Amid the causes which tended to hasten a rupture between these individuals, we must not omit the irritation produced by their difference of opinion as to the merits and claims of the Company's servants in India. Clive was the bold and persevering advocate of all those who had gained and merited his friendship by the aid they gave him in the performance of their public duties. Several of his recommendations to Mr. Sulivan met with attention; but others were treated with slight or delay. I have already mentioned Clive's feeling respecting Colonel Forde. However great the claims of that officer, the more recent successes of his rival, Colonel Coote, had fully justified those who furthered his promotion in England; but Major Carnac had distinguished himself in Bengal by the defeat of the Shah-Zada, the surrender of that prince, and the capture of M. Law and the French who were attached to him. These services, Clive thought, gave him a claim to a superior commission. He was also very anxious to obtain a majority for Captain Knox, who, independent of his services under him, had, on several late occasions[163], established a reputation for skill and gallantry, superior to any one of his standing in India. At this period it was not uncommon to give superior commissions to those who greatly distinguished themselves. Clive was the advocate of a system, which, considering the actual state of the service, he thought indispensable to reward and encourage men of talent and enterprise. Mr. Sulivan, though he did not deny the merits of the persons brought to his notice by Clive, appears to have been very reluctant to promote them, at the hazard of creating discontent to others. He was, like other members of the Court of Directors at that period, prompt to attend to the frequent appeals made to them against the local government; and such appeals were usually from those who had no pretensions to preferment but that of seniority, and who were often persons quite unfitted, by their habits and character, for the delicate and arduous duties which, at this period, devolved upon officers intrusted with high military command. Clive, by his notes in answer to the Chairman on these points, appears to have been very impatient of the general reasoning with which his applications were answered. He conscientiously felt, in supporting those he brought forward, that he acted from no motive but that of the public good; he saw that by such maxims our Indian empire never would have been gained; and he was quite satisfied that the system which Mr. Sulivan desired to establish, of directing the attention of the civil and military servants in India to the government in England, was calculated to subvert all authority in the local administration, and, in its results, to distract, weaken, and distress our yet infant empire in the East. Sulivan's were the principles of the head of a commercial company; Clive's those of the founder and sustainer of an empire.