Extract of a Letter from the Commissioners for the Affairs of India, to the Court of Directors, dated 3rd November, 1784, in Answer to their Remonstrance.
SIXTH ARTICLE.
We think it proper, considering the particular nature of the subject, to state to you the following remarks on that part of your representation which relates to the plan for the discharging of the Nabob's debts.
1st. You compute the revenue which the Carnatic may be expected to produce only at twenty lacs of pagodas. If we concurred with you in this opinion, we should certainly feel our hopes of advantage to all the parties from this arrangement considerably diminished. But we trust that we are not too sanguine on this head, when we place the greatest reliance on the estimate transmitted to you by your President of Fort St. George, having there the best means of information upon the fact, and stating it with a particular view to the subject matter of these paragraphs. Some allowance, we are sensible, must be made for the difference of collection in the Nabob's hands, but, we trust, not such as to reduce the receipt nearly to what you suppose.
2ndly. In making up the amount of the private debts, you take in compound interest at the different rates specified in our paragraph. This it was not our intention to allow; and lest any misconception should arise on the spot, we have added an express direction that the debts be made up with simple interest only, from the time of their respective consolidation. Clause F f.
3rdly. We have also the strongest grounds to believe that the debts will be in other respects considerably less than they are now computed by you; and consequently, the Company's annual proportion of the twelve lacs will be larger than it appears on your estimate. But even on your own statement of it, if we add to the 150,000l., or 3,75,000 pagodas, (which you take as the annual proportion to be received by the Company for five years to the end of 1789,) the annual amount of the Tanjore peshcush for the same period, and the arrears on the peshcush, (proposed by Lord Macartney to be received in three years,) the whole will make a sum not falling very short of pagodas 35,00,000, the amount of pagodas 7,00,000 per annum for the same period. And if we carry our calculations farther, it will appear, that, both by the plan proposed by the Nabob and adopted in your paragraphs, and by that which we transmitted to you, the debt from the Nabob, if taken at 3,000,000l., will be discharged nearly at the same period, viz., in the course of the eleventh year. We cannot, therefore, be of opinion that there is the smallest ground for objecting to this arrangement, as injurious to the interests of the Company, even if the measure were to be considered on the mere ground of expediency, and with a view only to the wisdom of reëstablishing credit and circulation in a commercial settlement, without any consideration of those motives of attention to the feelings and honor of the Nabob, of humanity to individuals, and of justice to persons in your service and living under your protection, which have actuated the legislature, and which afford not only justifiable, but commendable grounds for your conduct.
Impressed with this conviction, we have not made any alteration in the general outlines of the arrangement which we had before transmitted to you. But, as the amount of the Nabob's revenue is matter of uncertain conjecture, and as it does not appear just to us that any deficiency should fall wholly on any one class of these debts, we have added a direction to your government of Fort St. George, that, if, notwithstanding the provisions contained in our former paragraphs, any deficiency should arise, the payments of what shall be received shall be made in the same proportion which would have obtained in the division of the whole twelve lacs, had they been paid.
No. 10.
Referred to from p. [103].
[The following extracts are subjoined, to show the matter and the style 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.]