ABSTRACT
We have now traced to their conclusion the difficulties in which Clive’s successors were involved by their defects of character and the operation of a system essentially unstable. Clive, as Governor, had assumed it to be part of his duty to exercise a constant supervision over the Nawab’s government, to protect if necessary the Nawab’s ministers, and to guard against the development at the Durbar of any interest antagonistic to the English. Under Holwell the system had fallen into confusion. Vansittart, thinking a change of persons would remedy evils inherent in the system itself, had established Mir Kasim and adopted the principle of not interfering with the government except on those points which directly concerned the English trade. The result, as we have seen, was the unchecked development of a hostile power, and a bloody war to re-establish the person who had been deposed by Vansittart in 1760. It now remains to consider the steps leading to the settlement that was to form the basis of permanent and ordered British rule in Bengal.
