81
by the Secretary and list of those who have our protection with a proper des-
cription to be transmitted us annually,
130. There never surely was a time when the situation of the Company's
affairs or that of their servants of all ranks as well as of those who are resident
in India under the Company's protection so loudly called for a general re-
formation. If that regard (which we really look upon to be due) is to be paid
to the truth of your representation of the distressed situation of our once
flourishing settlement of Fort William, no attempts should be neglected for
restoring it to something like its former lustre, and necessity must now enforce
what prudence would always have suggested to those who attend to her
dictates. Should the oeconomy we recommend to our servants of all ranks be
as general as their situation requires, it must banish that false shame which
is too often the attendant of those of weak minds, whose ill judged [...] in
an inferiour situation in regard to rank or fortune put them upon following
the examples of their superiours hi either, in their vicious or luxurious indul-
gencies; but not to incur a censure formerly passed on us on a like occasion,
though we are endeavouring rather to recommend and persuade where we
are authorized to command, we will only add that we doubt not but our
servants who are disposed to reflect will be very sensible before we close our
letter that we are not acting on arbitrary or parsimonious principles, but on
such which have equally for object the true and lasting interest of the Company
and that of every individual servant acting under them, and that such of them
who show the greatest zeal and readiness for conducting the affairs under
their several departments in order to establish our general plan under the
directions now given will be most entitled to our future favour and protec-
tion and will not fail to receive proofs of our attention thereto.
13 L It was our intention to have struck off the various articles of allow-
ances to our servants from the President to the writer and have fixed one
general appointment to each rank for salary, diet money etc., but the short-
ness of the time before the dispatch of the ships not permitting us to digest
the references and observations we must of course have made on those of our
other Presidencies, we have determined to let the several allowances remain
on the foot they have for some time subsisted from the gentlemen of Council
to the factor. But as we are sensible that our junior servants of the rank of
writers at Bengal are not, upon the whole, on so goad a footing as elsewhere,
we do hereby direct that the future appointment to a writer for salary, diet
money and all allowances whatever be four hundred current rupees
per annum, which mark of our favour and attention properly attended to
must prevent their reflections on what we shall further order in regard to
them as having any other object or foundation than their particular interest
and happiness.
132. There is no part of the 80th paragraph of our General Letter of the
23rd January 1754 per Denham, York and Norfolk and Anson that does not
merit your particular attention, one of which we are determined to enforce
from a persuasion that the indigence of our junior servants, which may too
often have been the effect of their vices and the imitation of their ste
tedi not a little contributed to increase that load of complaints wlicfe
been so strongly and, repeatedly urged by die Nabob in regard to the
mA are