The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke Volume VIII Part 4

The internal trade of Bengal has next attracted the inquiries of your Committee.

The great and valuable articles of the Company's investment, drawn from the articles of internal trade, are raw silk, and various descriptions of piece-goods made of silk and cotton. These articles are not under any formal monopoly; nor does the Company at present exercise a _declared_ right of preemption with regard to them. But it does not appear that the trade in these particulars is or can be perfectly free,--not so much on account of any direct measures taken to prevent it as from the circ.u.mstances of the country, and the manner of carrying on business there: for the present trade, even in these articles, is built from the ruins of old monopolies and preemptions, and necessarily partakes of the nature of its materials.

In order to show in what manner manufactures and trade so const.i.tuted contribute to the prosperity of the natives, your Committee conceives it proper to take, in this place, a short general view of the progress of the English policy with relation to the commerce of Bengal, and the several stages and gradations by which it has been brought into its actual state. The modes of abuse, and the means by which commerce has suffered, will be considered in greater detail under the distinct heads of those objects which have chiefly suffered by them.

During the time of the Mogul government, the princes of that race, who omitted nothing for the encouragement of commerce in their dominions, bestowed very large privileges and immunities on the English East India Company, exempting them from several duties to which their natural-born subjects were liable. The Company's _dustuck_, or pa.s.sport, secured to them this exemption at all the custom-houses and toll-bars of the country. The Company, not being able or not choosing to make use of their privilege to the full extent to which it might be carried, indulged their servants with a qualified use of their pa.s.sport, under which, and in the name of the Company, they carried on a private trade, either by themselves or in society with natives, and thus found a compensation for the scanty allowances made to them by their masters in England. As the country government was at that time in the fulness of its strength, and that this immunity existed by a double connivance, it was naturally kept within tolerable limits.

But by the revolution in 1757 the Company's servants obtained a mighty ascendant over the native princes of Bengal, who owed their elevation to the British arms. The Company, which was new to that kind of power, and not yet thoroughly apprised of its real character and situation, considered itself still as a trader in the territories of a foreign potentate, in the prosperity of whose country it had neither interest nor duty. The servants, with the same ideas, followed their fortune in the channels in which it had hitherto ran, only enlarging them with the enlargement of their power. For their first ideas of profit were not official; nor were their oppressions those of ordinary despotism. The first instruments of their power were formed out of evasions of their ancient subjection. The pa.s.sport of the Company in the hands of its servants was no longer under any restraint; and in a very short time their immunity began to cover all the merchandise of the country. Cossim Ali Khan, the second of the Nabobs whom they had set up, was but ill disposed to the instruments of his greatness. He bore the yoke of this imperious commerce with the utmost impatience: he saw his subjects excluded as aliens from their own trade, and the revenues of the prince overwhelmed in the ruin of the commerce of his dominions. Finding his reiterated remonstrances on the extent and abuse of the pa.s.sport ineffectual, he had recourse to an unexpected expedient, which was, to declare his resolution at once to annul all the duties on trade, setting it equally free to subjects and to foreigners.

Never was a method of defeating the oppressions of monopoly more forcible, more simple, or more equitable: no sort of plausible objection could be made; and it was in vain to think of evading it. It was therefore met with the confidence of avowed and determined injustice.

The Presidency of Calcutta openly denied to the prince the power of protecting the trade of his subjects by the remission of his own duties.

It was evident that his authority drew to its period: many reasons and motives concurred, and his fall was hastened by the odium of the oppressions which he exercised voluntarily, as well as of those to which he was obliged to submit.

When this example was made, Jaffier Ali Khan, who had been deposed to make room for the last actor, was brought from penury and exile to a station the terms of which he could not misunderstand. During his life, and in the time of his children who succeeded to him, parts of the territorial revenue were a.s.signed to the Company; and the whole, under the name of residency at the Nabob's court, was brought, directly or indirectly, under the control of British subjects. The Company's servants, armed with authorities delegated from the nominal government, or attended with what was a stronger guard, the fame of their own power, appeared as magistrates in the markets in which they dealt as traders.

