Clive was fully sensible of the character of the motives by which the latter were influenced. He saw and felt for their condition, and imputed their intrigues and conspiracies, less to their personal characters than to the general causes to which I have alluded. He did not, therefore, expect any sudden change in their sentiments; but he tried, by every act in his power, to render that control which it was necessary to exercise less irksome. His conduct, however, had often the effect of lowering those he desired to exalt; for it brought his actions into strong contrast with the weak machinations of men, who could neither conceal their jealousy of his power, nor their own inability to cope with his superior mind. The natives of Bengal, as yet ignorant of the construction of the English government, ascribed every thing to Clive. They considered him as the exclusive author of the success which had attended the English arms; and with his life many expected it to terminate. The existence of such sentiments gave probability to the reports of plots said to have been formed, both at Moorshedabad and at Patna, for his assassination; and he was warned of them by persons who deemed their information authentic. But he does not appear to have given such warnings any attention. He continued steadily to pursue his object of supporting the Nabob he had raised to the throne, while at the same time he took every measure to save the interests of his country from the dangers to which they were exposed from the vacillating weakness, or the excited feelings, of that prince. When Clive arrived at Moorshedabad with Roy Dullub, he found the Nabob's son Meeran in a state of great irritation, at the restoration of that Hindu influence, which it was the real though concealed object of Meer Jaffier's expedition to Patna to destroy. The disposition of this young man, as far as it had yet developed itself, was sanguinary and rapacious. He was, as has been related, the cause of Suraj-u-Dowlah's being put to death: and this act, with the more recent assassination of the son of that Prince, and the imprisonment of his mother, had made him unpopular with the more peaceable part of his father's subjects, particularly the Hindus, who dreaded his cruelty and violence. But the Mahommedan chiefs and soldiers, whose pride had been wounded, and who were checked in their licentious habits, hailed these qualities, which, combined with Meeran's known jealousy and hatred of the English, gave them hopes of recovering, through his means, their lost influence and power.