choice and selection, and on his own mere authority, take with him in
his progress a large retinue, "and a numerous society of English
gentlemen to compose his family," which he represents as necessary,
although, in a letter from that very place to which he took that very
numerous society, he informs the Court of Directors "that his own
consequence and that of the nation he represents are independent of
show." And after his arrival there, he, the said Warren Hastings, did
write from Lucknow, the capital of that province, a letter, dated the
30th of April, 1784, to the Court of Directors, in which are several
particulars to the following purport or tenor, and which he points out
to the Directors "to be circumstances of no trivial information,"
namely,--"that he had found that the lands in that province, as well as
in some parts more immediately under the Company, have suffered in a
grievous manner, being completely exhausted of their natural moisture by
the total failure of one entire season of the periodical rains," with a
few exceptions, which were produced only "by the uncommon labor of the
husbandman." And in a letter to Edward Wheler, Esquire, a member of the
Council-General, from Benares, the 20th of September, 1784, he says,
that "_the public revenues_ had declined with the failure of the
cultivation _in three successive years_; and all the stores of grain
which the _providence_ of the husbandmen, (as he was informed is their
_custom_,) in defiance of the _vigilance_ of the aumils [collectors],
_clandestinely reserved for their own use_, were of course exhausted,
in which state no person would accept of the charge of the collections
on a positive engagement; nor did the rain fall till the 10th of July."
And in another letter, dated from Benares, the 1st of October following,
he repeats the same accounts, and that the "country could not bear
further additions of expense: that it had _no inlets of trade_ to supply
the issues that were made from it" (the exceptions stated there being
inconsiderable); "therefore _every rupee_ which is drawn into your
treasury [the Company's] from its circulation will accelerate the period
at which its ability must cease _to pay even the stipulated subsidy_."
Notwithstanding this state of the country, of which he was well apprised
before he left Calcutta, and the poverty and distress of the prince
having been frequently, but in vain, represented to him, in order to
induce him to forbear