THE WEALTH OF NATIONS.

597

arts of oppression they have reduced the population of severalof the Moluccas nearly to the number which is sufficient tosupply with fresh provisions and other necessaries of life theirown insignificant garrisons, and such of their ships as occa-sionally come there for a cargo of spices. Under the govern-ment even of the Portuguese , however, those islands are saidto have been tolerably well inhabited. The English com-pany havenotyet had time to establish in Bengal so perfectlydestructive a system. The plan of their government, how-ever, has had exactly the same tendency. It has not beenuncommon, I am well assured, for the chief, that is, the firstclerk of a factory, to order a peasant to plough up a rich fieldof poppies, and sow it with rice or some other grain. Thepretence was, to prevent a scarcity of provisions ; but the realreason, to give the chief an opportunity of selling at a betterprice a large quantity of opium which he happened then tohave upon hand. Upon other occasions the order has beenreversed; and a rich field of rice or other grain has beenploughed up, in order to make room for a plantation of pop-pies; when the chief foresaw that extraordinary profit waslikely to be made by opium. The servants of the companyhave upon several occasions attempted to establish in theirown favour the monopoly of some of the most importantbranches, not only of the foreign, but of the inland trade ofthe country, llad they been allowed to go on, it is impossiblethat they should not at some time or another have attemptedto restrain the production of the particular articles of whichthey had thus usurped the monopoly, not only to the quantitywhich they themselves could purchase, but to that which theycould expect to sell with such a profit as they might thinksufficient. In the course of a century or two, the policy ofthe English company would in this manner have probablyproved as completely destructive as that of the Dutch .

Nothing, however, can be moredirectly contrary to the realinterest of those companies, considered as the sovereign ofthe countries which they have conquered, than this destruc-tive plan. In almost all countries the revenue of the sove-reign is drawn from that of the people. The greater the re-venue of the people, therefore, the greater the annual produceof their land and labour, the more they can all'ord to the so-vereign. It is his interest, therefore, to increase as much aspossible that annual produce. But if this is the interest ofevery sovereign, it is peculiarly so ot one whose revenue like