His Excellency's Reply

To the Native Headmen.

The strong expressions of your approbation of my Government and attachment to Lady BROWNRIGG and myself contained in your address are most gratifying to my feelings, though at the same time they increase my regret at leaving this Island, where I have so long placed my chief happiness in contributing, according to the best of my abilities to your security and comfort.

In recapitulating the sad event of the year 1813 you remind me of a grievous calamity which occurred so soon after my first arrival that unable to prevent what I could not foresee. I was reduced to revise the best means of alleviating those sufferings, which were beyond my power to remove - In this distressing duty I was so promptly seconded by every one is the settlement capable of giving his aid, that little more was left for me than to express my good-will and set the example which they were all eager to follow.

In repealing the Bazaar tax, I conceive that I was not only relieving the poorer class of inhabitants from an impost which bore hard upon their scanty resources, but that I was also justified by moral as well as political expediency, in removing a restraint upon trade and private industry, which opened a dangerous temptation to fraud in the petty dealer, and oppressive extortion in the lower servants of Government.

The union of the whole Island under the mild dominion of the British Government, cannot fail to produce by a confirmation of peaceful security and a large segmentation of internal wealth the most beneficial results - These good effects have as you truly state already began to appear - but time is necessary to develop the resources of a country hitherto so little known, and to rouse into useful action the energies of a people long cramped under a tyrannical despotism.

The welfare and prosperity of every country depend so much upon the state of agriculture and commerce, that it would be an unpardonable negligence in any Government not to give a full attention to those two great sources of public happiness - I am gratified to hear your approbation of my measures upon those important subjects, in which, I trust, a material improvement will be soon effected through your steady perseverance, "aided by the present connection with the fertile Provinces of the Interior, so that agricultural industry and commercial activity may, by reacting on one another, increase the mass of capital and enlarge the stock of comfort in every class of community.

But it would be in vain to augment the wealth of a nation without a due regard to that religious and moral cultivation which can alone enable a people either to deserve or enjoy prosperity. It affords me therefore the highest gratification to see the progress which has been made in the publication of the Scriptures in the native languages - The pure and holy precepts of the Gospel can never be generally known in vain, the consequence assuredly will be an improvement in genuine religion among the natives professing Christianity, and sooner or later, a conversion of the idolatrous heathen.

Nothing can more contribute to accelerate these important events than the numerous Schools which have been established during my Government, and I have heard with emotions of peculiar delight your expressions of warm gratitude to Lady BROWNRIGG for the pains she has taken and the constant solicitude she has shown in founding and superintending establishment where native children have been trained up under the vigilance of her own guardian care, and the best foundation laid for their leading, in their mature age, a virtuous and happy life.

I cannot but feel highly gratified at your desire to have Portraits of LADY BROWNRIGG and myself. I will take care to have them painted immediately on my arrival in England and engravings shall be executed by the best artists, so that each of you may have a resemblance which you desire to posses, though is never can be a memorial so useful to you in animating you to good conduct, according to your own expression, as it will be flattering and honourable to myself.

I now bid you adieu, - I sincerely thank you for your anxiety for my safe voyage and happy arrival in my native country and I wish you all manure of felicity in a country, in which I have lived long enough to regard it with almost an interest equal to that which I feel for my own.

                                                                                        KING'S HOUSE
                                                                                                                      Colombo, 29th January 1820