It was impossible for the natives in general to distinguish, in the proceedings of the same persons, what was transacted on the Company's account from what was done on their own; and it will ever be so difficult to draw this line of distinction, that as long as the Company does, directly or indirectly, aim at any advantage to itself in the purchase of any commodity whatever, so long will it be impracticable to prevent the servants availing themselves of the same privilege.

The servants, therefore, for themselves or for their employers, monopolized every article of trade, foreign and domestic: not only the raw merchantable commodities, but the manufactures; and not only these, but the necessaries of life, or what in these countries habit has confounded with them,--not only silk, cotton, piece-goods, opium, saltpetre, but not unfrequently salt, tobacco, betel-nut, and the grain of most ordinary consumption. In the name of the country government they laid on or took off, and at their pleasure heightened or lowered, all duties upon goods: the whole trade of the country was either destroyed or in shackles. The acquisition of the Duanne, in 1765, bringing the English into the immediate government of the country in its most essential branches, extended and confirmed all the former means of monopoly.

In the progress of these ruinous measures through all their details, innumerable grievances were suffered by the native inhabitants, which were represented in the strongest, that is, their true colors, in England. Whilst the far greater part of the British in India were in eager pursuit of the forced and exorbitant gains of a trade carried on by power, contests naturally arose among the compet.i.tors: those who were overpowered by their rivals became loud in their complaints to the Court of Directors, and were very capable, from experience, of pointing out every mode of abuse.

The Court of Directors, on their part, began, though very slowly, to perceive that the country which was ravaged by this sort of commerce was their own. These complaints obliged the Directors to a strict examination into the real sources of the mismanagement of their concerns in India, and to lay the foundations of a system of restraint on the exorbitancies of their servants. Accordingly, so early as the year 1765, they confine them to a trade only in articles of export and import, and strictly prohibit them from all dealing in objects of internal consumption. About the same time the Presidency of Calcutta found it necessary to put a restraint upon themselves, or at least to make show of a disposition (with which the Directors appear much satisfied) to keep their own enormous power within bounds.

But whatever might have been the intentions either of the Directors or the Presidency, both found themselves unequal to the execution of a plan which went to defeat the projects of almost all the English in India,--possibly comprehending some who were makers of the regulations.

For, as the complaint of the country or as their own interest predominated with the Presidency, they were always s.h.i.+fting from one course to the other; so that it became as impossible for the natives to know upon what principle to ground any commercial speculation, from the uncertainty of the law under which they acted, as it was when they were oppressed by power without any color of law at all: for the Directors, in a few months after they had given these tokens of approbation to the above regulations in favor of the country trade, tell the Presidency, "It is with concern we see in _every page_ of your Consultations _restrictions, limitations, prohibitions, affecting various articles of trade_." On their side, the Presidency freely confess that these monopolies of inland trade "were the foundation of all the bloodsheds, ma.s.sacres, and confusions which have happened of late in Bengal."

Pressed in this urgent manner, the Directors came more specifically to the grievance, and at once annul all the pa.s.sports with which their servants traded without duties, holding out means of compensation, of which it does not appear that any advantage was taken. In order that the duties which existed should no longer continue to burden the trade either of the servants or natives, they ordered that a number of oppressive toll-bars should be taken away, and the whole number reduced to nine of the most considerable.

When Lord Clive was sent to Bengal to effect a reformation of the many abuses which prevailed there, he considered monopoly to be so inveterate and deeply rooted, and the just rewards of the Company's servants to be so complicated with that injustice to the country, that the latter could not easily be removed without taking away the former. He adopted, therefore, a plan for dealing in certain articles, which, as he conceived, rather ought to be called "a regulated and restricted trade"

than a formal monopoly. By this plan he intended that the profits should be distributed in an orderly and proportioned manner for the reward of services, and not seized by each individual according to the measure of his boldness, dexterity, or influence.

