If, therefore,
such a change was in agitation before the sailing of the ships, and yet
was concealed when it might have been communicated, the concealment is
censurable. It is not improbable that some change of the kind was made
or meditated before the sailing of the ships for Europe: for it is
hardly to be imagined that reasons wholly unlooked-for should appear for
setting aside a plan concerning the success of which the Council-General
seemed so very confident, that a new one should be proposed, that its
merits should be discussed among the moneyed men, that it should be
adopted in Council, and officially ready for transmission to Madras, in
twelve or thirteen days. In this perplexity of plan and of transmission,
the Court of Directors may have made an arrangement of their affairs on
the groundwork of the first scheme, which was officially and
authentically conveyed to them. The fundamental alteration of that plan
in India might require another of a very different kind in England,
which the arrangements taken in consequence of the first might make it
difficult, if not impossible, to execute.
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