The letter[130] from Mr. Clive to his son, acknowledging the receipt of the accounts of his success, commences with one of those simple but natural bursts of paternal affection that mock all imitation. "Your last letter," he says, "gave me joy beyond all possibility of expression. The whole kingdom is in transports for the glory and success their countryman has gained. Come away, and let us rejoice together!" In a subsequent letter, he dwells with true paternal feeling upon the same subject. "May Heaven," he writes[131], "preserve you safe to Old England, where not only your friends and relations, but strangers who never saw you, will congratulate you for the glorious actions you have done your country. With what joy shall I embrace you! Oh, may I live to see that day! Your mother and sisters are sitting with me round the fire, drinking to your health and safe voyage." Mr. Clive appears, from his own statement, to have been involved in his circumstances, and to have felt much distress in becoming such a burden to his son. In his answer to the letter which informed him of Clive's agents being directed to give him the additional sum of 500_l._ per annum, and to keep a coach for him, he observes[132], "I have received your letter of the 9th of November, 1758, and am under the greatest obligations that ever father was to a son, especially in the unhappy circumstances my own imprudence and being bound for others hath rendered me. Mr. Woolaston, for whom I was surety, is now dead; and what he owed the government, together with what remained unpaid on my account, amount to no less than 9000_l._ more than we have to pay. The Treasury, by direction of the Duke of Newcastle, have postponed the payment to a future day; but I fear that day will come before you arrive in England; and when you come, what pretence have I to expect or desire you should set me free, when I have already had your benevolence in so extraordinary a manner? Thank God you have so much in your power! Let us live on a fifth part of what you have so generously allowed me. If I am free, I shall be content; and, while I live, bless Providence, and pray for the increase of your happiness, who have saved a distressed family from utter ruin." The letters from Clive's mother breathe the truest maternal affection. Her warmest gratitude is expressed for that comfort which he has diffused throughout all his family, and above all, as the old lady states, for his great kindness to "her girls."