it; that one English functionary who, the year before, was not worth a hundred guineas, had, during that season of misery, remitted sixty thousand pounds to London.  These charges we believe to have been unfounded.  That servants of the Company had ventured, since Clive’s departure, to deal in rice, is probable.  That, if they dealt in rice, they must have gained by the scarcity, is certain.  But there is no reason for thinking that they either produced or aggravated an evil which physical causes sufficiently explain.  The outcry which was raised against them on this occasion was, we suspect, as absurd as the imputations which, in times of dearth at home, were once thrown by statesmen and judges, and are still thrown by two or three old women, on the corn factors.  It was, however, so loud and so general that it appears to have imposed even on an intellect raised so high above vulgar prejudices as that of Adam Smith.  What was still more extraordinary, these unhappy events greatly increased the unpopularity of Lord Clive.  He had been some years in England when the famine took place.  None of his acts had the smallest tendency to produce such a calamity.  If the servants of the Company had traded in rice, they had done so in direct contravention of the rule which he had laid down, and, while in power, had resolutely enforced.  But, in the eyes of his countrymen, he was, as we have said, the Nabob, the Anglo-Indian character personified; and, while he was building and planting in Surrey, he was held responsible for all the effects of a dry season in Bengal.

Parliament had hitherto bestowed very little attention on our Eastern possessions.  Since the death of George the Second, a rapid succession of weak administrations, each of which was in turn flattered and betrayed by the Court, had held the semblance of power.  Intrigues in the palace, riots in the capital, and insurrectionary movements in the American colonies, had left the advisers of the Crown little leisure to study Indian politics.  When they did interfere, their interference was feeble and irresolute.  Lord Chatham, indeed, during the short period of his ascendency in the councils of George the Third, had meditated a bold attack on the Company.  But his plans were rendered abortive by the strange malady which about that time began to overcloud his splendid genius.

At length, in 1772, it was generally felt that Parliament could no longer neglect the affairs of India.  The Government was stronger than any which had held power since the breach between Mr. Pitt and the great Whig connection in 1761.  No pressing question of domestic or European policy required the attention of public men.  There was a short and delusive lull between two tempests.  The excitement produced by the Middlesex election was over; the discontents of America did not yet threaten civil war; the financial difficulties of the Company brought on a crisis; the Ministers were forced to take up the subject; and the whole storm, which had long been gathering, now broke at once on the head of Clive.