To N. B. Edmonstone, Esq. secretary to government. Secret Department. Sir, Para. 1. I have the honour to acknowledge the receipt of your letter of the 2d instant, with its enclosures. 2. Having in compliance with the orders of his excellency the most noble the governor-general in council, completed the calculation of arrears due by the vizier, down to the end of last month, upon the principles of the accounts transmitted to me, a statement of the same was furnished to his excellency on the 13th instant, and a demand on him in the name of his excellency the most noble the governor-general in council, for the immediate payment of the amount. 3. Although no formal demand was, at any period prior to the 23d of last month, made upon the vizier for the payment of the expences incurred by the company in protecting his excellency's dominions, when the threatened invasion of Zemaun Shah rendered it necessary to augment the British force in Oude, yet a translation of the statement transmitted to me in the secretary's letter of the 10th of October, 1799, was, in consequence of a desire expressed by the vizier to be furnished with the statement alluded to in the governorgeneral's letter to him of the 26th September, 1799, presented to his excellency in the November following. As this statement exhibited a sum of something above seventeen lacks of rupees, and as I had casually mentioned that sum in a late requisition for the payment of the arrears, I found it necessary, on the present occasion, to enter into an explanation of the principles upon which the calculation is formed, in order to account for the difference between the former and the presen: statement. 4. Accompanying I do myself the honour of transmitting to you, in English and Persian, copies of my address to the vizier on the subject, with the copies of the statement in both languages. The additions made to the account, transmitted in your letter of the 2d instant, are a continuation of the charges on account of his Majesty's 27th regiment of dragoons, of the Hindoostance regi ment of cavalry, and of the Bojerries, from the 1st of November, 1799, to the end of March, 1801, amounting to eleven lacks nine thousand three hundred and sixty-nine rupees, making the whole This statement having been transmitted to me, by order of his excellency the most noble the governor general, I now do myself the honour of enclosing a translation of it in the Persian language, by which your excellency will observe, that the amount due by your excellency is thirty-eight lacks thirteen thousand five hundred and ninety rupees, two annas, and half a pice. In order that your excellency may thoroughly comprehend the enclosed account, I beg leave to state to you the principles upon which it is framed;the largest number of troops of different descriptions, which, according to the 7th article of the treaty, is to be maintained in Oude at the expence of the company, is thirteen thousand men: and if at any time there be an excess to that number, the expence of such excess is to be defrayed by your exceliency. In the month of November, 1798, the force in Oude, in consequence of the threatened invasion of Zemaun Shah, was considerably augmented above the greatest number defined; part of the excess was in a few months withdrawn, and a portion was necessarily detained for the protection of your excellency's dominions. The expence of 13,000 men, with the necessary equipments of ordnance, &c. being set apart as a charge to be borne by the company, the expence attending the excess of troops above that number, with their necessary equip ments, is charged to your excellency, every corps for the actual period it was serving in Oude. The The corps for which the charges are made, are exclusive of the additional troops recently arrived for the protection of Oude; and as the expence is calculated up to the end of March, 1801, the cause of the difference between the present statement and the estimate which I formerly furnished to your excellency, will be obvious to your excellency's comprehension. Having thus furnished your excellency with the statement of the arrears due by your excellency to the company, and explained the principles upon which it has been prepared, I now, in conforinity to the orders which I have received, call upon your excellency, in the name of his excellency the most noble the marquis Wellesley, governor-general, for the immediate payment of the money. (Signed) W. SCOTT, Resident, Lucknow. A true copy. 1st Nov. 1798, to the end of October, 1799 One regiment native infantry, from 1st November, 1798, to 15th March, 1799 One regiment of native infantry, from the 1st November, 1798, to the 31st May, 1799 One regiment European dragoons, from 1st November, 1798, to the 31st March, 1801, at 5,61,023. 10. 9. per annum, is for two years and five months The Hindoostanee regiment, from 1st November, 1798, to the 31st March, 1801,at 1,86,060.9. 3,61,668 3 0 2,38,683 0 3,71,284 0 13,55,807 10 9 4.49,646 59 1,10,555 3 31st March, 1801 - 1,39,632 o Written the 5th of April, 1801. I have had the honour to receive your excellency's letter (recapitulating that received 14th March). The general spirit and tenor of this communication from your excellency have excited my serious concern; your excellency's conduct on this important occasion has been as unexpected as it has been evidently incompatible with your approved cha racter for wisdom, prudence, and attachment to the company. The magnitude of the questions discussed in my last address to your excellency, the alarming facts facts submitted to your observation, and the necessary conclusions deduced from those facts, and from your own reiterated declarations, might have been expected to have engaged your excellency's deliberate and sincere attention, and to have induced you to enter into the subject of my propositions with a spirit of candour and justice. With what sentiments, then, must my mind be affected when I perceive that your excellency has met my anxious endeavour to avert the evils now menacing your dominions, not by an open and distinct consideration of the alternative proposed to you, but by a studious suppression of the most