in a subsequent letter from Colombo as also in one of the 21st of the same month, although with some slight alteration, I am obliged to recommend that Your Honours should endeavour to put this order into execution as far as possible, and not issue licenses to any one. I do so although I expect not only that the farmer of the Alfandigo (for the export of all articles permitted to be exported) will complain on this account, and will pay less rent in future, but also, and especially that the inhabitants will object to this regulation, because they receive at least twice as much for the plain coconuts as for the oil which they will have to deliver to the Company. This will be so in spite of some concessions which have been made already in the payment for the oil, upon their petition of June 14, 1687, submitted to His Excellency Laurens Pyl, then Governor of Ceylon, in which they stated that it was a great disadvantage to them to be obliged to give the olas of their trees as food for the elephants, and that they were now also prevented from selling their fruits, but had to press oil out of these for the Company.[20] The iron and steel tools imported by the Company did not yield much profit, because there was no demand for them. The wealthy people considered them too expensive, and the poor could not afford to purchase them for the ploughing and cultivation of their fields and gardens. They have therefore been stowed away in the storehouses. As may be seen from the questions submitted by me to the Council of Colombo on January 22, 1695, I proposed that the inhabitants should be permitted to obtain these tools direct from Coromandel, which was kindly granted by the Honourable the Supreme Government of India by letter of December 12 of the same year. This may be considered the fourth point in which they have been indulged; another is the license given to them in the same letter from Batavia (confirmed in a letter of July 3, 1696) that they may convey the products of their lands and other small merchandise by vessel to Coromandel, north of Negapatam, without being obliged to stop and pay Customs duty in the former place, as they had to do since 1687. They must not therefore be restricted in this, as I introduced this new rule as soon as the license arrived.[21]