1763. Book IV. recommended negotiation; and offered himself as mediator. To settle with the subordinate agents of his own government belonged, he said, to the Nabob himself; but the King of Tanjore was a sovereign Prince; and a tribunal distinct from that of either party, namely, that of an independent mediator, was necessary to adjust the differences between them.* By interfer ence of the Presidency, a treaty con cluded with the Rajah of Tanjore. The Nabob resisted this mode of adjustment, with great eagerness; and, rather than adopt it, would have postponed the enforcement of his claims, trusting to the chapter of accidents, and a time to come, at which the Rajah might yield at discretion. The Presidency, however, knew their power; they sent, therefore, an agent to Tanjore, to hear the allegations of both parties, and suggest the conditions of an agreement. The following were the terms which they resolved to confirm: That twenty-two lacs of rupees, at five instalments, should be paid by the Rajah to the Nabob, as arrears; four lacs as a present; and four annually as a tribute: That the districts, on the other hand, of Coiladdy and Elangad should be ceded to the Rajah; and that Arni should be restored to its former Governor or Killedar. The pecuniary exactions were greatly inferior to the claims of the Nabob; and so great reluctance did he show to the ratification of the treaty, that Mr. Pigot is said to have seized his chop, or seal, and applied it to the paper with his own hand. † Aware that the inflated conceptions diffused among their countrymen of the riches of India, and of Tanjore as a distinguished part of India, might lead the Court of Directors to regard the sum extracted from the Rajah as criminally small, the Presidency wrote, in their own defence; That, without their assistance, the Nabob was unable to extract a single rupee; that the reduction of Tanjore would have been a difficult enterprise; that they had not an army sufficient for the purpose; that the expedition would have occasioned an expense which they were unable to bear; and that a rupture with the Rajah would have tended to raise up other enemies. The inability of the country to sustain, without oppression, a heavier exaction, they were either not yet aware of, or did not care to allege. When the *This is evidently the meaning of Mr. Pigot's letter to the Nabob, of May 31, 1762; from which, by a misinterpretation, the author of the Hist. and Management of the E. I. C. draws an accusation, p. 124. This is stated on the authority of the Nabob's Letter to Mr. Palk, October 8, 1776. The author of the Hist. and Management, &c. says, "General Laurence, Mr. Bourchier, and particularly Colonel Call and Mr. Palk, were either present at this transaction, or were convinced of the truth of it, from the incontestable information, given by others as well as by the Nabob; who made heavy complaints to them of the President's conduct :" p. 127. 1763. Directors afterwards transmitted their reflections, they said; "If four lacks were CHAP. VI. given as a present, it seems as if the Company ought to have it, for their interposition and guarantee of the treaty. We shall be glad to have this affair explained to us, that we may know the real state of the case, with respect to that donation." * The twenty-two lacs were directed to be paid to the Company, and credit was given for them in the Nabob's account. Paris. The war between the English and French, which had ceased in India with Treaty of the fall of Pondicherry, was terminated in Europe by the treaty of Paris, definitively signed on the 10th of February, 1763. Of this treaty the eleventh article, intended to define the rights of the two nations in India, or those advantages, in the enjoyment of which the relative strength of the two parties made them willing to engage not to molest one another, was in the following words: "That Great Britain shall restore to France, in the condition they now are, the different factories † which that crown possessed as well on the coast of Coromandel and Orissa, as on that of Malabar, as also in Bengal, at the beginning of the year 1749. And France renounces all pretensions to the acquisitions which she has made on the coast of Coromandel and Orissa. And his most Christian Majesty shall restore on his part all that he may have conquered from Great Britain in the East Indies during the present war, and will expressly cause Natal and Tapanouly, § in the island of Sumatra, to be restored. And he further engages not to erect fortifications, or to keep troops, in any part of the dominions of the Subahdar of Bengal; and in order to preserve future peace on the coast of Coromandel and Orissa, the English and French shall acknowledge Mahomed Ally Khan, for lawful Nabob of the Carnatic, and Salabut Jung for lawful Subahdar of the Deccan, and both parties shall renounce all demands and pretensions of satisfaction, with which they might charge each other, or their Indian allies, for the depredation or pillage committed on either side during the war." bob. In the distribution of the advantages of the Carnatic sovereignty; for such Company ob tain a jaghire it now might truly be deemed, as scarcely even a nominal subjection was ac- from the Naknowledged either to the Subahdar of Deccan, or the Emperor himself; the English imagined they had as yet not appropriated to themselves the requisite share. They began accordingly to represent to the Nabob the necessity of bestowing upon the Company a jaghire; or a grant of lands, the rents and re * Letter from the Court of Directors to the President and Council of Fort St. George, 30th December, 1763. + Comptoirs. Fort St. David and its dependencies. § Bencoolen. 2 1763. Book IV. venues of which, free from any deduction to the Nabob's treasury, should accrue to themselves. The Nabob urged the narrowness of his own resources, the load of debt under which he laboured, the great proportion of his revenue already allowed to the Company, and the cession which he had made, not only of lands, but of the tribute which the Company owed for Madras itself. The Company, in truth, had now placed themselves in a situation of considerable difficulty. The Presidency could not help observing, that under the weakness of both the mind and the resources of the Nabob, the defence of Carnatic must rest upon them; and that they must, therefore, maintain at all times an army sufficient to oppose its enemies. This, without the revenue of the country, was a burden which they knew they could not sustain: And yet to strip of all his revenue a sovereign Prince of whose rights they had so often proclaimed themselves the champions, was a procedure which bore a most unfavourable appearance, and from which formidable accusations against them could hardly fail to be drawn. The Company took the course which power, though less supported by reasons, will most commonly pursue: They adopted the alternative which was most agreeable to themselves; and the revenues of Carnatic gradually passed into their hands. The