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 passport 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 passport 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 assigned 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