Some alarm was created last night by the publication of
what pur- ported to be disastrous news from India. It was conveyed in the fol- lowing extract, for whose authenticity the Standard vouches, from a hurried letter written on the 27th of August, at Bombay, by Major 3fessiter, of the Twenty. eighth Regiment-
'• Bombay, 27th August 1812. • • • s
The Colonel is going away in command of a brigade. I therefore fall into the command of the Regiment. We take the field immediately. Most disast- rous news [have] arrived [from] the interior. The Forty-first cut to pieces. " [A reference to some private affairs follows.]
"Yours, &c. JOHN MESSITER."
Without disparaging the word of Major Messiter, the Standard at once doubted the correctness of his intelligence and enumerated various considerations to establish its improbability. The first alarm has sub- sided, and the morning brings confirmation of the Standard's doubts. The Times says- " We feel peculiar pleasure in being enabled from the best-informed sources to contradict this painful report. An official letter from the highest authority in Bombay, dated August 28th, [one day later,] and professing to give 'the latest Sews' from Candahar, makes no mention of such an occurrence ; and from the perfect silence of the Indian press upon the subject, it would seem to be rather an individual fiction than even a current rumour. Its extreme improbability has been ably exposed by our contemporary ; and we need only now call atten- tion to the circumstance that Major Messiter professes to be acting upon or- ders issued on the receipt of intelligence of which those from whom alone the orders could have emanated know nothing." It appears from the Morning Post that the writer of the letter of the 28th is Sir George Arthur, the Governor of Bombay.
This evening, the Standard admits, without qualification, that Major Messiter must have been imposed upon.
The Globe quotes a letter from Captain Wetherell, of the Forty-first Regiment, to Mr. Wynn Williams, of the Temple, dated from Bombay on the 24th of August ; the writer being at that city in command of a detachment of his regiment- " We are about to make an attack on Hydrabad after the monsoon, with 5,000 men, under Sir C. Napier. I shall have about 400 or 500 men of the Fortieth and Forty-first, I expect, under my command. The Ameers are possessed of immense wealth ; and the place, though strong for Natives, cannot resist cannon long, the walls being very high, but weakened by being so much loopholed. We expect to go from this about the 10th of September."
The same paper understands that Major Messiter's letter is treated with unmixed ridicule in all military circles.
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