But this scheme of monopoly did not subsist long, at least in that mode and for those purposes. Three of the grand monopolies, those of opium, salt, and saltpetre, were successively by the Company taken into their own hands. The produce of the sale of the two former articles was applied to the purchase of goods for their investment; the latter was exported in kind for their sales in Europe. The senior servants had a certain share of emolument allotted to them from a commission on the revenues. The junior servants were rigorously confined to salaries, on which they were unable to subsist according to their rank. They were strictly ordered to abstain from all dealing in objects of internal commerce. Those of export and import were left open to young men without mercantile experience, and wholly unprovided with mercantile capitals, but abundantly furnished with large trusts of the public money, and with all the powers of an absolute government. In this situation, a religious abstinence from all illicit game was prescribed to men at nine thousand miles' distance from the seat of the supreme authority.

Your Committee is far from meaning to justify, or even to excuse, the oppressions and cruelties used by many in supplying the deficiencies of their regular allowances by all manner of extortion; but many smaller irregularities may admit some alleviation from thence. Nor does your Committee mean to express any desire of reverting to the mode (contrived in India, but condemned by the Directors) of rewarding the servants of an higher cla.s.s by a regulated monopoly. Their object is to point out the deficiencies in the system, by which restrictions were laid that could have little or no effect whilst want and power were suffered to be united.

But the proceedings of the Directors at that time, though not altogether judicious, were in many respects honorable to them, and favorable, in the intention at least, to the country they governed. For, finding their trading capital employed against themselves and against the natives, and struggling in vain against abuses which were inseparably connected with the system of their own preference in trade, in the year 1773 they came to the manly resolution of setting an example to their servants, and gave up all use of power and influence in the two grand articles of their investment, silk and piece-goods. They directed that the articles should be bought at an equal and public market from the native merchants; and this order they directed to be published in all the princ.i.p.al marts of Bengal.

Your Committee are clearly of opinion that no better method of purchase could be adopted. But it soon appeared that in deep-rooted and inveterate abuses the wisest principles of reform may be made to operate so destructively as wholly to discredit the design, and to dishearten all persons from the prosecution of it. The Presidency, who seemed to yield with the utmost reluctance to the execution of these orders, soon made the Directors feel their evil influence upon their own investment; for they found the silk and cotton cloths rose twenty-five per cent above their former price, and a further rise of forty per cent was announced to them.

SILK.

What happened with regard to raw silk is still more remarkable, and tends still more clearly to ill.u.s.trate the effects of commercial servitude during its unchecked existence, and the consequences which may be made to arise from its sudden reformation. On laying open the trade, the article of raw silk was instantly enhanced to the Company full eighty per cent. The contract made for that commodity, wound off in the Bengal method, which used to sell for less than six rupees, or thirteen s.h.i.+llings, for two pounds' weight, arose to nine rupees, or near twenty s.h.i.+llings, and the filature silk was very soon after contracted for at fourteen.

The Presidency accounted for this rise by observing that the price had before been _arbitrary_, and that the persons who purveyed for the Company paid no more than "what was _judged_ sufficient for the maintenance of the first providers." This fact explains more fully than the most labored description can do the dreadful effects of the monopoly on the cultivators. They had the _sufficiency_ of their maintenance measured out by the judgment of those who were to profit by their labor; and this measure was not a great deal more, by their own account, than about two thirds of the value of that labor. In all probability it was much less, as these dealings rarely pa.s.sed through intermediate hands without leaving a considerable profit. These oppressions, it will be observed, were not confined to the Company's share, which, however, covered a great part of the trade; but as this was an article permitted to the servants, the same power of arbitrary valuation must have been extended over the whole, as the market must be equalized, if any authority at all is extended over it by those who have an interest in the restraint. The price was not only raised, but in the manufactures the quality was debased nearly in an equal proportion. The Directors conceived, with great reason, that this rise of price and debas.e.m.e.nt of quality arose, not from the effect of a free market, but from the servants having taken that opportunity of throwing upon the market of their masters the refuse goods of their own private trade at such exorbitant prices as by mutual connivance they were pleased to settle.

The mischief was greatly aggravated by its happening at a time when the Company were obliged to pay for their goods with bonds bearing an high interest.

