s, limitations, prohibitions, affecting various articles of
trade_." On their side, the Presidency freely confess that these
monopolies of inland trade "were the foundation of all the bloodsheds,
massacres, and confusions which have happened of late in Bengal."

Pressed in this urgent manner, the Directors came more specifically to
the grievance, and at once annul all the passports with which their
servants traded without duties, holding out means of compensation, of
which it does not appear that any advantage was taken. In order that the
duties which existed should no longer continue to burden the trade
either of the servants or natives, they ordered that a number of
oppressive toll-bars should be taken away, and the whole number reduced
to nine of the most considerable.

When Lord Clive was sent to Bengal to effect a reformation of the many
abuses which prevailed there, he considered monopoly to be so inveterate
and deeply rooted, and the just rewards of the Company's servants to be
so complicated with that injustice to the country, that the latter could
not easily be removed without taking away the former. He adopted,
therefore, a plan for dealing in certain articles, which, as he
conceived, rather ought to be called "a regulated and restricted trade"
than a formal monopoly. By this plan he intended that the profits should
be distributed in an orderly and proportioned manner for the reward of
services, and not seized by each individual according to the measure of
his boldness, dexterity, or influence.

But this scheme of monopoly did not subsist long, at least in that mode
and for those purposes. Three of the grand monopolies, those of opium,
salt, and saltpetre, were successively by the Company taken into their
own hands. The produce of the sale of the two former articles was
applied to the purchase of goods for their investment; the latter was
exported in kind for their sales in Europe. The senior servants had a
certain share of emolument allotted to them from a commission on the
revenues. The junior servants were rigorously confined to salaries, on
which they were unable to subsist according to their rank. They were
strictly ordered to abstain from all dealing in objects of internal
commerce. Those of export and import were left open to young men without
mercantile experience, and wholly unprovided with mercantile capitals,
but abundantly furnished with large trusts of the public money, and with
all the powers o