The Council met, and Clive stated to them his full determination to make a thorough reform, and to use for that purpose the whole of the ample authority, civil and military, which had been confided to him.  Johnstone, one of the boldest and worst men in the assembly, made some show of opposition.  Clive interrupted him, and haughtily demanded whether he meant to question the power of the new government.  Johnstone was cowed, and disclaimed any such intention.  All the faces round the board grew long and pale; and not another syllable of dissent was uttered.

Clive redeemed his pledge.  He remained in India about a year and a half; and in that short time effected one of the most extensive, difficult, and salutary reforms that ever was accomplished by any statesman.  This was the part of his life on which he afterwards looked back with most pride.  He had it in his power to triple his already splendid fortune; to connive at abuses while pretending to remove them; to conciliate the goodwill of all the English in Bengal, by giving up to their rapacity a helpless and timid race, who knew not where lay the island which sent forth their oppressors, and whose complaints had little chance of being heard across fifteen thousand miles of ocean.  He knew that if he applied himself in earnest to the work of reformation, he should raise every bad passion in arms against him.  He knew how unscrupulous, how implacable, would be the hatred of those ravenous adventurers who, having counted on accumulating in a few months fortunes sufficient to support peerages, should find all their hopes frustrated.  But he had chosen the good part; and he called up all the force of his mind for a battle far harder than that of Plassey.  At first success seemed hopeless; but soon all obstacles began to bend before that iron courage and that vehement will.  The receiving of presents from the natives was rigidly prohibited.  The private trade of the servants of the Company was put down.  The whole settlement seemed to be set, as one man, against these measures.  But the inexorable governor declared that, if he could not find support at Fort William, he would procure it elsewhere, and sent for some civil servants from Madras to assist him in carrying on the administration.  The most factious of his opponents he turned out of their offices.  The rest submitted to what was inevitable; and in a very short time all resistance was quelled.

But Clive was far too wise a man not to see that the recent abuses were partly to be ascribed to a cause which could not fail to produce similar abuses, as soon as the pressure of his strong hand was withdrawn.  The Company had followed a mistaken policy with respect to the remuneration of its servants.  The salaries were too low to afford even those indulgences which are necessary to the health and comfort of Europeans in a tropical climate.  To lay by a rupee from such scanty pay was impossible.  It could not be supposed that men of even average abilities would