Page:EB1911 - Volume 06.djvu/554

 with such effect in 1857. It is sufficient to say that after the Mutiny the government returned to his policy, and not a native gunner is now to be found in the Indian army.

Clive’s final return to England, a poorer man than he went out, in spite of still more tremendous temptations, was the signal for an outburst of his personal enemies, exceeded only by that which the malice of Sir Philip Francis afterwards excited against Warren Hastings. Every civilian whose illicit gains he had cut off, every officer whose conspiracy he had foiled, every proprietor or director, like Sulivan, whose selfish schemes he had thwarted, now sought their opportunity. He had, with consistent generosity, at once made over the legacy of £70,000 from the grateful Jafar Ali, as the capital of what has since been known as “the Clive Fund,” for the support of invalided European soldiers, as well as officers, and their widows, and the Company had allowed 8% on the sum for an object which it was otherwise bound to meet. General John Burgoyne, of Saratoga memory, did his best to induce the House of Commons, in which Lord Clive was now member for Shrewsbury, to impeach the man who gave his country an empire, and the people of that empire peace and justice, and that, as we have seen, without blot on the gift, save in the matter of Omichund. The result, after the brilliant and honourable defences of his career which will be found in Almon’s Debates for 1773, was a compromise that saved England this time from the dishonour which, when Warren Hastings had to run the gauntlet, put it in the same category with France in the treatment of its public benefactors abroad. On a division the House, by 155 to 95, carried the motion that Lord Clive “did obtain and possess himself” of £234,000 during his first administration of Bengal; but, refusing to express an opinion on the fact, it passed unanimously the second motion, at five in the morning, “that Robert, Lord Clive, did at the same time render great and meritorious services to his country.” The one moral question, the one questionable transaction in all that brilliant and tempted life—the Omichund treaty—was not touched.

Only one who can personally understand what Clive’s power and services had been will rightly realize the effect on him, though in the prime of life, of the discussions through which he had been dragged. In the greatest of his speeches, in reply to Lord North, he said,—“My situation, sir, has not been an easy one for these twelve months past, and though my conscience could never accuse me, yet I felt for my friends who were involved in the same censure as myself I have been examined by the select committee more like a sheep-stealer than a member of this House.” Fully accepting that statement, and believing him to have been purer than his accusers in spite of temptations unknown to them, we see in Clive’s end the result merely of physical suffering, of chronic disease which opium failed to abate, while the worry and chagrin caused by his enemies gave it full scope. This great man, who did more for his country than any soldier till Wellington, and more for the people and princes of India than any statesman in history, died by his own hand on the 22nd of November 1774 in his fiftieth year.

The portrait of Clive, by Dance, in the council chamber of Government House, Calcutta, faithfully represents him. He was slightly above middle-size, with a countenance rendered heavy and almost sad by a natural fulness above the eyes. Reserved to the many, he was beloved by his own family and friends. His encouragement of scientific undertakings like Major James Rennell’s surveys, and of philological researches like Francis Gladwin’s, gained him to two honorary distinctions of F.R.S. and LL.D.

His son and successor Edward (1754–1839) was created earl of Powis in 1804, his wife being the sister and heiress of George Herbert, earl of Powis (1755–1801). He is thus the ancestor of the later earls of Powis, who took the name of Herbert instead of that of Clive in 1807.

CLOACA, the Latin term given to the sewers laid to drain the low marshy grounds between the hills of Rome. The most important, which drained the forum, is known as the Cloaca Maxima and dates from the 6th century This was 10 ft. 6 in. wide, 14 ft. high, and was vaulted with three consecutive rings of voussoirs in stone, the floor being paved with polygonal blocks of lava.

 CLOCK. The measurement of time has always been based on the revolution of the celestial bodies, and the period of the apparent revolution of the sun, i.e. the interval between two consecutive crossings of a meridian, has been the usual standard for a day. By the Egyptians the day was divided into 24 hours of equal length. The Greeks adopted a different system, dividing the day, i.e. the period from sunrise to sunset, into 12 hours, and also the night. Whence it followed that it was only at two periods in the year that the length of the hours during the day and night were uniform (see ). In consequence, those who adopted the Greek system were obliged to furnish their water-clocks (see ) with a compensating device so that the equal hours measured by those clocks should be rendered unequal, according to the exigencies of the season. The hours were divided into minutes and seconds, a system derived from the sexagesimal notation which prevailed before the decimal system was finally adopted. Our mode of computing time, and our angular measure, are the only relics of this obsolete system.

The simplest measure of time is the revolution of the earth round its axis, which so far as we know is uniform, perfectly regular, and has not varied in speed during any period of human observation. The time of such a revolution is called a sidereal day, and is divided into hours, minutes and seconds. The period of rotation of the earth is practically measured by observations of the fixed stars (see ), the period between two successive transits of the same star across a meridian constituting the sidereal day. But as the axis of the earth slowly revolves round in a cone, whereby the phenomenon known as the precession of the equinoxes is produced, it follows that the astronomical sidereal day is not the true period of the earth’s rotation on its axis, but varies from it by less than a twenty millionth part, a fraction so small as to be inappreciable. But the civil day depends not on the revolution of the earth with regard to the stars, but on its revolution as compared with the position of the sun. Therefore each civil day is on the average longer than a sidereal one by nearly four minutes, or, to be exact, each sidereal day is to an average civil day as ·99727 to 1, and the sidereal hour, minute and second are also shorter in like proportion. Hence a sidereal clock has a shorter, quicker-moving pendulum than an ordinary clock.

Ordinary civil time thus depends on the apparent revolution of the sun round the earth. As, however, this is not uniform, it is needful for practical convenience to give it an artificial uniformity. For this purpose an imaginary sun, moving round the earth with the average velocity of the real sun, and called the “mean” sun, is taken as the measure of civil time. The day is divided into 24 hours, each hour into 60 minutes, and each minute into 60 seconds. After that the sexagesimal division system is abandoned, and fractions of seconds are estimated in decimals.

A clock consists of a train of wheels, actuated by a spring or weight, and provided with a governing device which so regulates the speed as to render it uniform. It also has a mechanism by which it strikes the hours on a bell or gong (cp. Fr. cloche, Ger. Glocke, a bell; Dutch klok, bell, clock), whereas, strictly, a timepiece does not strike, but simply shows the time.

The earliest clocks seem to have come into use in Europe during the 13th century. For although there is evidence that they may have been invented some centuries sooner, yet until that date they were probably only curiosities. The first form they took was that of the balance clock, the invention of which is ascribed, but on very insufficient grounds, to Pope Silvester II. in 996. A clock was put up in a former clock tower at Westminster with some great bells in 1288, out of a fine imposed on a chief-justice who had offended the government, and the motto Discite justitiam, moniti, inscribed upon it. The bells were sold,