ABSTRACT
Although North realized that the Adigar was t a man whose profligate and perfidious ambition had announced views which we could not countenance with honour', the whole basis of his Kandyan policy from 1800 to 1803 was his alliance with Talawuwe.3 The motives which induced North to ally himself with a self-proposed murderer and traitor sprang from the curious complexity of his character. He was ambitious to make the British power paramount in Ceylon by establishing a protectorate over Kandy with a subsidized British garrison at the capital, after the model of the Indian Protected States.4 A poor judge of character and far from clear-sighted, it rarely crossed his mind that an ambitious minister who would tum traitor to make himself king would never be content merely to exchange a native for a foreign ruler. Talawuwe's secret plan was to use
I C.O. 54. I: Feb. 21 and Oct. 5, 1799. The King wished North to cede to him Tamblegam and the seashore under Trincomalee. The Governor refused, since the cession of a port would have destroyed the British monopoly of the Kandyan cinnamon trade.
