thought, proved his capacity, as had the members of Council, Messrs Sykes and Cartier.

Nothing now remained for Clive before embarking for England but to take leave of his colleagues. This he did in a weighty minute which he laid before them on the 16th January 1767, the last occasion on which he attended the Council. The most important point upon which he dwelt in this paper was the necessity) for not only promulgating, but for rigorously enforc ing, the orders of the Government. It had, he observed, been 'too much the custom in this Government to make orders and regulations, and then to suppose the business done. To what end and purpose' are they made if they be not promulgated and enforced? No regulation can be carried into execution, no order obeyed, if you do not make rigorous examples of the disobedient. Upon this point I rest the welfare of the Company in Bengal. The servants are now brought to a proper sense of their duties. If you slacken the reins of government, affairs will soon revert to their former channel. Anarchy and corruption will again prevail, and, elate with a new victory, be too headstrong for any future efforts of government. Recall to your memories the many attempts that have been made in the civil and military departments to overcome our authority and to set up a kind of independency against the Court of Directors. Reflect also on the resolute measures we have pursued, and their wholesome effects. Dis

obedience to legal power is the first step of sedition, and palliative measures effect no cure. Every tender compliance, every condescension on your parts, will only encourage more flagrant attacks, and will daily increase in strength, and be at last in vain resisted. Much of our time has been employed in correcting abuses. The important work has been prosecuted with zeal, diligence and disinterestedness; and we have the happiness to see our labours crowned with success. I leave the country in peace. I leave the civil and military departments under discipline and subordination. It is incumbent on you to keep them You have power, you have abilities, you have integrity. Let it not be said that you are deficient in resolution. I repeat that you must not fail to exact the most implicit obedience to your orders. Dismiss or suspend from your service any man who shall dare to dispute your authority. If you deviate from the principles upon which you have hitherto acted, and upon which you are conscious you ought to proceed, or if you do not make a proper use of that power with which you are invested, I shall hold myself acquitted, as I do now protest, against the consequences.'

So.

A week later he communicated to his colleagues a supplemental minute embodying the following observations upon a point to which he had omitted to advert in his previous paper :

'The people of this country,' he wrote, 'have little or no idea of a divided power; they imagine that all

The Governor of

authority is vested in one man. Bengal should always be looked upon by them in this light, so far as is consistent with the honour of the Committee and the Council. In every vacant season, therefore, I think it expedient that he take a tour up the country in the quality of a supervisor-general. Frauds and oppressions of every sort being by this means laid open to his view, will in a great measure be prevented, and the natives will preserve a just opinion of the importance and dignity of our President, upon whose character and conduct much of the prosperity of the Company's affairs in Bengal must ever depend.'

These were Clive's last official utterances in India. They were worthy of the man who in less than twenty-two months had reformed the civil service and the army, had suppressed a dangerous mutiny, had reduced the expenditure, had by a wise and liberal economy nearly extinguished the Company's debt in India, and had substituted British for native rule over extensive and populous provinces.

If the Court of Directors, while justly according to Clive's last administration the praise which it so well deserved, had had the wisdom to adopt his recommendations regarding salaries, many of the evils which followed his departure might have been avoided; but in this, and in some other matters, the Court would seem to have laboured under a sort of judicial blindness, which was impervious to arguments, how