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684 Ill.SJOltV <Jf INDIA. [ho(,K III.
A.D. 1763. His ambition, it thus appears, was not satisfied; and lie had the mortification to see the ministry through wliom iie anticipated higher advancement dispkiced. DiBsatisfac- He was the more disconcerted because his interest at court and in parhament, ouve. which he had riedulously laboured to establisii, failed him at the very time when he was confidently calculating upon it to defeat an attack which had been darkly threatened by the court of directors. Though the proceeds of his jaghire had been regularly paid by the Bengal presidency to his agents in India, the directors, who were suffering under gi'eat pecuniary embarrassment, felt much dissatisfied, and Mr. Sullivan, the chairman, gave him to understand that the secret committee wouM communicate with him on the subject. He himself seems not to have been without misgivings, and for some time pursued a course which displayed none of his characteristic fearlessness, and was in fact more prudential than chivalrous. In a letter to Mr. Amyatt he says, " My friends advise me to do nothing to exasperate them (the directors), if they are silent as to my jaghire. Indeed, it is an object of .such importance that I should be inex- cusable if I did not make every other consideration give way to it ; and this is one of the reasons why I cannot join openly with the Bengal gentlemen in their resentments. It depends upon you, my friend, to make me a free man, by getting this grant confirmed from Dellii, and getting such an acknowledgment from under the hands of the old nabob and the new nabob, as may enable me to put all our enemies at defiance." His anxiety It is painful to see such a man as Clive reduced to the necessity of gagging jaghire. himsclf, and confessing that he could not act as a "free man," because he was afraid of giving offence which might prove injurious to his pecuniary interests. The worst of it is, that he seems unconscious of the degradation which he was thus voluntarily imposing upon himself, and hence again and again brings it under tiie notice of his correspondents as if it were a matter of which he had not the least cause to be ashamed. In a letter to Mr. Pybus, of Madras, after describing Sullivan as " the reigning director," and as " keeping every one out of the direction who is endowed with more knowledge, or would be likely to have more weight and influence than himself," he continues thus: "This kind of political behaviour has exasperated most of the gentlemen who are lately come from India, particularly those from Bengal They are surprised I do not join in their resentments ; and I should think it very surprising if I did, considering I have such an immense stake in India. My future power, my future gi-andeur, all depend upon the receipt of the jaghire money. I should be a madman to set at defiance those who at present show no inclination to hurt me." He was thu.s, according to his own confession, acting in a public matter from a selfish and sordid motive. Peace on such terms was at best a hollow truce ; and accord- ingly, no sooner was Clive convinced that the dominant party in the court of directors might be turned out, than he declared open war against it. In order to influence the election of 17G3 he manufactured an enormous number of votes.
