are no pains to keep him to it."

"_Lucknow, 28th December, 1781._

"If your new demand is to be insisted upon, which your letter seems
to portend, I must beg your precise orders upon it; as, from the
difficulties I have within these few days experienced in carrying
the points you had enjoined with the Nabob, I have the best grounds
for believing that he would consider it a direct breach of the late
agreement, and totally reject the proposal as such; and I must own
to you, that, in his present fermented state of mind, I could
expect nothing less than despair and a declared rupture.

"He has by no means been yet able to furnish me with means of
paying off the arrears due to the temporary brigade, to the
stipulated term of its continuance in his service. The funds
necessary for paying off and discharging his own military
establishment under British officers, and his pension list, have
been raised, on the private credit of Mr. Johnson and myself, from
the shroffs of this place, to whom we are at this moment pledged
for many lacs of rupees; and without such aid, which I freely and
at all hazards yielded, because I conceived it was your anxious
desire to relieve the Nabob as soon as possible of this heavy
burden, the establishment must have been at his charge to this
time, and probably for months to come, while his resources were
strained to the utmost to furnish jaidads for its maintenance to
this period. I therefore hesitate not to declare it utterly
impossible for him, under any circumstances whatever, to provide
funds for the payment of the troops you now propose to send him.

"The wresting Furruckabad, Kyraghur, and Fyzoola Khan's country
from his government, (for in that light, my dear Sir, I can
faithfully assure you, he views the measures adopted in respect to
those countries,) together with the resumption of all the jaghires,
so much against his inclination, have already brought the Nabob to
a persuasion that nothing less than his destruction, or the
annihilation of every shadow of his power, is meant; and all my
labors to convince him to the contrary have proved abortive. A
settled melancholy has seized him, and his health is reduced beyond
conception; and I do most humbly believe that the march of four
regiments of sepoys towards