The perplexed system of the Company's concerns, composed of so many opposite movements and contradictory principles, appears nowhere in a more clear light. If trade continued under restraint, their territorial revenues must suffer by checking the general prosperity of the country: if they set it free, means were taken to raise the price and debase the quality of the goods; and this again fell upon the revenues, out of which the payment for the goods was to arise. The observations of the Company on that occasion are just and sagacious; and they will not permit the least doubt concerning the policy of these unnatural trades.

"The amount of our Bengal cargoes, from 1769 to 1773, is 2,901,194_l._ sterling; and if the average increase of price be estimated at twenty-five per cent only, the amount of such increase is 725,298_l._ sterling. The above circ.u.mstances are exceedingly alarming to us; but what must be our concern, to find by the advices of our President and Council of 1773, that a further advance of forty per cent on Bengal goods was expected, and allowed to be the consequence of advertis.e.m.e.nts then published, authorizing a free trade in the service? We find the Duanne revenues are in general farmed for five years, and the aggregate increase estimated at only 183,170_l._ sterling (on a supposition that such increase will be realized); yet if the annual investment be sixty lacs, and the advance of price thirty per cent only, such advance will _exceed the increase of the revenue by no less than 829,330l.

sterling_."

The indignation which the Directors felt at being reduced to this distressing situation was expressed to their servants in very strong terms. They attributed the whole to their practices, and say, "We are far from being convinced that the compet.i.tion which tends to raise the price of goods in Bengal is wholly between public European companies, or between merchants in general who export to foreign markets: we are rather of opinion that the sources of this grand evil have been the extraordinary privileges granted to individuals in our service or under our license to trade without restriction throughout the provinces of Bengal, and the encouragement they have had to extend their trade to the uttermost, even in such goods as were proper for our investment, by observing the success of those persons who have from time to time _found means to dispose of their merchandise to our Governor and Council_, though of so bad a quality as to be sold here with great difficulty, after having been frequently refused, and put up at the next sale without price, to the very great discredit and disadvantage of the Company." In all probability the Directors were not mistaken; for, upon an inquiry inst.i.tuted soon after, it was found that Cantu Babu, the banian or native steward and manager to Mr. Hastings, (late President,) held two of these contracts in his own name and that of his son for considerably more than 150,000_l._ This discovery brought on a prohibition from the Court of Directors of that suspicious and dangerous dealing in the stewards of persons in high office. The same man held likewise farms to the amount of 140,000_l._ a year of the landed revenue, with the same suspicious appearance, contrary to the regulations made under Mr. Hastings's own administration.

In the mortifying dilemma to which the Directors found themselves reduced, whereby the ruin of the revenues either by the freedom or the restraint of trade was evident, they considered the first as most rapid and urgent, and therefore once more revert to the system of their ancient preemption, and destroy that freedom which they had so lately and with so much solemnity proclaimed, and that before it could be abused or even enjoyed. They declare, that, "unwilling as we are to return to _the former coercive system_ of providing an investment, or to abridge that freedom of commerce which has been so lately established in Bengal, yet at the same time finding it our indispensable duty to strike at the _root_ of an evil which has been so severely felt by the Company, and which can no longer be supported, we hereby direct that all persons whatever in the Company's service, _or under our protection_, be absolutely prohibited, by public advertis.e.m.e.nt, from trading in any of those articles which compose our investment, directly or indirectly, except on account of and for the East India Company, until their investment is completed."

As soon as this order was received in Bengal, it was construed, as indeed the words seemed directly to warrant, to exclude all natives as well as servants from the trade, until the Company was supplied. The Company's preemption was now authoritatively reestablished, and some feeble and ostensible regulations were made to relieve the weavers who might suffer by it. The Directors imagined that the reestablishment of their coercive system would remove the evil which fraud and artifice had grafted upon one more rational and liberal. But they were mistaken; for it only varied, if it did so much as vary, the abuse. The servants might as essentially injure their interest by a direct exercise of their power as by pretexts drawn from the freedom of the natives,--but with this fatal difference, that the frauds upon the Company must be of shorter duration under a scheme of freedom. That state admitted, and indeed led to, means of discovery and correction; whereas the system of coercion was likely to be permanent. It carried force further than served the purposes of those who authorized it: it tended to cover all frauds with obscurity, and to bury all complaint in despair. The next year, therefore, that is, in the year 1776, the Company, who complained that their orders had been extended beyond their intentions, made a third revolution in the trade of Bengal. It was set free again,--so far, at least, as regarded the native merchants,--but in so imperfect a manner as evidently to leave the roots of old abuses in the ground. The Supreme Court of Judicature about this time (1776) also fulminated a charge against monopolies, without any exception of those authorized by the Company: but it does not appear that anything very material was done in consequence of it.

