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XX.

1781.

BOOK of the existing administration, nothing great, decisive, or comprehensively beneficial, could indeed be expected. A bill was, however, introduced and passed, explanatory of the powers of the Supreme Court of Judicature, and in some points limiting and restraining its jurisdiction, which had been extended, by the arbitrary encroachments of the chief-justice, far beyond the real and obvious intent of the Regulating Act *.

Shawbaz Beg Khan, if Shawbaz Beg Khan did in fact produce it to you to write upon it at any time after you had put your seal to it?

A. It is not a contradiction. After all the seals were put to it, after that time, I meant to say, I never saw it till after the death of Shawbaz Beg Khan.

Q. Is all the writing over the seals of your hand-writing?
A. The LAST is not my hand-writing.

Q. Look to it, and be sure.

A. This is also my hand-writing.

Q. Why did you say it was not your hand-writing when it is?

A. I did not remember writing it: but on seeing it is the same flow of the pen, I acknowledge it to be my handwriting.

*It may perhaps be permitted here transiently to note, as a pleasing instance of national generosity, however historically unimportant, a bill brought into the house of peers in the course of the session, after having passed the commons, "for allowing a certain sum to the two universities, as an indemnification for the exclusive right of printing almanacks, granted to them by patent of king James I., but of which they had been recently divested by a decision of the courts at Westminster.")

XX.

1781.

At this period the war in India had become very BOOK general; a most formidable combination of the country powers in opposition to the English had taken place, which, assisted by the fleets and armies of France, seemed to menace the very existence of the empire of Britain in India. Hyder Ally, the Ravages of ancient and inveterate enemy of the Company, in in the Car the month of July 1780, broke into the Carnatic with a vast army, and committed the most dreadful ravages. This sanguinary despot and conqueror, to adopt the high-wrought description of a cele

Hyder Ally

natic.

This was violently opposed by the lord-chancellor Thurlow,
as a fruitless and scandalous waste of the public money. It
being alleged, and evidence adduced to prove, that the profits
of the patent had been applied by these learned bodies to the
printing of scarce and valuable MSS, particularly many in the
Arabic and other Oriental languages, which would otherwise
never have been communicated to the world, the chancellor
avowed, in terms which would have astonished a Talbot or a
Hardwicke, his utter contempt of Persian and Coptic literature.
He said, that, when he was at the university, he never spent his
time in the study of such curious trifles: and they must be
much more profound than he affected to be, who could either
be pleased with or comprehend them." Happily the house of
peers held the claims of literature in somewhat higher respect
than the great law lord who presided in that illustrious as-
sembly, and the bill passed with general and decided approba-
tion.

"O let not those of whom the muse is scorn'd,
Alive or dead, be ever of the muse adorn'd !"

SPENSER.

whootyna rivaty could bind, resolved, in the gloomy Ayyywa of a hund cpacious of such things, to have the whole was an everlasting monument

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XX.

One dead uniform silence reigned over the whole BOOK region. This hurricane of war passed through every part of the central provinces of the Car

natic *."

On the 10th of September (1780) Hyder Ally attacked and surrounded a considerable detached corps under colonel Baillie, which, after very great but unavailing efforts of valor, were entirely cut to pieces or made prisoners. He then assailed with his victorious army, and rendered himself master of Arcot; and scarcely did the government at Madras believe itself to be in safety, when sir Eyre Coote arrived to take the command of the Company's forces on the coast of Coromandel, and Hyder was in repeated engagements foiled and defeated by this fortunate and gallant veteran.

1781.

counters in

Indies.

Various naval encounters also took place between Naval enthe French and English fleets, commanded by M. the EastSuffrein and admiral sir Edward Hughes, with equal skill, courage, and success. The naval force of both nations was gradually increased, in the progress of the war, to a degree far beyond what had been known at any former period in India, amounting at the last, on the part of the British, to eighteen ships of the line of battle. But the proportion continuing nearly the same, the mutual accessions of strength served only to increase the number of human victims: and the successive battles being ob

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* Mr. Burke's speech on the affairs of Arcot.

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The report of ede seiect commune de reformed to a cormance of the houses, rock accer that sie Elgjah Imper, dia menys cietustee a like had so jir degraded as clave and office as to accept of a place unice de Company, cone sciema ang gemens under wlad de Jesd his appoint $t;ad #ew * da alles was a consequence presented de king, a docect his majesty to recall sir F'yað Umper trem čia to answer for his conduct. A bill was akewise brugte in bv de advocate, Mr. Dunias e inicing rain pans and pemaities on sr Choinas Xanged, ter high crunes and musicncantors. This all winch at arst excled very great expectation and atennen, and which was commuci v sesto to session in a manner whoily unprecedemed, was at last suffered to sink iʼn negled and bivro,

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Warren Hastings, osy, governor-general in Bengil,

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