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Rh holding supreme authority, a Clive or a Warren Hastings. But when the local chief authority was in the hands of men wanting alike in intellect, in high principle, and in nerve, the situation was likely to become dangerous in the extreme.

For the moment, when Clive quitted India, the situation was tranquil. But it might become at any moment the reverse. Therefore it was that Clive had recommended as his successor a man whom he believed he had sounded to the core, and in whom he had found one after his own heart. But there is no proverb more true than that contained in the criticism passed by Tacitus on Galba, 'Omnium consensu capax imperii, nisi imperasset.' We shall see presently how the conduct of Vansittart corresponded to this aphorism.

A little more than a year before quitting the shores of Bengal, Clive had addressed to Mr. Pitt, afterwards Lord Chatham, then Secretary of State, a letter (January 7, 1759) in which he had represented the difficulties of the actual situation, and had suggested a mode of dealing with them. He had described the actual Súbahdár as a man attached to the English, and as likely to continue that attachment 'while he has no other support,' but totally uninfluenced by feelings of gratitude, feelings not common to his race. On the other hand, he was advanced in years; his son, Míran, was utterly unworthy, so unworthy 'that it will be almost unsafe trusting him with the succession.' He added immediately, as though prescient of the events