tration of the country; accurate accounts of all establishments, receipts, and expenditure; the correction of abuses, and proper distribution of justice; the reduction of expense; the amelioration of the revenue system, including the customs and duties levied on commerce; the improvement of resources; the extinction of debt; the efficiency of the troops retained, and the discharge of such as were useless.' On assuming office at Haidarábád in 1821, shortly after the issue of these instructions, Sir Charles Metcalfe had given vigorous effect to them. Among other measures he had arranged for the assessment and settlement of the land revenue for a definite term of years, with the village communities themselves, and without any intermediate agency of farmer or middleman. The sphere of this arrangement was limited to the Northern Division of Haidarábád. This was the work in which Mr. Colvin, as second Assistant to Mr. Byam Martin, found himself engaged from the close of 1827 till he returned to Calcutta in the latter half of 1830. The Resident's first Assistant, Mr. Edward Ravenshaw, who also became a life-long friend, was three years his senior. He received Mr. Colvin and his young wife on their arrival, and it was in his house that their first child, a son, was born. Mr. Byam Martin the Resident was a man devoted to books, and of extensive reading; a man, therefore, not uncongenial to his second Assistant.
Mr. Colvin was employed chiefly in the work of assessing land revenue. The joint tenure, which is
