any such assignment, shall
and may be recovered back, by such native prince paying or delivering
the same, from the person or persons receiving the same, or his or their
representatives.

* * * * *

No. 4.

Referred to from pp. 64 and 73.

(COPY.)

27th May, 1782.

_Letter from the Committee of Assigned Revenue, to the President and
Select Committee, dated 27th May, 1782; with Comparative Statement, and
Minute thereon._

To the Right Honorable LORD MACARTNEY, K.B., President, and Governor,
&c., Select Committee of Fort St. George.

MY LORD, AND GENTLEMEN,--

Although we have, in obedience to your commands of the 5th January,
regularly laid before you our proceedings at large, and have
occasionally addressed you upon such points as required your resolutions
or orders for our guidance, we still think it necessary to collect and
digest in a summary report those transactions in the management of the
assigned revenue which have principally engaged our attention, and
which, upon the proceeding, are too much intermixed with ordinary
occurrences to be readily traced and understood.

Such a report may be formed with the greater propriety at this time,
when your Lordship, &c., have been pleased to conclude your arrangements
for the rent of several of the Nabob's districts. Our aim in it is
briefly to explain the state of the Carnatic at the period of the
Nabob's assignment,--the particular causes which existed to the
prejudice of that assignment, after it was made,--and the measures which
your Lordship, &c., have, upon our recommendation, adopted for removing
those causes, and introducing a more regular and beneficial system of
management in the country.

Hyder Ali having entered the Carnatic with his whole force, about the
middle of July, 1780, and employed fire and sword in its destruction for
near eighteen months before the Nabob's assignment took place, it will
not be difficult to conceive the state of the country at that period. In
those provinces which were fully exposed to the ravages of horse, scarce
a vestige remained either of population or agriculture: such of the
miserable inhabitants as escaped the fury of the sword were either
carried into the Mysore country or left to struggle under the horrors of
famine. The Arcot and Trichinopoly districts began early to feel the
effects of this desolating war. Tinnevelly, Madura, and Ramnadaporum,
though little infested with Hyder