But though Lord Clive had it in his power to meet and answer thus speedily these reflections upon his character, it is very evident that this good fortune was partly owing to accident; and that, in many similar instances, the most honourable and the most cautious of men might have found it altogether impossible to explain, at the moment, or at all, charges thus brought against them, at the distance of many years, when the minute circumstances had dropped from their memory, when documents had been mislaid or lost, or witnesses had fallen under the stroke of death. Several persons, whose acts were alluded to in the various reports, complained bitterly of this, as well as that the injury was not known till it had become in some measure irreparable by publication. At length the storm which had so long been gathering against Lord Clive in the Select Committee, burst upon his head. The Committee had taken a historical view of the whole incidents, military and political, that had occurred in Bengal for seventeen years before; and Lord Clive and most of the chief agents who had been engaged in them had been repeatedly examined. Colonel Burgoyne, who, on the 8th and 21st of April, had brought up the Third and Fourth Reports of the Committee, called the attention of the House to them on the 10th of May[193], and, after alluding to the disagreeable situation in which he was placed, declared that the Reports contained an account of crimes shocking to human nature; that all the disasters that had befallen the Company and their affairs in the East could be traced back to the dethronement of Suraj-u-Dowlah, and the establishment of Meer Jaffier; a revolution, he said, effected by the blackest perfidy. He dwelt upon the circumstances of that event, in which Lord Clive took the leading part; the fictitious treaty by which Omichund was induced to desert his master; the forging, as he alleged, of Admiral Watson's name to that treaty, when the Admiral himself refused to subscribe it; the subsequent agreement with Meer Jaffier, and the immense sums received by the Select Committee of Calcutta, and others of the principal agents, under the name of presents or donations, but which, being, as he asserted, extorted by the influence of military force, did, like all acquisitions by treaty with foreign powers, of right belong to the State. He also attacked the proceedings of General Caillaud and others; and after expatiating on the enormities which the Reports had brought to light, he concluded by moving the following resolutions:--"1. That all acquisitions made under the influence of a military force, or by treaty with foreign Princes, do of right belong to the State. 2. That to appropriate acquisitions so made to the private emolument of persons entrusted with any civil or military power of the State, is illegal. 3. That very great sums of money and other valuable property have been acquired in Bengal, from Princes and others of that country,