CLIVE AND OMICHUND.
[To THE EDITOR OF THE " SPECTATOR."] Sra,—Mr. Vincent Smith's strictures on your reviewer and the conduct of Clive with regard to the Omichund transaction seem to me to be not only eminently unfair but extraordinarily super- ficial. The plainest laws of evidence are sacrificed in order to vilify the character of a great soldier and statesman who founded our Indian Empire. Mr. Vincent Smith makes the following assertion :- " The simple facts are well known, no trouble being needed to master them. Omichund demanded three millions of rupees, after- wards reduced to two millions, as the price of holding his tongue. The banker kept his word and held his tongue. Clive broke his word, and directed the commission of forgery in order to deprive Omichund of the agreed payment for a great service already rendered. Nobody's life was then at stake, on June 30th, a week after Plessey. The sole motive of Clive's crime was the saving of two millions of rupees."
This passage does not contain a single fact accurately stated, and its value may be estimated by the following analysis. Mr. Vincent Smith writes:- "Omichund demanded three millions of rupees, afterwards reduced to two millions, as the price of holding his tongue."
Mr. Watts in his letter to Clive (May 14th, 1757) states that Omichund demanded more than three millions as the price of his blackmail. Mr. Vincent Smith states that the reviewer " asserts further, without offering a particle of proof, that yielding to Omichund's blackmail ' would certainly have involved the lives of the Englishmen in the hands of the Nabob.' " The reviewer based his statement on substantial evidence repro- duced in " the Life " which has lain buried in the Report from the Select Committee appointed by the House of Commons on April 13th, 1772.
Mr. Vinoent Smith writes : " The banker kept his word and held his tongue." The banker kept his tongue because he con- sidered the British had bound themselves to pay £200,000 as the price of his silence. The insatiate extortioner, however, obtained a handsome sum from the Nawab by divulging to him so much of the Alliance between the English and Meer Jaffier as might be confided to his ears without danger. Mr. Vincent Smith slates :- " Clive broke his word, and directed the commission of forgery in order to deprive Omichund of the agreed payment for a great service already rendered."
At the meeting of the Select Committee, held on May 17th, 1757, the two Admirals (Pocock and Watson) being present, it was " decided to deceive him [Omichund] by a double treaty." Clive frankly informed the Parliamentary Committee that he himself formed the plan of the fictitious Treaty to which the Committee consented, though Admiral Watson objected to signing it.
Mr. Vincent Smith remarks: " Nobody's life was then at stake, on June 30th, a week after Plessey." This is a quibble. Lives were at stake when Omichund attempted to blackmail.
The following is a malignant blunder :- " The sole motive of Clive's crime was the saving of two millions of rupees."
Mr. Hill in his exhaustive Introduction to Bengal in 1756-57 has shown that
" Neither he [Clive] nor the British •received any pecuniary benefit from the deception of Omichund."
There is a want of accuracy in the following statement :- " Sir George Forrest timorously refrains from expressing a definite opinion about his hero's conduct, and contents himself with the observation that at the time everybody approved of the trick."
There is no timorous refraining from expressing a definite opinion in my considered verdict:—
"Clive had to come to a conclusion at once on a complicated and momentous matter—not a conclusion in the abstract, but a conclu- sion in the concrete. He had a choice of difficulties. If he rejected Omichund's terms, Omichund threatened to reveal the whole con- spiracy to the Nawab. Watts and all the Europeans up the country would be murdered. But this would not be all. The Nawab, assisted by French troops, would attack and destroy the British settlements in Bengal. If Clive allowed himself to be blackmailed by Omichund, and complied with his terms, the Seths and Meer Jaffier, he had every reason to think, would, according to Watts' letter, refuse to agree to the treaty, and the enterprise would have to be abandoned. The abandonment of the enterprise meant massacre and the destruction of the British settlements in Bengal. Clive had to resort to a device in order to avoid civil bloodshed, and to save a province from destruction."
Ifffey, Oxon.
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