Before entering on the Memoirs of Clive, it will be useful to take a succinct view of the state of India, at the period when he commenced his career in that country, and more especially of the coast of Coromandel, which was the scene on which he first displayed those talents that were afterwards to raise him to such eminence. The emperors of Delhi, since the death of Aurungzebe (A. D. 1707), had rapidly declined from the power they once possessed. The government of distant countries was intrusted to soubahdars (or viceroys), who invariably took advantage of the dissensions in the imperial family, or the weakness of a reigning prince, to endeavour to render themselves independent. The same motives and principles which governed the conduct of these vicegerents, actuated those whose allegiance and obedience they claimed in virtue of their delegated powers from the nominal Sovereign of India. Hindoo rajahs, and Mahomedan nabobs owned or rejected the sway of their superiors according to their means of resistance; while the Mahrattas, a name unknown to the military history of Asia before the middle of the seventeenth century, threatened, by a system[1] of predatory warfare, to complete the destruction of these Mahomedan conquerors, whose chiefs, whether engaged in contest for the imperial Crown, the high office of soubahdar, or the inferior rank of nabob, appear to have lost, in their rancorous hostility to each other, all sense of union and of common danger, and to have blindly courted the aid of allies who (a little foresight would have shown them) were rising fast to greatness upon their ruin. These observations on the conduct of the Mahomedan princes are not more applicable to the connections they formed with the Mahrattas, than to those which, in the eighteenth century, they began to contract with Europeans. The Portuguese, who had discovered a passage to India in 1498, enjoyed the exclusive commerce with that country for a complete century; but their short and brilliant career was essentially different from that of the European nations who succeeded them. Their establishments were all maritime. They conquered and subdued the princes and chiefs on the shores and islands of India; but seldom, if ever, carried their arms into the interior, or engaged in any of those offensive and defensive alliances with native states, that must have hurried them into contests, to support which the resources and strength of the mother country would have been altogether inadequate. In consequence of this policy, their established character for valour, and the strength of their fortifications, they did not become objects of attack to the principal native powers of India. Neither the Emperors of Delhi, nor their princely delegates had, or desired to have, any naval force. They attached no value to the sea-coast or to islands, but as they might produce them profit through the medium of customs: and the