"The highly criminal violence of the force at Hyderabad, which is known to the whole army to be guided by weak and wrong-headed men, has unfortunately precipitated a very different issue to that which I was so sanguine as to expect. That force has declared that they speak the sentiments of the whole, or at least those of a great proportion of the Madras army; though it is evident, at the moment they made such an assertion, they could not have received an answer from any station to that absurd paper which they term an _Ultimatum_, which they have had the audacity to forward to Government; but which, I conscientiously believe, would, if it had been publicly promulgated, have been disowned and disclaimed by great numbers of the senior and most respectable officers at every station in the army. I can speak positively with regard to some, indeed all of the senior officers of the garrison of Masulipatam upon this subject, and they have lately been considered as the most violent of the whole. I am far from meaning (such meaning would, indeed, be as contrary to that high respect I have ever entertained for your character, as to the duties of my situation) to offer even an opinion on the wisdom and policy of that step which Government has lately adopted with the Company's officers of this establishment. The test these were required to sign was, as far as I understood it, a mere repetition of the obligations of the commission that every one of them held; and the only rational objection that could be made to it by men who were devoted to their duty, and who had never deviated from it in thought, word, or deed, was, that it was unnecessary; that it was, with regard to them at least, an act of supererogation, and one that had a taint of suspicion in it. These were, indeed, the feelings that passed in my mind when this paper was first put into my hands; but they were instantly subdued by a paramount sense of public duty; and I signed it to show (as far as my example could show) my perfect acquiescence in a measure which the Government I served had thought proper to adopt: but I am satisfied it was not the terms of this paper which led the great majority of the Company's officers both in camp and at the Mount, and in the garrison, to refuse their signatures; it was the manner in which it was presented, and the circumstances by which the whole proceeding was accompanied. The minds of the most honourable, and of those most attached to Government and to their Country, revolted more at the mode than the substance of the act: they felt (perhaps erroneously) that they were disgraced, because the manner in which their consent was asked showed they were not in the least trusted: and this was, I am assured, one of the chief causes of their almost general rejection of this proposed test of fidelity. It appears to me of the greatest importance that you should be aware of every feeling that this proceeding excited; and it is in discharge