to an extent which called forth the
astonishment of the natives, had all a statesman's foresight. On the
same date he obtained not only an imperial charter for the Company's
possession in the Carnatic also, thus completing the work he began at
Arcot, but a third firman for the highest of all the lieutenancies of
the empire, that of the Deccan itself. This fact is mentioned in a
letter from the secret committee of the court of directors to the Madras
government, dated the 27th of April 1768. Still so disproportionate did
the British force seem, not only to the number and strength of the
princes and people of India, but to the claims and ambition of French,
Dutch and Danish rivals, that Clive's last advice to the directors, as
he finally left India in 1767, was this: "We are sensible that, since
the acquisition of the dewany, the power formerly belonging to the
soubah of those provinces is totally, in fact, vested in the East India
Company. Nothing remains to him but the name and shadow of authority.
This name, however, this shadow, it is indispensably necessary we should
seem to venerate." On a wider arena, even that of the Great Mogul
himself, the shadow was kept up till it obliterated itself in the
massacre of English people in the Delhi palace in 1857; and Queen
Victoria was proclaimed, first, direct ruler on the 1st of November
1858, and then empress of India on the 1st of January 1877.

Having thus founded the empire of British India, Clive's painful duty
was to create a pure and strong administration, such as alone would
justify its possession by foreigners. The civil service was
de-orientalized by raising the miserable salaries which had tempted its
members to be corrupt, by forbidding the acceptance of gifts from
natives, and by exacting covenants under which participation in the
inland trade was stopped. Not less important were his military reforms.
With his usual tact and nerve he put down a mutiny of the English
officers, who chose to resent the veto against receiving presents and
the reduction of batta at a time when two Mahratta armies were marching
on Bengal. His reorganization of the army, on the lines of that which he
had begun after Plassey, and which was neglected during his second visit
to England, has since attracted the admiration of the ablest Indian
officers. He divided the whole into three brigades, so as to make each a
complete force, in itself equal to any single native army that could be
broug