he says, will give no cause of just complaint to private traders.  He adds, “I have no doubt but that they have hitherto provided investments, and it cannot turn to my interest to preclude them now, though I must ever think it my duty to combat the private views of individuals who set themselves up as competitors under that very body under whose license and indulgence only they can derive their privilege of trade:  all I contend for is the same influence my employers have ever had.”  He ends by declining any reply to any of their future references of this nature.

The whole of this extraordinary letter is inserted in the Appendix, No. 51,—­and Mr. Rouse’s minute of observations upon it in Appendix, No. 52, fully refuting the few pretexts alleged in that extraordinary performance in support of the trade by influence and authority.  Mr. Hollond, one of the Council, joined Mr. Rouse in opinion that a letter to the purport of that minute should be written; but they were overruled by Messrs. Purling, Hogarth, and Shakespeare, who passed a resolution to defer sending any reply to Mr. Hurst:  and none was ever sent.  Thus they gave countenance to the doctrine contained in that letter, as well as to the mischievous practices which must inevitably arise from the exercise of such power.  Some temporary and partial relief was given by the vigorous exertions of Mr. Rouse; but he shortly after removing from that government, all complaints were dropped.

It is remarkable, that, during the long and warm contest between the Company’s agents and the dealers of Dacca, the Board of Trade seem to have taken a decided part against the latter.  They allow some sort of justice in the complaints of the manufacturers with regard to low valuation, and other particulars; but they say, that, “although” (during the time of preemption) “it appears that the weavers were not allowed the same liberty of selling to individuals they before enjoyed, our opinion on the whole is, that these complaints have originated upon the premeditated designs of the delals [factors or brokers] to thwart the new mode of carrying on the Company’s business, and to render themselves necessary.”  They say, in another place, that there is no ground for the dissatisfactions and difficulties of the weavers:  “that they are owing to the delals, whose aim it is to be employed.”

This desire of being employed, and of rendering themselves necessary, in men whose only business it is to be employed in trade, is considered by the gentlemen of the board as no trivial offence; and accordingly they declare, “they have established it as an invariable rule, that, whatever deficiency there might be in the Dacca investment, no purchase of the manufactures of that quarter shall be made for account of the Company from private merchants.  We have passed this resolution, which we deem of importance, from a persuasion that private merchants are often induced to make advances for Dacca goods, not by the ordinary chance of sale, but merely from an expectation of disposing of them at an enhanced price to the Company, against whom a rivalship is by this manner encouraged”; and they say, “that they intend to observe the same rule with respect to the investment of other of the factories from whence similar complaints may come.”