'To be perpetually complaining to the Nabob renders us too little and mean in his eyes. If you have not a force capable of protecting you and your servants from insults, you should apply for it.' No one can pretend that Mir Kasim was ignorant of this practice. Yet he now affected to regard it as a grievous innovation made by personal enemies resolved upon his overthrow. In short, by the beginning of 1763, it was plain, to all but the optimistic Governor, that the English would either lose their privileges or have to fight for them.

It is needless to detail the prolonged and heated discussions which took place between Vansittart and Hastings on the one side and the remainder of the Council on the other, regarding the policy that should now be followed. The arrangements which the President had made with Mir Kasim were formally disapproved. The Chief of Patna, who had from the first condemned the revolution of 1760 with a violence which damaged his own cause, was authorised to take measures for the security of the factory and garrison if an attack were threatened; and an embassy was sent to make a last effort to dissuade Mir Kasim from hostilities. But he categorically refused every demand. After some delay he permitted the English envoys to depart, but his troops were already moving on Patna. The English thereupon seized that city, but owing to ill-leadership failed to hold it, and in their retreat were surrounded and taken. The embassy was attacked near Murshidabad and massacred.

Thus for the third time within seven years the English came to an open rupture with the Nawab of Bengal. In this case various causes rendered the struggle prolonged and severe. Although Major Adams, by an unbroken series of victories, drove Mir Kasim out of Bengal and Behar, the fugitive succeeded in getting the support of Oudh and thus renewed the struggle by invading Behar in 1764. The military command had now fallen into the weaker hands of Carnac; and the army had been demoralised by promises of a donation, payment of which had been delayed. Little was done beyond defending Patna from the enemy until, in the autumn, the spirit of mutiny was crushed; then the English advanced into Oudh, beat the Nawab at Buxar, and occupied that province as well.

Such was the end of Mir Kasim's government. Before flying to Oudh he gave a shocking proof of the ferocity of his disappointed ambition; for he caused his English prisoners to be massacred at Patna. But the guilt does not lie upon him only. Some rests upon one of the victims, Ellis, the late Chief of Patna, whose intemperate speech had given reason for suspecting his intentions. Even more rests upon Vansittart, who had allowed, nay, even encouraged, Mir Kasim to exercise power without reference to the wishes of the English; who had fed his ambition without being prepared to give it free scope; whose policy from the day he landed in Calcutta was marked by blind inconsequence, and perfect inability to read men or forecast the future.

Vansittart was succeeded in 1764 by Spencer, who, while suffering to the full from all his predecessor's defects, added to them a complete subordination of public to private interests. Meanwhile, on the outbreak of war with Mir Kasim, Mir Jaffar had been drawn out once more from his retirement and proclaimed Nawab by the man who had deposed him. He proved even feebler and more incompetent than before. The ministers he chose and insisted on retaining were men of low birth, vicious habits or undoubted treachery. They contributed, to the utmost of their power, to the difficulties encountered by the English in the campaign of 1764; and, although the Nawab and the Council held prolonged conferences, they failed altogether to find a satisfactory solution of their disputes. Presently, in January 1765, Mir Jaffar died; and the new Governor resolved in future strictly to control the appointments of ministers. So far it was well enough; but unfortunately he proceeded to allow the new Nawab to display substantial gratitude for this reduction of his power, and also laid the selected minister under contribution. What made this conduct the more remarkable was that orders had been received from the Company absolutely prohibiting further participation in the inland trade, and requiring all its servants to enter into covenants against receiving presents; but the President, who felt fully qualified to deal with the political future of Bengal, shrank from the responsibility of executing these orders because a successor, Lord Clive, had already been appointed. It

would seem that he felt empowered to carry out whatever projects might be of private benefit but none that threatened private loss. In fact, the Company's government was rapidly falling into chaos, and Clive was reappointed Governor to bring it back to order and decency. It was the hardest task with which he was ever entrusted, and in its achievement he secured his greatest success.

He reached Calcutta in May 1765, and at once took up the work of reform. Supreme control had been assigned to a Select Committee of the Council so long as the war with Oudh should last; but Clive, finding that he would encounter the greatest opposition in the larger body, resolved to keep the Committee in force, though Oudh had been overcome, and use it as the controlling organ of government. With its aid and his own commanding personality, he broke down all resistThe covenants against presents were executed. An inquiry was held into the acceptance of presents on the late appointment of Nawab and ministers. When vacancies occurred in Council, he sent for Company's servants from Madras in preference to promoting men unsuitable from youth or character.

ance.

