TWO Urzdâshts [or humble addresses] transmitted by you have passed under our view. You write, “that, agreeably to our directions, the “rations and monthly pay of the Ahmedies belonging to Little Bala­poor, Hûscotah, and Khân Khânhully, are issued, at the computation “of thirty days [to the month]; but that having heard that Pitumber, “the Aumil of Yoosûfâbâd, had [lately] received orders to issue the pay “of the Ahmedies [depending on his jurisdiction] at the computation “of thirty-six days [to the month], you were, in consequence, doubt­ful whether to issue the same [for the future] at the rate of thirty or “thirty-six days, and would act therein as we should command.”

It is known. Do you act conformably with the directions which you have received. What business have you with [the orders given to] others?

In regulating the monthly pay of servants and others in India, the length of the month is not necessarily determined, either by the lunar or solar reckoning. Indeed, it is very rarely that either domestics or military persons, in the country service, are paid at so favorable a rate. On the contrary, the month is sometimes arbitrarily made to consist of forty days, and very commonly of thirty-five. By this means the actual falls far short of the nominal pay; the difference, when forty days are assigned to the month, being no less than three months in the year. Thus a Sepoy, apparently rated at twelve rupees a month, would, in fact, receive only nine.

This practice, which does not obtain among the English in India, enables a master, when he wishes either to reduce or raise the pay of his dependants, to do so, without making any alteration in its established or nominal amount: and though there is, in truth, no delusion in the device, there is something in it that appears to gratify the vanity, both of the servant and of his employer; the impor­tance of each being supposed to be increased, in a certain degree, by the ostensible amount of the regulated salary.

However officious or supererogatory the representation of Râjah Râm Chundur might have been, it hardly merited the sharp reproof which it received from his master; especially as its tendency was to effect a reduction of the public expence. But this is only one, among a variety of similar instances, of the excessive irri­tableness and austerity of the Sultan’s disposition, which seems to have rendered him, at all times, more prone to censure than to commend his servants.