President, however, was anxious that, at this time, the donation should wear the appearance of a voluntary act on the part of the Nabob; and amid his efforts of persuasion assured him, if we can believe the Nabob himself, "that if four districts were given, the Company would be extremely pleased and obliged to him, and would ever assist him and his children with a proper force of Europeans, without desiring any thing further; that till he had cleared off his debts to the Company, the revenues of those districts, after defraying the expenses of the soldiers, should be placed to the credit of his When the President began to pass from the tone of suggestion to that of requisition; and the Nabob perceived that compliance could not be escaped, he endeavoured to obtain the security of at least a written promise for those terms which had been offered in order to gain his consent. But when he transmitted the draught of an agreement, in which those terms were specified, and which he requested the Governor and Council to sign, the temper of the President broke through his policy; and he pulled off the mask with which he account." * * Rous's Appendix, p. 161. This declaration is made in a subsequent correspondence between the Nabob and the Governor and Council, and not denied by the Governor and Council, though such a bargain, they say, was a bad one for the Company. 1764. had hitherto endeavoured, though it must be confessed but awkwardly, to cover CHAP. VI. from the Nabob and the world the view of his real situation. He sent back the agreement unsigned, with strong marks of his displeasure; and told the Nabob by letter, that it ill became the situation in which he stood, to make conditions with the Company; since "they," said he, "do not take any thing from you; but they are the givers, and you are a receiver.” * Issoof not ap It was not till the summer of 1763 that the Nabob and Presidency were Mahomed enabled to turn their attention to Madura and Tinivelly. Though Mahomed proved as GoIssoof had been vigorously employed, from the raising of the siege of Madras till vernor of Madura, and the fall of Pondicherry, in reducing the refractory Polygars and other local takes arms to prevent his commanders, obedience and tranquillity were by no means established: And downfall. when that active and useful partisan proposed to take the country as renter, and to become responsible, though for a small revenue from a region which hitherto had cost much and yielded nothing, the offer was not unwillingly embraced. Mahomed Issoof, like other renters of India, had no doubt an inclination to withhold if possible the sum which he engaged to pay out of the taxes which he was empowered to collect: and, like other Governors, contemplated, it is probable, from the very beginning, the chance of independence. It cannot, however, be denied, that the enemies with whom he had as yet been obliged to struggle, and who had heretofore rendered the country not only unproductive, but burdensome, left him no revenue to pay. It appears, accordingly, that none had ever been received. For this failure, the Nabob and the Company now proceeded to inflict chastisement, and in the month of August 1763, a combined army of natives and English marched to Madura. Mahomed Issoof endeavoured by negotiation, and the influence of those among the English whom he had rendered his friends, to ward off the blow. But when he found these efforts unavailing, he resolved to give himself the chance of a struggle in his own defence. He was not a man of whom the subjugation was to be expected at an easy price. He baffled all the efforts of the Nabob and the Company, till the month of October, 1764; when he had already forced them to expend a million sterling, and no ordinary quantity of English blood; and without a deed of treachery which placed his person in their hands, it is uncertain how far he might have prolonged his resistance. Among a body of French troops whom he had received from the Rajah of Tanjore, was a person of the name of Marchand, by whom he was seized and delivered to his enemies. * Mr. Pigot's Letter to the Nabob, August 13, 1763. Book IV. 1764. The occasions on which the interests of the Nabob and of the Rajah of Tanjore were liable to clash or to interfere became, through their jealousy and mutual Contentions hatred, a perpetual source of contention. The treaty which had been formed between the under the coercive authority of the English, had defined the terms of their Rajah of Tan- pecuniary relation: with the usual want of foresight, every thing else was left jore, about the mound of the vague and disputable. The river Cavery, about six miles to the north-west of Cavery. Nabob and Trichinopoly, is divided into two streams, of which the northern takes the name of Coleroon, and, by a course not far from direct, joins the sea at Devi-Cotah. The southern branch, which retains the name of Cavery, passes through the flat alluvial territory of Tanjore; and, dividing itself into a great number of smaller streams, overflows, and fructifies the country. But it so happens that the two branches of this great river, after flowing at some distance from one another, for a space of about twenty miles, again approach, forming what is called the island of Seringham, and are only prevented by a narrow neck of land, which requires continual repairs, from reuniting their streams, and falling down the channel of the Coleroon to the ocean. The kingdom of Tanjore was thus in the highest degree interested in the preservation of the mound of the Cavery, upon the waters of which its vegetative powers so greatly depended; and it must have anciently been a powerful instrument of coercion in the hands of the neighbouring kingdom of Trichinopoly, within the territories of which it appears to have been always included. The Nabob, as sovereign of Trichinopoly, now assumed authority over the mound of the Cavery; and the dispute between him and the Rajah grew to importance. The Rajah endeavoured to make the reparation of the mound the condition of paying the money which he owed by the treaty; and the President, after writing several letters to the Nabob, appointed a deputy to inquire into the subject and to make his report. The rights in question were actually two. The first was the right of sovereignty in the mound; the second was the right of having the mound preserved and repaired. The first, as no one disputed, belonged to the Nabob. The second, if prescription and equity constituted any title, as undeniably belonged to the Rajah. Ignorantly and awkwardly, and not without English co-operation, they blended them together in one question; and the dispute became interminable. Who had the right of repairing the mound, was the subject about which they contended; the Nabob claiming it, as inherent in the sovereignty; and the Rajah, as inherent in the title which he possessed to the waters of the Cavery. Unhappily, in the right which, as sovereign, the Nabob claimed, of permitting no one but himself to repair the mound, he tacitly |