CHAP. 9. BOOK IV acrimonious debates, the powers demanded for an officer of the Crown were condemned in a Court of 1770. Proprietors; and the ministers were not disposed to enforce, by any violent procedure, the acceptance of their terms. The Company would agree to sanction the interference of the officer commanding the ships of the King only within the Gulf of Persia, where they were embroiled with some of the neighbouring chiefs; the demand of two ships of the line for the Bay of Bengal was suspended; and the legal objection to the commission of the supervisors was withdrawn. In this manner, at the present conjuncture, was the dispute between the Government and the Company compromised. Two frigates, beside the squadron for the Gulf of Persia, were ordered upon Indian service. In one of them the supervisors took their passage. Their fate was remarkable. The vessel which carried them never reached her port; nor was any intelligence of her or her passengers ever received. Mr. Cartier assumed the government of Bengal at the beginning of the year 1770. The first year of his administration was distinguished by one of those dreadful famines which so often afflict the provinces of India; a calamity by which more than a third of the inhabitants of Bengal were computed to have been destroyed.1 On the 10th of March, 1770, the Nabob Syef ad by Governor Johnstone. Printed for W. Nicholl, 1769;” “A Letter to the Proprietors of East India Stock, relative to some Propositions intended to be moved at the next General Court, on Wednesday the 12th of July." Printed as above, 1769. Letter of the Governor and Council to the Directors, 3rd Nov. 1772. СНАР. 9. Dowla died of the small-pox; and his brother BOOK IV Mubarek ad Dowla, a minor, was appointed to occupy his station. The President and Council 1770. made with him the same arrangements, and afforded the same allowance for the support of his family and dignity, as had been established in the time of his predecessor. But this agreement was condemned in very unceremonious terms by the Directors. "When we advert," say they, "to the encomiums you have passed on your own abilities and prudence, and on your attention to the Company's interest (in the expostulations you have thought proper to make on our appointment of commissioners to superintend our general affairs in India), we cannot but observe with astonishment, that an event of so much importance as the death of the Nabob Syef al Dowla, and the establishment of a successor in so great a degree of non-age, should not have been attended with those advantages for the Company, which such a circumstance offered to your view.-Convinced, as we are, that an allowance of sixteen lacks per annum will be sufficient for the support of the Nabob's state and rank, while a minor, we must consider every addition thereto as so much to be wasted on a herd of parasites and sycophants, who will continually surround him; or at least be hoarded up, a consequence still more pernicious to the Company. You are therefore, during the non-age of the Nabob, to reduce his annual stipend to sixteen lacks of rupees." By the last regulations of the Directors, the inland 1 General Letter to Bengal, 10th April, 1771. СНАР. 9. BOOK IV trade in salt, beetel-nut, and tobacco, was reserved to the natives, and Europeans were excluded from it. 1771. By a letter of theirs, however, dated the 23d of March, 1770, it was commanded to be laid open to all persons, Europeans as well as natives, but without any privileges to their countrymen or servants beyond what were enjoyed by natives and other subjects. These regulations were promulgated on the 12th of December. In the mean time financial difficulties were every day becoming more heavy and oppressive. On the 1st of January, 1771, when the President and Council at Fort William had received into their treasury 95,43,855 current rupees, for which they had granted bills on the Court of Directors, the cash remaining in it was only 35,42,761 rupees. At the same period the amount of bond debts in Bengal was 612,6281. And at the beginning of the following year it had swelled to 1,039,4781. Notwithstanding the intelligence which the Directors had received of the inadequacy of their revenues, and the accumulation of their debts in all parts of India; and notwithstanding their knowledge of the great amount of bills drawn upon them, for which they were altogether unable to provide, they signalized their rapacity on the 26th of September, 1770, by coming to a resolution for recommending it to the General Court, to avail themselves of the permission accorded in the late act, by making a dividend at the rate of twelve per cent. per annum. The approba On the tion of the General Court was unanimous. СНАР. 9. 1772. to the General Court an augmentation of the dividend BOOK IV to six and a quarter per cent. for the six months respectively ensuing approved in the General Court, by ninety-four voices against five in the first instance, and 374 against thirty in the second. On the 17th of March, 1772, the Directors again resolved to recommend a dividend of six and a quarter per cent. for the current half year, which the Court of Proprietors in a similar manner confirmed. These desperate proceedings hurried the affairs of the Company to a crisis. On the 8th of July, on an estimate of cash for the next three months, that is, of the payments falling due, and the cash and receipts which were applicable to meet them, there appeared a deficiency of no less than 1,293,000l. On the 15th of July the Directors were reduced to the necessity of applying to the Bank for a loan of 400,000l. On the 29th of July they applied to it for an additional loan of 300,000l. of which the Bank was prevailed upon to advance only 200,000l. And on the 10th of August the Chairman and Deputy waited upon the Minister to represent to him the deplorable state of the Company, and the necessity of being supported by a loan of at least one million from the public.' The glorious promises which had been so confidently made of unbounded riches from India, their total failure, the violent imputations of corrupt and erroneous conduct which the Directors and the agents of their government mutually cast upon one another, had, previous to this disclosure, raised a great fer For the details and documents relative to this curious part of the history of the Company, see the Eighth Report of the Committee of Secrecy, 1773. CHAP. 9. BOOK IV ment in the nation, the most violent suspicions of extreme misconduct on the part of the Company and their servants, and a desire for some effectual interference on the part of the legislature. In the King's 1772. speech, on the 21st of January, at the opening of the preceding session, it had been intimated that one branch of the national concerns which, "as well from remoteness of place, as from other circumstances, was peculiarly liable to abuses, and exposed to danger, might stand in need of the interposition of the legislature, and require new laws either for supplying defects or remedying disorders." On the 30th of March a motion was made by the Deputy Chairman for leave to bring in a bill for the better regulation of the Company's servants, and for improving the administration of justice in India. The grand evil of which the Directors complained was the want of powers to inflict upon their servants adequate punishment either for disobedience of orders, or any other species of misconduct. The Charter of Justice, granted in 1753, empowered the Mayor's Court of Calcutta, which it converted into a Court of Record, to try all civil suits arising between Europeans, within the town or factory of Calcutta, or the factories dependent upon it: it also constituted the President and Council a Court of Record, to receive and determine appeals from the Mayors; it further erected them into Justices of the Peace, with power to hold quarter sessions; and into Commissioners of oyer and terminer, and general gaol-delivery, for the trying and punishing of all offences, high treason excepted, committed within the limits of Calcutta and its dependent factories. This extent of jurisdic |