honourable and detrimental to the nation. Clive defended himself vigorously, laying about him on all sides; and the motion was rejected, without division, in favour of a resolution "that Robert Lord Clive did render great and meritorious services to his country." His death in the following year (November, 1774) closed the career of this high-spirited, courageous, indefatigable man, to whom above all others the English are indebted for the foundation of their empire in India. Never before or since has an Irish peerage been the cheap reward of such invaluable service to the nation. His daring and his sagacity, his singular talent for politics and his genius for war, produced in Lord Clive a rare combination of masculine qualities exactly fitted to the circumstances of his time in India.
Of the two Acts that were eventually passed in 1773, one enabled the Ministers to lend the Company £1,400,000 to discharge their obligations; the other changed the constitution of the Company and gave a Parliamentary title to their administration in India. To these matters, to the re-arrangement of the governing body at home and to the reform of the system abroad, the scope of Lord North's Regulating Act was carefully confined. The territorial acquisitions and revenues were still to be retained by the Company for the term of their charter; and the uncertain ground of sovereign prerogative was evaded by founding the enactment upon "the eminent dominion of Parliament over every British subject in every concern." The Courts of the Directors and Proprietors in London were re-consti-
