166 
did we obtain any redress. At that time, I can safely affirm, I 
lived in the most sparing manner, a writers income altogether not 
exceeding sixty-five pounds per annum. I never drank wine at 
my own table, and often went supperless to bed when the day 
closed, because I could not afford either supper or candle: as the 
dinner hour was one o’clock, and a writer’s age generally between 
sixteen and twenty-one, the abstinence was not occasioned by a 
want of appetite. During the bright moonlight evenings, I in- 
dulged myself in reading on the flat roof of the writer’s apartments 
at the bunder; where, through the medium of a cloudless atmos- 
phere, I could peruse the smallest edition of Shakespeare without 
inconvenience. 
Those to whom these details may be uninteresting, will 
have the goodness to pass over a few of the following pages: 
to many, the next representation made by the civil servants 
at Bombay, and the remarks accompanying it, will be grati- 
fying: they will there see a candid statement of the civil esta- 
blishment at that presidency, and a faithful account of the insol- 
vencies, deaths, and fortune, of those gentlemen who devoted 
themselves to the service of their employers at Bombay, and its 
subordinate settlements, during a series of more than twenty years: 
most families are now interested in the affairs of India, and have 
some endeared connexion in that part of the world: although the 
general system of the Company’s service may, in some respects, be 
altered, most of the facts stated in the following representation, 
respecting the civil servants at the different settlements in India, 
are analogous to the curtailments and deprivations of the present 
day. 
