It appears that the ill success of his former scheme did not deter him from recommending another.  Accordingly, in July, 1777, Mr. Hastings proposed, and it was resolved, that the salt mahls should be let, with the lands, to the farmers and zemindars for a ready-money rent, including duties,—­the salt to be left to their disposal.  After some trial of this method, Mr. Hastings thought fit to abandon it.  In September, 1780, he changed his plan a third time, and proposed the institution of a salt office; the salt was to be again engrossed for the benefit of the Company, and the management conducted by a number of salt agents.

From the preceding facts it appears that in this branch of the Company’s government little regard has been paid to the ease and welfare of the natives, and that the Directors have nowhere shown greater inconsistency than in their orders on this subject.  Yet salt, considering it as a necessary of life, was by no means a safe and proper subject for so many experiments and innovations.  For ten years together the Directors reprobated the idea of suffering this necessary of life to be engrossed on any condition whatsoever, and strictly prohibited all Europeans from trading in it.  Yet, as soon as they were made to expect from Mr. Hastings that the profits of the monopoly should be converted to their own use, they immediately declared that it “could be no considerable grievance to the country,” and authorized its continuance, until he himself, finding it produced little or nothing, renounced it of his own accord.  Your Committee are apprehensive that this will at all times, whatever flattering appearance it may wear for a time, be the fate of any attempt to monopolize the salt for the profit of government.  In the first instance it will raise the price on the consumer beyond its just level; but that evil will soon be corrected by means ruinous to the Company as monopolists, viz., by the embezzlement of their own salt, and by the importation of foreign salt, neither of which the government of Bengal may have power for any long time to prevent.  In the end government will probably be undersold and beaten down to a losing price.  Or, if they should attempt to force all the advantages from this article of which by every exertion it may be made capable, it may distress some other part of their possessions in India, and destroy, or at least impair, the natural intercourse between them.  Ultimately it may hurt Bengal itself, and the produce of its landed revenue, by destroying the vent of that grain which it would otherwise barter for salt.