it was soon exported in much
smaller quantities by any other nation. A new way of supplying the
market of Europe, by means of the British power and influence, was
invented: a species of trade (if such it may be called) by which it is
absolutely impossible that India should not be radically and
irretrievably ruined, although our possessions there were to be ordered
and governed upon principles diametrically opposite to those which now
prevail in the system and practice of the British company's
administration.

[Sidenote: Investments.]

A certain portion of the revenues of Bengal has been for many years set
apart to be employed in the purchase of goods for exportation to
England, and this is called the _Investment_. The greatness of this
investment has been the standard by which the merit of the Company's
principal servants has been too generally estimated; and this main cause
of the impoverishment of India has been generally taken as a measure of
its wealth and prosperity. Numerous fleets of large ships, loaded with
the most valuable commodities of the East, annually arriving in England,
in a constant and increasing succession, imposed upon the public eye,
and naturally gave rise to an opinion of the happy condition and growing
opulence of a country whose surplus productions occupied so vast a space
in the commercial world. This export from India seemed to imply also a
reciprocal supply, by which the trading capital employed in those
productions was continually strengthened and enlarged. But the payment
of a tribute, and not a beneficial commerce to that country, wore this
specious and delusive appearance.

[Sidenote: Increase of expenses.]

The fame of a great territorial revenue, exaggerated, as is usual in
such cases, beyond even its value, and the abundant fortunes of the
Company's officers, military and civil, which flowed into Europe with a
full tide, raised in the proprietors of East India stock a premature
desire of partaking with their servants in the fruits of that splendid
adventure. Government also thought they could not be too early in their
claims for a share of what they considered themselves as entitled to in
every foreign acquisition made by the power of this kingdom, through
whatever hands or by whatever means it was made. These two parties,
after some struggle, came to an agreement to divide between them the
profits which their speculation proposed to realize in England from the
territorial revenu