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THE NATURE AND CAUSES OF

measure at variance. The interest of those servants and de-pendants might so far predominate in the court of proprietors,as sometimes to dispose it to support the authors of depreda-tions which had been committed, in direct violation of itsown authority. With the majority of proprietors, the sup-port even of the authority of their own court might some-times be a matter of less consequence, than the support ofthose who had set that authority at defiance.

The regulations of 1773 , accordingly, did not put an endto the disorders of the company’s government in India . Not-withstanding that, during a momentary fit of good conduct,they had at one time collected, into the treasury of Calcutta ,more than three millions sterling; notwithstanding that theyhad afterward extended, either their dominion, or their de-predations over a vast accession of some of the richest andmost fertile countries in India ; all was wasted and destroy-ed. They found themselves altogether unprepared to stopor resist the incursion of llyder Ali; and, in consequence ofthose disorders, the company is now ( 1784 ) in greater dis-tress than ever; and in order to prevent immediate bank-ruptcy, is once more reduced to supplicate the assistance ofgovernment. Different plans have been proposed hy thedifferent parties in parliament, for the better management ofits affairs. And all those plans seem to agree in supposing,what was indeed always abundantly evident, that it is alto-gether unfit to govern its territorial possessions. Even thecompany itself seems to be convinced of its own incapacityso far, and seems, upon that account, willing to give themup to government.

With the right of possessing forts and garrisons in distantand barbarous countries, is necessarily connected the right ofmaking peace and war in those countries. The joint stockcompanies which have had the one right, have constantly ex-ercised the other, and have frequently had it expressly con-ferred upon them. How unjustly, how capriciously, howcruelly they have commonly exercised it, is too well knownfrom recent experience.

When a company of merchants undertake, at their own riskand expense, to establish a new trade with some remote andbarbarous nation, it may not be unreasonable to incorporatethem into a joint stock company, and to grant them, in caseof their success, a monopoly of the trade for a certain numberof years. It is the easiest and most natural way in which