hases of the Board of Trade.

CLOTHS, OR PIECE-GOODS.

The general system above stated, relative to the silk trade, must
materially have affected the manufactures of Bengal, merely as it was a
system of preference. It does by no means satisfactorily appear to your
Committee that the freedom held out by the Company's various orders has
been ever fully enjoyed, or that the grievances of the native merchants
and manufacturers have been redressed; for we find, on good authority,
that, at that very period at which it might be supposed that these
orders had their operation, the oppressions were in full vigor. They
appear to have fallen heaviest on the city of Dacca, formerly the great
staple for the finest goods in India,--a place once full of opulent
merchants and dealers of all descriptions.

The city and district of Dacca, before the prevalence of the East India
Company's influence and authority, manufactured annually to about three
hundred thousand pounds' value in cloths. In the year 1776 it had
fallen to about two hundred thousand, or two thirds of its former
produce. Of this the Company's demand amounted only to a fourth part,
that is, about fifty thousand pounds yearly. This was at that time
provided by agents for the Company, under the inspection of their
commercial servants. On pretence of securing an advantage for this
fourth part for their masters, they exerted a most violent and arbitrary
power over the whole. It was asserted, that they fixed the Company's
mark to such goods as they thought fit, (to all goods, as stated in one
complaint,) and disposed of them as they thought proper, excluding not
only all the native dealers, but the Dutch Company, and private English
merchants,--that they made advances to the weavers often beyond their
known ability to repay in goods within the year, and by this means,
having got them in debt, held them in perpetual servitude. Their
inability to keep accounts left them at the discretion of the agents of
the supreme power to make their balances what they pleased, and they
recovered them, not by legal process, but by seizure of their goods and
arbitrary imprisonment of their persons. One and the same dealer made
the advance, valued the return, stated the account, passed the judgment,
and executed the process.

Mr. Rouse, Chief of the Dacca Province, who struggled against those
evils, says, that in the year 1773 there were no balances due, as the
trade was then carried on by t