of representation employed by those who have obtained that ascendency
over the Nabob of Arcot which is described in the letter marked No. 6 of
the present Appendix, and which is so totally destructive of the
authority and credit of the lawful British government at Madras. The
charges made by these persons have been solemnly denied by Lord
Macartney; and to judge from the character of the parties accused and
accusing, they are probably void of all foundation. But as the letters
are in the name and under the signature of a person of great rank and
consequence among the natives,--as they contain matter of the most
serious nature,--as they charge the most enormous crimes, and
corruptions of the grossest kind, on a British governor,--and as they
refer to the Nabob's minister in Great Britain for proof and further
elucidation of the matters complained of,--common decency and common
policy demanded an inquiry into their truth or falsehood. The writing is
obviously the product of some English pen. If, on inquiry, these charges
should be made good, (a thing very unlikely,) the party accused would
become a just object of animadversion. If they should be found (as in
all probability they would be found) false and calumnious, and supported
by _forgery_, then the censure would fall on the accuser; at the same
time the necessity would be manifest for proper measures towards the
security of government against such infamous accusations. It is as
necessary to protect the honest fame of virtuous governors as it is to
punish the corrupt and tyrannical. But neither the Court of Directors
nor the Board of Control have made any inquiry into the truth or
falsehood of these charges. They have covered over the accusers and
accused with abundance of compliments; they have insinuated some oblique
censures; and they have recommended perfect harmony between the chargers
of corruption and peculation and the persons charged with these
crimes.]
13th October, 1782. _Extract of a Translation of a Letter from the Nabob
of Arcot to the Chairman of the Court of Directors of the East India
Company_.
Fatally for me, and for the public interest, the Company's favor and my
unbounded confidence have been lavished on a man totally unfit for the
exalted station in which he has been placed, and unworthy of the trusts
that have been reposed in him. When I speak of one who has so deeply
stabbed my honor, my wounds bleed afresh, and I must be allowed that
freedom of expression which the galling reflection of my injuries and my
misfortunes naturally draws from me. Shall your servants, unchecked,
unrestrained, and unpunished, gratify their private views and ambition
at the expense of my honor, my peace, and my happiness, and to the ruin
of my country, as well as of all your affairs? No sooner had Lord
Macartney obtained the favorite object of his ambition than he betrayed
the greatest insolence towards me, the most glaring neglect of the
common civilities and attentions paid me by all former governors in the
worst of times, and even by the most inveterate of my enemies. He
insulted my servants, endeavored to defame my character by unjustly
censuring my administration, and extended his boundless usurpation to
the whole government of my dominions, in all the branches of judicature
and police; and, in violation of the express articles of the agreements,
proceeded to send renters into the countries, unapproved of by me, men
of bad character, and unequal to my management or responsibility.
Though he is chargeable with the greatest acts of cruelty, even to the
shedding the blood and cutting off the noses and ears of my subjects, by
those exercising his authority in the countries, and that even the
duties of religion and public worship have been interrupted or
prevented, and though he carries on all his business by the arbitrary
exertion of military force, yet does he not collect from the countries
one fourth of the revenue that should be produced. The statement he
pretends to hold forth of expected revenue is totally fallacious, and
can never be realized under the management of his Lordship, in the
appointment of renters totally disqualified, rapacious, and
irresponsible, who are actually embezzling and dissipating the public
revenues that should assist in the support of the war. Totally occupied
by his private views, and governed by his passions, he has neglected or
sacrificed all the essential objects of public good, and by want of
coöperation with Sir Eyre Coote, and refusal to furnish the army with
the necessary supplies, has rendered the glorious and repeated victories
of the gallant general ineffectual to the expulsion of our cruel enemy.
To cover his insufficiency, and veil the discredit attendant on his
failure in every measure, he throws out the most illiberal expressions,
and institutes unjust accusations against me; and in aggravation of all
the distresses imposed upon me, he has abetted the meanest calumniators
to bring forward false charges against me and my son, Amir-ul-Omrah, in
order to create embarrassment, and for the distress of my mind. My
papers and writings sent to you must testify to the whole world the
malevolence of his designs, and the means that have been used to
forward them. He has violently seized and opened all letters addressed
to me and my servants, on my public and private affairs. My vackeel,
that attended him according to ancient custom, has been ignominiously
dismissed from his presence, and not suffered to approach the
Government-House. He has in the meanest manner, and as he thought in
secret, been tampering and intriguing with my family and relations for
the worst of purposes. And if I express the agonies of my mind under
these most pointed injuries and oppressions, and complain of the
violence and injustice of Lord Macartney, I am insulted by his affected
construction that my communications are dictated by the insinuations of
others, at the same time that his conscious apprehensions for his
misconduct have produced the most abject applications to me to smother
my feelings, and entreaties to write in his Lordship's favor to England,
and to submit all my affairs to his direction. When his submissions have
failed to mould me to his will, he has endeavored to effect his purposes
by menaces of his secret influence with those in power in England, which
he pretends to assert shall be effectual to confirm his usurpation, and
to deprive me, and my family, in succession, of my rights of sovereignty
and government forever. To such a length have his passions and violences
carried him, that all my family, my dependants, and even my friends and
visitors, are persecuted with the strongest marks of his displeasure.
