"The Nabob's allowances are 53 lacs, which he signed and agreed to; so that there will remain little short of 200 lacs to the Company, clear of all expenses in collections. What think you of the stocks? We shall draw bills for about 16 lacs this year, and, in future, I believe, there will be an end to bills of exchange. Our investment this year will exceed 40 lacs, and we shall send 15 lacs to China. We have 24 lacs of restitution money to pay, and 30 lacs of bonds to discharge, or we should not have drawn at all, even this year. "We have concluded a firm and lasting peace with Sujah-u-Dowlah, by giving him up all his country, for which he pays 50 lacs to the Company: 25 down, and security for the rest in twelve months. I have not leisure to entertain you with an account of our proceedings with regard to the gentlemen of council: the upshot is, as you have expressed yourself in one of your letters, 'There are not five men of principle in the whole settlement.' I believe this is the first instance of such a paper appearing upon record as we have sent home. "There is an account in our committee and consultation proceedings, as large as a general return, with as many columns, specifying the sums of money received, and to be received, by whom, and to whom, and on whose houses drawn; in short, the Directors, when they first see these papers, will imagine it to be an account of increase of revenues. If you can get John Walsh into a humour of entertaining you upon these matters, he is qualified to do it better than any man in England. My time and paper grow short. "I am, dear Scrafton, "Yours, &c. "CLIVE "May it please your Honour, "I did not know at the time I wrote the above, that your Honour would have been one of my masters, as I might have saved myself the trouble of writing so much, or referring you to Walsh. Believe me, there is an absolute necessity of getting some of the Madras servants here, or we shall never bring about a reformation. The gentry here will do nothing with a good will. "I am "Your Honour's most obedient servant, "CLIVE." Clive, in answering a letter[271] from Mr. Fowke, a Director, observes,—