LORD CLIVE

(EDINBURGH REVIEW, JANUARY, 1810.)

The Life of Robert Lord Clive; collected from the Family Papers, communicated by the Earl of Powis. By MAJOR-GENERAL SIR JOHN 8 vols. London: 1836. 3

MALCOLM, K.C.B.

men.

8vo.

from their home by an immense ocean, subjugated, in the course of a few years, one of the greatest empires in the world. Yet, unless we greatly err, this subject is, to most readers, not only insipid, but positively distasteful.

Perhaps the fault lies partly with the historians. Mr. Mill's book, though it has un- Mill and Orme. Histories by doubtedly great and rare merit, is not sufficiently animated and picturesque to attract those who read for amusement. Orme, inferior to no English historian in style and power of painting, is minute even to tediousness. In one volume he allots, on an average, a closely-printed quarto page to the events of every forty-eight hours. The consequence is, that his narrative, though one of the most authentic, and one of the most finely written in our language, has never been very popular, and is now scarcely ever read.

WE have always thought it strange that | handful of his countrymen, separated while the history of the Spanish Empire in America is familiarly known to all the nations of Europe, the great actions of our countrymen in the East should, even among ourselves, excite little interest. Every schoolboy knows who imprisoned Montezuma, and who strangled Atabalipa. But we doubt whether one Neglect of Indian history in ten, even among Engby English- lish gentlemen of highly cnltivated minds, can tell who won the battle of Buxar, who perpetrated the massacre of Patna, whether Surajah Dowlah ruled in Oude or in Travancore, or whether Holkar was a Hindoo or a Mussulman. Yet the victories of Cortes were gained over savages who had no letters, who were ignorant of the use of metals, who had not broken in a single animal to labour, who wielded no better weapons than those which could be made out of sticks, flints, and fish-bones, who regarded a horse-soldier as a monster half man and half beast, who took a harquebusier for a sorcerer, able to scatter the thunder and lightning of the skies. The people of India, when we subdued them, were ten times as numerous as the vanquished Americans, and were at the same time quite as highly civilized as the victorious Spaniards. They had reared cities larger and fairer than Saragossa or Toledo, and buildings more beautiful and costly than the cathedral of Seville. They could show bankers richer than the richest firms of Barcelona or Cadiz, viceroys whose splendour far surpassed that of Ferdinand the Catholic, myriads of cavalry and long trains of artillery which would have astonished the Great Captain. It might have been expected that every Englishman who takes any interest in any part of history would be curious to know how a

Lord Powis.

We fear that Sir John Malcolm's volumes will not much attract those readers whom Orme and Mill have repelled. The materials placed at his disposal Materials by the late Lord Powis supplied by were indeed of great value. But we cannot say that they have been very skilfully worked up. It would, however, be unjust to criticise with severity a work which, if the author had lived to complete and revise it, would probably have been improved by condensation, and by a better arrangement. We are more disposed to perform the pleasing duty of expressing our gratitude to the noble family to which the public owes so much useful and curious information.

The effect of the book, even when we make the largest allowance for the partiality of those who have furnished, and of

character.

those who have digested the materials, is, | him seated on a stone spout near the on the whole, greatly to raise the character summit. They also relate how he formed of Lord Clive. We are far all the good-for-nothing lads of the town Opposite estimates of indeed from sympathizing into a kind of predatory army, and comClive's with Sir John Malcolm, pelled the shopkeepers to submit to a whose love passes the love tribute of apples and halfpence, in conof biographers, and who can see nothing sideration of which he guaranteed the but wisdom and justice in the actions of security of their windows. He was sent his idol. But we are at least equally far from school to school, making very little from concurring in the severe judgment of progress in his learning, and gaining for Mr. Mill, who seems to us to show less himself everywhere the character of an discrimination in his account of Clive than exceedingly naughty boy. One of his in any other part of his valuable work. masters, it is said, was sagacious enough Clive, like most men who are born with to prophesy that the idle lad would make strong passions, and tried by strong temp- a great figure in the world. But the tations, committed great faults. But general opinion seems to have been that every person who takes a fair and en- poor Robert was a dunce, if not a reprolightened view of his whole career must bate. His family expected nothing good admit that our island, so fertile in heroes from such slender parts and such a headand statesmen, has scarcely ever produced strong temper. It is not strange, therea man more truly great either in arms or fore, that they gladly accepted for him, in council. when he was in his eighteenth year, a writership in the service of the East India Company, and shipped him off to make a fortune or to die of a fever at Madras.

