70 1 HISTORY OF INDIA. [Book III.
AD. 1766. £24,128. The whole capital of the fund thu.s amounted to £123,001, 6«. 8cZ., and at 8 per cent., the rate of interest which the Company agreed to pay, pro- duced an annual income of £9912, to be expended in pensioas. ^^/""- After suppressing the mutiny Clive proceeded with General Camac to
against the Cliuprali, wliere a kind of congress was held. It was attended by Sujah Dowlah, contem- Shah Alum's minister, and deputies from the Mahrattas. Shah Alum, hitherto puted. excluded from Delhi, was bent on gaining possession of it, and had engaged the assistance of the Mahrattas for that purpose, by assuring them that the Com- pany's troops would form part of the expedition. Clive at once declared against this proposal, in which he saw only ruin to Shah Alum himself, and a warfare which might throw the whole empire into confusion. Instead of an alliance with the Mahrattas, whom he regarded as the only enemies from whom serious danger was now to be apprehended, he was desirous of forming a confederacy against them, and laid the foundations of a treaty by which the Company, the Nabob of Oude, the Jat, and the Rohilla chiefs, were mutually to assist each other in resisting the demands and repelling the incursions of the Mahrattas. Before the terms were finally arranged, Clive, attaching little importance to the assist- ance to be derived from such distant allies, took his departure and arrived at Calcutta on the 30th of July. The disagreeable service in which he had been engaged, the exertion he had been obliged to make, and a clima,te to which his constitution was ill adapted, had seriously aifected his health. He had previously intimated his determination to return to Europe, and in answer to a letter from the directors earnestly requesting him to continue in the government for another cuve's year, replied^ "It is now a month since I have been in so deplorable a state of
health
seriously health as to be wholly unable to attend to business, and it is past a doubt I affected. gaunot survivc the malignity of this climate another year." The directors, in urging their request, had said, "When we consider the penetration with which your lordship at once discerned our true interest in every branch, the rapidity with which you restored peace, order, and tranquillity, and the unbiassed integ- rity that has governed aU your actions, we must congratulate your lordship on being the happy instrument of such extensive blessings to those countries ; and you have our sincerest thanks for the great and important advantages thereby obtained for the Company." Nor did they confine themselves to thanks. After arguing that "another years experience and peaceful enjoyment of our acquisi- tions might fix them on a basis that might give great hopes they may be as lasting as they are great," they continued thus — "We are very sensible of the sacrifice we ask your lordship to make in desiring your continuance another year in Bengal, after the great service you have rendered the Company, and the difficulties you have passed through in accomplishing them, under circumstances in which your own example has been the principal means of restraining the general rapaciousness and corruption which had brought oiu:" affairs to the brink of ruin. These services, my lord, deserve more than verbal acknowledgments ;
