Two letters have been received from you, and their contents are understood.

[After some directions on certain trivial points, like those remarked on under Letter IV. page 13, the letter proceeds:]

You write, “that wishing to marry your daughter,* and there being “none of her cast in this country to contract her to, there is a necessity “of sending for a proper person for the purpose from the Pâyen-Ghaut: “and you therefore solicit passports for the ingress and egress of parties, “whom it will be requisite to invite on the occasion, according to the “list which you have enclosed.”*

It is known. A passport for the persons who are to come from the Pâyen-Ghaut to Bangalore, on this occasion, is enclosed: you will, therefore send for some person of your cast, and giving your daughter in marriage to him, detain him near you. Where is the necessity for sending him back to the Pâyen-Ghaut? If this, however, should not be practicable, you must seek for one of your own cast in this country to betroth her to; when [having found such a one] you will celebrate their nuptials. What more?

The Sultan would not appear to have had any objections to the entrance of strangers into Mysore, provided they came thither for the purpose of settling; but it was extremely difficult for any, who had found admission into his dominions, to quit them again. That he should have insisted on the detention of Râm Chundur’s intended son-in-law, in the event of the latter being brought from the Carnatic, is not to be wondered at, considering the distrust with which he habitually viewed all intercourse between that country and his own. To have allowed the son-in-law, and perhaps the daughter, of a person of the rank and authority of Râm Chundur, to reside in the territories, and be liable to the influence, of the power of whom he was most jealous and apprehensive, would have been entirely at variance with those maxims of policy, which constantly governed his conduct in regard to the English.