WRITE out, and send to the Presence, a copy of the Hûkm-nâmeh [or instructions] with which you have been graciously furnished, the same being wanted, for the purpose of bestowing [i. e. transmitting] it to the Kâzy of Zuferâbâd. Observe that the name of the Kuchurry of Zuferâbâd is to be inserted in the [first] line of the first page [of the copy], instead of the name of Bangalore, and that the name of the Kâzy must be omitted.* For the rest, all that relates to fees, &c., and whatever else is written therein, must be copied verbatim,* and transmitted to us.

Let the copy of the Hûkm-nâmeh [herein-mentioned] be bound,* previously to its being dispatched to us.

N.B. There follows next a letter to Syed Peer, the Kilaadâr of Bangalore, informing him of the orders sent to the Kâzy, and desiring him to see that they were duly complied with. The document in question was, when ready, to be forwarded to the Presence by him (Syed Peer.)

It might be inferred from the foregoing letter, that no copy of the instructions to the Kâzy of Bangalore had been preserved, and that hence arose the necessity of calling upon that officer to furnish one: but, considering the great regularity with which official documents, in general, appear to have been registered under Tippoo Sultan’s government, it can hardly be imagined, that an entry of the in­structions in question should not have been duly made among the records of the proper department. Nor is such a supposition at all requisite, in order to account for the present directions; since there is no difficulty in conceiving, that the regis­ter, containing the document wanted, might have been left at Seringapatam, in which case, no doubt, a copy would be more easily and speedily obtained from Bangalore than from the capital. The thing chiefly remarkable, therefore, in the letter before us, is the direction which it contains, for sending the instrument specified, in a form which should save the trouble of preparing in camp any other copy for the Kâzy of Zuferâbâd: for such would seem to have been the sole ob­ject of the minute instructions given on this head. By this means, nothing more would be necessary, on the receipt of the document in question, than to fill up the blanks left in it, and to affix the usual seal and signature to it. Such an expe­dient, for the economizing of time and labour, would scarcely occur to any but a very eccentric mind.

It might have been expected, considering the particular design which the Sultan would appear to have had in requiring the document in question, and adverting to the minuteness of his directions respecting it, that he would not have forgotten to order a blank to be left for the date of the instructions, as well as for the name of the Kâzy to whom they were to be transmitted. But this omission is only one of various instances of similar inadvertency and inconsistency, with which all the productions of his pen abound, and which may be safely referred to the indis­tinctness of his views, and the crudeness of his conceptions on the generality of subjects. To the same causes (originating in an understanding naturally contracted) still more, perhaps, than to caprice and levity, are to be ascribed most of the trivial and indigested regulations, as well as many of the incongruous and vacillating measures, which marked the course of his bustling but ruinous reign.