Ejected from Parliament, and straitened in his means, he naturally began to look again towards India.  The Company and the Government were eager to avail themselves of his services.  A treaty favourable to England had indeed been concluded in the Carnatic.  Dupleix had been superseded, and had returned with the wreck of his immense fortune to Europe, where calumny and chicanery soon hunted him to his grave.  But many signs indicated that a war between France and Great Britain was at hand; and it was therefore thought desirable to send an able commander to the Company’s settlements in India.  The Directors appointed Clive governor of Fort St. David.  The King gave him the commission of a lieutenant-colonel in the British army, and in 1755 he again sailed for Asia.

The first service on which he was employed after his return to the East was the reduction of the stronghold of Gheriah.  This fortress, built on a craggy promontory, and almost surrounded by the ocean, was the den of a pirate named Angria, whose barks had long been the terror of the Arabian Gulf.  Admiral Watson, who commanded the English squadron in the Eastern seas, burned Angria’s fleet, while Clive attacked the fastness by land.  The place soon fell, and a booty of a hundred and fifty thousand pounds sterling was divided among the conquerors.

After this exploit, Clive proceeded to his government of Fort St. David.  Before he had been there two months, he received intelligence which called forth all the energy of his bold and active mind.

Of the provinces which had been subject to the house of Tamerlane, the wealthiest was Bengal.  No part of India possessed such natural advantages both for agriculture and for commerce.  The Ganges, rushing through a hundred channels to the sea, has formed a vast plain of rich mould which, even under the tropical sky, rivals the verdure of an English April.  The rice-fields yield an increase such as is elsewhere unknown.  Spices, sugar, vegetable oils, are produced with marvellous exuberance.  The rivers afford an inexhaustible supply of fish.  The desolate islands along the sea-coast, overgrown by noxious vegetation, and swarming with deer and tigers, supply the cultivated districts with abundance of salt.  The great stream which fertilises the soil is, at the same time, the chief highway of Eastern commerce.  On its banks, and on those of its tributary waters, are the wealthiest marts, the most splendid capitals, and the most sacred shrines of India.  The tyranny of man had for ages struggled in vain against the overflowing bounty of nature.  In spite of the Mussulman despot and of the Mahratta freebooter, Bengal was known through the East as the garden of Eden, as the rich kingdom.  Its population multiplied exceedingly.  Distant provinces were nourished from the overflowing of its granaries — and the noble ladies of London and Paris were clothed in the delicate produce of its looms, The race by whom this rich tract was peopled,