What was done to
alleviate one complaint thus aggravating the other, and at length
proving pernicious to both, this trade on bonds likewise came to its
period.
Your Committee has reason to think that the bonds have since that time
sunk to a discount much greater even than what is now stated. The Board
of Trade justly denominates their resource for that year "the sinking
credit of a paper currency, laboring, from the uncommon scarcity of
specie, under disadvantages scarcely surmountable." From this they value
themselves "on having effected an _ostensible_ provision, at least for
that investment." For 1783 nothing appears even ostensible.
By this failure a total revolution ensued, of the most extraordinary
nature, and to which your Committee wish to call the particular
attention of the House. For the Council-General, in their letter of the
8th of April, 1782, after stating that they were disappointed in their
expectations, (how grounded it does not appear,) "thought that they
should be able to spare a sum to the Board of Trade,"--tell the Court of
Directors, "that they had adopted a _new_ method of keeping up the
investment, by private subscribers for eighty lacs of rupees, which will
find _cargoes for their ships_ on the usual terms of privilege, _at the
risk of the individuals_, and is to be repaid to them _according to the
produce of the sales in England_,"--and they tell the Directors, that "a
copy of the plan makes a number in their separate dispatches over land.
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