The trade became nominally free; but the course of business established in consequence of coercive monopoly was not easily altered. In order to render more distinct the principles which led to the establishment of a course and habit of business so very difficult to change as long as those principles exist, your Committee think it will not be useless here to enter into the history of the regulations made in the first and favorite matter of the Company's investment, the trade in _raw silk_, from the commencement of these regulations to the Company's perhaps finally abandoning all share in the trade which was their object.

RAW SILK

The trade in _raw silk_ was at all times more popular in England than really advantageous to the Company. In addition to the old jealousy which prevailed between the Company and the manufactory interest of England, they came to labor under no small odium on account of the distresses of India. The public in England perceived, and felt with a proper sympathy, the sufferings of the Eastern provinces in all cases in which they might be attributed to the abuses of power exercised under the Company's authority. But they were not equally sensible to the evils which arose from a system of sacrificing the being of that country to the advantage of this. They entered very readily into the former, but with regard to the latter were slow and incredulous. It is not, therefore, extraordinary that the Company should endeavor to ingratiate themselves with the public by falling in with its prejudices. Thus they were led to increase the grievance in order to allay the clamor. They continued still, upon a larger scale, and still more systematically, that plan of conduct which was the princ.i.p.al, though not the most blamed, cause of the decay and depopulation of the country committed to their care.

With that view, and to furnish a cheap supply of materials to the manufactures of England, they formed a scheme which tended to destroy, or at least essentially to impair, the whole manufacturing interest of Bengal. A policy of that sort could not fail of being highly popular, when the Company submitted itself as an instrument for the improvement of British manufactures, instead of being their most dangerous rival, as heretofore they had been always represented.

They accordingly notified to their Presidency in Bengal, in their letter of the 17th of March, 1769, that "there was no branch of their trade they more ardently wish to extend than that of raw silk." They disclaim, however, all desire of employing compulsory measures for that purpose, but recommended every mode of encouragement, and particularly by augmented wages, "_in order to induce manufacturers of wrought silk to quit that branch and take to the winding of raw silk_."

Having thus found means to draw hands from the manufacture, and confiding in the strength of a capital drawn from the public revenues, they pursue their ideas from the purchase of their manufacture to the purchase of the material in its crudest state. "We recommend you to give an _increased price_, if necessary, _so as to take that trade out of the hands of other merchants and rival nations_." A double bounty was thus given against the manufactures, both in the labor and in the materials.

It is very remarkable in what manner their vehement pursuit of this object led the Directors to a speedy oblivion of those equitable correctives before interposed by them, in order to prevent the mischiefs which were apparent in the scheme, if left to itself. They could venture so little to trust to the bounties given from the revenues a trade which had a tendency to dry up their source, that, by the time they had proceeded to the thirty-third paragraph of their letter, they revert to those very compulsory means which they had disclaimed but three paragraphs before. To prevent silk-winders from working in their private houses, where they might work for private traders, and to confine them to the Company's factories, where they could only be employed for the Company's benefit, they desire that the newly acquired power of government should be effectually employed. "Should," say they, "this practice, through _inattention_, have been suffered to take place again, it will be proper to put a stop to it, which may _now be more effectually done by an absolute prohibition, under severe penalties, by the authority of government_."

