YOUR two letters have been received. What you write, respecting the excuses made by the manufacturers of the district [under you] for declining to weave the stuffs we require, has excited our astonishment; we therefore direct, that they be compelled, by menaces, to prepare the number of pieces required, with the utmost expedition, and agreeably to the pattern [heretofore] sent. If, notwithstanding your injunctions and menaces, they persist in their false pretexts and disobedience, they must be well flogged.

What you write, regarding the affair of the Hurkâreh* Râmâ, who has been propagating false reports to the prejudice of the people of Punganore,* is understood. Let the said Hurkâreh be put in irons and confined; and after taking security from the bankers of Punganore, let them be released, as their further detention would be idle.

Revolting as the idea of flogging a body of weavers, for being averse to under­take a fabric, with which they were probably unacquainted, or which they might not be able to execute without detriment to their ordinary occupations, must appear to every English reader, we are obliged, in fairness to Tippoo Sultan, to acknowledge, that similar acts of oppression and violence are, by no means, uncommon, under the native governments of India. Still, however, such acts usually proceed from subordinate officers, or persons exercising, and perhaps abusing, delegated power; and rarely, if ever, distinctly and immediately, as in the instance before us, from the sovereign himself. Thus the evil, generally speaking, is to be traced to the despotic nature of the government; while, in the case under consideration, it may justly be referred, in a great measure, to the personal character of the ruler.

It is impossible not to be struck, in the foregoing letter, by the sudden transition which it exhibits, from flagrant oppression to rigorous justice. Imprisonment and chains are not thought too severe a punishment for calumny by the man, who in the same breath, as may be said, consigns a numerous class of industrious artisans to the scourge, for refusing to relinquish their accustomed pursuits, in order to administer to his caprice. But such inconsistencies are constantly presenting them­selves in the conduct of Tippoo Sultan; whose irregular mind was, at no time, under the influence of any fixed principle, if bigotry, and still more, hatred of the English, be excepted. To humanity of disposition, or to a love of justice, in the abstract, he certainly could lay no claim; and, therefore, in punishing the Hurkâ­reh Râmâ as he did, it is much more probable that he was actuated by resentment, at the imposition attempted to be practised upon him by that informer, than by any feeling for the injury which his slander might have done to the objects of it.