for my maintenance, they pay the pitiful allowance only when it is their pleasure to do it.  My situation has for years past been increasing in wretchedness to a degree that I am in want of daily bread, and my servants and animals are dying of hunger.  My distresses are so great that I have not been able to pay a daum to the surgeons for the cure of my wounds; and they, too, are discouraged from affording me their assistance or furnishing me with medicines.  How, then, is it possible for me to exist?  Considering you as my patron, participating in my afflictions, I have represented the circumstances concerning my situation; and I hope, from your friendship, that you will honor me with a favorable answer.”

XLVII.  The Resident, Bristow, did also receive a strong application from three others of the brethren of the reigning sovereign, called Mirza Hyder Ali, Mirza Ennayut Ali, and Mirza Syef Ali, representing their very pitiable case, in a letter of the 9th of March, 1783, in which, among other particulars, are contained the following.

“Our situation is not fit to be represented. For two years we have not received a hubba on account of our tuncaw [assignment on the revenue], though the ministers have annually charged a lac of rupees, and never paid us anything. After all, we are the sons of Sujah ul Dowlah! It is surprising, having such a friend as you, our situation is arrived at that pass that we should be in distress for dry bread and clothes.  Whereas you have done many generous acts, be pleased so to show us your favor, that by some means we may receive our allowances from the Company’s treasury, and not be obliged to depend upon and solicit others for it.”

XLVIII.  That one of the princes aforesaid, called the Mirza Jungly, about the beginning of the year 1783, was obliged to fly from the dominions of the Nabob of Oude, and to leave his country and connections; and as the Resident, Bristow, writing from Lucknow, hath observed, “he went to try his fortune at other courts, in preference to starving at home, which might have been his fate, by all accounts, at this place.”  And the said prince sought for succor at the court of one of the neighboring Mahomedan princes; but conceiving some disgust at the treatment he met with there, he departed from thence, and on the 8th of February, 1783, arrived at the Mahratta camp, while David Anderson, Esquire, was there in the character of Minister Plenipotentiary to the Company, with a view, if his reception there should not prove answerable to his wishes, to pass on to the southward.  And the said Anderson, probably considering this event as of very great importance to the honor of the British government, as well as to its interest, on the one hand, by exhibiting the son and brother of a sovereign prince, from whom the Company had received many millions of money, a fugitive from his country, and a wanderer for bread through the courts of India, and, on the