nd incredulous. It is not,
therefore, extraordinary that the Company should endeavor to ingratiate
themselves with the public by falling in with its prejudices. Thus they
were led to increase the grievance in order to allay the clamor. They
continued still, upon a larger scale, and still more systematically,
that plan of conduct which was the principal, though not the most
blamed, cause of the decay and depopulation of the country committed to
their care.

With that view, and to furnish a cheap supply of materials to the
manufactures of England, they formed a scheme which tended to destroy,
or at least essentially to impair, the whole manufacturing interest of
Bengal. A policy of that sort could not fail of being highly popular,
when the Company submitted itself as an instrument for the improvement
of British manufactures, instead of being their most dangerous rival, as
heretofore they had been always represented.

They accordingly notified to their Presidency in Bengal, in their letter
of the 17th of March, 1769, that "there was no branch of their trade
they more ardently wish to extend than that of raw silk." They
disclaim, however, all desire of employing compulsory measures for that
purpose, but recommended every mode of encouragement, and particularly
by augmented wages, "_in order to induce manufacturers of wrought silk
to quit that branch and take to the winding of raw silk_."

Having thus found means to draw hands from the manufacture, and
confiding in the strength of a capital drawn from the public revenues,
they pursue their ideas from the purchase of their manufacture to the
purchase of the material in its crudest state. "We recommend you to give
an _increased price_, if necessary, _so as to take that trade out of the
hands of other merchants and rival nations_." A double bounty was thus
given against the manufactures, both in the labor and in the materials.

It is very remarkable in what manner their vehement pursuit of this
object led the Directors to a speedy oblivion of those equitable
correctives before interposed by them, in order to prevent the mischiefs
which were apparent in the scheme, if left to itself. They could venture
so little to trust to the bounties given from the revenues a trade which
had a tendency to dry up their source, that, by the time they had
proceeded to the thirty-third paragraph of their letter, they revert to
those very compulsory means which they had disclaimed but three
pa