Clive obtained, before he quitted Patna, a monopoly of the saltpetre of that province for the Company. This grant was, in every respect, very advantageous to the English; and no less so to the Nabob, who received as much revenue, and more certain payment, than he had done before. The officers of Meer Jaffier were, however, discontented with an arrangement by which they lost the bribes and presents which they formerly received from the contractors for that article. After this and other matters were settled, Clive proceeded to Moorshedabad, accompanied by Roy Dullub, with whom he had to adjust many points connected with the full performance of the treaty.
The object of Clive, throughout this short expedition to Patna, was to reconcile, as far as he could, the jarring interests which distracted the court of Meer Jaffier, and threatened to disturb the peace of the country. His honour, and the public interests, strongly attached him to the Nabob; though, at the same time, it was not only politic, but indispensably necessary, to keep the power of that prince within limits. He felt himself especially bound to protect Roy Dullub from the enemies by whom he was threatened. That minister, it will be recollected, was one of the chief instruments in effecting the revolution; and had subsequently received, both from Clive and Meer Jaffier, the fullest assurances of safety to his life and property.
Clive, on the expedition to Patna, and on all other occasions, communicated with Meer Jaffier upon every subject. He often visited him; and giving scope to the natural bent of his temper, entered into his amusements. But it was impossible to reconcile that prince to his condition; which was more humiliating from the circumstance of his presenting to his countrymen the first instance, in Bengal, of the power of a proud Mahommedan sovereign being overshadowed by that of a body of merchants, who, before this great change, had never appeared at the court of his predecessors but as humble supplicants endeavouring to obtain commercial privileges. Many of the nobles and generals by whom the Nabob was surrounded had been, a year or two before, courted by bribes and flattery to protect the persons, or to promote the trade, of the very English agents on whose pleasure or policy their fortune and character now depended. To add to the strong and rankling feelings which such a change must have excited, the Mahommedan prince and his chiefs found themselves deserted by the wary and pliant Hindus, who, possessing greater foresight, and expecting security and advancement from the change of masters, were ready, on the first alarm of danger to their life or property, to seek the protection of the English. This the latter were in many cases under the necessity of granting; for, from the first, they had not intrinsic strength which could enable them to cope with those with whom they were hourly exposed to come in collision. They could not have remained in Bengal without the means of self-defence; they could not repel or retaliate an attack without counteracting and defeating their enemies; they could not retreat without ruin, from the ground to which their successes had advanced them; and they could only maintain themselves by forming and improving their connections in the country. Though the cultivation and support of the ties, which this course led them to establish, created divisions among those whose union would have been their destruction, it had at the same time the evil of cherishing feuds, rebellions, and revolutions. Supposing those who had lost all but the name of authority by our progress had been so well satisfied of our decided superiority as to become patient wearers of the degraded trappings of state, could they have reconciled their proud followers to obedience and submission to those whom they deemed foreign upstarts, and whose power became every day more galling from the abuses committed by the meanest of the natives[206] of India employed in their service, or guarded by their protection?