Chapter 14

What he had done for Madras, what he had accomplished for Bengal proper, and what he had effected in reforming the Company itself, he was now to complete in less than two years, in this the third period of his career, by putting his country politically in the place of the emperor of Delhi, and preventing for ever the possibility of the corruption to which the British in India had been driven by an evil system. On the 3rd of May 1765 he landed at Calcutta to learn that Jafar Ali Khan had died, leaving him personally £70,000, and had been succeeded by his son, though not before the government had been further demoralized by taking £100,000 as a gift from the new nawab; while Kasim Ali had induced not only the viceroy of Oudh, but the emperor of Delhi himself, to invade Behar. After the first mutiny in the Bengal army, which was suppressed by blowing the sepoy ringleader from a gun, Major Munro, "the Napier of those times," scattered the united armies on the hard-fought field of Buxar. The emperor, Shah Alam, detached himself from the league, while the Oudh viceroy threw himself on the mercy of the British. Clive had now an opportunity of repeating in Hindustan, or Upper India, what he had accomplished for the good of Bengal. He might have secured what are now called the United Provinces, and have rendered unnecessary the campaigns of Wellesley and Lake. But he had other work in the consolidation of rich Bengal itself, making it a base from which the mighty fabric of British India could afterwards steadily and proportionally grow. Hence he returned to the Oudh viceroy all his territory save the provinces of Allahabad and Kora, which he made over to the weak emperor. But from that emperor he secured the most important document in the whole of British history in India up to that time, which appears in the records as "firmaund from the King Shah Aalum, granting the dewany of Bengal, Behar and Orissa to the Company, 1765." The date was the 12th of August, the place Benares, the throne an English dining-table covered with embroidered cloth and surmounted by a chair in Clive's tent. It is all pictured by a Mahommedan contemporary, who indignantly exclaims that so great a "transaction was done and finished in less time than would have been taken up in the sale of a jackass." By this deed the Company became the real sovereign rulers of thirty millions of people, yielding a revenue of four millions sterling. All this had been accomplished by Clive in the few brief years since he had avenged "the Black Hole" of Calcutta. This would be a small matter, or might even be a cause of reproach, were it not that the Company's undisputed sovereignty proved, after a sore period of transition, the salvation of these millions. The lieutenant-governorship of Bengal since Clive's time has grown so large and prosperous that in 1905 it was found advisable to divide it into two separate provinces. But Clive, though thus moderate and even generous to an extent which called forth the astonishment of the natives, had all a statesman's foresight. On the same date he obtained not only an imperial charter for the Company's possession in the Carnatic also, thus completing the work he began at Arcot, but a third firman for the highest of all the lieutenancies of the empire, that of the Deccan itself. This fact is mentioned in a letter from the secret committee of the court of directors to the Madras government, dated the 27th of April 1768. Still so disproportionate did the British force seem, not only to the number and strength of the princes and people of India, but to the claims and ambition of French, Dutch and Danish rivals, that Clive's last advice to the directors, as he finally left India in 1767, was this: "We are sensible that, since the acquisition of the dewany, the power formerly belonging to the soubah of those provinces is totally, in fact, vested in the East India Company. Nothing remains to him but the name and shadow of authority. This name, however, this shadow, it is indispensably necessary we should seem to venerate." On a wider arena, even that of the Great Mogul himself, the shadow was kept up till it obliterated itself in the massacre of English people in the Delhi palace in 1857; and Queen Victoria was proclaimed, first, direct ruler on the 1st of November 1858, and then empress of India on the 1st of January 1877.

Having thus founded the empire of British India, Clive's painful duty was to create a pure and strong administration, such as alone would justify its possession by foreigners. The civil service was de-orientalized by raising the miserable salaries which had tempted its members to be corrupt, by forbidding the acceptance of gifts from natives, and by exacting covenants under which participation in the inland trade was stopped. Not less important were his military reforms. With his usual tact and nerve he put down a mutiny of the English officers, who chose to resent the veto against receiving presents and the reduction of batta at a time when two Mahratta armies were marching on Bengal. His reorganization of the army, on the lines of that which he had begun after Plassey, and which was neglected during his second visit to England, has since attracted the admiration of the ablest Indian officers. He divided the whole into three brigades, so as to make each a complete force, in itself equal to any single native army that could be brought against it. He had not enough British artillerymen, however, and would not make the mistake of his successors, who trained natives to work the guns, which were turned against the British with such effect in 1857. It is sufficient to say that after the Mutiny the government returned to his policy, and not a native gunner is now to be found in the Indian army.

