Some benefits, which had been given to former contractors at the discretion of the board, were no longer held under that loose indulgence, but were secured to Mr. Sulivan by his contract.  Other indulgences, of a lesser nature, and to which no considerable objection could be made, were on the application of a Mr. Benn, calling himself his attorney, granted.

Your Committee, examining Mr. Higginson, late a member of the Board of Trade, on that subject, were informed, that this contract, very soon after the making, was generally understood at Calcutta to have been sold to this Mr. Benn, but he could not particularize the sum for which it had been assigned,—­and that Mr. Benn had afterwards sold it to a Mr. Young.  By this transaction it appears clearly that the contract was given to Mr. Sulivan for no other purpose than to supply him with a sum of money; and the sale and re-sale seem strongly to indicate that the reduction of the penalty, and the other favorable conditions, were not granted for his ease in a business which he never was to execute, but to heighten the value of the object which he was to sell.  Mr. Sulivan was at the time in Mr. Hastings’s family, accompanied him in his progresses, and held the office of Judge-Advocate.

The monopoly given for these purposes thus permanently secured, all power of reformation cut off, and almost every precaution against fraud and oppression removed, the Supreme Council found, or pretended to find, that the commodity for which they had just made such a contract was not a salable article,—­and in consequence of this opinion, or pretence, entered upon a daring speculation hitherto unthought of, that of sending the commodity on the Company’s account to the market of Canton.  The Council alleged, that, the Dutch being driven from Bengal, and the seas being infested with privateers, this commodity had none, or a very dull and depreciated demand.

Had this been true, Mr. Hastings’s conduct could admit of no excuse.  He ought not to burden a falling market by long and heavy engagements.  He ought studiously to have kept in his power the means of proportioning the supply to the demand.  But his arguments, and those of the Council on that occasion, do not deserve the smallest attention.  Facts, to which there is no testimony but the assertion of those who produce them in apology for the ill consequences of their own irregular actions, cannot be admitted.  Mr. Hastings and the Council had nothing at all to do with that business:  the Court of Directors had wholly taken the management of opium out of his and their hands, and by a solemn adjudication fixed it in the Board of Trade.  But after it had continued there some years, Mr. Hastings, a little before his grant of the monopoly to Mr. Sulivan, thought proper to reverse the decree of his masters, and by his own authority to recall it to the Council.  By this step he became responsible for all the consequences.