onopoly more
forcible, more simple, or more equitable: no sort of plausible objection
could be made; and it was in vain to think of evading it. It was
therefore met with the confidence of avowed and determined injustice.
The Presidency of Calcutta openly denied to the prince the power of
protecting the trade of his subjects by the remission of his own duties.
It was evident that his authority drew to its period: many reasons and
motives concurred, and his fall was hastened by the odium of the
oppressions which he exercised voluntarily, as well as of those to which
he was obliged to submit.

When this example was made, Jaffier Ali Khan, who had been deposed to
make room for the last actor, was brought from penury and exile to a
station the terms of which he could not misunderstand. During his life,
and in the time of his children who succeeded to him, parts of the
territorial revenue were assigned to the Company; and the whole, under
the name of residency at the Nabob's court, was brought, directly or
indirectly, under the control of British subjects. The Company's
servants, armed with authorities delegated from the nominal government,
or attended with what was a stronger guard, the fame of their own power,
appeared as magistrates in the markets in which they dealt as traders.
It was impossible for the natives in general to distinguish, in the
proceedings of the same persons, what was transacted on the Company's
account from what was done on their own; and it will ever be so
difficult to draw this line of distinction, that as long as the Company
does, directly or indirectly, aim at any advantage to itself in the
purchase of any commodity whatever, so long will it be impracticable to
prevent the servants availing themselves of the same privilege.

The servants, therefore, for themselves or for their employers,
monopolized every article of trade, foreign and domestic: not only the
raw merchantable commodities, but the manufactures; and not only these,
but the necessaries of life, or what in these countries habit has
confounded with them,--not only silk, cotton, piece-goods, opium,
saltpetre, but not unfrequently salt, tobacco, betel-nut, and the grain
of most ordinary consumption. In the name of the country government
they laid on or took off, and at their pleasure heightened or lowered,
all duties upon goods: the whole trade of the country was either
destroyed or in shackles. The acquisition of the Duanne, in 1765,
brin