ment; and Mr. Benfield, with whom I have no business, and who, as he has been accustomed to do for many years, has continued to pay me his visits of respect, has felt the weight of his lordship's displeasure, and has had every unmerited insinuation thrown out against him, to prejudice him, and deter him from paying me his compliments as usual.

"Thus, gentlemen, have you delivered me over to a stranger; to a man unacquainted with government and business, and too opinionated to learn; to a man whose ignorance and prejudices operate to the neglect of every good measure, or the liberal co-operation with any that wish well to the publick interests; to a man who, to pursue his own passions, plans and designs, will certainly ruin all mine, as well as the company's affairs. His mismanagement and obstinacy have caused the loss of many lacks of my revenues, dissipated and embezzled, and every publick consideration sacrificed, to Lis vanity and private views. I beg to offer an instance in proof of my assertions, and to justify the hope I have, that you will cause to be made good to me all the losses I have sustained, by the mal-administration and bad practices of your servants, according to all the account of receipts of former years, and which I made known to lord Macartney, amongst other papers of information, in the beginning of his management in the collections. The district of Ongole produced annually, upon a medium of many years, ninety thousand pagodas; but lord Macartney upon receiving a sum of money from Ramchundry, let it out to him, in April last, for the inadequate rent of 50,000 pagodas per aunum, diminishing, in this district alone, near half the accustomed revenues. After this manner hath he exercised his powers over the countries, to suit his own purposes and designs; and this secret mode has he

*

taken to reduce the collections."

1st November, 1782. Copy of a Letter from the Nabob of Arcot to the Court of Directors, &c. Received 7th April, 1783.

THE distresses which I have set forth in my former letters, are now increased to such an alarming pitch, by the imprudent measures of your governour, and by the arbitrary and impolitick conduct pursued with the merchants and importers

• See Tellinga letter at the end of this correspondence.

of grain, that the very existence of the fort of Madras seems at stake, and that of the inhabitants of the settlement appears to have been totally overlooked; many thousands have died, and continue hourly to perish of famine, though the capacity of one of your youngest servants, with diligence and attention, by doing justice, and giving reasonable encouragement to the merchants, and by drawing the supplies of grain which the northern countries would have afforded, might have secured us against all those dreadful calamities. I had with much difficulty procured and purchased a small quantity of rice, for the use of myself, my family, and attendants, and with a view of sending off the greatest part of the latter to the northern countries, with a little subsistence in their hands. But what must your surprise be, when you learn, that even this rice was seized by lord Macartney, with a military force! and thus am I unable to provide for the few people I have about me, who are driven to such extremity and misery, that it gives me pain to behold them. I have desired permission to get a little rice from the northern countries for the subsistence of my people, without its being liable to seizure by your sepoys: this even has been refused me by lord Macartney. What must your feelings be, on such wanton cruelty, exercised towards me, when you consider that of thousands of villages belonging to me, a single one would have sufficed for my subsistence !

22d March, 1783. Translation of a Letter from the Nabob of Arcot to the Chairman and Directors of the East India Company. -Received from Mr. James Macpherson, 1st Jan. 1784.

"I AM willing to attribute this continued usurpation to the fear of detection in lord Macartney: he dreads the awful day when the scene of his enormities will be laid open, at my restoration to my country, and when the tongues of my oppressed subjects will be unloosed, and proclaim aloud the cruel tyrannies they have sustained. These sentiments of his lordship's designs are corroborated by his sending, on the 10th instant, two gentlemen to me and my son Ameer-ulOmrah; and these gentlemen from lord Macartney especially set forth to me, and to my son, that all dependance on the power of the superiour government of Bengal, to enforce the

intentions of the company to restore my country, was vain and groundless; that the company confided in his lordship's judgment and discretion, and upon his representations, and that if I, and my son, Ameer-ul-Omrah, would enter into friendship with lord Macartney, and sign a paper, declaring all my charges and complaints against him to be false, that his lordship might be induced to write to England, that all his allegations against me and my son were not well-founded; and, notwithstanding his declarations to withhold my country, yet on these considerations, it might be still restored me.

"What must be your feelings for your ancient and faithful friend, on his receiving such insults to his honour and understanding from your principal servant, armed with your authority? From these manœuvres, amongst thousands I have experienced, the truth must evidently appear to you, that I have not been loaded with those injuries and oppressions from motives of publick service, but to answer the private views and interests of his lordship, and his secret agents: some papers to this point are inclosed; others, almost without number, must be submitted to your justice, when time and circumstances will enable me fully to investigate those transactions. This opportunity will not permit the full representation of my load of injuries and distresses: I beg leave to refer you to my minister, Mr. Macpherson, for the papers, according to the inclosed list, which accompanied my last dispatches by the Rodney, which I fear have failed; and my correspondence with lord Macartney, subsequent to that period, such as I have been able to prepare for this opportunity, are inclosed.

