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 Goddard
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 assuring 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.

Something of affinity to this anecdote may appear in the first aspect of
_another_ transaction, which I shall proceed to relate, and of which it
is more immediately my duty to inform you.

You will have been advised, by repeated addresses of this government, of
the arrival of an army at Cuttack, under the command of Chimnajee
Boosla, the second son of Moodajee Boosla, the Rajah of Berar. The
origin and destination of this force have been largely explained and
detailed in the correspondence of the government of Berar, and in
various parts of our Consultations. The minute relation of these would
exceed the bounds of a letter; I shall therefore confine myself to the
principal fact.

About the middle of the last year, a plan of confederacy was formed by
the Nabob Nizam Ali Khan, by which it was proposed, that, while the army
of the Mahrattas, under the command of Mahdajee Sindia and Tuckoojee
Hoolkar, was employed to check the operations of General Goddard in the
West of India, Hyder Ali Khan should invade the Ca