Page:History of the French in India.djvu/620

 594 APPENDIX A. He don't know, bub hath heard and believes that the said President and Council did after the said 10th day of September, 1746, agree to give and pay to or to the use of the said Monsieur de la Bourdonnais the sum or value of 88,000 pagodas, as at present,* but whether .... in order to exempt or free the goods and effects of the said Governor and Council in their private capacity, or the said Edward and Joseph Fowke, or the said Jacob Salvadore, .... he don't know nor has been informed.' "Folio 21. — In reply to certain interrogatories, Mr Monson says,* He, the said Mr. Monson, having afterwards (after the treaty of ran- som had been settled) heard from Monsieur de la Bourdonnais that they must pay him down 100,000 pagodas, if they expected performance of the agreement, he communicated such his information to the Council, who, after deliberation agreed to pay it, but says this money was not demanded for granting the 15th and 16th articles.' " Again : — 1 No receipt was taken or required for the money privately paid, nor could any be insisted on in such a transaction, nor was any agreement made for returning the 88,000 pagodas in case the treaty was rejected by the Governor and Council of Pondichery; and can't say whether the Governor and Council of Pondichery were ever informed of this private transaction.' " Folio 23. — Mr. Fowke, in answer to the interrogatories, says 4 He is a stranger to the payment, but don't doubt the money being paid.' "In Folio No. 11, Francis Salvadore, executor to Jacob Salvadore, seems to prove that Mr. Morse and Messrs. Edward and Joseph Fowke advanced money on the Council bonds for the ransom ; but I should like someone better acquainted with the phraseology of money dealings to examine this passage, before relying on it as of any pertinence in the present question. " In the whole case the extract from Folio 23 seems to me the only evidence that any money was ever paid to La Bourdonnais by way of dusturi. Excepting Fowke, all the rest of the Council are out of Court, and so would Fowke be, if, while he disapproved of the capitulation, he yet joined ivith Solomons, Salvadore, Franco, and the rest of these extortioners, in advancing money on the Council bonds he would not himself sign. Indeed, if Edward Fowke was personally interested, as a sleeping partner with his brother Joseph, in the prospective profits of an usurious advance of this kind, this of itself would be a sufficient explanation of his refusal to join with Messrs Morse and Monson in signing the bonds Birdwood writes in the printed volume " at present," but as those words convey no meaning, I presume that he intended to write " a present."
 * Note ly Colonel Malleson. Sir G.