licy of apparently favouring the cause of the successful party. His Highness the Nizam is disposed to concur in any course of measures which the British government may adopt for the success of our mutual views of defensive alliance with the Mahratta states. 26. Since the commencement of this dispatch, I have received advices from Bombay, notifying the embarkation of the Peishwa, under convoy of the ship Herculean, from Laverndroog for Bassein, and the arrival of Colonel Close from Poona, at Bombay, on the 3d instant. 27. These events will probably accelerate the conclusion of defini tive engagements with the Peishwa, and will enable Colonel Close immediately to open a negotiation with Amrut Rao and Jeswunt Rao Holkar. 28. I have directed Colonel Close, and the Governor of Bombay, to apprize your Honourable Committee of the existing state of affairs at the time when this dispatch shall pass through Bombay. I have the honour to be, Fort William, INCLOSURE (A). In Letter from the Governor General to the Secret Committee; dated the 24th December 1802; Received overland the 9th May, 1803. Governor General's Instructions to the Resident at Poona, dated 23d June 1802; with Inclosure. To Lieutenant-Colonel Close, Resident at Poona. SIR, IN obedience to the commands of his Excellency the most noble the Governor General in Council, I have now the honour to address you, for the purpose of communicating to you his ExcelJency's sentiments on the propositions of the Peishwa, detailed in Colonel Palmer's Letter, No. 295, dated the 30th of November, 1801, and of conveying to you his Excellency's instructions for your guidance in conducting a negotiation for the conclusion of subsidiary engagements with the court of Poona; and I am directed to take this opportunity to acknowledge the receipt of your dispatches. 2. The observations and instructions which I am ordered to communicate to you are as follows: 3. The negotiations at Poona have assumed such different aspects at various periods of time, during Colonel Palmer's residence, and have been, involved in such intricacy and difficulty, that it is become recessary to revise with accuracy the whole course of our transactions at that court for some time past, in order to draw just conclusions with regard to the general disposition of the state of Poona towards the British government. 4. A review of the transactions and reasonable conditions which his Excellency the Governor General proposed to require from him, in consideration of affording him the aid of the British power. He deliberately preferred a situation of degradation and danger, with nominal independence, to a more intimate connection with the British power, which could not be formed on principles calculated to secure to the Peishwa the constant protection of our arms, without, at the same time, establishing our ascendancy in the Mahratta empire; subsequent events justify a conclusion, that the long and systematic course of deceitful and evasive policy pursued by the Peishwa on this occasion, was not less the result of a determined spirit of hostility thau of his characteristic jealousy and irresolution. which have passed between the British government and that of Poona, and of the conduct and policy of the latter with respect to the British government, since his Excellency's arrival in India, will be sufficient to demonstrate that the Peishwa (notwithstanding the general tenor of his professions, and the various artifices employed by his Highness to conceal from the British government the real purport of those intrigues which were disclosed by the records of the late Tippoo Sultaun) has not only been uniformly and progressively jealous of the power of the nation in India, but actively hostile to our prosperity to the utmost practicable extent, consistently with the security of his government, and with the irresolution and úmidity of his character. 5. In the year 1798, the authority of Bajow Rao was reduced to a state of extreme weakness by the imbecility of his counsels, by the instability and treachery of his disposition, and by the prevalence of internal discord; and in that crisis his government was menaced with destruction by the overbearing power of Scindia. It was evident that the Peishwa could not expect to be relieved from the oppressive controul of Scindia, and to be restored to a due degree of authority within his own dominions, by any other means than by the aid of the British power; and the Peishwa himself appears to have been sensible of this truth; for at an early period of the year, he earnestly and, repeatedly solicited the Governor General's assistance. But even under these circumstances, Bajow Rao was ultimately induced to withhold his consent to the just 6. The court of Poona now viewed the rapid approach of a severe contest between the British power and Tippoo Sultaun. This crisis presented various advantages to the faithless and sordid policy 'of the Peishwa, in the pursuit of which he would have been embar rassed by a more close alliance, with the Company. The events of the war might have offered occasions