Clive's final return to England, a poorer man than he went out, in spite of still more tremendous temptations, was the signal for an outburst of his personal enemies, exceeded only by that which the malice of Sir Philip Francis afterwards excited against Warren Hastings. Every civilian whose illicit gains he had cut off, every officer whose conspiracy he had foiled, every proprietor or director, like Sulivan, whose selfish schemes he had thwarted, now sought their opportunity. He had, with consistent generosity, at once made over the legacy of £70,000 from the grateful Jafar Ali, as the capital of what has since been known as "the Clive Fund," for the support of invalided European soldiers, as well as officers, and their widows, and the Company had allowed 8% on the sum for an object which it was otherwise bound to meet. General John Burgoyne, of Saratoga memory, did his best to induce the House of Commons, in which Lord Clive was now member for Shrewsbury, to impeach the man who gave his country an empire, and the people of that empire peace and justice, and that, as we have seen, without blot on the gift, save in the matter of Omichund. The result, after the brilliant and honourable defences of his career which will be found in Almon's _Debates_ for 1773, was a compromise that saved England this time from the dishonour which, when Warren Hastings had to run the gauntlet, put it in the same category with France in the treatment of its public benefactors abroad. On a division the House, by 155 to 95, carried the motion that Lord Clive "did obtain and possess himself" of £234,000 during his first administration of Bengal; but, refusing to express an opinion on the fact, it passed unanimously the second motion, at five in the morning, "that Robert, Lord Clive, did at the same time render great and meritorious services to his country." The one moral question, the one questionable transaction in all that brilliant and tempted life--the Omichund treaty--was not touched.

Only one who can personally understand what Clive's power and services had been will rightly realize the effect on him, though in the prime of life, of the discussions through which he had been dragged. In the greatest of his speeches, in reply to Lord North, he said,--"My situation, sir, has not been an easy one for these twelve months past, and though my conscience could never accuse me, yet I felt for my friends who were involved in the same censure as myself.... I have been examined by the select committee more like a sheep-stealer than a member of this House." Fully accepting that statement, and believing him to have been purer than his accusers in spite of temptations unknown to them, we see in Clive's end the result merely of physical suffering, of chronic disease which opium failed to abate, while the worry and chagrin caused by his enemies gave it full scope. This great man, who did more for his country than any soldier till Wellington, and more for the people and princes of India than any statesman in history, died by his own hand on the 22nd of November 1774 in his fiftieth year.

The portrait of Clive, by Dance, in the council chamber of Government House, Calcutta, faithfully represents him. He was slightly above middle-size, with a countenance rendered heavy and almost sad by a natural fulness above the eyes. Reserved to the many, he was beloved by his own family and friends. His encouragement of scientific undertakings like Major James Rennell's surveys, and of philological researches like Francis Gladwin's, gained him to two honorary distinctions of F.R.S. and LL.D.

His son and successor Edward (1754-1839) was created earl of Powis in 1804, his wife being the sister and heiress of George Herbert, earl of Powis (1755-1801). He is thus the ancestor of the later earls of Powis, who took the name of Herbert instead of that of Clive in 1807.

See Sir A. J. Arbuthnot, _Lord Clive_ ("Builders of Great Britain" series) (1899); Sir C. Wilson, _Lord Clive_ ("English Men of Action" series) (1890); G. B. Malleson, _Lord Clive_ ("Rulers of India" series) (1890); F. M. Holmes, _Four Heroes of India_ (1892); C. Caraccioli, _Life of Lord Clive_(1775).

CLOACA, the Latin term given to the sewers laid to drain the low marshy grounds between the hills of Rome. The most important, which drained the forum, is known as the Cloaca Maxima and dates from the 6th century B.C. This was 10 ft. 6 in. wide, 14 ft. high, and was vaulted with three consecutive rings of voussoirs in stone, the floor being paved with polygonal blocks of lava.

CLOCK. The measurement of time has always been based on the revolution of the celestial bodies, and the period of the apparent revolution of the sun, i.e. the interval between two consecutive crossings of a meridian, has been the usual standard for a day. By the Egyptians the day was divided into 24 hours of equal length. The Greeks adopted a different system, dividing the day, i.e. the period from sunrise to sunset, into 12 hours, and also the night. Whence it followed that it was only at two periods in the year that the length of the hours during the day and night were uniform (see CALENDAR). In consequence, those who adopted the Greek system were obliged to furnish their water-clocks (see CLEPSYDRA) with a compensating device so that the equal hours measured by those clocks should be rendered unequal, according to the exigencies of the season. The hours were divided into minutes and seconds, a system derived from the sexagesimal notation which prevailed before the decimal system was finally adopted. Our mode of computing time, and our angular measure, are the only relics of this obsolete system.

