CiiAiv X.] MERC'ENAKY SPIRIT OF THE MiLiTAUY. 59.3
of which was as follows: — "Gentlemen, — I have received both j'our remons- a.d. 1757. trance and protest. Had you consulted the dictates of your own reason, those of justice, or the respect due to your commanding officer, 1 am persuaded such a paper, so highly injurious to your own honour as officers, could never have esca])ed you. You say 3'-ou were assembled at a council to give your opinion cuve's fimi-
. . iies-s in re-
about a matter of property. Pray, gentlemen, how comes it that a promise of preBsiug it a sum of money from the nabob, entirely negotiated by me, can be deemed a matter of light and property ! So very far from it, it is now in my power to return to the nabob the money already advanced, and leave it to his option whether he will perform his promise or not. You have stormed no town and found the money there ; neither did you find it in the plains of Plassey, after the defeat of the nabob. In short, gentlemen, it pains me to remind you, that what you are to receive is entirely owing to the care I took of your interest. Had I not interfered gi'eatly in it, you had been left to the Company's gene- rosit}^ who, perhaps, would have thought you sufficiently rewarded in receiv- ing a pi'esent of six months' pay ; in return for which I have been treated with the greatest disrespect and ingratitude ; and, what is still worse, you have flown in the face of my authority for overruling an opinion, which, if pa,ssed, would , have been highly injurious to your own reputation, and been of the worst con- sequences to the cause of the nation and the Company." This answer, and the decisive step of ])lacing the officers who brought the paper in arrest, and sending a captain, who had acted as ringleader, down to Calcutta, opened the eyes of the remonstrants. Either brought back to a sense of duty, or alarmed at finding that in selfishly grasping at too much they were risking the loss of all, they made their submission and were forgiven.
This dispute, and various others, which, though of a less glaring, were of a Sumsi«i.ii..v very disagreeable nature, leave no room to doubt that the sudden influx of on iiis
11 I'll 1 • 1 -11' iiT/i'i accession.
wealth, obtained by nearly emptying the nabobs treasury, had dinused a mercenary and rapacious sjiirit among all classes, civil and military, in Calcutta. On seeing this result Clive must have had some misgivings as to the propriety of the course he had pursued, in accepting so much money for himself, and allowing so much to be exacted by others, who could not like him plead that they had done enough to deserve it. It was, perhaps, owing to some such feeling, that, in his very long letter to the secret committee of the court of directors, dated a month after he entered Moorshedabad, while giving very full details as to the money which Meer Jaffier had bound himself to pay, and the insufficiency of the treasury to pay it, he makes no allusion to the private treaty in which the select committee, in stipulating for a donative to the army and navy, had inserted an exorbitant donation to themselves, nor to the enormous sums which, without being stii>ulated, had been received in the name of presents. The omission could scarcely be a mere ovei-sight: if it was inten-
ttional. it is difficult to account for it on anv other supposition than that it was
