The difficulties at the outset will, however, be considerable.  For the long continuance of abuse has in some measure conformed the whole trade of the country to its false principle.  To make a sudden change, therefore, might destroy the few advantages which attend any trade, without securing those which must flow from one established upon sound mercantile principles, whenever such a trade can be established.  The fact is, that the forcible direction which the trade of India has had towards Europe, to the neglect, or rather to the total abandoning, of the Asiatic, has of itself tended to carry even the internal business from the native merchant.  The revival of trade in the native hands is of absolute necessity; but your Committee is of opinion that it will rather be the effect of a regular progressive course of endeavors for that purpose than of any one regulation, however wisely conceived.

After this examination into the condition of the trade and traders in the principal articles provided for the investment to Europe, your Committee proceeded to take into consideration those articles the produce of which, after sale in Bengal, is to form a part of the fund for the purchase of other articles of investment, or to make a part of it in kind.  These are, 1st, Opium,—­2ndly, Saltpetre,—­and, 3rdly, Salt.  These are all monopolized.

OPIUM.

The first of the internal authorized monopolies is that of opium.  This drug, extracted from a species of the poppy, is of extensive consumption in most of the Eastern markets.  The best is produced in the province of Bahar:  in Bengal it is of an inferior sort, though of late it has been improved.  This monopoly is to be traced to the very origin of our influence in Bengal.  It is stated to have begun at Patna so early as the year 1761, but it received no considerable degree of strength or consistence until the year 1765, when the acquisition of the Duanne opened a wide field for all projects of this nature.  It was then adopted and owned as a resource for persons in office,—­was managed chiefly by the civil servants of the Patna factory, and for their own benefit.  The policy was justified on the usual principles on which monopolies are supported, and on some peculiar to the commodity, to the nature of the trade, and to the state of the country:  the security against adulteration; the prevention of the excessive home consumption of a pernicious drug; the stopping an excessive competition, which by an over-proportioned supply would at length destroy the market abroad; the inability of the cultivator to proceed in an expensive and precarious culture without a large advance of capital; and, lastly, the incapacity of private merchants to supply that capital on the feeble security of wretched farmers.