12th August, and Postscript of the 16th August, 1783. Translation
     of a Letter to the Chairman and Directors of the East India
     Company. Received from Mr. James Macpherson, 14th January, 1784.

Your astonishment and indignation will be equally raised with mine, when you hear that your President has dared, contrary to your intention, to continue to usurp the privileges and hereditary powers of the Nabob of the Carnatic, your old and unshaken friend, and the declared ally of the king of Great Britain.

I will not take up your time by enumerating the particular acts of Lord Macartney’s violence, cruelty, and injustice:  they, indeed, occur too frequently, and fall upon me and my devoted subjects and country too thick, to be regularly related.  I refer you to my minister, Mr. James Macpherson, for a more circumstantial account of the oppressions and enormities by which he has brought both mine and the Company’s affairs to the brink of destruction.  I trust that such flagrant violations of all justice, honor, and the faith of treaties will receive the severest marks of your displeasure, and that Lord Macartney’s conduct, in making use of your name and authority as a sanction for the continuance of his usurpation, will be disclaimed with the utmost indignation, and followed with the severest punishment.  I conceive that his Lordship’s arbitrary retention of my country and government can only originate in his insatiable cravings, in his implacable malevolence against me, and through fear of detection, which must follow the surrender of the Carnatic into my hands, of those nefarious proceedings which are now suppressed by the arm of violence and power.

I did not fail to represent to the supreme government of Bengal the deplorable situation to which I was reduced, and the unmerited persecutions I have unremittingly sustained from Lord Macartney; and I earnestly implored them to stretch forth a saving arm, and interpose that controlling power which was vested in them, to check rapacity and presumption, and preserve the honor and faith of the Company from violation.  The Governor-General and Council not only felt the cruelty and injustice I had suffered, but were greatly alarmed for the fatal consequences that might result from the distrust of the country powers in the professions of the English, when they saw the Nabob of the Carnatic, the friend of the Company, and the ally of Great Britain, thus stripped of his rights, his dominions, and his dignity, by the most fraudulent means, and under the mask of friendship.  The Bengal government had already heard both the Mahrattas and the Nizam urge, as an objection to an alliance with the English, the faithless behavior of Lord Macartney to a prince whose life had been devoted and whose treasures had been exhausted in their service and support; and they did not hesitate to give positive orders to Lord Macartney for the restitution of my government and authority,