by investing the emoluments made in their stations, these emoluments are therefore inclusively authorized, and with them the practices from which they accrue.  All Parliamentary attempts to reform this system will be contradictory to its institution.  If, for instance, five hundred thousand pounds sterling annually be necessary for this kind of investment, any regulation which may prevent the acquisition of that sum operates against the investment which is the end proposed by the plan.

On this new scheme, (which is neither calculated for a future security nor for a present relief to the Company,) it is not visible in what manner the settlements in India can be at all upheld.  The gentlemen in employments abroad call for the whole produce of the year’s investment from Bengal; but for the payment of the counter-investment from Europe, which is for the far greater part sent out for the support of their power, no provision at all is made:  they have not, it seems, agreed that it should be charged to their account, or that any deduction should be made for it from the produce of their sales in Leadenhall Street.  How far such a scheme is preferable to the total suspension of trade your Committee cannot positively determine.  In all likelihood, extraordinary expedients were necessary; but the causes which induced this necessity ought to be more fully inquired into; for the last step in a series of conduct may be justifiable upon principles that suppose great blame in those which preceded it.

After your Committee had made the foregoing observations upon the plan of Mr. Hastings and his colleagues, transmitted to the Court of Directors, an extract of the Madras Consultations was a few days ago laid before us.  This extract contains a letter from the Governor-General and Council of Bengal to the Presidency of Fort St. George, which affords a very striking, though to your Committee by no means an unexpected, picture of the instability of their opinions and conduct.  On the 8th of April the servants had regularly formed and digested the above-mentioned plan, which was to form the basis for the investment of their own fortunes, and to furnish the sole means of the commercial existence of their masters.  Before the 10th of the following May, which is the date of their letter to Madras, they inform Lord Macartney that they had fundamentally altered the whole scheme.  “Instead,” say they, “of allowing the subscribers to retain an interest in the goods, they are to be provided entirely on account of the Company, and transported at their risk; and the subscribers, instead of receiving certificates payable out of the produce of the sales in Europe, are to be granted receipts, on the payment of their advances, bearing an interest of eight per cent per annum, until exchanged for drafts on the Court of Directors, payable 365 days after sight, at the rate of two shillings per current rupee,—­which drafts shall be granted in the proper time, of three eighths of the amount subscribed, on the 31st of December next, and the remaining five eighths on the 31st of December, 1783.”