The story of the termination of Omichund's life is affecting, and must make an impression upon every well-constituted mind. We view with pity the effects which the sudden dissolution of his golden dreams had upon this wretched, though wealthy Hindu; but we cannot allow the feelings in which we indulge to subdue our judgment. While we give a tear to weak and suffering humanity, we must do justice to those who deemed themselves compelled by circumstances, and by the situation in which they were placed, to repress all private feeling, and even to incur obloquy, in the performance of their public duty. With such sentiments I cannot, like Mr. Mill[182], proclaim my sympathy and regret for this martyr to avarice; and stamp, with the term of "consummate treachery[183]," the expedient by which his exorbitant demands and wicked designs were disappointed and frustrated; far less can I admit the truth of the historian's remark, "That Clive was a person to whom deception, when it suited his purpose, never gave a pang." This general and sweeping assertion, far from being supported by any facts that have come to my knowledge[184], is contradicted by every evidence we possess, and is altogether contrary to the general character of his open and manly, but sensitive mind. I do not pretend to look into the hearts of men, and to pronounce dogmatically upon their inmost thoughts and feelings; but, in admitting that Clive, in the extraordinary situation in which he was placed, resisted art by art, and counteracted the treachery of the enemies of the Government he served, by deceiving them, I am satisfied, from all his own statements, as well as from those of others, that he had recourse to such an expedient only because he considered himself to be called upon to employ it, by the duty he owed to his country. He may, like other men, have erred, both in his objects and in the mode of their accomplishment; but I deem the whole history of his life, and, above all, the unbounded confidence we find placed in him, both by the natives of India and by his own countrymen, to be altogether incompatible with the truth of the charge, that he was a man "to whom deception, when it suited his purpose, never gave a pang."