ging the English into the immediate government of the country in its
most essential branches, extended and confirmed all the former means of
monopoly.

In the progress of these ruinous measures through all their details,
innumerable grievances were suffered by the native inhabitants, which
were represented in the strongest, that is, their true colors, in
England. Whilst the far greater part of the British in India were in
eager pursuit of the forced and exorbitant gains of a trade carried on
by power, contests naturally arose among the competitors: those who were
overpowered by their rivals became loud in their complaints to the Court
of Directors, and were very capable, from experience, of pointing out
every mode of abuse.

The Court of Directors, on their part, began, though very slowly, to
perceive that the country which was ravaged by this sort of commerce was
their own. These complaints obliged the Directors to a strict
examination into the real sources of the mismanagement of their concerns
in India, and to lay the foundations of a system of restraint on the
exorbitancies of their servants. Accordingly, so early as the year 1765,
they confine them to a trade only in articles of export and import, and
strictly prohibit them from all dealing in objects of internal
consumption. About the same time the Presidency of Calcutta found it
necessary to put a restraint upon themselves, or at least to make show
of a disposition (with which the Directors appear much satisfied) to
keep their own enormous power within bounds.

But whatever might have been the intentions either of the Directors or
the Presidency, both found themselves unequal to the execution of a plan
which went to defeat the projects of almost all the English in
India,--possibly comprehending some who were makers of the regulations.
For, as the complaint of the country or as their own interest
predominated with the Presidency, they were always shifting from one
course to the other; so that it became as impossible for the natives to
know upon what principle to ground any commercial speculation, from the
uncertainty of the law under which they acted, as it was when they were
oppressed by power without any color of law at all: for the Directors,
in a few months after they had given these tokens of approbation to the
above regulations in favor of the country trade, tell the Presidency,
"It is with concern we see in _every page_ of your Consultations
_restriction