superior appointments in a manner the best adapted, in his opinion, to secure efficiency.
He dealt likewise with the Civil Service. Nothing had impressed Clive more than the evil effects of the predominance of venality and corruption during the rule which had followed his first departure, and he was resolved to put them down with a strong hand. He found, on his landing, a subject which gave him the opportunity he desired for showing publicly the bent of the line of conduct he intended to pursue.
Four months before his return, Mír Jafar, worn out by anxiety and trouble, had passed away. His position had become degraded, even in his own eyes. From having been, as he was on the morrow of Plassey, the lord of three rich provinces, he had become, to use the words of a contemporary Englishman[1], 'a banker for the Company's servants, who could draw upon him as often and to as great an amount as they pleased.'
We have seen how the members of Council had benefited pecuniarily by the elevation of Mír Jafar to the masnad in 1757; by that of his successor in 1763; by Mír Jafar's re-elevation the same year. The opportunity of again selecting a successor was not to be passed over without their once again plunging their hands in the treasury of Murshidábád. They found that there were two candidates for the vacant office, the son of Míran, and therefore grandson of Mír Jafar, and the eldest surviving son of that
- ↑ Mr. Scrafton. See Scrafton's Letters.
