extraordinary nature, and to which your Committee wish to call the particular attention of the House. For the Council-General, in their letter of the 8th of April, 1782, after stating that they were disappoint. ed in their expectations, (how grounded it does not appear,)"thought that they should be able to spare a sum to the Board of Trade," - tell the Court of Directors, "that they had adopted a new method of keeping up the investment, by private subscribers for eighty lacs of rupees, which will find cargoes for their ships on the usual terms of privilege, at the risk of the individuals, and is to be repaid to them according to the produce of the sales in England," and they tell the Directors, that "a copy of the plan makes a number in their separate dispatches over land."

It is impossible, in reporting this revolution to the House, to avoid remarking with what fidelity Mr. Hastings and his Council have adhered to the mode of transmitting their accounts which your Committee found it necessary to mark and censure in their First Report. Its pernicious tendency is there fully set forth. They were peculiarly called on for a most accurate state of their affairs, in order to explain the necessity of having recourse to such a scheme, as well as for a full and correct account of the scheme itself. But they send only the above short minute by one. dispatch over land, whilst the copy of the plan itself, on which the Directors must form their judgment, is sent separately in another dispatch over land, which has never arrived. A third dispatch, which also contained the plan, was sent by a sea conveyance, and arrived late. The Directors have, for very obvious reasons, ordered, by a strict injunction, that they should send duplicates of all their dispatches by

every ship. The spirit of this rule, perhaps, ought to extend to every mode of conveyance. In this case, so far from sending a duplicate, they do not send even one perfect account. They announce a plan by one conveyance, and they send it by another conveyance, with other delays and other risks.

At length, at nearly four months' distance, the plan has been received, and appears to be substantially that which had been announced, but developing in the particulars many new circumstances of the greatest importance. By this plan it appears that the subscription, even in idea or pretence, is not for the use of the Company, but that the subscribers are united into a sort of society for the remitting their private fortunes: the goods, indeed, are said to be shipped on the Company's account, and they are directed to be sold on the same account, and at the usual periods of sales; but, after the payment of duties, and such other allowances as they choose to make, in the eleventh article they provide "that the remainder of the sales shall revert to the subscribers, and be declared to be their property, and divided in proportion to their respective shares." The compensation which they allow in this plan to their masters for their brokerage is, that, if, after deducting all the charges which they impose," the amount of the sales should be found to exceed two shillings and twopence for the current rupee of the invoice account, it shall be taken by the Company." For the management of this concern in Bengal they choose commissioners by their own authority. By the same authority they form them into a body, they put them under rules and regulations, and they empower them also to make regulations of their own. They remit, by the like authority, the

duties to which all private trade is subject; and they charge the whole concern with seven per cent, to be paid from the net produce of the sales in England, as a recompense to the commissioners: for this the commissioners contract to bear all the charges on the goods to the time of shipping.

The servants having formed this plan of trade, and a new commission for the conduct of it, on their private account, it is a matter of consideration to know who the commissioners are. They turn out to be the three senior servants of the Company's Board of Trade, who choose to take upon them to be the factors of others for large emoluments, whilst they receive salaries of two thousand pounds and fifteen hundred pounds a year from the Company. As the Com. pany have no other fund than the new investment from whence they are to be paid for the care of their servants' property, this commission and those salaries being to take place of their brokerage, they in effect render it very difficult, if not impossible, for them to derive advantage from their new occupation.

As to the benefit of this plan: besides preventing the loss which must happen from the Company's ships returning empty to Europe, and the stopping of all trade between India and England, the authors of it state, that it will "open a new channel of remittance, and abolish the practice, by precluding the necessity, of remitting private fortunes by foreign bottoms, and that it may lead to some permanent mode for remit tance of private fortunes, and of combining it with the regular provision of the Company's investment, — that it will yield some profit to the Company without risk, and the national gain will be the same as upon the regular trade."

As to the combination of this mode of remittance with the Company's investment, nothing can be affirmed concerning it until some satisfactory assurance can be held out that such an investment can ever be realized. Mr. Hastings and the gentlemen of the Council have not afforded any ground for such an expectation. That the Indian trade may become a permanent vehicle of the private fortunes of the Company's servants is very probable,—that is, as permanent as the means of acquiring fortunes in India; but that some profit will accrue to the Company is absolutely impossible. The Company are to bear all the charge outwards, and a very great part of that homewards; and their only compensation is the surplus commission on the sale of other people's goods. The nation will undoubtedly avoid great loss and detriment, which would be the inevitable consequence of the total cessation of the trade with Bengal and the ships returning without cargoes. But if this temporary expedient should be improved into a system, no occasional advantages to be derived from it would be. sufficient to balance the mischiefs of finding a great Parliamentary corporation turned into a vehicle for remitting to England the private fortunes of those for whose benefit the territorial possessions in India are in effect and substance under this project to be solely held.

By this extraordinary scheme the Company is totally overturned, and all its relations inverted. From being a body concerned in trade on their own account, and employing their servants as factors, the servants have at one stroke taken the whole trade into their own hands, on their own capital of 800,000l., at their own risk, and the Company are

become agents and factors to them, to sell by com mission their goods for their profit.

To enable your Committee to form some judgment upon the profit which may accrue to the Company from its new relation and employment, they directed. that an estimate should be made of the probable proceeds of an investment conducted on the principles of that intended to be realized for 1783. By this estimate, which is subjoined,* it appears to your Com

* Estimate of the Sale Amount and Net Proceeds in England of the Cargoes to be sent from Bengal, agreeable to the Plan received by Letter dated the 8th April, 1782.

This calculation supposes the eighty lac investments will be equal to the tonnage of five ships.

1. The sale amount is computed on an average of the sales of the two last years' imports.

2. The custom is computed on an average of what was paid on piecegoods and raw silk of said imports, adding additional imposts.

3. The ships going out of this season, (1782,) by which the above investment is expected to be sent home, are taken up at 477. 5s. per ton, for the homeward cargo; this charge amounts to 35,815 each ship; the additional wages to the men, which the Company pay, and a very small charge for demurrage, will increase the freight, &c., to 40,000l. per ship, agreeable to above estimate.

4. The duty of five per cent is charged by the Company on the gross sale amount of all private trade licensed to be brought from India: the amount of this duty is the only benefit the Company are likely to receive from the subscription investment.

5. This charge is likewise made on private trade goods, and is little, if anything, more than the real expense the Company are at on account of the same; therefore no benefit will probably arise to the Company from it on the sale of the said investment.

6. This is the sum which will probably be realized in England, and is only equal to 18. 5d. per rupee, on the eighty lacs subscribed.