t
complaints arose among the natives, and among all the foreigners who
traded to Bengal. It must unquestionably have thrown the whole
mercantile system of the country into the greatest confusion. With
regard to the natives, no expedient was proposed for their relief. The
case was serious with respect to European powers. The Presidency plainly
represented to the Directors, that some agreement should be made with
foreign nations for providing their investment to a certain amount, or
that the deficiencies then subsisting must terminate in an open rupture
with France. The Directors, pressed by the large payments in England,
were not free to abandon their system; and all possible means of
diverting the manufactures into the Company's investment were still
anxiously sought and pursued, until the difficulties of the foreign
companies were at length removed by the natural flow of the fortunes of
the Company's servants into Europe, in the manner which will be stated
hereafter.

But, with all these endeavors of the Presidency, the investment sunk in
1769, and they were even obliged to pay for a part of the goods to
private merchants in the Company's bonds, bearing interest. It was plain
that this course of business could not hold. The manufacturers of
Bengal, far from being generally in a condition to give credit, have
always required advances to be made to them; so have the merchants very
generally,--at least, since the prevalence of the English power in
India. It was necessary, therefore, and so the Presidency of Calcutta
represented the matter, to provide beforehand a year's advance. This
required great efforts; and they were made. Notwithstanding the famine
in 1770, which wasted Bengal in a manner dreadful beyond all example,
the investment, by a variety of successive expedients, many of them of
the most dangerous nature and tendency, was forcibly kept up; and even
in that forced and unnatural state it gathered strength almost every
year. The debts contracted in the infancy of the system were gradually
reduced, and the advances to contractors and manufacturers were
regularly made; so that the goods from Bengal, purchased from the
territorial revenues, from the sale of European goods, and from the
produce of the monopolies, for the four years which ended with 1780,
when the investment from the surplus revenues finally closed, were never
less than a million sterling, and commonly nearer twelve hundred
thousand pounds. This mil