or left to struggle under the horrors of famine.  The Arcot and Trichinopoly districts began early to feel the effects of this desolating war.  Tinnevelly, Madura, and Ramnadaporum, though little infested with Hyder’s troops, became a prey to the incursions of the Polygars, who stripped them of the greatest part of the revenues.  Ongole, Nellore, and Palnaud, the only remaining districts, had suffered, but in a small degree.

The misfortunes of war, however, were not the only evils which the Carnatic experienced.  The Nabob’s aumildars, and other servants, appear to have taken advantage of the general confusion to enrich themselves.  A very small part of the revenue was accounted for; and so high were the ordinary expenses of every district, that double the apparent produce of the whole country would not have satisfied them.

In this state, which we believe is no way exaggerated, the Company took charge of the assigned countries.  Their prospect of relief from the heavy burdens of the war was, indeed, but little advanced by the Nabob’s concession; and the revenues of the Carnatic seemed in danger of being irrecoverably lost, unless a speedy and entire change of system could be adopted.

On our minutes of the 21st January we treated the subject of the assignment at some length, and pointed out the mischiefs which, in addition to the effects of the war, had arisen from what we conceived to be wrong and oppressive management.  We used the freedom to suggest an entire alteration in the mode of realizing the revenues.  We proposed a considerable and immediate reduction of expenses, and a total change of the principal aumildars who had been employed under the Nabob.

Our ideas had the good fortune to receive your approbation; but the removal of the Nabob’s servants being thought improper at that particular period of the collections, we employed our attention chiefly in preserving what revenue was left the country, and acquiring such materials as might lead to a more perfect knowledge of its former and present state.

These pursuits, as we apprehended, met with great obstructions from the conduct of the Nabob’s servants.  The orders they received were evaded under various pretexts; no attention was paid to the strong and repeated applications made to them for the accounts of their management; and their attachment to the Company’s interest appeared, in every instance, so feeble, that we saw no prospect whatever of success, but in the appointment of renters under the Company’s sole authority.

Upon this principle, we judged it expedient to recommend that such of the Nabob’s districts as were in a state to be farmed out might be immediately let by a public advertisement, issued in the Company’s name, and circulated through every province of the Carnatic; and, with the view of encouraging bidders, we proposed that the countries might be advertised for the whole period of the Nabob’s assignment, and the security of the Company’s protection promised in the fullest manner to such persons as might become renters.