This letter contains a perfect plan of policy, both of compulsion and encouragement, which must in a very considerable degree operate destructively to the manufactures of Bengal. Its effect must be (so far as it could operate without being eluded) to change the whole face of that industrious country, in order to render it a field for the produce of crude materials subservient to the manufactures of Great Britain. The manufacturing hands were to be seduced from their looms by high wages, in order to prepare a raw produce for our market; they were to be locked up in the factories; and the commodity acquired by these operations was, in this immature state, carried out of the country, whilst its looms would be left without any material but the debased refuse of a market enhanced in its price and scanted in its supply. By the increase of the price of this and other materials, manufactures formerly the most flouris.h.i.+ng gradually disappeared under the protection of Great Britain, and were seen to rise again and flourish on the opposite coast of India, under the dominion of the Mahrattas.

These restraints and encouragements seem to have had the desired effect in Bengal with regard to the diversion of labor from manufacture to materials. The trade of raw silk increased rapidly. But the Company very soon felt, in the increase of price and debas.e.m.e.nt of quality of the wrought goods, a loss to themselves which fully counterbalanced all the advantages to be derived to the nation from the increase of the raw commodity. The necessary effect on the revenue was also foretold very early: for their servants in the princ.i.p.al silk-factories declared that the obstruction to the private trade in silk must in the end prove detrimental to the revenues, and that the investment clashes with the collection of these revenues. Whatsoever by bounties or immunities is encouraged out of a landed revenue has certainly some tendency to lessen the net amount of that revenue, and to forward a produce which does not yield to the gross collection, rather than one that does.

The Directors declare themselves unable to understand how this could be.

Perhaps it was not so difficult. But, pressed as they were by the greatness of the payments which they were compelled to make to government in England, the cries of Bengal could not be heard among the contending claims of the General Court, of the Treasury, and of Spitalfields. The speculation of the Directors was originally fair and plausible,--so far as the mere encouragement of the commodity extended.

Situated as they were, it was hardly in their power to stop themselves in the course they had begun. They were obliged to continue their resolution, at any hazard, increasing the investment. "The state of our affairs," say they, "requires the utmost extension of your investments.

You are not to forbear sending even those sorts _which are attended with loss_, in case such should be necessary to supply an investment to as great an amount as _you can provide from your own resources_; and we have not the least doubt of your being thereby enabled to increase your consignments of this valuable branch of national commerce, even to the utmost of your wishes. But it is our positive order that no part of such investment be provided with borrowed money which is to be repaid by _drafts upon our treasury in London_; since the license which has already been taken in this respect has involved us in difficulties which we yet know not how we shall surmount."

This very instructive paragraph lays open the true origin of the internal decay of Bengal. The trade and revenues of that country were (as the then system must necessarily have been) of secondary consideration at best. Present supplies were to be obtained, and present demands in England were to be avoided, at every expense to Bengal.

The spirit of increasing the investment from revenue at any rate, and the resolution of driving all compet.i.tors, Europeans or natives, out of the market, prevailed at a period still more early, and prevailed not only in Bengal, but seems, more or less, to have diffused itself through the whole sphere of the Company's influence. In 1768 they gave to the Presidency of Madras the following memorable instruction, strongly declaratory of their general system of policy.

"We shall depend upon your prudence," say they, "to discourage foreigners; and being intent, as you have been repeatedly acquainted, on bringing home as great a part of the revenues as possible in your manufactures, the outbidding them in those parts where they interfere with you would certainly prove an effectual step for answering that end.

We therefore recommend it to you to offer such increase of price as you shall deem may be consistently given,--that, by beating them out of the market, the quant.i.ties by you to be provided may be proportionally enlarged; and if you take this method, it is to be so cautiously practised as not to enhance the prices in the places immediately under your control. On this subject we must not omit the approval of your prohibiting the weavers of Cuddalore from making up any cloth of the same sortments that are provided for us; and if such prohibition is not now, it should by all means be in future, _made general, and strictly maintained_."

This system must have an immediate tendency towards disordering the trade of India, and must finally end in great detriment to the Company itself. The effect of the restrictive system on the weaver is evident.

The authority given to the servants to buy at an advanced price did of necessity furnish means and excuses for every sort of fraud in their purchases. The instant the servant of a merchant is admitted on his own judgment to overbid the market, or to send goods to his master which shall sell at loss, there is no longer any standard upon which his unfair practices can be estimated, or any effectual means by which they can be restrained. The hope entertained by the Directors, of confining this destructive practice of giving an enhanced price to a particular spot, must ever be found totally delusive. Speculations will be affected by this artificial price in every quarter in which markets can have the least communication with each other.

