If the Company's servants had taken a new date from that
period, and if from thenceforward their conduct had corresponded with
the views of the legislature, it is probable that a review of the
transactions of remoter periods would not have been deemed necessary,
and that the remembrance of them would have been gradually effaced and
finally buried in oblivion. But the reports which your Committee have
already made have shown the House that from the year 1772, when those
proceedings commenced in Parliament on which the act of the following
year was founded, abuses of every kind have prevailed and multiplied in
Bengal to a degree unknown in former times, and are perfectly sufficient
to account for the present distress of the Company's affairs both at
home and abroad. The affair which your Committee now lays before the
House occupies too large a space in the Company's records, and is of too
much importance in every point of view, to be passed over.
Your Committee find that in March, 1775, a petition was presented to the
Governor-General and Council by a person called Coja Kaworke, an
Armenian merchant, resident at Dacca, (of which division Mr.
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