material facts of the case; by an erroneous representation of the only argument which you have noticed, and by an evident design to evade the irresistible inference resulting from your excellency's former communications both with colonel Scott and with me? Deeply lamenting the temper and disposition of mind in which your excellency appears to have entered into this most arduous discussion, my most painful regret has been occasioned by the conclusion of your excellency's letter, in which you have peremptorily rejected, without qualification, both the propositions which I had submitted to your choice, for the preservation of the combined interests of the company and of your excellency in the province of Oude. The unhappy counsels which have induced your excellency to adopt this precipitate and inconsiderate measure leave me no alternative but that of becoming an inactive spectator of the ruin of your excellency's and of the honourable company's interests in the province of Oude, or of resorting to the most decisive steps for the purpose of averting those evils which must inevitably flow from your excellency's adherence to your apparent determination of rejecting both the propositions which I have submitted to your consideration. In my last letter to your excellency, I reviewed the embarrassed situation of your affairs, and the distressed condition of your country; and I expressed my unalterable conviction, that no effectual security against the ruin of the general interests of the province of Oude could be provided, otherwise than by the adoption of the first plan proposed for your excellency's consideration. I further informed your excellency, that if you should unfortunately be per suaded to reject that salutary and advan tageous proposal, the funds for the payment of the subsidy must be placed, without a moment of delay, beyond the hazard of failure; and I concluded by declaring to your excellency my deter mination to adhere with firmness to the tenor of that letter, as containing principles from which the British government never could depart. I lament that the facts and conclusions detailed in that letter should not have convinced your excellency that any determination was the result of the most mature reflection, arising from a deliberate and dispassionate conviction of an insuperable necessity, and confirmed by your excellency's own representations, and by the progressive experience of every hour; and, consequently, that decision formed with such deliberation, founded on such principles, and directed to such objects, would not be relinquished with levity or precipitation. Your excellency has not controverted one of the facts or principles upon which that determination was founded. Recent events have enforced the spirit of both; and have manifested that the issue of these propositions must ultimately involve the fate of your fertile but decaying dominions, the security of the com pany's provinces, and the happiness of a numerous and industrious, but suffering people. Intrusted with the charge of such extensive interests, I am resolved never to recede from any measure evidently demanded by the exigency of my arduous duty. I therefore now declare to your excellency, in the most explicit terms, that I consider it to be my positive duty to resort to any extremity rather than to suffer the further progress of that ruin to which the interests of your excellency and the honourable company are exposed, by the continued operation of the evils and abuses actually existing in the civil and military administration of the province of Oude. With this view I have repeated my former instructions to lieutenant-colonel Scott, and I have directed him again to offer the two propositions contained in my last letter to your excellency's most serious consideration. I trust that your excellency, in your answer to this letter, will signify your acquiescence in one or other of the propositions submitted to you; and I entertain a confident hope of having the satis faction faction to learn by your next dispatch that the necessary arrangements have actually been commenced, if not concluded, for carrying into effect that proposition which may be most acceptable to you. I have judged it expedient to introduce these general observations at the commencement of this letter for the purpose of impressing your excellency with a solemn conviction of the importance of the occasion, and with a just sense of my fixed and unalterable resolution to apply an effectual remedy, without delay, to the existing abuses in the province of Oude. I now proceed to reply more particularly to the statements contained in your excellency's letter, of the ; the manner in which your excellency has combined the several extracts which you have been pleased to quote from my correspondence, and from the letters of sir Alured Clarke and of lieutenantcolonel Scott, together with the inference which you draw from those papers, would warrant an apprehension that the substance and spirit of all your excelléncy's late communications to lieutenantcolonel Scott, relative to the failure of your resources, had entirely escaped your memory. Your excellency has hitherto described your embarrassments to have arisen not merely from the charge of that part of your excellency's troops which you have thought fit to continue in your service, but principally from the defective state of the collections, and from the ruinous condition of the country. Independently of your excellency's repeated acknowledgment of the decline of your resources and revenues, and of the evils and abuses which pervade every branch of the administration, your excellency, in your letter to lieutenant-colonel Scott, of the 29th, (adverting to the means of providing funds for the payments of the subsidiary force) has distinctly stated that your apprehension of the failure of the necessary funds arose not from the continued charge of your own useless and dangerous troops, (the immediate reduction of which was obstructed solely by your excellency's intervention) but from the precarious state of the collections. I here transcribe your excellency's expres sions from that letter: "The state of the