rd time, and proposed the
institution of a _salt office_; the salt was to be again engrossed for
the benefit of the Company, and the management conducted by a number of
salt agents.

From the preceding facts it appears that in this branch of the Company's
government little regard has been paid to the ease and welfare of the
natives, and that the Directors have nowhere shown greater inconsistency
than in their orders on this subject. Yet salt, considering it as a
necessary of life, was by no means a safe and proper subject for so many
experiments and innovations. For ten years together the Directors
reprobated the idea of suffering this necessary of life to be engrossed
on _any condition whatsoever_, and strictly prohibited all Europeans
from trading in it. Yet, as soon as they were made to expect from Mr.
Hastings that the profits of the monopoly should be converted to their
own use, they immediately declared that it "could be no considerable
grievance to the country," and authorized its continuance, until he
himself, finding it produced little or nothing, renounced it of his own
accord. Your Committee are apprehensive that this will at all times,
whatever flattering appearance it may wear for a time, be the fate of
any attempt to monopolize the salt for the profit of government. In the
first instance it will raise the price on the consumer beyond its just
level; but that evil will soon be corrected by means ruinous to the
Company as monopolists, viz., by the embezzlement of their own salt, and
by the importation of foreign salt, neither of which the government of
Bengal may have power for any long time to prevent. In the end
government will probably be undersold and beaten down to a losing price.
Or, if they should attempt to force all the advantages from this article
of which by every exertion it may be made capable, it may distress some
other part of their possessions in India, and destroy, or at least
impair, the natural intercourse between them. Ultimately it may hurt
Bengal itself, and the produce of its landed revenue, by destroying the
vent of that grain which it would otherwise barter for salt.

Your Committee think it hardly necessary to observe, that the many
changes of plan which have taken place in the management of the salt
trade are far from honorable to the Company's government,--and that,
even if the monopoly of this article were a profitable concern, it
should not be permitted. Exclusive of the genera