162 THE WEALTH AND POVERTY OF NATIONSand held out ducal fortunes... for the lucky few."^22 Luck, obviously,
was only part of the story.
To be sure, India was a disease-ridden place. Many of these new rich
never made it back to England. Even healthy and competent survivors
had problems cashing in their assets; the dead had to rely on agents
with their own interests to nourish and often no one to answer to. The
crumbs that fell in this way from the Indian table fattened a small army
of dealers, lawyers, scrivenors, jewelers, bill brokers, smugglers, confi
dence men, and profiteers.
Lord Clive (he had received an Irish peerage and hoped soon for an
English tide) had a bigger problem than most; he had so much more
to take back. He sent £180,000 in bills of exchange on the VOC in
Amsterdam, which then had to be discounted and used to buy sterling
remittances. More than £40,000 went through the English East India
Company, and considerable though unknown amounts through private
merchants. He also invested hugely in jewels—£25,000 in diamonds
bought in Madras alone—and carried these back for resale in England.
"We may safely affirm," wrote Macaulay, "that no Englishman who
started with nothing has ever, in any line of life, created such a fortune
at the early age of thirty-four."^23
When Clive returned to England, he put his fortune to "creditable"
use. He gave large sums to sisters, other relations, impecunious friends;
arranged an income of £800 a year for his parents, say $400,000 of
today's money, while insisting that they keep a carriage; and settied
£500 a year on his old commanding officer, "whose means were very
slender." After devoting some £50,000 to these generosities, he
bought land with a view to securing seats in the Commons for himself
and a small coterie of clients. He also bought a substantial packet of
shares (£100,000) in the East India Company, which he assigned to
strawmen so as to make a small voting bloc. In those days, the meet
ings of the court of proprietors, as it was called, were "large, stormy,
even riotous.... Fictitious votes were manufactured on a gigantic
scale." Robert Clive was someone to be reckoned with.
In the short run, this transfer of wealth and political power from the
mysterious East to the country shires and parliamentary halls of Eng
land proved unpalatable—too fast, too new. Who were these nabobs
(the then current version of the Indian tide of nawab), to buy large es
tates, pretend to social eminence, corrupt English politics? Inevitably,
a cry went up for official investigation and parliamentary inquiries.
These led to scandalous trials (Warren Hastings) and provoked im-