toil the senior clerks were sometimes permitted to trade on their own account and thus to make large fortunes, the opportunity rarely came until after many years of continuous suffering, and then generally when the climate had exhausted the man's energies.

To a young man of the nature of Robert Clive such a life could not be congenial. And, in fact, he hated it from the outset. He had left England early in 1743; his voyage had been long and tiring: the ship on which he sailed had put in at Rio, and was detained there nine months; it remained anchored for a shorter period in St. Simon's Bay; and finally reached Madras only at the close of 1744. The delays thus occurring completely exhausted the funds of the young writer: he was forced to borrow at heavy interest from the captain: the friend at Madras, to whom he had letters of introduction, had quitted that place. The solitary compensating advantage was this, that his stay at Rio had enabled him to pick up a smattering of Portuguese.

We see him, at length arrived, entering upon those hard and uninteresting duties to undertake which he had refused a life of far less drudgery in England in a congenial climate and under a sun more to be desired than dreaded. Cast loose in the profession he had selected, separated from relatives and friends, he had no choice but to enter upon the work allotted to him. This he did sullenly and with no enthusiasm. How painful was even this perfunctory performance; how keenly he felt the degradation—for such he deemed it—may be judged from the fact recorded by his contemporaries and accepted by the world, that for a long time he held aloof from his companions and his superiors. These in their turn ceased after a time to notice a young man so resolute to shun them. And although with time came an approach to intercourse, there never was cordiality. It is doubtful, however, whether in this description there has not mingled more than a grain of exaggeration. We have been told of his wayward nature: we have read how he insulted a superior functionary, and when ordered by the Governor to apologize, complied with the worst possible grace: how, when the pacified superior, wishing to heal the breach, asked him to dinner, he refused with the words that although the Governor had ordered him to apologize, he did not command him to dine with him: how, one day, weary of his monotonous existence, and suffering from impecuniosity, he twice snapped a loaded pistol at his head; how, on both occasions, there was a misfire; how, shortly afterwards, a companion, entering the room, at Clive's request pointed the pistol outside the window and pulled the trigger; how the powder ignited, and how then Clive, jumping to his feet, exclaimed, 'I feel I am reserved for better things.'

These stories have been told with an iteration which would seem to stamp them as beyond contradiction. But the publication of Mr. Forrest's records of the Madras Presidency (1890) presents a view altogether different. The reader must understand that the Board at Fort St. David—at that time the ruling Board in the Madras Presidency—is reporting, for transmission to Europe, an account of a complaint of assault made by the Rev. Mr. Fordyce against Clive.

It would appear from this that Mr. Fordyce was a coward and a bully, besides being in many other respects an utterly unfit member of society. It had come to Clive's ears that this man had said of him, in the presence of others, that he, Clive, was a coward and a scoundrel; that the reverend gentleman had shaken his cane over him in the presence of Mr. Levy Moses; and had told Captain Cope that he would break every bone in his (Clive's) skin. In his deposition Clive stated that these repeated abuses so irritated him, 'that he could not forbear, on meeting Mr. Fordyce at Cuddalore, to reproach him with his behaviour, which, he told him, was so injurious he could bear it no longer, and thereupon struck him two or three times with his cane, which, at last Mr. Fordyce returned and then closed in with him, but that they were presently parted by Captain Lucas.'

The Board, in giving its judgement on the case, recapitulated the many offences committed by Mr. Fordyce, the great provocation he had given to Clive, and suspended him. With regard to Clive they recorded: 'lest the same,' the attack on Fordyce, 'should be to Mr. Clive's prejudice, we think it not improper to assure you that he is generally esteemed a very quiet person and no ways guilty of disturbances.' It is to be inferred from this account that, far from deserving the character popularly assigned to him, Clive, in the third year of his residence in India, was regarded by his superiors as a very quiet member of society.

Still, neither the climate nor the profession suited him. 'I have not enjoyed,' he wrote to one of his cousins, 'a happy day since I left my native country.' In other letters he showed how he repented bitterly of having chosen a career so uncongenial. Gradually, however, he realized the folly of kicking against the pricks. He associated more freely with his colleagues, and when the Governor, Mr. Morse, sympathizing with the young man eating out his heart from ennui, opened to him the door of his considerable library, he found some relief to his sufferings. These, at last, had reached their term. Before Clive had exhausted all the books thus placed at his disposal, events occurred which speedily opened to him the career for which he had panted.

CHAPTER II

It will contribute to the better understanding of the narrative of the events which plunged the English into war in 1745, if we take a bird's-eye view of the peninsula generally, particularly of the southern portion, as it appeared in the year preceding.

Of India generally it is sufficient to say that from the year 1707, when the Emperor Aurangzeb died, authority had been relaxing to an extent which was rapidly bringing about the disruption of the bonds that held society together. The invasion of Nadír Sháh followed by the sack of Delhi in 1739 had given the Mughal dynasty a blow from which it never rallied. Thenceforward until 1761, when the third battle of Pánípat completed the catastrophe, the anarchy was almost universal. Authority was to the strongest. The Sallustian motto, 'Alieni appetens sui profusus,' was the rule of almost every noble; the agriculturists had everywhere abundant reason to realize 'that the buffalo was to the man who held the bludgeon.'¹

¹ The late Lord Lawrence used to tell me that when he was Acting Magistrate and Collector of Pánípat in 1836, the natives were in the habit of describing the lawlessness of the period which ceased in 1818 by using the expressive phrase I have quoted.

The disorder had extended to the part of India south of the Vindhyan range which was then known under the comprehensive term of the Deccan. When Aurangzeb had conquered many Súbahs, or provinces, of Southern India, he had placed them under one officer, to be nominated by the Court of Delhi, and to be called Súbahdár, or chief of the province. As disorder spread after his death the Súbahdárs and inferior chiefs generally began to secure themselves in the provinces they administered. The invasion of Nadír Sháh made the task generally easy. In the Deccan especially, Chin Kílich Khán, the chief of a family which had served with consideration under Akbar and his successors, whose father had been a favourite of Aurangzeb, who had himself served under that sovereign, and who had obtained from the successors of Aurangzeb the titles of Nizám-ul-Múlk and Asaf Jáh, took steps to make the Súbahdárship of Southern India hereditary in his family. The territories comprehended under the term