[Sidenote:  Investments.]

A certain portion of the revenues of Bengal has been for many years set apart to be employed in the purchase of goods for exportation to England, and this is called the Investment.  The greatness of this investment has been the standard by which the merit of the Company’s principal servants has been too generally estimated; and this main cause of the impoverishment of India has been generally taken as a measure of its wealth and prosperity.  Numerous fleets of large ships, loaded with the most valuable commodities of the East, annually arriving in England, in a constant and increasing succession, imposed upon the public eye, and naturally gave rise to an opinion of the happy condition and growing opulence of a country whose surplus productions occupied so vast a space in the commercial world.  This export from India seemed to imply also a reciprocal supply, by which the trading capital employed in those productions was continually strengthened and enlarged.  But the payment of a tribute, and not a beneficial commerce to that country, wore this specious and delusive appearance.

[Sidenote:  Increase of expenses.]

The fame of a great territorial revenue, exaggerated, as is usual in such cases, beyond even its value, and the abundant fortunes of the Company’s officers, military and civil, which flowed into Europe with a full tide, raised in the proprietors of East India stock a premature desire of partaking with their servants in the fruits of that splendid adventure.  Government also thought they could not be too early in their claims for a share of what they considered themselves as entitled to in every foreign acquisition made by the power of this kingdom, through whatever hands or by whatever means it was made.  These two parties, after some struggle, came to an agreement to divide between them the profits which their speculation proposed to realize in England from the territorial revenue in Bengal.  About two hundred thousand pounds was added to the annual dividends of the proprietors.  Four hundred thousand was given to the state, which, added to the old dividend, brought a constant charge upon the mixed interest of Indian trade and revenue of eight hundred thousand pounds a year.  This was to be provided for at all events.

By that vast demand on the territorial fund, the correctives and qualifications which might have been gradually applied to the abuses in Indian commerce and government were rendered extremely difficult.

[Sidenote:  Progress of investments.]

The practice of an investment from the revenue began in the year 1766, before arrangements were made for securing and appropriating an assured fund for that purpose in the treasury, and for diffusing it from thence upon the manufactures of the country in a just proportion and in the proper season.  There was, indeed, for a short time, a surplus of cash in the treasury.  It was in some shape to be sent home