But their payments becoming less and less
regular, and the war carrying away all the supplies, at length Mr.
Hastings, in December, 1780, denounced sentence of approaching
dissolution to this system, and tells the Directors that "he bore too
high a respect for their characters to treat them with the management of
a preparatory and gradual introduction to an unpleasing report: that it
is the _only substantial_ information he shall have to convey in that
letter." In confidence, therefore, of their fortitude, he tells them
without ceremony, "that there will be a necessity of making a large
reduction, or possibly a _total suspension_, of their investment;--that
they had already been reduced to borrow near 700,000_l._ This resource,"
says he, "cannot last; it must cease at a certain period, and that
perhaps not far _distant_."
He was not mistaken in his prognostic. Loans now becoming the regular
resource for retrieving the investment, whose ruin was inevitable, the
Council enable the Board of Trade, in April, 1781, to grant certificates
for government bonds at eight per cent interest for about 650,000_l.
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