ry hardly on the many. He endeavoured to reduce this evil
by placing the trade on a settled basis which, whilst it would secure
to the natives a supply of the article at a rate not in excess of
that which the poor man could afford, would secure to the servants of
the Company fixed incomes on a graduated scale. His scheme, he knew,
was far from being perfect, but it was the best he could devise in
the face of the refusal of the India Office to increase salaries, and
certainly it was a vast improvement on the system it superseded.
Whilst it secured to the Company's servants in all departments an
adequate, even a handsome, income, it reduced the price of salt to
the natives to an amount from ten to fifteen per cent. below the
average price to them of the preceding twenty years.

This accomplished, Clive proceeded to reconstitute the Calcutta
Council. According to the latest orders then in existence this
Council was composed of a president and sixteen members: but the fact
of a man being a member of Council did not prevent him from accepting
an agency in other parts of the Company's territories. The result was
that many of the members held at the same time executive and
supervising offices. They controlled, as councillors, the actions
which they had performed as agents. There had been in consequence
great laxity, much wrongdoing, complete failure of justice. Clive
remedied {166}this evil by ruling that a member of Council should be
that and nothing more. He encountered great opposition, even amongst
the members of the Select Committee, but he carried through his
scheme.

Of this Select Committee it may here be stated that Clive used its
members solely as a consultative committee. Those members had their
duties, not always in Calcutta. Thus, whilst Carnac was with the
army, Sykes acted at Murshidabad as the Governor's agent; Verelst
supervised the districts of Burdwan and Mednipur: Mr. Sumner alone
remained with Clive. This gentleman had been nominated to succeed
Clive in case of his death or resignation. But it had become evident
to Clive long before the period at which we have arrived that he was
in every way unfitted for such an office. Infirm of purpose,
sympathizing to a great extent with the corrupt party, wanting in
energy, Sumner had given Clive but a slack support. This was the case
especially in the matter of the reform of the Council just narrated.

Pursuing his inquiries Clive soon discovered that the administ