By the determination of Mr. Hurst, and the resolutions of the Board of Trade, it is much to be apprehended that the native mercantile interest must be exceedingly reduced.  The above-mentioned resolutions of the Board of Trade, if executed in their rigor, must almost inevitably accomplish its ruin.  The subsequent transactions are covered with an obscurity which your Committee have not been able to dispel.  All which they can collect, but that by no means distinctly, is, that, as those who trade for the Company in the articles of investment may also trade for themselves in the same articles, the old opportunities of confounding the capacities must remain, and all the oppressions by which this confusion has been attended.  The Company’s investments, as the General Letter from Bengal of the 20th of November, 1775, par. 28, states the matter, “are never at a stand; advances are made and goods are received all the year round.”  Balances, the grand instrument of oppression, naturally accumulate on poor manufacturers who are intrusted with money.  Where there is not a vigorous rivalship, not only tolerated, but encouraged, it is impossible ever to redeem the manufacturers from the servitude induced by those unpaid balances.

No such rivalship does exist:  the policy practised and avowed is directly against it.  The reason assigned in the Board of Trade’s letter of the 28th of November, 1778, for its making their advances early in the season is, to prevent the foreign merchants and private traders interfering with the purchase of their (the Company’s) assortments.  “They also refer to the means taken to prevent this interference in their letter of 26th January, 1779.”  It is impossible that the small part of the trade should not fall into the hands of those who, with the name and authority of the governing persons, have such extensive contracts in their hands.  It appears in evidence that natives can hardly trade to the best advantage, (your Committee doubt whether they can trade to any advantage at all,) if not joined with or countenanced by British subjects.  The Directors were in 1775 so strongly impressed with this notion, and conceived the native merchants to have been even then reduced to so low a state, that, notwithstanding the Company’s earnest desire of giving them a preference, they “doubt whether there are at this time in Bengal native merchants possessed of property adequate to such undertaking, or of credit and responsibility sufficient to make it safe and prudent to trust them with such sums as might be necessary to enable them to fulfil their engagements with the Company.”

The effect which so long continued a monopoly, followed by a preemption, and then by partial preferences supported by power, must necessarily have in weakening the mercantile capital, and disabling the merchants from all undertakings of magnitude, is but too visible.  However, a witness of understanding and credit does not believe the capitals of the natives to be yet so reduced as to disable them from partaking in the trade, if they were otherwise able to put themselves on an equal footing with Europeans.