1 ( 38 ).
2 Collectorates of Bellary, Cuddapah, Salem, Coimbatore, Northern Mala-
3 bar, the whole of both the Canaras, and part of the Southern Mahratta
4 country. Of many of the provinces thus bequeathed by the father, the
5 son was deprived by the treaty which was forced upon him by Lord
6 Cornwallis and the Mahrattas in 1792; and the event of the 4th of
7 May 1799 placed the whole of the remainder at the absolute disposal of
8 Lord Wellesley and his Allies,
9 After assigning to each of the parties the districts which were most
10 contiguous and convenient, it was determined for reasons which had
11 great weight with the Statesmen of those days, to reconstruct the ancient
12 kingdom of Mysore, and for this purpose the present Rajah, then a boy
13 of five years of age, was taken from his prison and seated’ on the throne.
14 The revenue of this new State was roughly estimated at 14 lakhs of
15 Canteroy Pagodas, of which seven lakhs of Star Pagodas, equal to
16 twenty-four and a half lakhs of Rupees, were, and are, payable to the
17 British for the maintenance of a subsidiary force for its defence and secu-
18 rity. Poorniab, a Brahmin, who had formerly been Finance Minister to
19 Tippoo, was now made Dewan and Regent. Colonel Barry Close was
20 Resident, and Colonel Arthur Wellesley commanded the Division.
21 Under the combined influence of three such men no State could help
22 flourishing, and accordingly we find that Mysore did so in a very
23 eminent degree. Poorniah’s thorough knowledge of the resources —
24 of the country enabled him to add materially to the revenue,
25 which was further swelled to a fictitious amount by the sale of
26 the enormous stores of sandal-wood, which had accumulated dur-
27 ing the many years that the spite or the bigotry of Tippoo had
28 prohibited its exportation from his dominions. So successful indeed, as
29 far as finance was concerned, was the administration of Poorniah that,
30 although the Mysore State had kept a considerable body of troops in the
31 field during the Mahratta War,’ not only had the annual subsidy been
32 regularly paid, but when in 1812, he was suddenly required to surrender
33 his power to the Rajah, a sum of upwards of two crores of Rupees, more
34 than two millions sterling, was found in the Treasury of the State.
35 Maharaj Krishna Raj Wadyar when he took the power into his own
36 hands, was @ young man of seventeen. His natural talents were good,
37 and his disposition was thought to be the same. He could not but hold
38 in lively recollection the obscurity from which he had been raised, and his
39 boyhood had been passed under the eye of the ablest native Statesman