"There was, however, another secret motive to this violent and unjust measure. It happened that Lord Clive and his parliamentary friends had, for some time, acted in opposition to the court-party; and in this country, where ministers maintain their power by the inflicting of punishments, as well as by the distribution of rewards, it is no wonder that they should endeavour to weary out by oppression those whom they cannot allure by corruption. The Chairman of the East India Company was known to be at enmity with Lord Clive. Him, therefore, they considered as the aptest instrument with which the noble Lord might be tortured into a change of political conduct; and the plan of mutual resentment was no sooner resolved upon than executed. "By one of the first ships which sailed for Bengal after the contested election, the Court of Directors sent orders to the Governor and Council, that they should no longer pay to the attornies of Lord Clive the rent granted him by Meer Jaffier, but that they should in future detain it in their hands, and carry it to the credit of the Company; and that they should transmit to the Court of Directors an exact account of all the sums already received by Lord Clive or his attornies on that head, as his Lordship's pretensions to the jaghire would be settled in England. The public letter conveying these orders assigned no reason for their being issued; but a private letter[177] from Mr. Sulivan to Mr. Vansittart, then Governor of Bengal, which was soon after produced on oath in the Court of Chancery, declared that the payment of the jaghire was stopped, because all cordiality between the Court of Directors and Lord Clive was at an end. This vindictive plea, confidentially communicated by the Chairman to his friend the Governor, could not, however, be set up in a court of equity in justification of a flagrant violation of right. The Company had, for some years, paid the jaghire without objection; and even at this time of litigation they neither claimed any title to it themselves nor pretended that there was any other claimant than the present possessor. It is not necessary to enumerate the absurd arguments and mean subterfuges to which the Court of Directors were reduced, in answer to the bill filed against them by Lord Clive in the Court of Chancery. It is sufficient to observe, that the principal reasons which they assigned for discontinuing the payment were, that the Company might one day or other be called to account by the Emperor[178] of Hindustan for the money paid under the head of this jaghire; that, therefore, Lord Clive was accountable to them even for the sums he had already received; that, if the Nabob, Meer Jaffier, had a right to grant the jaghire out of his own revenues, (which, however, the Court of Directors did not admit,) yet as that Nabob had been deposed by the Company's agents, the grant became of no effect.