e these were "to effect a
complete repair, which could hardly be concluded in one season, and the
subsequent expense would be but trifling."

Notwithstanding which, the said Warren Hastings urged and prevailed upon
the Council to allow in the first year the full amount proposed by Mr.
Kinlock in his estimate of the necessary repairs, and did burden the
Company with what he must have deemed to be, for the greater part, an
unnecessary expense of 80,000 rupees per annum for four years.

That the permission granted to Mr. Frazer to make dobunds, or new and
additional embankments in aid of the old ones, whenever he should judge
them necessary, at the charge of government, (the said charge to be
verified by the oath of the said Frazer, without any voucher,) was a
power very much to be suspected, and very improper to be intrusted to a
contractor who had already covenanted to keep the old pools in perfect
repair, and to construct new ones wherever the old pools had been
broken down and washed away, or where the course of the rivers might
have rendered new ones necessary, in consideration of the great sums
stipulated to be paid to him by the government.

That the grant of the foregoing contracts, and the permission afterwards
annexed to the second of the said grants, become much more reprehensible
from a consideration of the circumstances of the person to whom such a
grant was made.

That the due performance of the service required local knowledge and
experience, which the said Archibald Frazer, being an officer in the
Supreme Court of Justice, could not have possessed.

XII.--CONTRACTS FOR OPIUM.

That it appears that the opium produced in Bengal and Bahar is a
considerable and lucrative article in the export trade of those
provinces; that the whole produce has been for many years monopolized
either by individuals or by the government; that the Court of Directors
of the East India Company, in consideration of the hardship imposed on
the native owners and cultivators of the lands, who were deprived of
their natural right of dealing with many competitors, and compelled to
sell the produce of their labor to a single monopolist, did authorize
the Governor-General and Council to give up that commodity as an article
of commerce.

That, while the said commodity continued to be a monopoly for the
benefit of government, and managed by a contractor, the contracts for
providing it were subject to the Company's fundamental