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178 ensconced in the three provinces of Bengal, Bihár, and Orissa. The frontier of Oudh was to form a permanent barrier against all further progress.' Such a policy might commend itself to the theorist, but it was not fitted for the rough throes of an empire in dissolution, its several parts disputed by adventurers. Within a single decade it was blown to the winds.

There is one subject upon which it becomes me to touch slightly before considering the army administration. During one of his visits to Murshidábád it was discovered that, in his will, the late Súbahdár, Mír Jafar, had bequeathed five lakhs of rupees to Clive. The discovery was made after Clive, in common with the other servants of the Company, had bound himself not to accept any presents from natives of India. He could not therefore take the legacy himself. But the money was there — practically to be disposed of as he might direct. He resolved, with the approval of his Council, to constitute with it a fund for the relief of the officers and men of the Company's army who might be disabled by wounds or by the climate. Thus was formed the institution which, under the title of 'Lord Clive's Fund,' served to bring help and consolation to many poor and deserving servants of the Company for nearly a century. By a strange freak of fortune this fund reverted, in 1858, on the transfer of India to the Crown, to the descendants of the very man who could not, or believed he could not, accept it, when bequeathed to him, for himself.