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136 a revulsion. The warlike natives of Bihár had not been conquered, and they knew it. They had helped Clive, not that they should become subject to the foreigner from the sea, but that they might have a native ruler whom they trusted, in place of one whom they disliked. When they realized that the result of this change was not only subjection to the islanders, but impoverishment to themselves, they broke into what was called rebellion, and showed on many a bloody field that it was not they, only Siráj-ud-daulá, who had been conquered at Plassey.

This was the most dangerous legacy of the policy and action of Clive. He recognized its shadowy existence. He wrote to his successor, Mr. Vansittart, when he transferred to him his own office, that the only danger he had to dread in Bengal was that which might arise from venality and corruption. He might have added that the spoils of P]assey had created a state of society in which those vices were prominent; that the saltpetre monopoly, with the duties and exemptions which had followed its acquisition, had confirmed them. The Súbahdár himself recognized the new danger which would follow the departure of Clive. In his mind he was the moderator who, satisfied himself, would have stayed the hands of others. To quiet the newcomers there would be fresh rapacity, more stringent despoilings. He felt, to use the expression of the period when Clive quitted Bengal, that 'the soul was departing from the body.'

Clive made over charge to Mr. Holwell, of Black