o
England for change of climate. Before he left Madras he married Miss
Maskelyne. Never did a man return to his native land under more
auspicious conditions who had gone thence under conditions so
inauspicious. The bad boy of Market-Drayton was now the illustrious
and opulent soldier whom the gentlemen of the India House delighted to
salute as General Clive, and about whom it seemed as if it was
impossible for the nation to make too much ado.

[Sidenote: 1755--Back to India]

Clive was now seized with the ambition to play a part in home politics.
The general election of 1754 seemed to offer him a tempting opportunity
of entering Parliament. He came forward as one of the members for St.
Michael's in Cornwall, was opposed by Newcastle, and supported by
Sandwich and Fox, was returned, was petitioned against, and was
unseated on petition. To fight a parliamentary election in those days
meant the spending of a very great deal of money, and Clive, who had
squandered his well-earned fortune right and left since his return to
his native land, found himself, after he was unseated, in a decidedly
disagreeable position. His money was dwindling; his hope of political
triumphs had vanished into thin air; naturally enough, his thoughts
turned back to the India of his youth. The curious good-luck that
always attended upon him stood him in good stead here. If he had need
of the India of his youth, the India of his youth had need of him. If
France and England were not at {265} war, the rumor of war was busy
between them, and there was a desire for good leaders in the advancing
English colonies in India. Poor Dupleix was out of the way already.
The brilliant spirit whom Clive's genius had over-crowed had vanished
forever from the scenes of his triumphs and his humiliations. He had
suffered something of the same hard measure that he had himself meted
out to his colleague La Bourdonnais; he had been recalled in
comparative disgrace to France, with ruined fortunes and ruined hopes,
to die, a defeated and degraded man, the shadow of his own great name.
But the influence of France was not extinct in India; it might at any
moment reassert itself--at any moment come to the push of arms between
France and England in the East as well as in the West; and where could
the English look for so capable a leader of men as Clive? So it came
about that in the year 1755 Clive again sailed the seas for India,
under very different conditions fr