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96 the Pindárís might be overcome by intrigue, by setting chief against chief, and by fomenting internal disputes among them. 'When the Honourable Committee,' he said, 'suggest the expediency of engaging one portion of the Pindárí association to destroy another, I am roused by the fear that we have been culpably deficient in pointing out to the authorities at home the brutal and atrocious qualities of these wretches ... and I am confident that nothing would have been more repugnant to the feelings of the Honourable Committee, than the notion that the Government should be soiled by a procedure, which was to bear the colour of a confidential intercourse in a common cause with any of these gangs .' He knew that the evil must be crushed, without the concession of any terms to anarchy, and he was convinced that it could be suppressed if the determination to do so existed; he believed moreover that the native princes would have to submit to its removal, without attempting seriously to interfere with the adoption of such a course.

Meanwhile the Board of Control in England, enlightened by the events of 1815-16, which could no longer be explained away, had tardily, in September, 1816, addressed a letter to the Governor-General, giving him a reluctant and qualified authority to suppress the Pindárís, and to destroy their future means of action. But before this letter had reached Calcutta, his advisers in the Indian Council were frightened at the ravages which had been perpetrated