Page:Haidar Ali and Tipu Sultan.djvu/193



insolent reply to Lord Mornington's overtures brought matters to a crisis. On February 22, 1799, the Governor-General issued a 'Declaration' on the part of the East India Company and their allies the Nizám and the Peshwá, in which he recounted the studious good faith of the British Government, and their anxiety to meet in every way the Sultán's reasonable demands, adducing as evidence of this the surrender of the territory claimed by him in Wainád—a concession which Tipú had himself admitted to be satisfactory. The document then goes on to relate the astonishment with which the allies discovered that, in spite of this evidence of their sincere adherence to the treaty of 1790, the Sultán had entered into negotiations with a hostile power for the purpose of commencing a war against the Company and the Allied Powers. It dwells upon the persistent delay on Tipú's part to receive an envoy to adjust existing grievances, and points out that