Page:Great Men and Famous Women Volume 2.djvu/72

 250 SOLDIERS AND SAILORS when he had to encounter a formidable mutiny of the officers of the army, occa- sioned by a diminution of their field allowances. Two hundred English officers engaged in a conspiracy to resign their commissions on the same day, believing that the governor-general would submit to any terms rather than see the army, on which the safety of the empire rested, left without commanders. They were mistaken in their calculations; Clive supplied their places from the officers round his person ; he sent for others from Madras ; he even gave commissions to some mercantile agents who offered their support at this time. Fortunately the soldiers, and particularly the Sepoys, over whom Clive had unbounded intiu- ence, remained steadfast in their allegiance. The leaders were arrested, tried, and dismissed from the service ; the others, completely humbled, besought per- mission to withdraw their resignations, and Clive exhibited lenity to all, save those whom he regarded as the contrivers of the plot. In his foreign policy he was equally successful. The Nabob of Oude, who had threatened invasion, sought for peace as soon as he heard of Clive's arrival in India ; and the Emperor of Delhi executed a formal warrant, empowering the Company to collect and administer the revenues of Bengal, Bahar, and Oussa ; that is, in fact, to exercise direct sovereignty over these provinces. Never had such a beneficial change been wrought in the short space of eighteen months. The governor-general set a noble example of obedience to his own regulations ; he refused the brilliant presents offered him by the native princes, and when Meer Jaffier left him a legacy of sixty thousand pounds, he made the whole over to the Company, in trust, for the officers and soldiers invalided in their service. At the close of January, 1767, the state of his health compelled Lord Clive to return to England. His reception at home was far from being gratifying ; his old enemies in the India House, reinforced by those whose rapacity he had checked in Bengal, assailed him publicly and privately ; the prejudices excited against those who had suddenly made large fortunes in India, were concentrated against him who was the highest, both in rank and fortune ; while his ostenta- tious display of wealth and grandeur increased the unfavorable impression on the public mind. The dreadful famine which desolated Bengal in 1770, was, with strange perversity, attributed to Lord Clive's measures, and his parliamentary in- fluence was greatly weakened by the death of George Grenville. Such was his position in the session of 1772, when the state of India was brought before Par- liament, and all the evils of its condition made subjects of charge against the best of its rulers. Clive met the storm wnth firmness. Lord Chatham declared that the speech in which he vindicated himself at an early stage of the proceedings was one of the finest ever delivered in the House of Commons ; his answers, when subjected to a rigid examination before a committee of inquiry, were equally remarkable for their boldness and candor. But there were some of his deeds which could not be justified, and a vote of moderate censure on his con- duct was sanctioned by the House of Commons. This was a disgrace, for which the favor of his sovereign, though it never varied, afforded him no consolation ; his constitution, already weakened by a tropical climate, began to give way ; to