But in truth all Clive’s views were directed towards the country in which he had so eminently distinguished himself as a soldier and a statesman; and it was by considerations relating to India that his conduct as a public man in England was regulated.  The power of the Company, though an anomaly, is in our time, we are firmly persuaded, a beneficial anomaly.  In the time of Clive, it was not merely an anomaly, but a nuisance.  There was no Board of Control.  The Directors were for the most part mere traders, ignorant of general politics, ignorant of the peculiarities of the empire which had strangely become subject to them.  The Court of Proprietors, wherever it chose to interfere, was able to have its way.  That Court was more numerous, as well as more powerful, than at present; for then every share of five hundred pounds conferred a vote.  The meetings were large, stormy, even riotous, the debates indecently virulent.  All the turbulence of a Westminster election, all the trickery and corruption of a Grampound election, disgraced the proceedings of this assembly on questions of the most solemn importance.  Fictitious votes were manufactured on a gigantic scale.  Clive himself laid out a hundred thousand pounds in the purchase of stock, which he then divided among nominal proprietors on whom he could depend, and whom he brought down in his train to every discussion and every ballot.  Others did the same, though not to quite so enormous an extent.

The interest taken by the public of England in Indian questions was then far greater than at present, and the reason is obvious.  At present a writer enters the service young; he climbs slowly; he is fortunate if, at forty-five, he can return to his country with an annuity of a thousand a year, and with savings amounting to thirty thousand pounds.  A great quantity of wealth is made by English functionaries in India; but no single functionary makes a very large fortune, and what is made is slowly, hardly, and honestly earned.  Only four or five high political offices are reserved for public men from England.  The residencies, the secretaryships, the seats in the boards of revenue and in the Sudder courts are all filled by men who have given the best years of life to the service of the Company; nor can any talents however splendid or any connections however powerful obtain those lucrative posts for any person who has not entered by the regular door, and mounted by the regular gradations.  Seventy years ago, less money was brought home from the East than in our time.  But it was divided among a very much smaller number of persons, and immense sums were often accumulated in a few months.  Any Englishman, whatever his age might be, might hope to be one of the lucky emigrants.  If he made a good speech in Leadenhall Street, or published a clever pamphlet in defence of the chairman, he might be sent out in the Company’s service, and might return in three or four years as rich as Pigot or as Clive.  Thus