§2. Soon after the capture of Seringapatam a clandestine correspondence was discovered in the palace between the Nawab of the Carnatic and the deceased Tippu. The treachery was undeniable. At the same time the discovery enabled the British to get rid of a dynasty that had oppressed the people and intrigued with the enemies of the East India Company for half a century. Nawab Mohammed Ali, whom the British had placed on the throne of the Carnatic in opposition to the French, had died in 1795. His son and successor had followed in the steps of his father, but no complaints reached him, for he was smitten with mortal disease. Lord Mornington, now Marquis of Wellesley, waited for his death, and then told the family that their rule was over. The title of Nawab was preserved, and pensions were liberally provided, but the Carnatic was incorporated with the Madras Presidency, and brought under British administration like the Bengal provinces. [Sidenote: Scandals of Nawab rule.] The annexation of the Carnatic delivered Madras from a host of scandals which had been accumulating for some forty years. The old Nawab had removed from Arcot to Madras, and carried on costly intrigues with the Company's servants in India, and with influential persons in the British Isles, in the hope of getting the revenues into his own hands, and leaving the East India Company to defend his territories out of their own resources. He loaded himself with debt by bribing his supporters with pretended loans, which existed only on paper, bore exorbitant interest, and were eventually charged on the public revenue. All this while, he and his officials were obstructing British operations in the field by withholding supplies, or treacherously informing the enemy of the movements of the British army. Since the annexation of the Carnatic in 1801 all these evils have passed into oblivion, and the public peace has remained undisturbed. [Sidenote: Wellesley's political system.] §3. The war with Tippu taught Lord Wellesley that it was impossible to trust the Mahrattas. They would not join the British government against a common enemy unless paid to do so; and they were always ready to go over to the enemy on the same terms. Accordingly Lord Wellesley proposed to maintain the peace of India, not by a balance of power, but by becoming the sovereign head of a league for the prevention of all future wars. [Sidenote: Subsidiary alliances.] With these views Lord Wellesley proposed that neither the Nizam nor the Mahrattas should take any French officers into their pay for the future; that neither should engage in any war or negotiation without the consent of the British government; and that each should maintain a subsidiary force of sepoys, drilled and commanded by British officers, which should be at the disposal of the British government for the maintenance of the peace of India. [Sidenote: Nizam accepts.]