elf out shabbily would
be folly. I reckon that we can bring our whole expense for the passage
within the twelve hundred pounds allowed by the Company. My calculation
is that our cabins and board will cost L250 apiece. The passage of our
servants L50 apiece. That makes up L600. My clothes and etceteras, as
Mrs. Meeke observes, I will, I am quite sure, come within L200. [Mrs.
Meeke was his favourite among bad novel-writers, See page 96.] Yours
will, of course, be more. I will send you L300 to lay out as you like;
not meaning to confine you to it, by any means; but you would probably
prefer having a sum down to sending in your milliner's bills to me.
I reckon my servant's outfit at L50; your maid's at as much more. The
whole will be L1200.

One word about your maid. You really must choose with great caution.
Hitherto the Company has required that all ladies, who take maidservants
with them from this country to India, should give security to send
them back within two years. The reason was, that no class of people
misconducted themselves so much in the East as female servants from
this country. They generally treat the natives with gross insolence; an
insolence natural enough to people accustomed to stand in a subordinate
relation to others when, for the first time, they find a great
population placed in a servile relation towards them. Then, too, the
state of society is such that they are very likely to become mistresses
of the wealthy Europeans, and to flaunt about in magnificent palanquins,
bringing discredit on their country by the immorality of their lives
and the vulgarity of their manners. On these grounds the Company has
hitherto insisted upon their being sent back at the expense of those who
take them out. The late Act will enable your servant to stay in India,
if she chooses to stay. I hope, therefore, that you will be careful
in your selection. You see how much depends upon it. The happiness and
concord of our native household, which will probably consist of sixty or
seventy people, may be destroyed by her, if she should be ill-tempered
and arrogant. If she should be weak and vain, she will probably form
connections that will ruin her morals and her reputation. I am no
preacher, as you very well know; but I have a strong sense of the
responsibility under which we shall both lie with respect to a poor
girl, brought by us into the midst of temptations of which she cannot
be aware, and which have turned many heads th