A History of the Mahrattas v2.c37.55

v2.c37.55

During the rains the Bombay Government had full leisure to contemplate the state of their affairs. Their greatest distress was their total want of funds. They looked to Bengal for a supply of treasure; but the hostility of Hyder, which the Supreme Government had doubted, and which the majority of the Madras rulers disbelieved, burst with appalling certainty on the province of Arcot, which was invaded in the month of July with the most formidable army that had ever opposed the British power in India. This new difficulty, superadded to their own distress, induced the Supreme Government to declare that they could afford no assistance to the Bombay presidency.¹ ‘We have no resource,’ says Governor Hornby in his admirable minute of the 1st August, ‘but such as we may find in our own efforts’; and in this strait his measures showed much judgment and vigour. To raise funds was the subject of immediate deliberation, and the difficulties are best expressed in the means taken to obviate them. A quantity of copper in the Company’s warehouses, valued at ten or twelve lacks of rupees, was disposed of to the highest bidder; loans in Bengal, on the credit of the Bombay Government, were proposed to be negotiated, and a plan laid of seizing as much as possible of the enemy’s resources, by anticipating them in the collection of their revenue.