So long as that corporation continued to
receive a vast quantity of merchantable goods without any disbursement
for the purchase, so long it possessed wherewithal to continue a
dividend to pay debts, and to contribute to the state. But it must have
been always evident to considerate persons, that this vast extraction of
wealth from a country lessening in its resources in proportion to the
increase of its burdens was not calculated for a very long duration. For
a while the Company's servants kept up this investment, not by improving
commerce, manufacture, or agriculture, but by forcibly raising the
land-rents, on the principles and in the manner hereafter to be
described. When these extortions disappointed or threatened to
disappoint expectation, in order to purvey for the avarice which raged
in England, they sought for expedients in breaches of all the agreements
by which they were bound by any payment to the country powers, and in
exciting disturbances among all the neighboring princes. Stimulating
their ambition, and fomenting their mutual animosities, they sold to
them reciprocally their common servitude and ruin.
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