to resist, with the aid of very slight defences, all the efforts of a large and highly disciplined European force. I have already stated, in the course of this narrative, the successive causes which combined to prevent Clive's return to Madras, after the fall of Chandernagore, and have afforded the reader ample materials to judge this question from the most authentic documents. To deny to Clive the right of exercising his judgment amid the exigencies of the public service in which he was placed would be to deny him the means of consulting and promoting the interests and honour of his country. When he acted, as he did upon this occasion, against the positive and reiterated orders of the government of Madras, he did so under a deep and alarming responsibility: but in such extreme cases, the greater the hazard which an individual incurs the greater his merit, if he can establish that the public interests have been promoted by his conduct. The dangers which threatened the English settlements on the coast of Coromandel were great, but they were prospective, and the issue uncertain. The dangers at Bengal, had Clive abandoned the scene, were immediate; and even if we suppose that Calcutta had not been retaken by the resentful Suraj-u-Dowlah, aided by the party of French[169] who still remained, it was certain that all those impressions and advantages which had been gained by the combined efforts of Admiral Watson and Clive would have been lost, and future armaments required to restore the English in Bengal to that power from which they had fallen, and which was henceforth indispensable to their existence; for from the moment they had been compelled to undertake offensive operations against the native sovereign of the country their reverting to their former condition of merchants was impossible. Such was the actual situation of affairs. The penetrating eye of Clive saw, at this moment, the future importance of Bengal; and though fully aware of the dangers that threatened Madras, rested, with a confidence that was not disappointed, upon the able civil and military officers[170] to whom its affairs were entrusted. He had no such consolatory feelings when he looked to those[171] on whom the chief authority must devolve at Calcutta; and the details which have been given fully prove the correctness of that judgment which he early formed upon a point so important in the decision of the question.