These principles, and the correspondent practices, leave the India
Company without any security that all the leases of the lands of Bengal
may not have been disposed of, under that administration which made the
five years' settlement in 1772, in the same manner and for the same
purpose.
To enable the House to judge how far this apprehension may be founded,
it will be proper to state, that Mr. Nicholas Grueber, who preceded Mr.
Barwell in the Chiefship of Dacca, in a letter dated 29th of April,
1775, declares that he paid to the Committee of Circuit twelve thousand
rupees as their profit on a single salt farm,--which sum, he says, "I
paid the Committee at their request, before their departure from Dacca,
and reimbursed myself out of _the advances_ directed to be issued for
the provision of the salt." Thus one illicit and mischievous transaction
always leads to another; and the irregular farming of revenue brings on
the misapplication of the commercial advances.
Mr. Barwell professes himself to be sensible "_that a wish to add to his
fortune may possibly have warped his judgment_, and that _he rather
chooses to admit an error than deny a fact_.
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