re not mistaken; for, upon
an inquiry instituted soon after, it was found that Cantu Babu, the
banian or native steward and manager to Mr. Hastings, (late President,)
held two of these contracts in his own name and that of his son for
considerably more than 150,000_l._ This discovery brought on a
prohibition from the Court of Directors of that suspicious and dangerous
dealing in the stewards of persons in high office. The same man held
likewise farms to the amount of 140,000_l._ a year of the landed
revenue, with the same suspicious appearance, contrary to the
regulations made under Mr. Hastings's own administration.

In the mortifying dilemma to which the Directors found themselves
reduced, whereby the ruin of the revenues either by the freedom or the
restraint of trade was evident, they considered the first as most rapid
and urgent, and therefore once more revert to the system of their
ancient preemption, and destroy that freedom which they had so lately
and with so much solemnity proclaimed, and that before it could be
abused or even enjoyed. They declare, that, "unwilling as we are to
return to _the former coercive system_ of providing an investment, or to
abridge that freedom of commerce which has been so lately established in
Bengal, yet at the same time finding it our indispensable duty to strike
at the _root_ of an evil which has been so severely felt by the Company,
and which can no longer be supported, we hereby direct that all persons
whatever in the Company's service, _or under our protection_, be
absolutely prohibited, by public advertisement, from trading in any of
those articles which compose our investment, directly or indirectly,
except on account of and for the East India Company, until their
investment is completed."

As soon as this order was received in Bengal, it was construed, as
indeed the words seemed directly to warrant, to exclude all natives as
well as servants from the trade, until the Company was supplied. The
Company's preemption was now authoritatively reestablished, and some
feeble and ostensible regulations were made to relieve the weavers who
might suffer by it. The Directors imagined that the reestablishment of
their coercive system would remove the evil which fraud and artifice had
grafted upon one more rational and liberal. But they were mistaken; for
it only varied, if it did so much as vary, the abuse. The servants might
as essentially injure their interest by a direct exercise o