Volume VIII Part 15 (1/2)
[40] Vide Appendix B. No. 4.
[41] Vide Appendix B. No. 6.
[42] Ibid., No. 7.
[43] Vide Appendix B. No. 6.
[44] Ibid.
[45] Act 13 Geo. III. cap 63.
[46] Vide Mr. Hastings's Letter of 16 December, 1782, in Appendix B. No.
6.
[47] Vide Appendix B. No. 6.
[48] Vide Appendix B. No. 3.
[49] Ibid.
[50] Ibid.
[51] Vide Appendix B. No. 3.
[52] Vide Appendix B. No. 3.
[53] Ibid.
[54] Ibid., No. 6.
[55] Vide Appendix B. No. 6.
[56] Relative to salt farms, charges of the Ranny of Burdwan, and the charges of Nundcomar and Munny Begum.
APPENDIX.
B. No. 1.[57]
_Copy of a Letter from the Governor-General to the Court of Directors._
To the Honorable the Court of Directors of the Honorable United East India Company.
FORT WILLIAM, 29th November, 1780.
HONORABLE SIRS,--
You will be informed by our Consultations of the 26th of June of a very unusual tender which was made by me to the board on that day, for the purpose of indemnifying the Company for the extraordinary expense which might be incurred by supplying the detachment under the command of Major Camac in the invasion of the Mahratta dominions, which lay beyond the district of Gohud, and drawing the attention of Mahdajee Sindia, to whom that country immediately appertained, from General G.o.ddard, while his was employed in the reduction of Ba.s.sein, and in securing the conquests made by your arms in Guzerat. I was desirous to remove the only objection which has been or could be ostensibly made to the measure, which I had very much at heart, as may be easily conceived from the means which I took to effect it. For the reasons at large which induced me to propose that diversion, it will be sufficient to refer to my minute recommending it, and to the letters received from General G.o.ddard near the same period of time. The subject is now become obsolete, and all the fair hopes which I had built upon the prosecution of the Mahratta war, of its termination in a speedy, honorable, and advantageous peace, have been blasted by the dreadful calamities which have befallen your arms in the dependencies of your Presidency of Fort St. George, and changed the object of our pursuit from the aggrandizement of your power to its preservation. My present reason for reverting to my own conduct on the occasion which I have mentioned is to obviate the false conclusions or purposed misrepresentations which may be made of it, either as an artifice of ostentation or as the effect of corrupt influence, by a.s.suring you that the money, _by whatever means it came into your possession_, was not my own,--that I had myself no right to it, nor would or could have received it, but for the occasion which prompted me to avail myself of the accidental means which were at that instant afforded me of accepting and converting it to the property and use of the Company; and with this brief apology I shall dismiss the subject.