family; and his country put into the hands of his mortal enemy. There were men of honour and virtue enough amongst the Directors at home, however, to feel a proper disgust, or at least, regard for public opinion, at these unprincipled proceedings, and the Rajah, through the means of Lord Paget was restored, not however without having a certain quantity of troops quartered upon him; a yearly payment of four lacs of pagodas imposed; and being bound not to make any treaty or assist any power without the consent of the English. He was, in fact, put into the first stage of that process of subjection which would, in due time, remove from him even the shadow of independence.
Such were the measures by which the Nabob of Arcot endeavoured to relieve himself from his embarrassments with the English; but they would not all avail. Their demands grew faster than he could find means to satisfy them. Their system of action was too well devised to fail them; their victims rarely escaped from their toils: he might help them to ruin his neighbours, but he could not escape them himself. During his life he was surrounded by a host of cormorant creditors; his country, harassed by perpetual exactions, rapidly declined; and the death of his son and successor, Omdut ul Omrah, in 1801, produced one of the strangest scenes in this strange history. The Marquis Wellesley was then Governor-general, and, pursuing that sweeping course which stripped away the hypocritical mask from British power in India, threw down so many puppet princes, and displayed the English dominion in Indostan in its gigantic nakedness. The revenues of the Carnatic had been
