and legal claim to the throne of his father; that he had been educated with a view to it, and was qualified to adorn it by his disposition and talents; that he wished however to found his pretensions neither upon his birthright nor the strength of the party attached to him, but upon the general voice of his subjects calling him to the sovereignty; that if such was their sentiment he was ready to undertake the arduous duties of the station, in which he himself would assist him with the fruits of his experience; that if on the contrary they felt a predilection for his rival, no blood should be shed on his account, the prince and his tutor being resolved in that case to yield the point without a struggle, and retire to some distant island.  This impressive appeal had the desired effect, and the young prince was invited by unanimous acclamation to assume the reins of government.*

(Footnote.  Mr. Philip Braham, late chief of the East India Company’s settlement of Fort Marlborough, by whom the circumstances of this event were related to me, arrived at Achin in July 1781, about a fortnight after the transaction.  He thus described his audience.  The king was seated in a gallery (to which there were no visible steps), at the extremity of a spacious hall or court, and a curtain which hung before him was drawn aside when it was his pleasure to appear.  In this court were great numbers of female attendants, but not armed, as they have been described.  Mr. Braham was introduced through a long file of guards armed with blunderbusses, and then seated on a carpet in front of the gallery.  When a conversation had been carried on for some time through the Shabandar, who communicated his answers to an interpreter, by whom they were reported to the king, the latter perceiving that he spoke the Malayan language addressed him directly, and asked several questions respecting England; what number of wives and children our sovereign had; how many ships of war the English kept in India; what was the French force, and others of that nature.  He expressed himself in friendly terms with regard to our nation, and said he should always be happy to countenance our traders in his ports.  Even at this early period of his reign he had abolished some vexatious imposts.  Mr. Braham had an opportunity of learning the great degree of power and control possessed by certain of the orang kayas, who held their respective districts in actual sovereignty, and kept the city in awe by stopping, when it suited their purpose, the supplies of provisions.  Captain Forrest, who once more visited Achin in 1784 and was treated with much distinction (see his Voyage to the Mergui Archipelago page 51), says he appeared to be twenty-five years of age; but this was a misconception.  Mr. Kenneth Mackenzie, who saw him in 1782, judged him to have been at that time no more than nineteen or twenty, which corresponds with Mr. Braham’s statement.)