on of a Mr. Benn, calling himself
his attorney, granted.

Your Committee, examining Mr. Higginson, late a member of the Board of
Trade, on that subject, were informed, that this contract, very soon
after the making, was generally understood at Calcutta to have been sold
to this Mr. Benn, but he could not particularize the sum for which it
had been assigned,--and that Mr. Benn had afterwards sold it to a Mr.
Young. By this transaction it appears clearly that the contract was
given to Mr. Sulivan for no other purpose than to supply him with a sum
of money; and the sale and re-sale seem strongly to indicate that the
reduction of the penalty, and the other favorable conditions, were not
granted for his ease in a business which he never was to execute, but to
heighten the value of the object which he was to sell. Mr. Sulivan was
at the time in Mr. Hastings's family, accompanied him in his progresses,
and held the office of Judge-Advocate.

The monopoly given for these purposes thus permanently secured, all
power of reformation cut off, and almost every precaution against fraud
and oppression removed, the Supreme Council found, or pretended to find,
that the commodity for which they had just made such a contract was not
a salable article,--and in consequence of this opinion, or pretence,
entered upon a daring speculation hitherto unthought of, that of sending
the commodity on the Company's account to the market of Canton. The
Council alleged, that, the Dutch being driven from Bengal, and the seas
being infested with privateers, this commodity had none, or a very dull
and depreciated demand.

Had this been true, Mr. Hastings's conduct could admit of no excuse. He
ought not to burden a falling market by long and heavy engagements. He
ought studiously to have kept in his power the means of proportioning
the supply to the demand. But his arguments, and those of the Council on
that occasion, do not deserve the smallest attention. Facts, to which
there is no testimony but the assertion of those who produce them in
apology for the ill consequences of their own irregular actions, cannot
be admitted. Mr. Hastings and the Council had nothing at all to do with
that business: the Court of Directors had wholly taken the management of
opium out of his and their hands, and by a solemn adjudication fixed it
in the Board of Trade. But after it had continued there some years, Mr.
Hastings, a little before his grant of the monopoly to Mr. Sul