THE account of the cardamum reaping is fully understood. When we [some time since] gave [i. e. made over to] you a [numerous] body of the sect of Shaikhs, and others, our intention, in that measure, was purely this: that lands should be assigned to the people in question for cultivation, and that the business of the cardamum reaping should be entrusted to them [exclusively.]

It would seem, by the account you give of the excesses committed by the robbers in your district, that the latter were become very desirous of being incorporated with the Usud Ilhye band. It shall be as they wish.

It appears by another letter in the collection, which I have not thought it necessary to insert, that the class of people usually employed in reaping or gather ing the cardamums, had been recently detected in embezzlements of the produce to a considerable amount. This circumstance had probably led the Sultan to transplant a colony of Shaikhs, and other Mussulmans, into the district in ques­tion, with a view to their superseding the ancient laborers in this particular branch of agriculture, which constituted one of the principal monopolies of the govern­ment. What effect was produced by this expedient I do not know: but there is no reason to believe, that the Mahommedan reaper proved at all more faithful to his trust than the Hindoo, whom he displaced. On the contrary, it has been affirmed by a very respectable authority, that “although all the Asofs and “Amuldârs under the Sultan’s government were Moormen, who were seldom “chosen for any other reason than their being Mahommedans, and although the “whole of them had an oath of fidelity administered to them, the embezzlement “of public revenue, by the several classes of servants, is supposed to have “amounted annually to fifteen or twenty lacks of Cantarai pagodas.”* Colonel Beatson has also informed us, that “notwithstanding the severity and minuteness “of the Sultan’s regulations, no prince was ever so grossly imposed upon.”*