CLIVE, ROBERT, LORD, was born on the 29th of September 172.5, at Styehe, near Market Drayton, Shropshire. His family was respectable, but poor. lie was sent to several schools, but distin guished himself in all of them rather by a love of mischief and a fouler disposition than by any aptitude or love for learning. He was sent to India, and arrived at Madras, in the civil service, as a writer, In 1744. Three years after, he quitted the civil service of the Company for the military, which suited him much better. In /743 be distiu guiltiest himself at the siege of Pondicherry, and shortly after at the taking of Devi-Cotta, in Tanjore, on which occasion his superior officer recommended him to the notice of the Company and the British government. Coming into contact with the French (with whom, and not with the natives of India, the main struggle lay), he beat them under their veteran commanders. The taking of Arcot, and the decisive victory gained by the British there, were chiefly owing to this young and comparatively inexperienced officer. On his return to England In 1753 for the recovery of his health, be was highly compli mented by the Directory of the East India Company. In 1755 ho went again to India as governor of Fort St. David, and with the rank of lieutenant-colonel in the king's service. Soon after his arrival, in conjunction with the naval commanders, Watson and Pocock, he reduced the dangerous pirate Augria, taking Gheriah, his capital, and all his treasures. In the meantime the nabob Sujah-n-Dowlah bad attacked the British, destroyed their factories, and barbarously thrown part of his prisoners into the memorable Black Hole' of Calcutta. Colonel Clive was then, according to the admission of all parties, the main stay and only hope of the British in India. Ile sailed at once with Admiral Watson to Calcutta, took Fort St. William in January 1757, and following op his advantages, thoroughly defeated and disor gauised the Sujah'e army. Clive's victories led to a peace highly advantageous to the British power in India, which before this event was dwindling to nothing. A series of intrigues and recriminations followed : Clive accused Dowlah of being wholly devoted to the French interesta,—a cruel tyrant over his aubjects,—a man without honour, In whom there could be no faith or confidence. On the other side it was urged that Clive, insatiable of power, influence, and wealth, had from the beginning determined to dethrone that nabob; that with this view he had engaged in intrigues with Meer Jaffier, one of the nabob's officers, and with Omiehund, a Gentoo merchant, whom, it was said, he afterwards defrauded. In all these transactions the observation of the rigid role of right is not to be expected on either side. Clive's business was to advance the British power in India, and the nabob happened to be at once an impediment in his way, and a cruel tyrant, after the fashion of that country. The war that ensued was short and brilliant, for, with • ' handful of men,' Clive gained the groat victory of Plumy, and on the next day entering Moorshedabad in triumph, Installed Meer Jaffier, who took the style of Jaffier-Ali Cams, in the place of Sujah-u-Dowlah. The deposed nabob was soon taken, and privately put to death by Meer Jaffier's son. The new nabob gave Clive a jaghire, or grant of land, which was said to produce 27,0001. per annum. Clive being made governor of Calcutta, held the chief command there, and through the rest of British Bengal, for about two years.
In 1759 he destroyed a formidable Dutch armament sent against Bengal. In 1760 he returned to England, where he received the unanimous thanks of the Company, and was created by government an Irish peer, under the title of Lord Clive, baron of Plessey. He was returned to parliament for Shrewsbury, and kept his seat in the House of Commons till his death. In politics he was rather liberal, being what was then called a ' moderato Whig;' but he exercised a prodigious Influence on parliamentary elections. Speaking of his title of Lord, he says, in a letter to his friend Major Carnac, "If health had not deserted me on my arrival In England, In all probability I should have been an English peer Instead of an Irish one, with the promise of a red ribend. I know I could have bought the title (which 14 usual), but that I was above, and the honours I have obtained are free and voluntary." After Clive's departure, the *Mira of India fell Into an apparently hopeless state of confusion, and he was once more sent out (in 1761) as the only man at all likely to retrieve them. Before this last employment he received the order of the Bath, and was promoted to the rank of tnajorteneraL In spite of dissensions and Intrigues, and an almost general opposition on the part of the employds of the Company, both civil and military, ho set things In order, and gave security to that broad basis on which the British power has been sines raised in India. Ile however made many enemies, whose influence he felts few years later.
Ile returned from India on the 14th of July 1767, with a constitu tion thoroughly shattered. lie was received with the greatest distiue tion. Five years later (in 1772) his proceedings In India were made the subject of severe animadversion in parliament, and out of doors ; and in 1773 a select committee of the Home of Commons was appointed to examine Into them. The chargesprmented to the House were most serious, involving even a charge of forgery ; but on the great debate on the 22nd of May the combat was narrowed into a motion made by Colonel Burgoyne, and seoonded by Sir William Meredith—" That in the acquisition of his wealth Lord Clive had abused the powers with which he was intrusted." This motion was rejected, and at five o'clock In the morning a resolution was passed—" That Lord Clive had rendered great and praiseworthy services to his country." Ile was thus acquitted, but the course of the trial was a process of torture to his proud spirit ; nor was the form of the acquittal altogether satis factory. He never held up his head again, and towards the end of the following year he committed suicide. Soon after his first arrival in India, in consequence of a painful disorder he accustomed himself to take opium, the pernicious doses of which he gradually increased. After his last arrival in England, be suffered from a complication of disorders ; and to alleviate the anguish of the gall-stones he swallowed opium in greater quantities than ever. His death took place on the 22nd of November 1774, at his house in Berkeley-square, shortly after completing his forty-ninth year.
(Life of Robert Lord Clire, collected from the Family Papers, &c., by Major-General Sir John Malcolm, 3 vole. 8vo, 1836; and see the brilliant examen of Lord Clive's career and services by Macaulay, reprinted in his Essays.)