In 1776, notwithstanding an engagement in the contract strictly prohibiting all compulsory culture of the poppy, information was given to a member of the Council-General, that fields green with rice had been forcibly ploughed up to make way for that plant,—­and that this was done in the presence of several English gentlemen, who beheld the spectacle with a just and natural indignation.  The board, struck with this representation, ordered the Council of Patna to make an inquiry into the fact; but your Committee can find no return whatsoever to this order.  The complaints were not solely on the part of the cultivators against the contractor.  The contractor for opium made loud complaints against the inferior collectors of the landed revenue, stating their undue and vexatious exactions from the cultivators of opium,—­their throwing these unfortunate people into prison upon frivolous pretences, by which the tenants were ruined, and the contractor’s advances lost.  He stated, that, if the contractor should interfere in favor of the cultivator, then a deficiency would be caused to appear in the landed revenues, and that deficiency would be charged on his interposition; he desired, therefore, that the cultivators of opium should be taken out of the general system of the landed revenue, and put under “his protection.”  Here the effect naturally to be expected from the clashing of inconsistent revenues appeared in its full light, as well as the state of the unfortunate peasants of Bengal between such rival protectors, where the ploughman, flying from the tax-gatherer, is obliged to take refuge under the wings of the monopolist.  No dispute arises amongst the English subjects which does not divulge the misery of the natives; when the former are in harmony, all is well with the latter.

This monopoly continuing and gathering strength through a succession of contractors, and being probably a most lucrative dealing, it grew to be every day a greater object of competition.  The Council of Patna endeavored to recover the contract, or at least the agency, by the most inviting terms; and in this eager state of mutual complaint and competition between private men and public bodies things continued until the arrival in Bengal of Mr. Stephen Sulivan, son of Mr. Sulivan, Chairman of the East India Company, which soon put an end to all strife and emulation.

To form a clear judgment on the decisive step taken at this period, it is proper to keep in view the opinion of the Court of Directors concerning monopolies, against which they had uniformly declared in the most precise terms.  They never submitted to them, but as to a present necessity; it was therefore not necessary for them to express any particular approbation of a clause in Mr. Mackenzie’s contract which was made in favor of their own liberty.  Every motive led them to preserve it.  On the security of that clause they could alone have suffered to pass over in silence (for they never approved) the grant of the contract which contained it for three years.  It must also be remembered that they had from the beginning positively directed that the contract should be put up to public auction; and this not having been done in Mr. Mackenzie’s case, they severely reprimanded the Governor-General and Council in their letter of the 23rd December, 1778.