The Clives had been settled, ever since the twelfth century, on an estate of no great value, near Market Drayton, in Shropshire. In the reign of George the First this moderate but ancient inheritance was possessed by Mr. Richard Clive, who seems to have been a plain man of no great tact or capacity. He had been bred to the law, and divided his time between professional business and the avocations of a small proprietor. He married a lady from Manchester, of the name of Gaskill, and became the father of a very numerous family. His eldest son, Robert, the founder of the British Empire in India, was born at the old seat of his ancestors on the 29th of September, 1725.

childhood.

Some lineaments of the character of the man were early discerned in the child. There remain letters written by his relations when he was in his seventh year; and from these it appears that, even at that early age, his strong Robert Clive's, will, and his fiery passions, sustained by a constitutional intrepidity which sometimes seemed hardly compatible with soundness of mind, had begun to cause great uneasiness to the family." Fighting," says one of his uncles, "to which he is out of measure addicted, gives his temper such a fierceness and imperiousness, that he flies out on every trifling occasion." The old people of the neighbourhood still remember to have heard from their parents how Bob Clive climbed to the top of the lofty steeple of Market Drayton, and with what terror the inhabitants saw

Far different were the prospects of Clive from those of the youths whom the East India College now annually sends to the Presidencies of our Asiatic Empire. The Company was then purely a trading corporation. Its territory consisted of a few square miles, for which rent was paid to the native governments. Its troops were scarcely numerous enough to man the batteries of three or four ill-constructed forts, which had been erected for the protection of the warehouses. The East India The natives, who composed Company's a considerable part of these garrisons. little garrisons, had not yet been trained in the discipline of Europe, and were armed, some with swords and shields, some with bows and arrows. The business of the servant of the Company was not, as now, to conduct the judicial, financial, and diplomatic business of a great country, but to take stock, to make advances to weavers, to ship cargoes, and to keep a sharp look-out for private traders who dared to infringe the monopoly. The younger clerks were so miserably paid, that they could scarcely subsist without incurring debt; the elder enriched themselves by trading on their own account; and those who lived to rise to the top of the service often accumulated considerable fortunes.

Madras, to which Clive had been appointed, was, at this time, perhaps the first in importance of the Company's settlements. In the preceding century

Madras in 1743.

Fort St. George had arisen on a barren spot, beaten by a raging surf; and in the neighbourhood a town, inhabited by many thousands of natives, had sprung up, as towns spring up in the East, with the rapidity of the prophet's gourd. There were already in the suburbs many white villas, each surrounded by its garden, whither the wealthy agents of the Company retired, after the labours of the desk and the warehouse, to enjoy the cool breeze which springs up at sunset from the Bay of Bengal. The habits of these mercantile grandees appear to have been more profuse, luxurious, and ostentatious, than those of the high judicial and political functionaries who have succeeded them. But comfort was far less understood. Many devices which now mitigate the heat of the climate, preserve health, and prolong life, were unknown. There was far less intercourse with Europe than at present. The voyage by the Cape, which in our time has often been performed within three months, was then very seldom accomplished in six, and was sometimes protracted to more than a year. Consequently the Anglo-Indian was then much more estranged from his country, much more an Oriental in his tastes and habits, and much less fitted to mix in society after his return to Europe, than the Anglo-Indian of the present day.

even for that age. The ship remained
some months at the Brazils, where the
young adventurer picked
Clive's un-
up some knowledge of
happy position.
Portuguese, and spent all
his pocket-money. He did not arrive in
India till more than a year after he had
left England. His situation at Madras
was most painful. His funds were ex-
hausted. His pay was small. He had
contracted debts. He was wretchedly
lodged-no small calamity in a climate
which can be rendered tolerable to an
European only by spacious and well-
placed apartments. He had been fur-
nished with letters of recommendation to
a gentleman who might have assisted him;
but when he landed at Fort St. George he
found that this gentleman had sailed for
England. His shy and haughty disposition
withheld him from introducing himself.
He was several months in India before he
became acquainted with a single family.
The climate affected his health and spirits.
His duties were of a kind ill suited to his
ardent and daring character. He pined
for his home, and in his letters to his
relations expressed his feelings in language
softer and more pensive than we should
have expected, from the waywardness of
his boyhood, or from the inflexible stern-
ness of his later years. "I have not en-
joyed," says he, "one happy day since I
left my native country." And again, “I
must confess, at intervals, when I think of
my dear native England, it affects me in
a very particular manner. . . . If I should
be so far blest as to revisit again my own
country, but more especially Manchester,
the centre of all my wishes, all that I
could hope or desire for would be presented
before me in one view."

One solace he found of the most re-
spectable kind. The Governor possessed
a good library, and per-
Reading as
mitted Clive to have access
a solace.
to it. The young man
devoted much of his leisure to reading, and
acquired at this time almost all the know-
ledge of books that he ever possessed. As
a boy he had been too idle, as a man he
soon became too busy, for literary pursuits.

