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refuge among the Rohillas, the latter had entered the service of the Jats, and Sujah Dowlah did all that could be required of him, when he engaged never to give any countenance or protection to either. The only point as to which he ventured to demur was a proposal that the Company should be empowered to Dowlah and establish factories within his territories. In this he probably suspected a repe- tition of the same process by which Bengal had been wrested from its original. rulers, and therefore objected so strongly that the point was not pressed, and it was merely stipulated that the Company should have liberty to trade duty free. This liberty, however, was scarcely regarded as a boon, for at this time the three provinces were supposed to be the proper limits both of trade and of con- quest. In regard to the former, the presidency could foresee no benefit to the Company from maintaining settlements at so vast a distance; while in regard to the latter, even Clive declared in a letter to the directors, shortly after conclud- ing the treaty, "My resolution was, and my hopes will always be to confine our assistance, our conquest, and our possessions to Bengal, Behar, and Orissa. To go further is, in my opinion, a scheme so extravagantly ambitious and absurd, that no governor and council in their senses can ever adopt it, unless the whole scheme of the Company's interest be first entirely new modelled."

When Clive returned to Calcutta in September, a series of irksome duties lay before him. He had enforced the signature of the covenants interdicting presents, but as large sums had been received after the covenants had arrived, and were therefore, though unexecuted, legally binding, it was judged necessary to institute a strict inquiry in regard to them. This inquiry was, indeed, unavoidable, for Nujum-ud-Dowlah, dissatisfied with the arrangement which had forced Mahomed Reza Khan upon him as naib-soubah, no sooner heard of Clive's arrival than he hastened to Calcutta, and made it a formal complaint that the naib had emptied his treasury by paying away twenty lacs of rupees in pre- sents to the members of council. Mahomed Reza Khan's defence was that he was not a voluntary agent, but on receiving intimation of the sums which the members of council expected had no option but to pay them. The recipients of the so-called presents denied that they had used either force or terror. This was perhaps true, but the inquiry proved that they had intimated their expectations in a way which made it impossible to refuse them, and the sentence therefore was not unjust, which, on the ground of this misconduct, dismissed Mr. Spencer, the governor, and nine other leading officials from the Company's service. ment as to

The question of private trade still remained. The directors had, as we have seen, endeavoured to strike at the root of the evil, by sending out an order, on private the 8th of February, 1764, prohibiting the servants of the Company from trade. engaging in it. This judicious order they had been obliged to recall, in conse- quence of the interference of the general court of proprietors; and accordingly, in a letter sent out in the same ship in which Clive sailed from England, while they still expressed their conviction that the existing regulations as to the pri-