ants whom Clive, in his second
administration, had driven from the posts they had sullied, and their
allies, based a persecution which tortured the enfeebled frame of the
conqueror.

Clive's real fault in the eyes of the leaders of the persecution was
that he had become rich himself, and had prevented them from
fattening on the plunder of the country he had conquered. To most
men, in fact to all but a very few men, in England and in France,
India was a _terra incognita_ whither a certain few repaired young,
and whence they returned, in the prime of their manhood, rich, and
often with a great reputation. Why was it that such men were at once
subjected to the vilest persecution? The fact that they were so is
incontestable. Clive himself and Warren Hastings, whose reputation
has recently been splendidly vindicated by two great Englishmen,[1]
are cases in point in England; Dupleix and La Bourdonnais and Lally,
in France. It is the saddest of sad stories; the men who had rendered
the most brilliant {195}services to their respective countries
finding their bitterest enemies often amongst the Ministers of the
Crown. There is little to discriminate between the conduct of
parliamentary England and despotic France except in the degree of
misery and punishment to which they alike subjected the most
illustrious of their countrymen who had served in India.

[Footnote 1: Sir Fitzjames Stephen in the case of Nanda-Kumar: Sir
John Strachey in reference to the charges respecting Oudh and
Rohilkhand.]

To return. It will be remembered that in his second administration
Clive had purified the Civil Service of Bengal. The corrupt men whom
he had ejected had returned to England whilst he was still in India,
the charges made against them accompanying or preceding them in the
despatches transmitted to the Court of Directors. On receiving these
despatches the Court, having taken the opinions of their own lawyers
and of those of the Crown, resolved to bring the culprits to trial
for having accepted presents from the natives after they had received
the order from the Court making such acceptance penal. But the
inculpated men were rich and they resolved to appeal from the
Directors to the Proprietors. There had been a difference between
these two bodies as to whether the annual dividends should be
increased from ten, the amount recommended by the Court, to twelve
and a half per cent. At the annual meeting the votes of the men
dismissed by Cli