annual allowance from us of £600,000. Half that amount, or about £300,000, we paid to the emperor as tribute from Bengal, Behar, and Orissa. Thus was constituted the dual system of government, by which the English received all the revenues of Bengal, Behar, and Orissa, and undertook to maintain the army; while the criminal jurisdiction was vested in the Nawáb. In Indian phraseology, the Company was díwán, and the Nawáb was
nizám. The actual collection of the revenues still remained for seven years in the hands of native officials (1765-1772).
Olive's Reorganization of the Bengal Service, 1766.—Clive's other great task was the reorganization of the Company's service. All the officers, civil and military alike, were tainted with the common corruption. Their legal salaries were paltry, and quite insufficient for a livelihood. But they had been permitted to augment them, sometimes a hundredfold, by means of private trade and by gifts from the Native powers. Despite the united resistance of the civil servants, and an actual mutiny of two hundred military officers, Clive carried through his reforms. Private trade and the receipt of presents were prohibited for the future, while a fair increase of pay was provided out of the monopoly of salt.
Dual System of Administration, 1767-1772.—Lord Clive quitted India for the third and last time in 1767. Between that date and the governorship of Warren Hastings in 1772, little of importance occurred in Bengal, beyond the terrible famine of 1770, which is officially reported to have swept away one-third of the inhabitants. The dual system of government established in 1765 by Clive had proved a failure. The English were the real rulers, but the administration of the districts was still carried on by native officials. There was thus a divided responsibility, and when any disaster occurred it was impossible to find out who was really to blame. Even the distant Court of Directors in England discerned that a complete change had become necessary in the government of Bengal. Warren Hastings, a tried servant of the company, distinguished alike for intelligence, for probity, and for knowledge of Oriental manners, was nominated Governor by the Court of Directors, with express instructions to carry out a predetermined series of reforms. In their
