Lord Clive was one of those extraordinary men who give a character to the period and country in which they live. His name cannot be erased from the history of India, nor from that of Britain. Born in the rank of a private gentleman, and launched out early in life into the wide sea of Indian adventure, he soon far outstript all his competitors in the race of fortune and fame. He was trained in the best of schools, a state of danger, of suffering, and activity. He could not be said to have any master in the art of war; he was, to adopt the language of the great Chatham, "a heaven-born general;" and it was by the boldness and novelty of his measures, the impetuosity of his onset, and the imperturbable obstinacy of his defence, that he confounded his enemies, and changed the hesitating troops under his command into a band of heroes. He left nothing to chance: he foresaw and provided for every thing. Victory seemed to attend him wherever he turned, and no enterprise was too arduous where he was the leader. The same success and the same renown which distinguished him in the Carnatic, attended him in Bengal. From the date of the battle of Plassey, his reputation in that country was established; and all his negotiations with the native princes were from that day forward concluded more by the influence of his great name, than by the energy of his determined character.
But impetuous and ardent as was the tone of his mind, it is a remarkable part of his praise that he never suffered it to forsake the control of moderation; that he was always able to check and restrain it, and with a keen and cool glance to draw the line between the romantic and the useful, between the dictates of an intoxicating success, and that grand but practicable scheme of conquest and policy, which could give security and permanence to what had been achieved. After he had subdued the rich provinces of Bengal, Bahar, and Orissa, and had become, in fact, the arbiter of India, a wide scope was opened for his ambition. He was strongly urged by the Emperor of Hindostan to march to Delhi to restore him to the capital and throne of his ancestors. No project could be more alluring to a bold and ambitious man like Clive; and he saw and acknowledged that it was perfectly within his power. But it was anticipating the events of forty years. His well regulated mind perceived that great and flattering as was the glory of such a transaction, and high as it would raise his name, it would be contrary to sound policy and hurtful to his country. In the very midst of his career of victory he took every occasion to inculcate moderation. He pointed out that Bengal and its dependent provinces, we were able to govern, and could defend by a small well disciplined army, leaving a surplus revenue such as hardly any other country on earth could yield; but that the moment we passed its frontiers and engaged in the contests of the native princes, our very success would be ruinous to our finances; and our armies and other establishments, which must be indefinitely enlarged, would more than swallow up all the produce both of our revenue and our trade. Succeeding events have strikingly confirmed the dictates of his foresight.