The result of these measures was an outburst of indignation. According to the custom of those days, the Governor kept open house for all respectable persons; but Clive's dinner-table was deserted, his invitations were declined, his Madras nominees sent to Coventry. Clive was not the man to bear this meekly. Every person who was prominent in this movement met with severe punishment; they lost every lucrative post; they were transferred to disagreeable and unprofitable stations; they were reduced to the bare pay and allowances which every one drew but no one could live on. Presently it was evident that to resist Clive was a bootless attempt; and the civilians gave way.

Even severer trouble was encountered with the army. It was usual in India to pay officers when in the field an allowance, called batta, to enable them to meet the additional expenses of campaigning. In Bengal this had been fixed at a far higher rate than elsewhere, and the Company had sent repeated orders for its reduction. This again was left for Clive to carry out. The officers regarded it as a breach of faith. They were encouraged

by the civilians with promises of support. They formed an association which was joined by practically the whole body, and then threatened to resign their commissions unless batta was restored at the old rate. But Clive regarded their threats no more than he had regarded the discontent of the civilians. He sent for officers from Madras; he promoted men from the ranks; he insisted that every officer who resigned should be at once sent down to Calcutta so that they should not spread mutiny among the men; and this movement too, like that of the civilians, collapsed.

While he thus effected the reforms demanded by the Company, he accompanied them with another which plainly marks his firm grasp on the essentials of human nature. He laid it down that, while it was undesirable that youngsters should be able to return to Europe with fortunes after a few years' service, a man should have the prospect of securing a competence after enjoying the rank of councillor or field rank. To this salutary end he took advantage of the Company's orders forbidding its servants to participate in the inland trade. The public revenues derived from that source had been, under arrangements to be mentioned below, transferred to the Company. Clive resolved to employ these revenues to provide adequate pay for the senior civil and military servants; but, as he was well aware that the Company's traditions were all against making such payments from its own pocket, he disguised his proceedings by vesting the revenues in a society acting for the servants concerned, who were to manage matters on much the same footing as that allowed to the monopolists and taxfarmers under the native Government.

This step was disapproved at home, principally on the ground that interference with the inland trade had already been prohibited-an objection that did not in reality apply. But Clive's arguments had this much effect, that the Company decided to allot 2 per cent. of its territorial revenues among those servants who would have benefited under Clive's scheme, so that he in fact inaugurated the system under which Indian administrators ceased to look to irregular, and often illicit, forms of gain for the reward of their labours. By these measures of reform taken together Clive enabled

the Company's servants to break with their old traditions and prepared the instruments for the future administration of India. But he accomplished this at enormous personal cost. To these reforms are to be ascribed that deadly and persistent hatred which called his conduct in question before the Houses of Parliament, which pursued him to the grave and then attacked his memory, which sought to blacken and defame every one of his friends. In like manner the corrupt and vicious French agents at Pondicherry hounded to death the unhappy Lally. Here, too, we see the English conquest of Bengal following the same lines and yielding the same consequences as Dupleix's temporary conquest of the Carnatic. The evils were due not to the special worthlessness of the English or the French agents, but to the weakness of human nature exposed to extraordinary temptation.

Lastly, we have to consider the political settlement which Clive effected in Bengal. In the first place he restored the Nawab of Oudh to his former dominions. He considered rightly that he would be careful how he again attacked the English, and that his territories would form an advanced guard for the frontier of Behar. Oudh remained so until the days of Dalhousie. Secondly, he had to decide what should be done with the fugitive Emperor Shah Alam. The dream of marching to Delhi and making Moghuls had long floated before European eyes. Bussy and Caillaud and a host of others had been allured by the wealth and power which the prospect seemed to offer. But Clive resolutely put the idea aside and assigned Kora and Allahabad for the imperial residence and maintenance. He was not going to embroil the English with the strongest powers of Hindustan for the sake of an empty name, or waste their blood to establish the authority of another. Thirdly, he fixed the future position of the English in Bengal. Hitherto they had had no status beyond that conferred by military power. The immediate problem was how to secure control without evoking violent protests from Paris and the Hague. This was solved by taking for the Company the diwanni or revenue administration, and leaving the rest nominally in the Nawab's hands. But the Nawab himself was now powerless for good or evil. The English named the ministers who exercised authority in his name. Thus