pline of the army, Clive introduced an important change in the relations of the company to the native powers. Discerning in the recent occurrences the danger of allowing the nawab of Bengal to maintain a disciplined body of troops, he relieved him of all responsibility for the military defence of the country and of the management of the revenue, assigning to him out of the revenues of the province an annual sum of fifty-three lakhs of rupees for the expenses of his court and for the administration of justice. From the emperor of Delhi he obtained an imperial firman conferring upon the company the diwani, i.e. the right to collect the revenue in Bengal, Behar, and Orissa, thus constituting them in form, as well as in fact, the governors of the country.
After a residence of twenty-two months in Bengal Clive was compelled by ill-health to leave India for the last time. He returned to England a poorer man than he had left it. With enormous opportunities for amassing additional wealth in the course of the large transactions in which he was engaged, he had scrupulously abstained during his last visit to India from making any addition to his fortune. A legacy of 70,000l. which had been left to him by Mir Jaffier he accepted, but not for himself, devoting it to the establishment of a fund for the benefit of disabled Indian officers and their families. In his second government of Bengal Clive rendered services to his country which went far to outweigh whatever errors he had committed in his previous government. But those services, eminent as they were, did not meet with the same recognition in England which had been accorded to the services rendered by him in the earlier periods of his career. Both in the civil service and in the army he had made enemies by his stern repression of abuses and inflexible enforcement of orders. The malcontents, supported by Sulivan and his party at the India House, and by other persons, who, indignant at the abuses which had discredited British rule in Bengal, identified with the perpetrators of those abuses the man who in his last government had devoted himself to their repression, were unceasing in their denunciations of Clive. The newspapers were filled with attacks upon him; stories of the wildest kind were scattered broadcast; the very crimes which he had incurred odium by suppressing were laid to his charge; the unsatisfactory condition of the company's affairs after his departure from India, attributable to the errors of his successors, was ascribed to him. At last Clive, stung to the quick by the attacks which were made upon him, took advantage of a debate in the House of Commons on Indian affairs to reply to his assailants, and in a speech of considerable eloquence and vigour, in regard to which Lord Chatham, who heard it, said that he had never heard a finer speech, demolished the greater part of the accusations which had been made against him. A parliamentary inquiry ensued. Clive was subjected to a rigid examination and cross-examination, in the course of which, after describing in vivid language the temptations to which he had been exposed, he gave utterance to the celebrated exclamation, 'By God, Mr. Chairman, at this moment I stand astonished at my own moderation!' The inquiry extended into two sessions. It was completed in May 1773, and resulted in resolutions condemning, as illegal, the appropriation by servants of the state of acquisitions made by the arms of the state, and resolving, first, that this rule had been systematically violated by the English, functionaries in Bengal; and, secondly, that Clive, by the powers which he possessed as commander of the British forces in India, had obtained large sums from Mir Jaffier; but when it was further moved that Clive had abused his powers, and set an evil example to the servants of the public, the previous question was put and carried, and subsequently a motion that Clive had rendered 'great and meritorious services to the state' was passed without a division.
Clive did not long survive the termination of the inquiry. His health, always precarious, and much impaired by the exposure and fatigue of his life in India, had for some time occasioned him acute bodily suffering, which was greatly increased by the mental annoyance to which he was subjected after his final return from India. In order to alleviate his physical pain he had recourse to opium. The fits of depression to which he had been from time to time subject from an early age increased in frequency, and, combined with paroxysms of pain, affected his reason. He died by his own hand on 22 Nov. 1774, very shortly after completing his forty-ninth year. Lady Clive survived him for many years. He left several children. His eldest son, Edward [q. v.], afterwards became Earl of Powis.
The career of Clive was a very remarkable one, whether we consider the position and the reputation which he, the son of an impoverished country squire, commencing life as a clerk in the service of a mercantile company, was able to achieve at a comparatively early age; or the results of his exertions to his country; or the combination of administrative capacity in civil affairs with military genius of the highest order; or the difficulties under which he laboured, arising from a
