The first serious interruption to this progressive improvement of good feeling among the officers of the garrison of Masulipatam, was caused by a letter from an established committee at Hyderabad, which reached that garrison on the 18th July. This letter, which, like all other papers of a similar tendency, was shown to me, reproached the officers at Masulipatam with want of wisdom in having admitted me to assume the command of the garrison. The committee desired they would instantly demand from me an assurance that the order of the 1st of May would be rescinded; and, if I refused it, recommended that measures should be immediately taken to oblige me to quit Masulipatam. A paper of demands, which the Hyderabad committee termed their _Ultimatum_, and which they said they intended to forward to Government, accompanied this letter. These papers were shown to me by an officer of some rank and influence, with whom I was in the habit of confidential intercourse. He told me the senior officers of the garrison were far from approving of the sentiments of the Hyderabad committee, but much was to be feared from the violence of the juniors. I took this occasion of exposing all the fallacy of the grounds on which they were proceeding, and of impressing, in the most forcible language I could, the dangers into which many of the officers of the Company's army were precipitately rushing. As the substance of the communication I made to this officer was afterwards circulated in the form of a letter, I enclose an extract from my journal, in which it was immediately entered: and this extract will show you the nature of those arguments I used to reclaim men from their deep delusion. This communication had evidently a great effect upon the person to whom it was addressed; and he promised me he would not only communicate my sentiments to some of the most reflecting among the officers of the garrison, and obtain, through their means, the rejection of the proposals from Hyderabad, but would endeavour, in concert with them, to effect an arrangement that would exclude the younger part of the officers from any right of deliberation on the questions with which the army was now agitated; which I agreed with him would be a point of the greatest importance, and the first step towards a final settlement of existing evils. All these measures were happily effected. An answer was sent to Hyderabad, that the officers of Masulipatam must assert their right of judging for themselves, and that they could not comply with their demand regarding me; and the garrison committees, which were mobbish meetings of the whole of the officers, were dissolved, and all future proceedings entrusted to a few of the senior officers, who were (it was agreed) not to be influenced either by the opinions of other committees, or by the opinion of any officer in the garrison not included in their number, which was limited to eleven.