The simplest measure of time is the revolution of the earth round its axis, which so far as we know is uniform, perfectly regular, and has not varied in speed during any period of human observation. The time of such a revolution is called a sidereal day, and is divided into hours, minutes and seconds. The period of rotation of the earth is practically measured by observations of the fixed stars (see TIME), the period between two successive transits of the same star across a meridian constituting the sidereal day. But as the axis of the earth slowly revolves round in a cone, whereby the phenomenon known as the precession of the equinoxes is produced, it follows that the astronomical sidereal day is not the true period of the earth's rotation on its axis, but varies from it by less than a twenty millionth part, a fraction so small as to be inappreciable. But the civil day depends not on the revolution of the earth with regard to the stars, but on its revolution as compared with the position of the sun. Therefore each civil day is on the average longer than a sidereal one by nearly four minutes, or, to be exact, each sidereal day is to an average civil day as .99727 to 1, and the sidereal hour, minute and second are also shorter in like proportion. Hence a sidereal clock has a shorter, quicker-moving pendulum than an ordinary clock.

Ordinary civil time thus depends on the apparent revolution of the sun round the earth. As, however, this is not uniform, it is needful for practical convenience to give it an artificial uniformity. For this purpose an imaginary sun, moving round the earth with the average velocity of the real sun, and called the "mean" sun, is taken as the measure of civil time. The day is divided into 24 hours, each hour into 60 minutes, and each minute into 60 seconds. After that the sexagesimal division system is abandoned, and fractions of seconds are estimated in decimals.

A clock consists of a train of wheels, actuated by a spring or weight, and provided with a governing device which so regulates the speed as to render it uniform. It also has a mechanism by which it strikes the hours on a bell or gong (cp. Fr. _cloche_, Ger. _Glocke_, a bell; Dutch _klok_, bell, clock), whereas, strictly, a _timepiece_ does not strike, but simply shows the time.

The earliest clocks seem to have come into use in Europe during the 13th century. For although there is evidence that they may have been invented some centuries sooner, yet until that date they were probably only curiosities. The first form they took was that of the balance clock, the invention of which is ascribed, but on very insufficient grounds, to Pope Silvester II. in A.D. 996. A clock was put up in a former clock tower at Westminster with some great bells in 1288, out of a fine imposed on a chief-justice who had offended the government, and the motto _Discite justitiam, moniti_, inscribed upon it. The bells were sold, or rather, it is said, gambled away, by Henry VIII. In 1292 a clock in Canterbury cathedral is mentioned as costing £30, and another at St Albans, by R. Wallingford, the abbot in 1326, is said to have been such as there was not in all Europe, showing various astronomical phenomena. A description of one in Dover Castle with the date 1348 on it was published by Admiral W.H. Smyth (1788-1865) in 1851, and the clock itself was exhibited going, in the Scientific Exhibition of 1876. A very similar one, made by Henry de Vick for the French king Charles V. in 1379 was much like the common clocks of the 18th century, except that it had a vibrating balance instead of a pendulum. The works of one of these old clocks still exist in a going condition at the Victoria and Albert Museum. It came from Wells cathedral, having previously been at Glastonbury abbey.

These old clocks had what is called a verge escapement, and a balance. The train of wheels ended with a crown wheel, that is, a wheel serrated with teeth like those of a saw, placed parallel with its axis (fig. 1). These teeth, D, engaged with pallets CB, CA, mounted on a verge or staff placed parallel to the face of the crown wheel. As the crown wheel was turned round the teeth pushed the pallets alternately until one or the other slid past a tooth, and thus let the crown wheel rotate. When one pallet had slipped over a tooth, the other pallet caught a corresponding tooth on the opposite side of the wheel. The verge was terminated by a balance rod placed at right angles to it with a ball at each end. It is evident that when the force of any tooth on the crown wheel began to act on a pallet, it communicated motion to the balance and thus caused it to rotate. This motion would of course be accelerated, not uniformly, but according to some law dependent on the shape of the teeth and pallets. When the motion had reached its maximum, the tooth slipped past the pallet. The other pallet now engaged another tooth on the opposite side of the wheel. The motion of the balls, however, went on and they continued to swing round, but this time they were opposed by the pressure of the tooth. For a time they overcame that pressure, and drove the tooth back, causing a recoil. As, however, every motion if subjected to an adverse acceleration (i.e. a retardation) must come to rest, the balls stopped, and then the tooth, which had been forced to recoil, advanced in its turn, and the swing was repeated. The arrangement was thus very like a huge watch balance wheel in which the driving weight acted in a very irregular manner, not only as a driving force, but also as a regulating spring. The going of such clocks was influenced greatly by friction and by the oil on the parts, and never could be satisfactory, for the time varied with every variation in the swing of the balls, and this again with every variation of the effective driving force.

