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 30 SIJ^ THOMAS MUNRO

Tanjore, is found the following story of a Jew and aMusalman ; the translation was made b}^ Mr. Munro, and kindly communicated to me by Daniel Braith- waite, Esq.'

In August, 1788, Muni'o, now a lieutenant, was appointed an assistant in the Intelligence Department, under Captain Eead, and was attached to the head- quarters of the force sent to take possession of the province of Guntur ceded by the Nizam of the Deccan. ' The most important public transaction,' he says in a letter to his father in January, 1789^ ' since my last, is the surrender of the Guntur Circar to the Company, by which it became possessed of the whole coast from Jagannath to Cape Comorin.'

Of this important event, by which the annexation of the Districts now known as Kistna, Godavari, Vizagapatam, and Ganjam — or the Northern Circars — was completed, he wrote the following account, and gives expression to his opinion on the policy by which it was effected.

' The Nizam made himself master of that province soon after Haidar's invasion of the Karnatik, as an equivalent for the arrears of peshcush [tribute] due to him by the Company for the other Circars. The Com- pany not being at that time in a situation to compel him to restore it, he kept it quietly for several years : and though Sir John Macpherson sent Mr. Johnson to Haidarabad to demand the restitution of it, he paid little attention to his request. But the Company, seeing their affairs again in a respectable situation,