Clive had recommended, that the Governor of Bengal should have an adequate salary, and be restrained from trade. In one of his letters already quoted, he strongly urged that he should be vested with authority to take a resolution in cases of emergency entirely on himself. He subsequently not only pointed out the expediency of making Calcutta the chief seat of the government of India, but proposed, in any future arrangement, the nomination of a Governor-general, with the full powers he now enjoys. All these propositions have been adopted; but the most important were not carried into effect till thirty years of collision and confusion in the administration of the Indian Government, through the means of separate and independent presidencies, compelled the divided and jealous authorities in England to follow the wise counsel of one whose experience and foresight enabled him to predict the evils which must result from the weakness and distraction of their government abroad, and the necessity of forming one uniform system for the administration of our Indian territories, and placing them under one efficient general rule,—the individual at the head of which should be of a character that justified his being clothed with paramount power over the whole. Such was the magnitude of the evils that now weighed down the government of Bengal. It was at this period of danger from external enemies aggravated by a system radically corrupt, and in the continuance of which the interests of almost the whole of the public servants, and of all the free traders, were involved, that Clive evinced all the energy of his extraordinary character. We trace that quality, however, more in his private than in his public letters; and some extracts from the former will exhibit, better than the most laboured detail, the nature of the obstacles he had to encounter, and the measures he took to surmount them, and to restore and fix, on a firmer foundation than ever, the interests of his country in India. He observes, in a letter to Mr. Palk, Governor of Madras, dated Calcutta, 4th May[261];—