bitrary and impolitic conduct pursued with the
merchants and importers of grain, that the very existence of the Fort of
Madras seems at stake, and that of the inhabitants of the settlement
appears to have been totally overlooked: many thousands have died, and
continue hourly to perish of famine, though the capacity of one of your
youngest servants, with diligence and attention, by doing justice, and
giving reasonable encouragement to the merchants, and by drawing the
supplies of grain which the northern countries would have afforded,
might have secured us against all those dreadful calamities. I had with
much difficulty procured and purchased a small quantity of rice, for the
use of myself, my family, and attendants, and with a view of sending off
the greatest part of the latter to the northern countries, with a little
subsistence in their hands. But what must your surprise be, when you
learn that even this rice was seized by Lord Macartney, with a military
force! and thus am I unable to provide for the few people I have about
me, who are driven to such extremity and misery that it gives me pain to
behold them. I have desired permission to get a little rice from the
northern countries for the subsistence of my people, without its being
liable to seizure by your sepoys: this even has been refused me by Lord
Macartney. What must your feelings be, on such wanton cruelty exercised
towards me, when you consider, that, of thousands of villages belonging
to me, a single one would have sufficed for my subsistence!

* * * * *

22d March, 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, 1st January, 1784.

I am willing to attribute this continued usurpation to the fear of
detection in Lord Macartney: he dreads the awful day when the scene of
his enormities will be laid open, at my restoration to my country, and
when the tongues of my oppressed subjects will be unloosed, and proclaim
aloud the cruel tyrannies they have sustained. These sentiments of his
Lordship's designs are corroborated by his sending, on the 10th instant,
two gentlemen to me and my son, Amir-ul-Omrah; and these gentlemen from
Lord Macartney especially set forth to me, and to my son, that all
dependence on the power of the superior government of Bengal to enforce
the intentions of the Company to restore my country was vain and