167 
Having received no satisfactory answer to the letters, or repre- 
sentations, repeatedly made by the civil servants at Bombay, as to 
the inadequacy of their salary, to the unavoidable expenses they 
were liable to, on the 8th of October, 1777, the senior-merchants 
at the Presidency, addressed the following letter to the Governor 
and Council : 
To the Honourable William Hornby, Esquire , President and 
Governor , §c. Council on Bombay. 
Honourabe Sir, and Gentlemen, 
The justice and necessity of appointments to the civil 
servants of the Company in general, more adequate to their real 
wants of life, have been already so frequently and so feelingly 
represented by you to the Honourable the Court of Directors, that 
we should have remained longer silent on this subject, in hopes of 
relief from them; but as it is now four years since the last refer- 
ence was made, and not a line yet received in answer, we imagine 
more material affairs have so engrossed their attention, that your 
representations have utterly escaped their memory. For this reason, 
and because our real necessities press so hard on several of us, as 
to require instant relief; we have made bold to trouble you to 
apply some immediate remedy to the peculiar hardship of our 
present situation, which is that ol senior-merchants; most of us 
out of employ, and, of course, from the nature of the service, 
without means of subsistence from the Company, in the least ade- 
quate to the common and indispensable necessaries of life. 
Obvious as the hardship we complain of must be to every 
