distributed in shares according to their rank; the other was more
general. The terms of both loans were, that the risk of the voyage was
to be on account of _the Company_. The payment was to be in bills (at a
rate of exchange settled from the supercargoes at Canton) upon the same
Company. In whatever proportion the adventure should fail, either in the
ships not safely arriving in China or otherwise, in that proportion the
subscribers were to content themselves with the Company's bonds for
their money, bearing eight per cent interest. A share in this
subscription was thought exceeding desirable; for Mr. Hastings writes
from Benares, where he was employed in the manner already reported and
hereafter to be observed upon, requesting that the subscription should
be left open to his officers who were employed in the military
operations against Cheyt Sing; and accordingly three majors, seven
captains, twenty-three lieutenants, the surgeon belonging to the
detachment, and two civil servants of high rank who attended him, were
admitted to subscribe.

Bills upon Europe without interest are always preferred to the Company's
bonds, even at the high interest allowed in India. They are, indeed, so
greedily sought there, and (because they tend to bring an immediate and
visible distress in Leadenhall Street) so much dreaded here, that by an
act of Parliament the Company's servants are restricted from drawing
bills beyond a certain amount upon the Company in England. In Bengal
they have been restrained to about one hundred and eighty thousand
pounds annually. The legislature, influenced more strongly with the same
apprehensions, has restrained the Directors, as the Directors have
restrained their servants, and have gone so far as to call in the power
of the Lords of the Treasury to authorize the acceptance of any bills
beyond an amount prescribed in the act.

The false principles of this unmercantile transaction (to speak of it in
the mildest terms) were too gross not to be visible to those who
contrived it. That the Company should be made to borrow such a sum as
two hundred thousand pounds[7] at eight per cent, (or terms deemed by
the Company to be worse,) in order first to buy a commodity represented
by themselves as depreciated in its ordinary market, in order afterwards
to carry one half of it through a circuitous trading voyage, depending
for its ultimate success on the prudent and fortunate management of two
or three sales, and