Under the positive orders of the Company, the salt trade appears to have continued open from 1768 to 1772.  The act, indeed, contained an exception in favor of the Company, and left them a liberty of dealing in salt upon their own account.  But still this policy remained unchanged, and their orders unrevoked.  But in the year 1772, without any instruction from the Court of Directors indicating a change of opinion or system, the whole produce was again monopolized, professedly for the use of the Company, by Mr. Hastings.  Speaking of this plan, he says (letter to the Directors, 22d February, 1775):  “No new hardship has been imposed upon the salt manufacturers by taking the management of that article into the hands of government; the only difference is, that the profit which was before reaped by English gentlemen and by banians is now acquired by the Company.”  In May, 1766, the Directors had condemned the monopoly on any conditions whatsoever.  “At that time they thought it neither consistent with their honor nor their dignity to promote such an exclusive trade."[10] “They considered it, too, as disgraceful, and below the dignity of their present situation, to allow of such a monopoly, and that, were they to allow it under any restrictions, they should consider themselves as assenting and subscribing to all the mischiefs which Bengal had presented to them for four years past."[11]

Notwithstanding this solemn declaration, in their letter of 24th December, 1776, they approve the plan of Mr. Hastings, and say, “that the monopoly, on its present footing, can be no considerable grievance to the country,” &c.

This, however, was a rigorous monopoly.  The account given of it by General Clavering, Colonel Monson, and Mr. Francis, in their minute of 11th January, 1775, in which the situation of the molungees, or persons employed in the salt manufacture, is particularly described, is stated at length in the Appendix.  Mr. Hastings himself says, “The power of obliging molungees to work has been customary from time immemorial.”

Nothing but great and clear advantage to government could account for, and nothing at all perhaps could justify, the revival of a monopoly thus circumstanced.  The advantage proposed by its revival was the transferring the profit, which was before reaped by English gentlemen and banians, to the Company.  The profits of the former were not problematical.  It was to be seen what the effect would be of a scheme to transfer them to the latter, even under the management of the projector himself.  In the Revenue Consultations of September, 1776, Mr. Hastings said, “Many causes have since combined to reduce this article of revenue almost to nothing.  The plan which I am now inclined to recommend for the future management of the salt revenue differs widely from that which I adopted under different circumstances.”