It seemed that the private trade would now be utterly crushed, and that the monopoly, protected by the whole strength of the royal prerogative, would be more profitable than ever.  But unfortunately just at this moment a quarrel arose between the agents of the Company in India and the Mogul Government.  Where the fault lay is a question which was vehemently disputed at the time, and which it is now impossible to decide.  The interlopers threw all the blame on the Company.  The Governor of Bombay, they affirmed, had always been grasping and violent; but his baronetcy and his military commission had completely turned his head.  The very natives who were employed about the factory had noticed the change, and had muttered, in their broken English, that there must be some strange curse attending the word Excellency; for that, ever since the chief of the strangers was called Excellency, every thing had gone to ruin.  Meanwhile, it was said, the brother in England had sanctioned all the unjust and impolitic acts of the brother in India, till at length insolence and rapine, disgraceful to the English nation and to the Christian religion, had roused the just resentment of the native authorities.  The Company warmly recriminated.  The story told at the India House was that the quarrel was entirely the work of the interlopers, who were now designated not only as interlopers but as traitors.  They had, it was alleged, by flattery, by presents, and by false accusations, induced the viceroys of the Mogul to oppress and persecute the body which in Asia represented the English Crown.  And indeed this charge seems not to have been altogether without foundation.  It is certain that one of the most pertinacious enemies of the Childs went up to the Court of Aurengzebe, took his station at the palace gate, stopped the Great King who was in the act of mounting on horseback, and, lifting a petition high in the air, demanded justice in the name of the common God of Christians and Mussulmans.169 Whether Aurengzebe paid much attention to the charges brought by infidel Franks against each other may be doubted.  But it is certain that a complete rupture took place between his deputies and the servants of the Company.  On the sea the ships of his subjects were seized by the English.  On land the English settlements were taken and plundered.  The trade was suspended; and, though great annual dividends were still paid in London, they were no longer paid out of annual profits.

Just at this conjuncture, while every Indiaman that arrived in the Thames was bringing unwelcome news from the East, all the politics of Sir Josiah were utterly confounded by the Revolution.  He had flattered himself that he had secured the body of which he was the chief against the machinations of interlopers, by uniting it closely with the strongest government that had existed within his memory.  That government had fallen; and whatever had leaned on the ruined fabric began to totter.  The bribes had been thrown