Every shadow of authority in my person is taken from me, and respect to
my name discouraged throughout the whole country. When an officer of
high rank in his Majesty's service was some time since introduced to me
by Lord Macartney, his Lordship took occasion to show a personal
derision and contempt of me. Mr. Richard Sulivan, who has attended my
durbar under the commission of the Governor-General and Council of
Bengal, has experienced his resentment; 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 coöperation with any that wish well to the
public 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 lacs of my
revenues, dissipated and embezzled, and every public consideration
sacrificed to his 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
maladministration 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, 90,000 pagodas; but Lord Macartney, _upon
receiving a sum of money from Ramchundry_[73] let it out to him, in
April last, for the inadequate rent of 50,000 pagodas per annum,
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
Governor, and by the arbitrary and impolitic conduct pursued with the
merchants and importers 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 January, 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, Amir-ul-Omrah; and these gentlemen from
Lord Macartney especially set forth to me, and to my son, that all
dependence on the power of the superior 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,
Amir-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 to me.
What must be your feelings for your ancient and faithful friend, on his
receiving such insults to his honor and understanding from your
principal servant, armed with your authority! From these manoeuvres,
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 public 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 shall 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, Amir-ul-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 handwriting I acquainted Mr. Hastings, as I now do my
ancient friends the Company, with the insult offered to my honor 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, Amir-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 connection 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 Carnatic, 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, honor, 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
Carnatic 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 honor and faith of the Company from
violation. The Governor-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
Carnatic, 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 behavior 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 honorable, but equally advantageous to my friends the
Company: for they justly thought that my honor 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 their positive and reiterated mandates,
and, as if nettled by their interference, which he disdained, in
redoubling the fury of his violence, and sacrificing the public and
myself to his malice and ungovernable passions?
I am, Gentlemen, at a loss to conceive where his usurpation will stop
and have an end. Has he not solemnly declared that the assignment was
only made for the support of war? and if neither your instructions nor
the orders of his superiors at Bengal were to be considered as
effectual, has not the treaty of peace virtually determined the period
of his tyrannical administration? But so far from surrendering the
Carnatic into my hands, he has, since that event, affixed advertisements
to the walls and gates of the Black Town for letting to the best bidder
the various districts for the term of three years,--and has continued
the Committee of Revenue, which you positively ordered to be abolished,
to whom he has allowed enormous salaries, from 6000 to 4000 pagodas per
annum, which each member has received from the time of his appointment,
though his Lordship well knows that most of them are by your orders
disqualified by being my principal creditors.
If those acts of violence and outrage had been productive of public
advantage, I conceive his Lordship might have held them forward in
extenuation of his conduct; but whilst he cloaks his justification under
the veil of your records, it is impossible to refute his assertions or
to expose to you their fallacy; and when he is no longer able to support
his conduct by argument, he refers to those records, where, I
understand, he has exercised all his sophistry and malicious
insinuations to render me and my family obnoxious in the eyes of the
Company and the British nation. And when the glorious victories of Sir
Eyre Coote have been rendered abortive by a constant deficiency of
supplies,--and when, since the departure of that excellent general to
Bengal, whose loss I must ever regret, a dreadful famine, at the close
of last year, occasioned by his Lordship's neglect to lay up a
sufficient stock of grain at a proper season, and from his prohibitory
orders to private merchants,--and when no exertion has been made, nor
advantage gained over the enemy,--when Hyder's death and Tippoo's return
to his own dominions operated in no degree for the benefit of our
affairs,--in short, when all has been a continued series of
disappointment and disgrace under Lord Macartney's management, (and in
him alone has the management been vested,)--I want words to convey those
ideas of his insufficiency, ignorance, and obstinacy which I am
convinced you would entertain, had you been spectators of his ruinous
and destructive conduct.
But against me, and my son, Amir-ul-Omrah, has his Lordship's vengeance
chiefly been exerted: even the Company's own subordinate zemindars have
found better treatment, probably because they were more rich; those of
Nizanagoram have been permitted, contrary to your pointed orders, to
hold their rich zemindaries at the old disproportionate rate of little
more than a sixth part of the real revenue; and my zemindar of Tanjore,
though he should have regarded himself equally concerned with us in the
event of the war, and from whose fertile country many valuable harvests
have been gathered in, which have sold at a vast price, has, I
understand, only contributed, last year, towards the public exigencies,
the very inconsiderable sum of one lac of pagodas, and a few thousand
pagodas' worth of grain.