"Notwithstanding all the violent acts and declarations of lord Macartney, yet a consciousness of his own misconduct was the sole incentive to the menaces and overtures he has held out, in various shapes. He has been insultingly lavish in his expressions of high respect for my person; has had the insolence to say, that all his measures flowed from his affectionate regard alone; has presumed to say, that all his enmity and oppression were levelled at my son, Ameerul-Omrah, to whom he before acknowledged every aid and assistance: and, his lordship being without any just cause or foundation for complaint against us, or a veil to cover his own violences, he has now had recourse to the meanness, and

has dared to intimate of my son, in order to intimidate me, and to strengthen his own wicked purposes, to be in league with our enemies the French. You must doubtless be astonished, no less at the assurance, than at the absurdity of such a wicked suggestion."

(In the nabob's own hand.)

"P. S. In my own hand-writing I acquainted Mr. Hastings, as I now do my ancient friends the company, with the insult offered to my honour and understanding, in the extraordinary propositions sent to me by lord Macartney, through two gentlemen, on the 10th instant, so artfully veiled with menaces, hopes, and promises. But how can lord Macartney add to his enormities, after his wicked and calumniating insinuations, so evidently directed against me and my family, through my faithful, my dutiful, and beloved son, Ameer-ul-Omrah, who, you well know, has been ever born and bred amongst the English, whom I have studiously brought up in the warmest sentiments of affection and attachment to them; sentiments, that in his maturity have been his highest ambition to improve, insomuch that he knows no happiness, but in the faithful support of our alliance and connexion with the English nation ?"

12th August, and Postscript of the 16th August, 1783. Translation of a Letter to the Chairman and Directors of the East-India Company, Received from Mr. James Macpherson, 14th January, 1784.

"YOUR astonishment and indignation will be equally raised with mine, when you hear that your president has dared, contrary to your intention, to continue to usurp the privileges and hereditary powers of the nabob of the Carnatick, your old and unshaken friend, and the declared ally of the king of Great Britain.

"I will not take up your time by enumerating the particular acts of lord Macartney's violence, cruelty, and injustice; they indeed occur too frequently, and fall upon me, and my devoted subjects and country, too thick, to be regularly related. I refer you to my minister, Mr. James Macpherson, for a more circumstantial account of the oppressions and enormities by which he has brought both mine and the company's affairs to the brink of

destruction. I trust that such flagrant violations of all justice, honour, and the faith of treaties, will receive the severest marks of your displeasure, and that lord Macartney's conduct, in making use of your name and authority as a sanction for the continuance of his usurpation, will be disclaimed with the utmost indignation, and followed with the severest punishment. I conceive that his lordship's arbitrary retention of my country and government can only originate in his insatiable cravings, in his implacable malevolence against me, and through fear of detection, which must follow the surrender of the Carnatick into my hands, of those nefarious proceedings which are now suppressed by the arm of violence and power.

"I did not fail to represent to the supreme government of Bengal the deplorable situation to which I was reduced, and the unmerited persecutions I have unremittingly sustained from lord Macartney; and I earnestly implored them to stretch forth a saving arm, and interpose that controlling power which was vested in them, to check rapacity and presumption, and preserve the honour and faith of the company from violation. The governour-general and council not only felt the cruelty and injustice I had suffered, but were greatly alarmed for the fatal consequences that might result from the distrust of the country powers in the professions of the English, when they saw the nabob of the Carnatick, the friend of the company, and the ally of Great Britain, thus stripped of his rights, his dominions, and his dignity, by the most fraudulent means, and under the mask of friendship. The Bengal government had already heard both the Mahrattas and the Nizam urge as an objection to an alliance with the English, the faithless behaviour of lord Macartney to a prince whose life had been devoted, and whose treasures had been exhausted, in their service and support; and they did not hesitate to give positive orders to lord Macartney for the restitution of my government and authority, on such terms as were not only strictly honourable, but equally advantageous to my friends the company; for they justly thought that my honour and dignity, and sovereign rights, were the first objects of my wishes and ambition: But how can I paint my astonishment at lord Macartney's presumption, in continuing his usurpation, after