ence, and the consequences which may
be made to arise from its sudden reformation. On laying open the trade,
the article of raw silk was instantly enhanced to the Company full
eighty per cent. The contract made for that commodity, wound off in the
Bengal method, which used to sell for less than six rupees, or thirteen
shillings, for two pounds' weight, arose to nine rupees, or near twenty
shillings, and the filature silk was very soon after contracted for at
fourteen.

The Presidency accounted for this rise by observing that the price had
before been _arbitrary_, and that the persons who purveyed for the
Company paid no more than "what was _judged_ sufficient for the
maintenance of the first providers." This fact explains more fully than
the most labored description can do the dreadful effects of the monopoly
on the cultivators. They had the _sufficiency_ of their maintenance
measured out by the judgment of those who were to profit by their labor;
and this measure was not a great deal more, by their own account, than
about two thirds of the value of that labor. In all probability it was
much less, as these dealings rarely passed through intermediate hands
without leaving a considerable profit. These oppressions, it will be
observed, were not confined to the Company's share, which, however,
covered a great part of the trade; but as this was an article permitted
to the servants, the same power of arbitrary valuation must have been
extended over the whole, as the market must be equalized, if any
authority at all is extended over it by those who have an interest in
the restraint. The price was not only raised, but in the manufactures
the quality was debased nearly in an equal proportion. The Directors
conceived, with great reason, that this rise of price and debasement of
quality arose, not from the effect of a free market, but from the
servants having taken that opportunity of throwing upon the market of
their masters the refuse goods of their own private trade at such
exorbitant prices as by mutual connivance they were pleased to settle.
The mischief was greatly aggravated by its happening at a time when the
Company were obliged to pay for their goods with bonds bearing an high
interest.

The perplexed system of the Company's concerns, composed of so many
opposite movements and contradictory principles, appears nowhere in a
more clear light. If trade continued under restraint, their territorial
revenues must suffer by c