f an absolute government. In this situation, a religious
abstinence from all illicit game was prescribed to men at nine thousand
miles' distance from the seat of the supreme authority.

Your Committee is far from meaning to justify, or even to excuse, the
oppressions and cruelties used by many in supplying the deficiencies of
their regular allowances by all manner of extortion; but many smaller
irregularities may admit some alleviation from thence. Nor does your
Committee mean to express any desire of reverting to the mode (contrived
in India, but condemned by the Directors) of rewarding the servants of
an higher class by a regulated monopoly. Their object is to point out
the deficiencies in the system, by which restrictions were laid that
could have little or no effect whilst want and power were suffered to be
united.

But the proceedings of the Directors at that time, though not altogether
judicious, were in many respects honorable to them, and favorable, in
the intention at least, to the country they governed. For, finding their
trading capital employed against themselves and against the natives, and
struggling in vain against abuses which were inseparably connected with
the system of their own preference in trade, in the year 1773 they came
to the manly resolution of setting an example to their servants, and
gave up all use of power and influence in the two grand articles of
their investment, silk and piece-goods. They directed that the articles
should be bought at an equal and public market from the native
merchants; and this order they directed to be published in all the
principal marts of Bengal.

Your Committee are clearly of opinion that no better method of purchase
could be adopted. But it soon appeared that in deep-rooted and
inveterate abuses the wisest principles of reform may be made to operate
so destructively as wholly to discredit the design, and to dishearten
all persons from the prosecution of it. The Presidency, who seemed to
yield with the utmost reluctance to the execution of these orders, soon
made the Directors feel their evil influence upon their own investment;
for they found the silk and cotton cloths rose twenty-five per cent
above their former price, and a further rise of forty per cent was
announced to them.

SILK.

What happened with regard to raw silk is still more remarkable, and
tends still more clearly to illustrate the effects of commercial
servitude during its unchecked exist