the natives in general to distinguish, in the proceedings of the same persons, what was transacted on the Company’s account from what was done on their own; and it will ever be so difficult to draw this line of distinction, that as long as the Company does, directly or indirectly, aim at any advantage to itself in the purchase of any commodity whatever, so long will it be impracticable to prevent the servants availing themselves of the same privilege.

The servants, therefore, for themselves or for their employers, monopolized every article of trade, foreign and domestic:  not only the raw merchantable commodities, but the manufactures; and not only these, but the necessaries of life, or what in these countries habit has confounded with them,—­not only silk, cotton, piece-goods, opium, saltpetre, but not unfrequently salt, tobacco, betel-nut, and the grain of most ordinary consumption.  In the name of the country government they laid on or took off, and at their pleasure heightened or lowered, all duties upon goods:  the whole trade of the country was either destroyed or in shackles.  The acquisition of the Duanne, in 1765, bringing the English into the immediate government of the country in its most essential branches, extended and confirmed all the former means of monopoly.

In the progress of these ruinous measures through all their details, innumerable grievances were suffered by the native inhabitants, which were represented in the strongest, that is, their true colors, in England.  Whilst the far greater part of the British in India were in eager pursuit of the forced and exorbitant gains of a trade carried on by power, contests naturally arose among the competitors:  those who were overpowered by their rivals became loud in their complaints to the Court of Directors, and were very capable, from experience, of pointing out every mode of abuse.

The Court of Directors, on their part, began, though very slowly, to perceive that the country which was ravaged by this sort of commerce was their own.  These complaints obliged the Directors to a strict examination into the real sources of the mismanagement of their concerns in India, and to lay the foundations of a system of restraint on the exorbitancies of their servants.  Accordingly, so early as the year 1765, they confine them to a trade only in articles of export and import, and strictly prohibit them from all dealing in objects of internal consumption.  About the same time the Presidency of Calcutta found it necessary to put a restraint upon themselves, or at least to make show of a disposition (with which the Directors appear much satisfied) to keep their own enormous power within bounds.