"Be assured, my good Sir, you will not have to encounter many of those disagreeable circumstances which you seem to apprehend in your letter to Mr. Verelst. That unthankful task has fallen to my lot. The Select Committee, and Committee of Inspection, have already made every regulation for the public good which can be desired or thought of; so that it only rests with you, gentlemen, to keep matters in the same channel, and not to relax in your authority, or let yourselves down, by declining to support the dignity of your station.
"A gentleman endowed, like Mr. Cartier, with a good capacity and solid judgment, of a generous and disinterested way of thinking, cannot fail of proving a very deserving servant to the Company, and of acquiring honour for himself, if he will but have a little more confidence in himself." After assuring him that, if he finds his new situation at Calcutta agreeable, he will use his interest to have him named Mr. Verelst's successor in the government, he continues:--"The state of my health is such, that I cannot continue in it (the government) another year, with any prospect of doing the Company service: indeed, I do not think I should survive another month; I have, therefore, determined to resign the government.
"The General, myself, and other friends, take our departure on Monday next.
"I remain, dear Sir, "Your affectionate friend, ever, "Clive."
Lord Clive had always intended to return home overland, and had arranged with several of his friends to accompany him; but the state of his health put an end to this long-cherished project.
When he was thus preparing to embark for his native country, broken as he was in health and constitution, and numerous as the enemies were whom his conduct had raised up against him, he might still look back with proud and generous satisfaction on the great sacrifice which he had made, and the splendid effects which it had produced. In the short space of twenty months he had quelled the opposition of the civil service, had dismissed the most culpable, and endeavoured to infuse a better spirit into those left; by his firmness, and, perhaps, still more by the magic influence of his name, he had subdued the dangerous spirit of mutiny among the military officers, after it had broken out in overt acts; had sent off the ringleaders without resistance; had introduced new officers in their room, pardoned the less guilty, and restored them to their rank and confidence; he had concluded an advantageous peace with the Nabob-Vizier, by which he secured a large contribution for the Company, to pay the expenses of the war, and gained two provinces for the emperor, our ally; he had farther secured for him an annual tribute out of Bengal; he had acquired for the Company a grant of the dewannee, or rather, in reality, of the revenues and government of the three great provinces; by means of which, and of an agreement with the Nabob, the whole political power came into the hands of the English, who, from that moment, were sovereigns, and the effective arbiters of India: for the names of Nabob and Emperor, unsupported by adequate military force, were but sounds. The Company's debts in India had been reduced, and nearly extinguished; their large investments provided, chiefly without drawing on home; the expenses of the various establishments had been examined and reduced with a liberal economy; the forces were never in a more efficient state, and never supported at so small an expense. His perfect knowledge of every part of the service, and his resolute determination, produced a silent acquiescence in reductions proposed by him, which, perhaps, would have excited the loudest murmurs had they come from any other quarter. And, after all reductions had been made, he might justly boast that he left the various services the best and most liberally paid in the world. He had checked the misrule which had desolated the provinces, and imposed fetters on the cupidity of the ruling caste, which were, unfortunately too soon removed after his departure: he had restored the course of justice to its original channel, and the natives to their wonted trade and commerce. Their political power was, indeed, gone; hardly a semblance of it remained; but the ordinary and daily aspect of society, which had been so rudely broken in upon for four or five years, by the interference of the English and their servants in the internal trade and concerns of the country, was once more restored. No man but Clive could have achieved such changes; and he derived his power to effect them from his own energetic character, and from the glory which his former exploits had diffused around him.