Page:Sir Thomas Munro and the British Settlement of the Madras Presidency.djvu/40

 32 SIR THOMAS MUNRO

more punctual in future in discharging their peshcush than they have hitherto been *? "

' It would certainly have been a more honourable and manly policy to have paid him, first, all his just claims, and then to have made the requisition. The consequence would have been the same, with this difference, that adopting this method would have raised, while following the other has degraded, the name of Englishmen !

' The spirit of the nation humbled in the West by an unfortunate war, seems to have extended its effects to this country, in stooping to a timid, where a bold policy would have been equally safe. The appre- hension, if any existed, was groundless, that the Nizam, if he had received the money, might have employed it against the Company, and refused to give up the province. The sum did not amount to the quarter of one year's revenue ; and had it been ten times more, it would have availed little ; for to a weak and distracted government, without an army, moifiey is but a poor defence against a warlike and powerful enemy. He knew that resistance would be in vain, and that it would serve no other purpose than to afford the Company a pretence for withholding the peshcush of the other provinces. He was too wise to give them such an opening, and was no doubt happy to save, in some measure, his credit, by the consideration that they had some claim to the possession of Guntur. His reply to Captain Kenna- way's demand is sensible and candid, — it is the