to repay him, but when we did repay him we allowed him no interest upon that debt. All this time his alliance was our salvation. He went in with us against common enemies — Mysoreans and Mahrattas. Half a century afterwards, when the relations were altered, we not only charged the Nizam interest upon the money that we advanced on his account, but we insulted his dignity with unbecoming words ; and when there was some hesitation on his part to execute the treaty assigning the revenues of certain districts for the liquidation of this debt, an English officer was seen, for days together, moving about the outworks of the city with telescope in hand, as if ascertaining the defences to some dangerous intent.
I may be considered to deal hardly with the British Government in respect of the furniture at the Residency ; but, happily for me, the late Professor H. H. Wilson, in his continuation of Mill's History of British India^ says, in a note (i. 527. Lib. ed.) : " A fourth of the second share of the prize-money of Seringapatam was to be paid to the Nizam, and, with a prudent regard for the interests of British trade, the Government of Madras thought it expedient to convert the amount into broadcloth, plate, china, glass, and the like, in order to initiate his Highness and his court into a taste for the elegant superfluities of European living."
It were well now to inquire, as Sir Henry Russell did in his evidence before a Select Committee of the House of Commons on the 19th April, 1832, — " In what character, and for what purpose, do we appear in India ?" Sir Henry himself gives the reply : — "If we are to act as mere phi-
