Volume III Part 10 (2/2)

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 a.s.sistance; and his Lords.h.i.+p 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 a.s.surance 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 circ.u.mstantial 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 Lords.h.i.+p'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 friends.h.i.+p. 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 rest.i.tution 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 pa.s.sions?

I am, Gentlemen, at a loss to conceive where his usurpation will stop and have an end. Has he not solemnly declared that the a.s.signment 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 advertis.e.m.e.nts 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 paG.o.das per annum, which each member has received from the time of his appointment, though his Lords.h.i.+p well knows that most of them are by your orders disqualified by being my princ.i.p.al creditors.

If those acts of violence and outrage had been productive of public advantage, I conceive his Lords.h.i.+p 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 a.s.sertions 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 Lords.h.i.+p'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 Lords.h.i.+p'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 paG.o.das, and a few thousand paG.o.das' worth of grain.

I am much concerned to acquaint you that ever since the peace a dreadful famine has swept away many thousands of the followers and sepoys'

families of the army, from Lord Macartney's neglect to send down grain to the camp, though the roads are crowded with vessels: but his Lords.h.i.+p has been too intent upon his own disgraceful schemes to attend to the wants of the army. The negotiation with Tippoo, which he has set on foot through the mediation of Monsieur Bussy, has employed all his thoughts, and to the attainment of that object he will sacrifice the dearest interests of the Company to gratify his malevolence against me, and for his own private advantages. The endeavor to treat with Tippoo, through the means of the French, must strike you, Gentlemen, as highly improper and impolitic; but it must raise your utmost indignation to hear, that, by intercepted letters from Bussy to Tippoo, as well as from their respective vakeels, and from various accounts from Cuddalore, we have every reason to conclude that his Lords.h.i.+p's secretary, Mr. Staunton, when at Cuddalore, as his agent to settle the cessation of arms with the French, was informed of all their operations and projects, and _consequently that Lord Macartney has secretly connived at Monsieur Bussy's recommendation to Tippoo to return into the Carnatic, as the means of procuring the most advantageous terms, and furnis.h.i.+ng Lord Macartney with the plea of necessity for concluding a peace after his own manner_: and what further confirms the truth of this fact is, that repeated reports, as well as the alarms of the inhabitants to the westward, leave us no reason to doubt that Tippoo is approaching towards us. His Lords.h.i.+p has issued public orders that the garrison store of rice, for which we are indebted to the exertions of the Bengal government, should be immediately disposed of, and has strictly forbid all private grain to be sold; by which act he effectually prohibits all private importation of grain, and may eventually cause as horrid a famine as that which we experienced at the close of last year from the same shortsighted policy and destructive prohibitions of Lord Macartney.

But as he has the fabrication of the records in his own hands, he trusts to those partial representations of his character and conduct, because the signatures of those members of government whom he seldom consults are affixed, as a public sanction; but you may form a just idea of their correctness and propriety, when you are informed that his Lords.h.i.+p, _upon my noticing the heavy disburs.e.m.e.nts made for secret service money, ordered the sums to be struck off, and the accounts to be erased from the cash-book of the Company_; and I think I cannot give you a better proof of his management of my country and revenues than by calling your attention to his conduct in the Ongole province, and by referring you to his Lords.h.i.+p's administration of your own jaghire, from whence he has brought to the public account the sum of twelve hundred paG.o.das for the last year's revenue, yet blazons forth his vast merits and exertions, and expects to receive the thanks of his Committee and Council.

I will beg leave to refer you to my minister, James Macpherson, Esq., for a more particular account of my sufferings and miseries, to whom I have transmitted copies of all papers that pa.s.sed with his Lords.h.i.+p.

I cannot conclude without calling your attention to _the situation of my different creditors_, whose claims are the claims of justice, and whose demands I am bound by honor and every moral obligation to discharge; it is not, therefore, without great concern I have heard insinuations tending to question the legality of their right to the payment of those just debts: they proceeded from advances made by them openly and honorably for the support of my own and the public affairs. But I hope the tongue of calumny will never drown the voice of truth and justice; and while that is heard, the wisdom of the English nation cannot fail to accede to an effectual remedy for their distresses, by any arrangement in which their claims may be duly considered and equitably provided for: and for this purpose, my minister, _Mr. Macpherson, will readily subscribe, in my name, to any agreement you may think proper to adopt, founded on the same principles_ with either of the engagements I entered into with the supreme government of Bengal for our mutual interest and advantage.

I always pray for your happiness and prosperity.

6th September, and Postscript of 7th September, 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, 14th January, 1784.

I refer you, Gentlemen, to my inclosed duplicate, as well as to my minister, Mr. Macpherson, for the particulars of my sufferings. There is no word or action of mine that is not perverted; and though it was my intention to have sent my son, Amir-ul-Omrah, who is well versed in my affairs, to Bengal, to impress those gentlemen with a full sense of my situation, yet I find myself obliged to lay it aside, from the insinuations of the calumniating tongue of Lord Macartney, that takes every license to traduce every action of my life and that of my son. I am informed that Lord Macartney, at this late moment, intends to write a letter: I am ignorant of the subject, but fully perceive, that, by delaying to send it till the very eve of the dispatch, he means to deprive me of all possibility of communicating my reply, and forwarding it for the information of my friends in England. Conscious of the weak ground on which he stands, he is obliged to have recourse to these artifices to mislead the judgment, and support for a time his unjustifiable measures by deceit and imposition. I wish only to meet and combat his charges and allegations fairly and openly, and I have repeatedly and urgently demanded to be furnished with copies of those parts of his _fabricated_ records relative to myself; but as he well knows I should refute his sophistry, I cannot be surprised at his refusal, though I lament that it prevents you, Gentlemen, from a clear investigation of his conduct towards me.

Inclosed you have a translation of an arzee from the Killidar of Vellore. _I have thousands of the same kind_; but this, just now received, will serve to give you some idea of the miseries brought upon this my devoted country, and the wretched inhabitants that remain in it, by the oppressive hand of Lord Macartney's management: nor will the _embezzlements of collections_ thus obtained, when brought before you in _proof_, appear less extraordinary,--which _shall certainly be done in due time_.

_Translation of an Arzee, in the Persian Language, from Uzzim-ul-Doen Cawn, the Killidar of Vellore, to the Nabob_, dated 1st September, 1783. Inclosed in the Nabob's Letter to the Court of Directors, September, 1783.

I have repeatedly represented to your Highness the violences and oppressions exercised by the present aumildar [collector of revenue], of Lord Macartney's appointment, over the few remaining inhabitants of the districts of Vellore, Amboor, Saulguda, &c.

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