Within the fort and its precincts the English governors exercised, by permission of the native rulers, an extensive authority. But they had never dreamed of claiming independent power. The surrounding country was governed by the Nabob of the Carnatic, a deputy of the Viceroy of the Deccan, commonly called the Nizam, who was himself only a deputy of the mighty prince designated by our ancestors as the Great Mogul. Those names, once so august and formidable, still remain. There is still a Nabob of the Carnatic, who lives on a pension allowed to him by the Company, out of the revenues of the province which his ancestors ruled. There is still a Nizam, whose capital is overawed by a British cantonment, and to whom a British resiBut neither climate, nor poverty, nor dent gives, under the name of advice, study, nor the sorrows of a homesick commands which are not to be disputed. exile, could tame the desperate audacity There is still a Mogul, who is permitted of his spirit. He behaved to his official to play at holding courts and receiving superiors as he had behaved to his schoolpetitions, but who has less power to help masters, and was several times in danger or hurt than the youngest civil servant of of losing his situation. Twice, while the Company. residing in the Writers' Buildings, he atClive's voyage was unusually tedious tempted to destroy himself; and twice the

pistol which he snapped at his own head | Dupleix treated the principal servants of failed to go off. This circumstance, it is the Company. The governor and several said, affected him as a similar escape of the first gentlemen of Fort St. George affected Wallenstein. After satisfying were carried under a guard to Pondicherry, himself that the pistol was really well and conducted through the loaded, he burst forth into an exclamation, town in a triumphal pro- tion violated. The capitulathat surely he was reserved for something cession under the eyes of great. fifty thousand spectators. It was with reason thought that this gross violation of public faith absolved the inhabitants of Madras from the engagements into which they had entered with Labourdonnais. Clive fled from the town by night in the disguise of a Mussulman, and took refuge at Fort St. David, one of the small English settlements subordinate to Madras. The circumstances in which he was now placed naturally led him to adopt a profession better suited to his restless and intrepid spirit than the business of examining packages and casting accounts. He solicited and obtained an ensign's commission in the service of the Company, and at twenty-one entered on his military career. His personal courage, of which he had, while still a writer, given signal proof by a desperate duel with a military bully who was the terror of Fort St. David, speedily made him conspicuous even among hundreds of brave men. He soon began to show in his new calling other qualities which had not before been discerned in him-judgment, sagacity, deference to legitimate authority. He distinguished himself highly in several operations against the French, and was particularly noticed by Major Lawrence, who was then considered as the ablest British officer in India.

About this time an event which at first seemed likely to destroy all his hopes in life, suddenly opened before him a new path to eminence. Europe had been, during some years, distracted by the war of the Austrian succession. George II. was the steady ally of Maria Theresa. The house of Bourbon took the opposite side. Though England was even then the first of maritime powers, she Surrender of Madras to La- was not, as she has since bourdonnais. become, more than a match on the sea for all the nations of the world together; and she found it difficult to maintain a contest against the united navies of France and Spain. In the eastern seas France obtained the ascendency. Labourdonnais, Governor of Mauritius, a man of eminent talents and virtues, conducted an expedition to the continent of India, in spite of the opposition of the British fleet-landed, assembled an army, appeared before Madras, and compelled the town and fort to capitulate. The keys were delivered up; the French colours were displayed on Fort St. George; and the contents of the Company's warehouses were seized as prize of war by the conquerors. It was stipulated by the capitulation that the English inhabitants should be prisoners of war on parole, and that the town should remain in the hands of the French till it should be ransoned. Labourdonnais pledged his honour that only a moderate ransom should be required. But the success of Labourdonnais had awakened the jealousy of his countryman, Dupleix, Governor of Pondicherry. Dupleix, moreover, had already begun to revolve gigantic schemes, Interference with which the restoration of Dupleix. of Madras to the English was by no means compatible. He declared that Labourdonnais had gone beyond his powers; that conquests made by the French arms on the continent of India were at the disposal of the Governor of Pondicherry alone; and that Madras peace between the English tween the should be rased to the ground. Labour- and French Crowns; but Companies. donnais was compelled to yield. The there arose, between the English and anger which the breach of the capitulation French Companies trading to the East, a excited among the English was increased war most eventful and important—a war by the ungenerous manner in which in which the prize was nothing less than

He had been only a few months in the army when intelligence arrived that peace had been concluded between Great Britain and France. Dupleix was in consequence compelled to restore Madras to the English Company; and the young ensign was at liberty to resume his former business. He did indeed return for a short time to his desk. He again quitted it in order to assist Major Lawrence in some petty hostilities with the natives, and then again returned to it. While he was thus wavering between a military and a commercial life, events took place which decided his choice. The politics of India assumed a new aspect. There was Struggle be