DESIRING him to send back to Madras [i. e. to dismiss] the Brahmen news-writer residing at Pondicherry [on the part either of the Nabob of Arcot, or the English government]; and signifying the Sultan’s wish, to purchase [at Pondicherry] seven or eight thousand firelocks.

The objection taken by the Sultan to the residence of a news-writer from Madras at Pondicherry, could proceed only from an anxiety to prevent the English Government from obtaining information, from the latter place, of the correspondence he was at this time carrying on with the French. If such an application, as the one here recorded, had come to the knowledge of the British government at the period it was made, it would certainly have justified, and probably have led to, the gravest suspicions of the Sultan’s designs. Yet it would not appear, that any doubts were entertained, at the period in question, of his disposition to maintain the peace, which he had not long before concluded with us.

I have no means of ascertaining, whether the Sultan’s request to the French governor, respecting the news-writer, was complied with or not. It is not, how­ever, likely that it was; since the governor could have assigned no plausible reason for a proceeding, so unusual among friendly powers in India.