of profit to the court of Poona at the expence of either or of all the belligerent powers, although the prospect was unquestionably most favourable to the success of the British cause. In this state of affairs, the Peishwa adopted a system of measures by which he hoped to secure every attainable gratification of his hatred and jealousy of the British name, together with every contingent benefit which could be derived from our success, and from the reduction or ruin of our enemy, enemy. His Highness therefore endeavoured to frame his councils on so complicated a basis as to deceive every state concerned in the war, and ultimately to reserve to himself every pretension which could be founded either on the observance of equitable neutrality, or on the discharge of the duties of active alliance. 7. In the spirit of these councils, on the Governor General's, first application to the Peishwa for his co-operation against Tippoo Sultaun, in the event of a contest with that prince, the Peishwa endeavoured to justify an ostensible neutrality, and to evade the obligation of the triple alliance, under the pretext, that the defensive engagements concluded at the termination of the war with Tippoo Sultaun in 1792, were binding only on his predecessor. Being compelled to abandon this absurd pretext, the Peishwa professed a cordial disposition to cooperate with the British arms against the common enemy, in conformity to his engagements, but, by a course of studied evasion and systematic deceit, he avoided all active interference in the contest with Tippoo Sultaun, and actually maintained an amicable intercourse with the enemy through the channel of Tippoo Sultaun's Vakeels, whom the Peishwa persisted in detaining at his court, in opposition to the re peated and earnest remonstrances of the Governor General. On the conclusion of the war, the Peishwa endeavoured to justify the violation of his faith, and to establish his claim to a participation in the profits of the war, by arguments founded on the embarrassed condition of his govern ment, and on the inoffensive na ture of his intercourse with Tippoo Sultaun. 8. The amicable professions of the Peishwa, and his apparent disposition to co-operate in the common cause to the extent that might be practicable under the distractions which prevailed in the government of Poona, had impressed the mind of the Governor General with a favourable opinion of the Peishwa's intentions; and accordingly his Excellency, in a letter addressed to the Honourable the Court of Directors under date the 20th of March 1799, expressed his conviction, that the disposition of the court of Poona continued perfectly favourable to the British interests, and that want of power would be the sole cause of its inaction, in the event of a war with Tippoo Sultaun. The equivocal and evasive conduct of the Peishwa, however, subsequently to that period of time, suggested considerable doubts of the sincerity of his attachment to the cause of the allies; and, at the conclusion of the war, those doubts were corroborated by the correspondence between Tippoo Sultaun and his agents at Poona, and by letters from Nana Furnavese and other Mahratta chieftains to Tippoo Sultaun, which were discovered among the records of Seringapatam. The combined evidence of those documents, and of the Peishwa's conduct during the war, affords unequivocal proofs of the hostility of his disposition towards the British power, and justifies a conclusion, that if fortune had appeared to favour the enemy, the Peishwa would openly have espoused his cause. 9. Although the faithless conduct duct of the Peishwa not only deprived him of all title to participate in the advantages of the war, but exposed him to the just resentment, of the allies, the Governor General determined to refrain from any measures of a vindictive nature, and to adopt the more liberal policy of conciliating the Peishwa's interests, and of providing for the security of the allies and for the general tranquillity of India, by repeating his invitation to the Peishwa, to accede to the proposal of general defensive alliance and mutual guarantee, which his Excellency had before unsuccessfully offered to the Peishwa's acceptAccordingly, at the close of the war in 1799, the propositions for the conclusion of defensive and subsidiary engagements with the Peishwa were renewed, under circumstances of peculiar advantage to the latter, who, by acceding to those propositions, would not only have been eman cipated from the oppressive controul of Scindia, and have been reinstated in the due exercise of his authority, but would have been admitted to a participation in the conquered territory of Mysore. But after a vexatious and illusory discussion of the propositions, during a period of several months, the negotiation was closed by the Peishwa's rejection of the conditions of defensive alliance under any admissible modification of them. The circumstances of that negotiation afford the strongest reason to believe, that the Peishwa never seriously intended to enter into any engagements on the basis of