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.
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