In a very few years the Court of Directors began to feel, even in Leadenhall Street, _the effects of trading to loss_ upon the revenues, especially on those of Bengal. In the letter of February, 1774, they observe, that, "looking back to their accounts for the four preceding years, on several of the descriptions of silk there has been an _increasing loss_, instead of any alteration for the better in the last year's productions. This," they say, "threatens the destruction of that valuable branch of national commerce." And then they recommend _such regulations_ (as if regulations in that state of things could be of any service) as may obtain "a profit in future, instead of so considerable a loss, which _we can no longer sustain_."

Your Committee thought it necessary to inquire into the losses which had actually been suffered by this unnatural forced trade, and find the loss so early as the season of 1776 to be 77,650_l._, that in the year 1777 it arose to 168,205_l._ This was so great that worse could hardly be apprehended: however, in the season of 1778 it amounted to 255,070_l._ In 1779 it was not so ruinously great, because the whole import was not so considerable; but it still stood enormously high,--so high as 141,800_l._ In the whole four years it came to 642,725_l._ The observations of the Directors were found to be fully verified. It is remarkable that the same article in the China trade produced a considerable and uniform profit. On this circ.u.mstance little observation is necessary.

During the time of their struggles for enlarging this losing trade, which they considered as a national object,--what in one point of view it was, and, if it had not been grossly mismanaged, might have been in more than one,--in this part it is impossible to refuse to the Directors a very great share of merit. No degree of thought, of trouble, or of reasonable expense was spared by them for the improvement of the commodity. They framed with diligence, and apparently on very good information, a code of manufacturing regulations for that purpose; and several persons were sent out, conversant in the Italian method of preparing and winding silk, aided by proper machines for facilitating and perfecting the work. This, under proper care, and in course of time, might have produced a real improvement to Bengal; but in the first instance it naturally drew the business from native management, and it caused a revulsion from the trade and manufactures of India which led as naturally and inevitably to an European monopoly, in some hands or other, as any of the modes of coercion which were or could be employed.

The evil was present and inherent in the act. The means of letting the natives into the benefit of the improved system of produce was likely to be counteracted by the general ill conduct of the Company's concerns abroad. For a while, at least, it had an effect still worse: for the Company purchasing the raw coc.o.o.n or silk-pod at a fixed rate, the first producer, who, whilst he could wind at his own house, employed his family in this labor, and could procure a reasonable livelihood by buying up the coc.o.o.ns for the Italian filature, now incurred the enormous and ruinous loss of fifty per cent. This appears in a letter to the Presidency, written by Mr. Boughton Rouse, now a member of your Committee. But for a long time a considerable quant.i.ty of that in the old Bengal mode of winding was bought for the Company from contractors, and it continues to be so bought to the present time: but the Directors complain, in their letter of the 12th of May, 1780, that both species, and particularly the latter, had risen so extravagantly that it was become more than forty per cent dearer than it had been fifteen years ago. In that state of price, they condemn their servants, very justly, for entering into contracts for three years,--and that for several kinds of silk, of very different goodness, upon averages unfairly formed, where the commodities averaged at an equal price differed from twenty to thirty per cent on the sale. Soon after, they formed a regular scale of fixed prices, above which they found they could not trade without loss.

Whilst they were continuing these methods to secure themselves against future losses, the Bengal s.h.i.+ps which arrived in that year announced nothing but their continuance. Some articles by the high price, and others from their ill quality, were such "as never could answer to be sent to Europe at any price." The Directors renew their prohibition of making fresh contracts, the present being generally to expire in the year 1781. But this trade, whose fundamental policy might have admitted of a doubt, as applied to Bengal, (whatever it might have been with regard to England,) was now itself expiring in the hands of the Company, so that they were obliged to apply to government for power to enlarge their capacity of receiving bills upon Europe. The purchase by these bills they entirely divert from raw silk, and order to be laid out wholly in piece-goods.