Omichund was not the only victim of the revolution.  Surajah Dowlah was taken a few days after his flight, and was brought before Meer Jaffier.  There he flung himself on the ground in convulsions of fear, and with tears and loud cries implored the mercy which he had never shown.  Meer Jaffier hesitated; but his son Meeran, a youth of seventeen, who in feebleness of brain and savageness of nature greatly resemble the wretched captive, was implacable.  Surajah Dowlah was led into a secret chamber, to which in a short time the minister of death were sent.  In this act the English bore no part and Meer Jaffier understood so much of their feelings that h thought it necessary to apologise to them for having avenge them on their most malignant enemy.

The shower of wealth now fell copiously on the Company and its servants.  A sum of eight hundred thousand pound sterling, in coined silver, was sent down the river from Moorshedabad to Fort William.  The fleet which conveyed this treasure consisted of more than a hundred boats, and performed its triumphal voyage with flags flying and music playing.  Calcutta, which a few months before had been desolate, was now more prosperous than ever.  Trade revived; and the signs of affluence appeared in every English house.  As to Clive, there was no limit to his acquisitions but his own moderation.  The treasury of Bengal was thrown open to him.  There were piled up, after the usage of Indian princes, immense masses of coin, among which might not seldom he detected the florins and byzants with which, before any European ship had turned the Cape of Good Hope, the Venetians purchased the stuffs and spices of the East.  Clive walked between heaps of gold and silver, crowned with rubies and diamonds, and was at liberty to help himself.  He accepted between two and three hundred thousand pounds.

The pecuniary transactions between Meer Jaffier and Clive were sixteen years later condemned by the public voice, and severely criticised in Parliament.  They are vehemently defended by Sir John Malcolm.  The accusers of the victorious general represented his gains as the wages of corruption, or as plunder extorted at the point of the sword from a helpless ally.  The biographer, on the other hand, considers these great acquisitions as free gifts, honourable alike to the donor and to the receiver, and compares them to the rewards bestowed by foreign powers on Marlborough, on Nelson, and on Wellington.  It had always, he says, been customary in the East to give and receive presents; and there was, as yet, no Act of Parliament positively prohibiting English functionaries in India from profiting by this Asiatic usage.  This reasoning, we own, does not quite satisfy us.  We do not suspect Clive of selling the interests of his employers or his country; but we cannot acquit him of having done what, if not in itself evil, was yet of evil example.  Nothing is more clear than that a general ought to be the servant of his own government, and