"I shall conclude this letter with submitting my conduct to your opinion. It would have required greater abilities than I am master of to reconcile and satisfy so many different interests. If I have erred, it has not been with design; whenever that can be made to appear, I shall very deservedly forfeit the good opinion and favour of the Court of Directors, to whom I owe every thing."
[69] This vote is dated the 6th of Feb., 1754. With that delicacy and tenderness to the feelings of his old commander, Colonel Lawrence, which he always manifested, he objected to receiving this mark of distinction, unless a similar present was made to that officer; which was done accordingly.
[71] Severndroog, another fort belonging to Angria, had been taken a few months previously by Commodore James, of the Bombay marines.
[73] Vide Lieutenant-Colonel Clive's evidence, _Reports of the House of Commons_, vol. iii., and _Ives's Voyage_, p. 82.
[74] Vide extract of consultations, Fort St. David, June 20. 1756.
[76] A war was at this time expected between England and France.
[77] It is to be observed, that though the French gave upon this occasion their support to the pretensions of their favourite Nabob, yet Mahommed Ali was not at that time acknowledged by Salabut Jung, then subadar of the Deckan, his immediate superior: and it was only at the peace of Paris, in 1763, that he was acknowledged by the French government.
[78] Aliverdi Khan died on the 9th of April, 1756; and Suraj-u-Dowlah, having been nominated successor, mounted the throne without opposition. The name of this prince was Mirza Mahmud, but he is best known by his title of Suraj-u-Dowlah, which means "the sun of the state."
[79] The person the Nabob alluded to was Kishendass, the son of the late Dewan of the Nabob of Dacca, who visited Calcutta on his way to Juggernaut; and as he was strongly recommended to Mr. Drake, the President of Calcutta, by Mr. Watts, the chief of Cossimbazar, on account of services rendered by his family to the Company, he was treated with kindness and attention.
[80] The outposts of Calcutta were attacked on the 18th of June, 1756.
[84] Vide Parliamentary Reports, vol. iii. p. 144.
[85] Mr. Mill, by his quotation from Seir Mutaquerin, and his observations upon the former state of prisons in England and India, appears desirous not only of palliating the guilt of the Nabob and his servants, but of throwing a share of the blame upon the unhappy sufferers: "Some search," he observes, "was made for a convenient apartment, but none was found; upon which, information was obtained of a place which the English themselves had employed as a prison, and into this, without further inquiry, they were impelled. It was unhappily a small ill-aired and unwholesome dungeon called the Black Hole; and the English had their own practice to thank, for suggesting it to the officers of the subadar as a fit place of confinement."--Mill, vol. iii. p. 149. Though I refrain from commenting on the tone in which the author quoted treats this memorable catastrophe, I must directly question the justice of the conclusions he has drawn from his own premises. Assuredly the use of a room of twenty feet square, with two small windows, as a prison for one, two, three, or ten prisoners, can be no justification for forcing, at the point of the sword, 146 captives into this inadequate space; much less for keeping them there, when their sufferings became so dreadful, and the death of almost all certain.