those propositions, and that he had no other intention from the commencement of the negotiation, than to avoid the consequences of an unquali fied refusal to treat, to deceive the public and the Governor Ge neral by the appearances of a disposition to concur in the views of the British government for the tranquillity of India, and to deter Scindia from the prosecution of his ambitious designs, by persuading that chieftain that the Peishwa had it in his power and in his contemplation to avail himself of the protection of the British arms. 10. The negotiations which followed the renewal of the Gover nor General's propositions in the month of April, 1800, were con ducted on the part of the Peishwa in the same spirit of temporizing policy and studied evasion which characterized his conduct in every previous discussion. His long and degrading subjection to the power of Scindia, his repeated experience of the perfidy and vio lence of that unprincipled chieftain, the internal distraction which prevailed in his government, and the consciousness of his inability to relieve himself from the pressure of his accumulated difficulties, and to secure the efficient exercise of his authority, were insufficient to subdue the emotions of his jealous fears, and to induce him to rely with confidence on the protection of that state, which alone possessed the power and the will to extricate him from his embarrassments, and to place him in a situation of comparative dig nity and security. 11. Those negotiations were closed in the month of September 1800, when various unprecedented acts of violence and extortion on the part of Scindia had aggravated the pressure of the Peishwa's affairs, and virtually annihilated his authority by the Peishwa's absolute rejection 1 rejection of the principal articles of the Governor General's propo sition; and he may be considered to have rejected those propositions again, by his refusal to become a party in the treaty of general defensive alliance concluded with the Nizam in October 1800, which was tendered to his accept ance. 12. While these several negotiations were depending, the Peishwa was at different times employed in carrying on intrigues for the purpose of detaching the Nizam from his connection with the company, with a view to the subversion of the British power and influence in the Deccan. Little doubt exists in his Excellency's mind of the authenticity of Kaudir Hoossain's mission towards the close of the year 1800, and of the Peishwa's participation with Scindia in the objects of that mission; and although his Excellency is by no means convinced of the existence of the confederacy ascribed to the Mahratta state, in the paper of intelligence transmitted in the dispatch from the Resident at Hydrabad, under date the 28th of November last, the Governor General is satisfied, that the object of Suddasheo Rao Munkaiser's intrigue at the court of Hydrabad was to effect the dissolution of the alliance between the company and the Nizam, and to engage his Highness to unite with the Mahrattas at any future favourable opportunity for the subversion of the British power. On this subject his Excellency inclines to the opinion, which you have expressed in your letter of 13th of February last, that the object of Munkaiser's mission was, "if possible to **** our alliance with the Nizam, and thus extinguish our power and nauence in the Deccan, but with out comprehending any settled or projected plan for the co-operation of the French, a means of support, however, which might have been eventually resorted to." 13. The inference to be deduced from these considerations is, that, until irresistibly compelled by the exigency of his affairs to have recourse, to the assistance of the Company, the Peishwa will never be induced to enter into any engagements, which in his apprehension would afford to the British government the means of acquiring an ascendancy in the Mahratta empire. If, at a time when his authority was reduced to the lowest state of degradation, and when his government was menaced with destruction by the immediate presence of Scindia at the head of a powerful army in the vicinity of Poona, and when no appa rent means existed for the relief of the Peishwa from the violence and usurpation of that ambitious chieftain, but the acceptance of the proffered aid of the British government, the Peishwa deemed it to be his wisest policy to refuse his assent to the liberal and advantageous propositions of the British government, there is still less reason to expect his acquiescence in those propositions, or in any modification of them, by which in his opinion the authority of his government would in any degree be subjected to the controul of the British power, at a season when the exigency of his affairs is diminished by the absence of his rival. 14. But whatever degree of jealousy the Peishwa may entertain of the ascendancy of the British state in the political scale of India, and however solicitous he may be to effect its subversion, he is sensible that in the present condition of the British power, the preserva |