of your Presidency of Fort St. George, and changed the object of our pursuit from the aggrandizement of your power to its preservation.  My present reason for reverting to my own conduct on the occasion which I have mentioned is to obviate the false conclusions or purposed misrepresentations which may be made of it, either as an artifice of ostentation or as the effect of corrupt influence, by assuring you that the money, by whatever means it came into your possession, was not my own,—­that I had myself no right to it, nor would or could have received it, but for the occasion which prompted me to avail myself of the accidental means which were at that instant afforded me of accepting and converting it to the property and use of the Company; and with this brief apology I shall dismiss the subject.

Something of affinity to this anecdote may appear in the first aspect of another transaction, which I shall proceed to relate, and of which it is more immediately my duty to inform you.

You will have been advised, by repeated addresses of this government, of the arrival of an army at Cuttack, under the command of Chimnajee Boosla, the second son of Moodajee Boosla, the Rajah of Berar.  The origin and destination of this force have been largely explained and detailed in the correspondence of the government of Berar, and in various parts of our Consultations.  The minute relation of these would exceed the bounds of a letter; I shall therefore confine myself to the principal fact.

About the middle of the last year, a plan of confederacy was formed by the Nabob Nizam Ali Khan, by which it was proposed, that, while the army of the Mahrattas, under the command of Mahdajee Sindia and Tuckoojee Hoolkar, was employed to check the operations of General Goddard in the West of India, Hyder Ali Khan should invade the Carnatic, Moodajee Boosla the provinces of Bengal, and he himself the Circars of Rajamundry and Chicacole.

The government of Berar was required to accept the part assigned it in this combination, and to march a large body of troops immediately into Bengal.  To enforce the request on the part of the ruling member of the Mahratta state, menaces of instant hostility by the combined forces were added by Mahdajee Sindia, Tuckoojee Hoolkar, and Nizam Ali Khan, in letters written by them to Moodajee Boosla on the occasion.  He was not in a state to sustain the brunt of so formidable a league, and ostensibly yielded.  Such at least was the turn which he gave to his acquiescence, in his letters to me; and his subsequent conduct has justified his professions.  I was early and progressively acquainted by him with the requisition, and with the measures which were intended to be taken, and which were taken, by him upon it.  The army professedly destined for Bengal marched on the Dusserra of the last year, corresponding with the 7th of October.  Instead of taking the direct course to Bahar, which had been prescribed, it proceeded by varied deviations and studied delays to Cuttack, where it arrived late in May last, having performed a practicable journey of three mouths in seven, and concluded it at the instant commencement of the rains, which of course would preclude its operations, and afford the government of Berar a further interval of five months to provide for the part which it would then be compelled to choose.