Ebook: Rulers of India

It is not surprising, then, that he showed the strongest aversion to devote himself to the study which would have qualified him to follow his father's profession. A seat at an attorney's desk, and the drudgery of an attorney's life, were to him as distasteful as they proved to be, at a later period, to the eldest son of Isaac Disraeli. He would have a career which promised action. If such were not open to him in his native land, he would seek for it in other parts of the world. When, then, his father, who had some interest, and who had but small belief in his eldest son, procured for him the appointment of writer in the service of the East India Company, Robert Clive accepted it with avidity. Probably if he had had the smallest idea of the nature of the duties which were associated with that office, he would have refused it with scorn. He panted, I have said, for a life of action: he accepted a career which was drudgery under a tropical sun, in its most uninteresting form. The Company in whose service he entered was simply a trading corporation. Its territory in India consisted of but a few square miles round the factories its agents had established, and for which they paid an annual rental to the native governments.