In time of peace, three foreign companies appear at first sight to bring their contribution of trade to the supply of this continual drain.  These are the companies of France, Holland, and Denmark.  But when the object is considered more nearly, instead of relief, these companies, who from their want of authority in the country might seem to trade upon a principle merely commercial, will be found to add their full proportion to the calamity brought upon Bengal by the destructive system of the ruling power; because the greater part of the capital of all these companies, and perhaps the whole capital of some of them, is furnished exactly as the British is, out of the revenues of the country.  The civil and military servants of the English East India Company being restricted in drawing bills upon Europe, and none of them ever making or proposing an establishment in India, a very great part of their fortunes, well or ill gotten, is in all probability thrown, as fast as required, into the cash of these companies.

In all other countries, the revenue, following the natural course and order of things, arises out of their commerce.  Here, by a mischievous inversion of that order, the whole foreign maritime trade, whether English, French, Dutch, or Danish, arises from the revenues; and these are carried out of the country without producing anything to compensate so heavy a loss.

[Sidenote:  Foreign companies’ investments.]

Your Committee have not been able to discover the entire value of the investment made by foreign companies.  But, as the investment which the English East India Company derived from its revenues, and even from its public credit, is for the year 1783 to be wholly stopped, it has been proposed to private persons to make a subscription for an investment on their own account.  This investment is to be equal to the sum of 800,000_l._ Another loan has been also made for an investment on the Company’s account to China of 200,000_l._ This makes a million; and there is no question that much more could be readily had for bills upon Europe.  Now, as there is no doubt that the whole of the money remitted is the property of British subjects, (none else having any interest in remitting to Europe,) it is not unfair to suppose that a very great part, if not the whole, of what may find its way into this new channel is not newly created, but only diverted from those channels in which it formerly ran, that is, the cash of the foreign trading companies.

[Sidenote:  Of the silver sent to China.]

Besides the investment made in goods by foreign companies from the funds of British subjects, these subjects have been for some time in the practice of sending very great sums in gold and silver directly to China on their own account.  In a memorial presented to the Governor-General and Council, in March, 1782, it appears that the principal money lent by British subjects to one company of merchants in China then amounted to seven millions of dollars, about one million seven hundred thousand pounds sterling; and not the smallest particle of silver sent to China ever returns to India.  It is not easy to determine in what proportions this enormous sum of money has been sent from Madras or from Bengal; but it equally exhausts a country belonging to this kingdom, whether it comes from the one or from the other.