lower and lower by every victory they obtained, thought it necessary at length to come to some system and some settlement.  After composing their differences with Lord Clive, they sent him out to that country about the year 1765, in order, by his name, weight, authority, and vigor of mind, to give some sort of form and stability to government, and to rectify the innumerable abuses which prevailed there, and particularly that great source of disorders, that fundamental abuse, presents:  for the bribes by which all these revolutions were bought had not the name of conditions, stipulations, or rewards; they even had the free and gratuitous style of presents.  The receivers contended that they were mere gratuities given for service done, or mere tokens of affection and gratitude to the parties.  They may give them what names they please, and your Lordships will think of them what you please; but they were the donations of misery to power, the gifts of sufferers to the oppressors; and consequently, where they prevailed, they left no certain property or fixed situation to any man in India, from the highest to the lowest.

The Court of Directors sent out orders to enlarge the servants’ covenants with new and severe clauses, strongly prohibiting the practice of receiving presents.  Lord Clive himself had been a large receiver of them.  Yet, as it was in the moment of a revolution which gave them all they possessed, the Company would hear no more of it.  They sent him out to reform:  whether they chose well or ill does not signify.  I think, upon the whole, they chose well; because his name and authority could do much.  They sent him out to redress the grievances of that country, and it was necessary he should be well armed for that service.  They sent him out with such powers as no servant of the Company ever held before.  I would not be understood here in my own character, much less in the delegated character in which I stand, to contend for any man in the totality of his conduct.  Perhaps in some of his measures he was mistaken, and in some of his acts reprehensible; but justice obliges me to say, that the plan which he formed and the course which he pursued were in general great and well imagined,—­that he laid great foundations, if they had been properly built upon.  For, in the first place, he composed all the neighboring countries torn to pieces by the wars of Cossim Ali, and quieted the apprehensions raised by the opinion of the boundless ambition of England.  He took strong measures to put an end to a great many of the abuses that prevailed in the country subject to the Company.  He then proceeded to the upper provinces, and formed a plan which, for a military man, has great civil and political merit.  He put a bound to the aspiring spirit of the Company’s servants; he limited its conquests; he prescribed bounds to its ambition.  “First” (says he) “quiet the minds of the country; what you have obtained regulate; make it known to India that you resolve to acquire no more.”