What must be your feelings for your ancient and faithful friend, on his receiving such insults to his honor and understanding from your principal servant, armed with your authority!  From these manoeuvres, amongst thousands I have experienced, the truth must evidently appear to you, that I have not been loaded with those injuries and oppressions from motives of public service, but to answer the private views and interests of his Lordship and his secret agents:  some papers to this point are inclosed; others, almost without number, must be submitted to your justice, when time and circumstances shall enable me fully to investigate those transactions.  This opportunity will not permit the full representation of my load of injuries and distresses:  I beg leave to refer you to my minister, Mr. Macpherson, for the papers, according to the inclosed list, which accompanied my last dispatches by the Rodney, which I fear have failed; and my correspondence with Lord Macartney subsequent to that period, such as I have been able to prepare for this opportunity, are inclosed.

Notwithstanding all the violent acts and declarations of Lord Macartney, yet a consciousness of his own misconduct was the sole incentive to the menaces and overtures he has held out in various shapes.  He has been insultingly lavish in his expressions of high respect for my person; has had the insolence to say that all his measures flowed from his affectionate regard alone; has presumed to say that all his enmity and oppression were levelled at my son, Amir-ul-Omrah, to whom he before acknowledged every aid and assistance; and his Lordship being without any just cause or foundation for complaint against us, or a veil to cover his own violences, he has now had recourse to the meanness and has dared to intimate of my son, in order to intimidate me and to strengthen his own wicked purposes, to be in league with our enemies the French.  You must doubtless be astonished, no less at the assurance than at the absurdity of such a wicked suggestion.

* * * * *

IN THE NABOB’S OWN HAND.

P.S.  In my own handwriting I acquainted Mr. Hastings, as I now do my ancient friends the Company, with the insult offered to my honor and understanding, in the extraordinary propositions sent to me by Lord Macartney, through two gentlemen, on the 10th instant, so artfully veiled with menaces, hopes, and promises.  But how can Lord Macartney add to his enormities, after his wicked and calumniating insinuations, so evidently directed against me and my family, through my faithful, my dutiful, and beloved son, Amir-ul-Omrah, who, you well know, has been ever born and bred amongst the English, whom I have studiously brought up in the warmest sentiments of affection and attachment to them,—­sentiments that in his maturity have been his highest ambition to improve, insomuch that he knows no happiness but in the faithful support of our alliance and connection with the English nation?