m, but as to a present
necessity; it was therefore not necessary for them to express any
particular approbation of a clause in Mr. Mackenzie's contract which was
made in favor of their own liberty. Every motive led them to preserve
it. On the security of that clause they could alone have suffered to
pass over in silence (for they never approved) the grant of the contract
which contained it for three years. It must also be remembered that they
had from the beginning positively directed that the contract should be
put up to public auction; and this not having been done in Mr.
Mackenzie's case, they severely reprimanded the Governor-General and
Council in their letter of the 23rd December, 1778.

The Court of Directors were perfectly right in showing themselves
tenacious of this regulation,--not so much to secure the best
practicable revenue from their monopoly whilst it existed, but for a
much more essential reason, that is, from the corrective which this
method administered to that monopoly itself: it prevented the British
contractor from becoming doubly terrible to the natives, when they
should see that his contract was in effect _a grant_, and therefore
indicated particular favor and private influence with the ruling members
of an absolute government.

On the expiration of Mr. Mackenzie's term, and but a few months after
Mr. Sulivan's arrival, the Governor-General, as if the contract was a
matter of patronage, and not of dealing, pitched upon Mr. Sulivan as the
most proper person for the management of this critical concern. Mr.
Sulivan, though a perfect stranger to Bengal, and to that sort and to
all sorts of local commerce, made no difficulty of accepting it. The
Governor-General was so fearful that his true motives in this business
should be mistaken, or that the smallest suspicion should arise of his
attending to the Company's orders, that, far from putting up the
contract (which, on account of its known profits, had become the object
of such pursuit) to _public auction_, he did not wait for receiving so
much as a _private proposal_ from Mr. Sulivan. The Secretary perceived
that in the rough draught of the contract the old recital of a proposal
to the board was inserted as a matter of course, but was contrary to the
fact; he therefore remarked it to Mr. Hastings. Mr. Hastings, with great
indifference, ordered that recital to be _omitted_; and the omission,
with the remark that led to it, has, with the same easy ind