collections of the 46 country is not unknown to you; you "know with what difficulties and exertions they are realized; and hence account of the want of resources to "supply all these heavy expences, any "delay should occur in the liquidation "of the kists, and my good faith be consequently impeached." By this just and candid declaration, your excellency has directly admitted the notorious and undeniable fact, that the apprehended failure of your resources is to be ascribed to the precarious realization of your revenues, and to the declining assets of the country. This declaration on the part of your excellency is a clear admission that the security of the united interests of your excellency and the honourable company, in providing for the defence of your excellency's terri tories, is exposed to imminent hazard. Your excellency, however, in the letter to which I now reply, appears to have lost sight of the facts thus explicitly avowed; and, entirely omitting all reference to the declining state of the collections, and to the abusive administration of the government of Oude, you now seem disposed to rest your complaint solely on the charges of that remaining portion of your troops, whose dismission from your service has been delayed exclusively by your own unfortunate and erroneous policy, in direct opposition to my advice. I admit, with real concern, that your excellency's embarrassments are greatly aggravated by your determination to retain in your service a considerable proportion of those licentious and disorderly troops, whose disaffection has been proved in every hour of trial, and whose turbulent spirit has repeatedly violated the peace peace of the country, and endangered your authority, and your life. It is, however, a source of great satisfaction to me to reflect, that the removal of this cause of embarrassment is within your excellency's own power; and I have directed the resident to take the most effectual means of affording immediate relief in this respect, by accelerating the dismission of the remainder of your excellency's troops. I have no doubt that whatever accidental counteraction or difficulty may have occurred to prevent the resident's success in completing the proposed reduction of your excellency's troops, will now be altogether removed, and that your excellency will henceforth unite cordially and zealously with lieutenant-colonel Scott in the final and complete accomplishment of a measure, the delay of which your excellency now declares to be the principal, if not the sole, cause of your embarrassments. It is indeed evident, that the resources expected from the reduction of your troops cannot prove effectual while your excellency shall continue to delay the dismission of so large and expensive a part of your military establishments. But I must recal to your excellency's recollection the fact which you have so emphatically acknowledged on former occasions, that the principal source of all your difficulties is to be found in the state of the country. I have repeatedly represented to your excellency the effects of the ruinous expedient of anticipating the collections; the destructive practice of realizing them by force of arms, the annual diminution of the jumma of the country, the precarious tenure by which the aumils and farmers hold their possessions, the misery of the lower classes of the people, absolutely excluded from the protection of the government, and the utter insecurity of life and property throughout the province of Oude. Your excellency has not only admitted the existence of these inveterate evils, but has solicited the aid and interference of the British government, as the only mode of effectual remedy. The transactions of every day in your excellency's dominions furnish additional proof that these evils augment to such an alarming degree as must speedily impair the resources of the state, and must frustrate all your excellency's efforts to fulfil your engagements with the British government. Your excellency has recently seen, within a few miles of your capital, an aumil employing the military force under his command to seize a number of Zemindars, who, with their families and the inhabitants, have deserted the villages which the aumil proposed to destroy by fire. If such violent means of extorting the revenues are employed under the walls of your excellency's palace, what must be the condition of your more remote subjects? From such a system the general desolation of the country must rapidly ensue; and while the revenue and population of the districts are failing in every direction, on what foundation rests the security for the payment of the subsidy to the company ? An immediate alteration in the system of management affords the only hope of providing either for the security of the company's military funds, or for any other interest involved in the fate of Oude. The necessity of such a change your excellency has repeatedly admitted, and you have accompanied that admission by an acknowledgment of your utter inability to carry into effect this indispensable reform. If any other proof were required of your excellency's ina bility to introduce such an effectual reform, that proof is to be found in the progressive and hourly aggravation of all the inveterate evils and abuses of the former government, notwithstanding the solicitude which your excellency has upon all occasions professed for the attainment of an improved system of administration. Under these circumstances, to introduce a wise and lenient system of administration, to diffuse happiness and prosperity among your subjects, to restore the vigour of your resources, and to pravide for the internal and external security and tranquillity of the country, what means remain but the substitution of the company's management in place of abuses which your excellency's hands cannot controul. It would be vain and fruitless to attempt this arduous task by partial interference, or by imperfect modifications of a system of which every principle is founded in error and impolicy, and every instrument tainted with injustice and corruption. After long and mature consideration, I offer to your excellency a renewal of my former |