judge will admit, that there was really nothing in common between the system which he set up and that which he was sent to destroy.  The monopoly of salt had been a source of revenue to the Government of India before Clive was born.  It continued to be so long after his death.  The civil servants were clearly entitled to a maintenance out of the revenue; and all that Clive did was to charge a particular portion of the revenue with their maintenance.  He thus, while he put an end to the practices by which gigantic fortunes had been rapidly accumulated, gave to every British functionary employed in the East the means of slowly, but surely, acquiring a competence.  Yet, such is the injustice of mankind, that none of those acts which are the real stains of his life has drawn on him so much obloquy as this measure, which was in truth a reform necessary to the success of all his other reforms.

He had quelled the opposition of the civil servants:  that of the army was more formidable.  Some of the retrenchments which had been ordered by the Directors affected the interests of the military service; and a storm arose, such as even Caesar would not willingly have faced.  It was no light thing to encounter the resistance of those who held the power of the sword, in a country governed only by the sword.  Two hundred English officers engaged in a conspiracy against the government, and determined to resign their commissions on the same day, not doubting that Clive would grant any terms, rather than see the army, on which alone the British empire in the East rested, left without commanders.  They little knew the unconquerable spirit with which they had to deal.  Clive had still a few officers round his person on whom he could rely.  He sent to Fort St George for a fresh supply.  He gave commissions even to mercantile agents who were disposed to support him at this crisis; and he sent orders that every officer who resigned should be instantly brought up to Calcutta.  The conspirators found that they had miscalculated.  The governor was inexorable.  The troops were steady.  The sepoys, over whom Clive had always possessed extraordinary influence, stood by him with unshaken fidelity.  The leaders in the plot were arrested, tried, and cashiered.  The rest, humbled and dispirited, begged to be permitted to withdraw their resignations.  Many of them declared their repentance even with tears.  The younger offenders Clive treated with lenity.  To the ringleaders he was inflexibly severe; but his severity was pure from all taint of private malevolence.  While he sternly upheld the just authority of his office, he passed by personal insults and injuries with magnanimous disdain.  One of the conspirators was accused of having planned the assassination of the governor; but Clive would not listen to the charge.  “The officers,” he said, “are Englishmen, not assassins.”