mont from the Duchess Dowager of
Newcastle, and was improving it at lavish cost. He had so far
invested money in the smaller boroughs that he could reckon on
bringing into Parliament a retinue of six or seven friends or
kinsmen. Under such circumstances the Select Committee, over which
Burgoyne presided, made Clive their more especial object of attack.
They drew forth into the light of day several transactions certainly
not well formed to bear it, as the forgery of Admiral Watson's
signature, and the fraud practised on Aminchand. But at the same time
they could not shut out the lustre of the great deeds he had
performed. Clive himself was unsparingly questioned, and treated with
slight regard. As he complains, in one of his speeches: "I their
humble servant, the Baron of Plassey, have been examined by the
Select Committee more like a sheep-stealer than a member of this
House." And he adds, with perfect truth: "I am sure, Sir, if I had
any sore {203}places about me, they would have been found: they have
probed me to the bottom; no lenient plasters have been applied to
heal; no, Sir, they were all of the blister kind, prepared with
Spanish flies and other provocatives."'

[Footnote 4: At Saratoga, October 17, 1777.]

[Footnote 5: Lord Stanhope's _History of England_, vol. vii. pp.
353-4.]

Throughout these attacks Clive never lost his calmness or his
presence of mind. Never once did his lofty spirit quail. He stood
there still the unconquered hero, ready to meet every charge,
sometimes retorting, but always nobly, on his adversaries. His
friends rallied gallantly round him. His particular friend, Mr.
Wedderburn, then Solicitor-General, gave him a support as valuable as
it was unstinted. When his administration in Bengal was spoken of by
his old enemy, Mr. Sulivan, in the House in a manner which, whilst
not directly attacking it, conveyed the impression that there was a
great deal more in the background, Clive went through every phase of
his career in Bengal, defending his own action in a style which
gained for him admiration. It was not, however, until the month of
May, 1773, that General Burgoyne defined the vague charges which had
theretofore supplied the place of argument, and brought them forward,
as a vote of censure, in three resolutions. These resolutions ran as
follows: (1) 'that all acquisitions made under the influence of a
military force, or by treaty with foreign princes, did of right
belong to the State'