Besides concentrating on his two Oriental law translations in his leisure, Jones spent much time in 1790 on matters related to his Society. Richard Johnson was leaving India because of poor health. Jones hosted a farewell party at the first of the year, at which he recommended Johnson to Banks as “one of the most distinguished of the Company's servants in India for ability as a public man, & for knowledge of various kinds & agreeable manners” (2:854).

Shore's departure interrupted another friendship. After completing the decennial revenue settlements (in which Jones assisted), he also left because of poor health. As he later said of Jones: “At the Gardens, he was my neighbour…. I have often regretted, as I flatter myself he also did, that our different avocations prevented our meeting as constantly as we both wished.”

Jonathan Duncan, another charter member of the Society and now superintendent at Benares, was helping resolve the revenue problem. He sent Jones a manuscript of the rare Nāradasmriti, a part of the “divine law” in the Smṛitis usually considered a supplement to the Mānava-Dharmaśāstra. As Cornwallis had told Jones of Duncan's treaty with the Infanticides, Jones hoped that it would be “the means of preserving the lives of thousands.” He equally condemned thuggee, “the sordid priestcraft of Durgā's ministers” (2:855, 856). These were cultural conditions that, in his view, could conceivably be cooperatively eliminated without trampling on Indian customs.