The first great step in the improvement of the balance clock was a very simple one. In the 17th century Galileo had discovered the isochronism of the pendulum, but he made no practical use of it, except by the invention of a little instrument for enabling doctors to count their patients' pulse-beats. His son, however, is supposed to have applied the pendulum to clocks. There is at the Victoria and Albert Museum a copy of an early clock, said to be Galileo's, in which the pins on a rotating wheel kick a pendulum outwards, remaining locked after having done so till the pendulum returns and unlocks the next pin, which then administers another kick to the pendulum (fig. 2). The interest of the specimen is that it contains the germ of the chronometer escapement and free pendulum, which is possibly destined to be the escapement of the future.

The essential component parts of a clock are:--

1. The pendulum or time-governing device;

2. The escapement, whereby the pendulum controls the speed of going;

3. The train of wheels, urged round by the weight or main-spring, together with the recording parts, i.e. the dial, hands and hour motion wheels;

4. The striking mechanism.

The general construction of the going part of all clocks, except large or turret clocks, is substantially the same, and fig. 3 is a section of any ordinary house clock. B is the barrel with the cord coiled round it, generally 16 times for the 8 days; the barrel is fixed to its arbor K, which is prolonged into the winding square coming up to the face or dial of the clock; the dial is here shown as fixed either by small screws x, or by a socket and pin z, to the prolonged pillars p, p, which (4 or 5 in number) connect the plates or frame of the clock together, though the dial is commonly set on to the front plate by another set of pillars of its own. The great wheel G rides on the arbor, and is connected with the barrel by the ratchet R, the action of which is shown more fully in fig. 25. The intermediate wheel r in this drawing is for a purpose which will be described hereafter, and for the present it may be considered as omitted, and the click of the ratchet R as fixed to the great wheel. The great wheel drives the pinion c which is called the centre pinion, on the arbor of the _centre wheel_ C, which goes through to the dial, and carries the long, or minute-hand; this wheel always turns in an hour, and the great wheel generally in 12 hours, by having 12 times as many teeth as the centre pinion. The centre wheel drives the "second wheel" D by its pinion d, and that again drives the scape-wheel E by its pinion e. If the pinions d and e have each 8 teeth or _leaves_ (as the teeth of pinions are usually called), C will have 64 teeth and D 60, in a clock of which the scape-wheel turns in a minute, so that the seconds hand may be set on its arbor prolonged to the dial. A represents the pallets of the escapement, which will be described presently, and their arbor a goes through a large hole in the back plate near F, and its back pivot turns in a cock OFQ screwed on to the back plate. From the pallet arbor at F descends the _crutch_ Ff, ending in the _fork_ f, which embraces the pendulum P, so that as the pendulum vibrates, the crutch and the pallets necessarily vibrate with it. The pendulum is hung by a thin spring S from the cock Q, so that the bending point of the spring may be just opposite the end of the pallet arbor, and the edge of the spring as close to the end of that arbor as possible.

We may now go to the front (or left hand) of the clock, and describe the dial or "motion-work." The minute hand fits on to a squared end of a brass socket, which is fixed to the wheel M, and fits close, but not tight, on the prolonged arbor of the centre wheel. Behind this wheel is a bent spring which is (or ought to be) set on the same arbor with a square hole (not a round one as it sometimes is) in the middle, so that it must turn with the arbor; the wheel is pressed up against this spring, and kept there, by a cap and a small pin through the end of the arbor. The consequence is, that there is friction enough between the spring and the wheel to carry the hand round, but not enough to resist a moderate push with the finger for the purpose of altering the time indicated. This wheel M, which is sometimes called the minute-wheel, but is better called the _hour-wheel_ as it turns in an hour, drives another wheel N, of the same number of teeth, which has a pinion attached to it; and that pinion drives the _twelve-hour wheel_ H, which is also attached to a large socket or pipe carrying the hour hand, and riding on the former socket, or rather (in order to relieve the centre arbor of that extra weight) on an intermediate socket fixed to the _bridge_ L, which is screwed to the front plate over the hour-wheel M. The weight W, which drives the train and gives the impulse to the pendulum through the escapement, is generally hung by a catgut line passing through a pulley attached to the weight, the other end of the cord being tied to some convenient place in the clock frame or _seat-board_, to which it is fixed by screws through the lower pillars.