he native brokers. In less than three
years these balances amounted to an immense sum,--a sum lost to the
Company, but existing in full force for every purpose of oppression. In
the amount of these balances almost every weaver in the country bore a
part, and consequently they were almost all caught in this snare. "They
are in general," says Mr. Rouse, in a letter to General Clavering,
delivered to your Committee, "a timid, helpless people; many of them
poor to the utmost degree of wretchedness; incapable of keeping
accounts; industrious as it were by instinct; unable to defend
themselves, if oppressed; and satisfied, if with continual labor they
derive from the fair dealing and humanity of their employer a moderate
subsistence for their families."

Such were the people who stood accused by the Company's agents as
_pretending_ grievances, in order to be excused the payment of their
balances. As to the commercial state of the province in general, Mr.
Rouse represents it "to be for those two years a perpetual scene of
complaint and disputation;--the Company's agents professing to pay
higher rates to weavers, whilst the Leadenhall sales showed an heavy
loss to the Company; the weavers have even travelled in multitudes to
prefer their complaints at the Presidency; the amount of the investment
comparatively small, with balances comparatively large, and, as I
understand, generally contested by the weavers; the native merchants,
called _delals_, removed from their influence, as prejudicial to the
Company's concerns; and European merchants complaining against undue
influence of the Company's commercial agents, in preventing the free
purchase even of those goods which the Company never takes."

The spirit of those agents will be fully comprehended from a state of
the proceedings before Mr. Rouse and Council, on the complaint of a Mr.
Cree, an English free merchant at Dacca, who had been twice treated in
the same injurious manner by the agents of Mr. Hurst, the Commercial
Chief at that place. On his complaint to the board of the seizure of the
goods, and imprisonment of his agents, Mr. Hurst was called upon for an
explanation. In return he informed them that he had sent to one of the
villages to inquire concerning the matter of fact alleged. The impartial
person sent to make this inquiry was the very man accused of the
oppressions into which he was sent to examine. The answer of Mr. Hurst
is in an high and determined tone. He doe