to its owners.  To send it out in silver was subject to two manifest inconveniences.  First, the country would be exhausted of its circulating medium.  A scarcity of coin was already felt in Bengal.  Cossim Ali Khan, (the Nabob whom the Company’s servants had lately set up, and newly expelled,) during the short period of his power, had exhausted the country by every mode of extortion; in his flight he carried off an immense treasure, which has been variously computed, but by none at less than three millions sterling.  A country so exhausted of its coin, and harassed by three revolutions rapidly succeeding each other, was rather an object that stood in need of every kind of refreshment and recruit than one which could subsist under new evacuations.  The next, and equally obvious inconvenience, was to the Company itself.  To send silver into Europe would be to send it from the best to the worst market.  When arrived, the most profitable use which could be made of it would be to send it back to Bengal for the purchase of Indian merchandise.  It was necessary, therefore, to turn the Company’s revenue into its commerce.  The first investment was about five hundred thousand pounds, and care was taken afterwards to enlarge it.  In the years 1767 and 1768 it arose to seven hundred thousand.

[Sidenote:  Consequences of them.]

This new system of trade, carried on through the medium of power and public revenue, very soon produced its natural effects.  The loudest complaints arose among the natives, and among all the foreigners who traded to Bengal.  It must unquestionably have thrown the whole mercantile system of the country into the greatest confusion.  With regard to the natives, no expedient was proposed for their relief.  The case was serious with respect to European powers.  The Presidency plainly represented to the Directors, that some agreement should be made with foreign nations for providing their investment to a certain amount, or that the deficiencies then subsisting must terminate in an open rupture with France.  The Directors, pressed by the large payments in England, were not free to abandon their system; and all possible means of diverting the manufactures into the Company’s investment were still anxiously sought and pursued, until the difficulties of the foreign companies were at length removed by the natural flow of the fortunes of the Company’s servants into Europe, in the manner which will be stated hereafter.

But, with all these endeavors of the Presidency, the investment sunk in 1769, and they were even obliged to pay for a part of the goods to private merchants in the Company’s bonds, bearing interest.  It was plain that this course of business could not hold.  The manufacturers of Bengal, far from being generally in a condition to give credit, have always required advances to be made to them; so have the merchants very generally,—­at least, since the prevalence of the English power in India.  It was necessary,