These are pretty sums to have fallen into the pockets of the English, chiefly _douceurs_, in ten years. Let the account be carried on for all India at a similar rate for a century, and what a sum! Lord Clive’s jaghire alone was worth 30,000_l._ per annum. And, besides this, it appears from the above documents that he also pocketed in these transactions 292,333_l._ No wonder at the enormous fortunes rapidly made; at the enormous debts piled on the wretched nabobs, and the dreadful exactions on the still more wretched people. No man could more experimentally than Clive thus address the Directors at home, as he did in 1765: “Upon my arrival, I am sorry to say, I found your affairs in a condition so nearly desperate as would have alarmed any set of men whose sense of honour and duty to their employers had not been estranged by the too eager pursuit of their own immediate advantages. The sudden, and among many, the unwarrantable acquisition of riches (who was so entitled to say this?) had introduced luxury in every shape, and in its most pernicious excess. These two enormous evils went hand in hand together through the whole presidency, infecting almost every member of every department. Every inferior seemed to have grasped at wealth, that he might be enabled to assume that spirit of profusion which was now the only distinction between him and his superiors. Thus all distinction ceased, and every rank became, in a manner, upon an equality. Nor was this the end of the mischief; for a contest of such a nature amongst our servants necessarily destroyed all proportion between their wants and the honest means of satisfying them. In a country _where money is plenty, where fear is the principle of government, and where your arms are ever victorious, it is no wonder that the lust of riches should readily embrace the proffered means of its gratification, or that the instruments of your power should avail themselves of their authority, and proceed even to extortion in those cases where simple corruption could not keep pace with their rapacity_. Examples of this sort, set by superiors, could not fail being followed, in a proportionate degree, by inferiors. The evil was contagious, and spread among the civil and military, down to the writer, the ensign, and the free merchant.”—Clive’s Letter to the Directors, Third Report of Parliamentary Committee, 1772.