e consideration.

In no affair has the connection between servants abroad and persons in
power among the proprietors of the India Company been more discernible
than in this. But if such confederacies, cemented by such means, are
suffered to pass without due animadversion, the authority of Parliament
must become as inefficacious as all other authorities have proved to
restrain the growth of disorders either in India or in Europe.

SALT.

The reports made by the two committees of the House which sat in the
years 1772 and 1773 of the state and conduct of the inland trade of
Bengal up to that period have assisted the inquiries of your Committee
with respect to the third and last article of monopoly, viz., that of
salt, and made it unnecessary for them to enter into so minute a detail
on that subject as they have done on some others.

Your Committee find that the late Lord Clive constantly asserted that
the salt trade in Bengal had been a monopoly time immemorial,--that it
ever was and ever must be a monopoly,--and that Coja Wazid, and other
merchants long before him, had given to the Nabob and his ministers two
hundred thousand pounds per annum for the exclusive privilege. The
Directors, in their letter of the 24th December, 1776, paragraph 76,
say, "that it has ever been in a great measure an exclusive trade."

The Secret Committee report,[8] that under the government of the Nabobs
the duty on salt made in Bengal was two and an half per cent paid by
Mussulmen, and five per cent paid by Gentoos. On the accession of Mir
Cassim, in 1760, the claim of the Company's servants to trade in salt
duty-free was first avowed. Mr. Vansittart made an agreement with him by
which the duties should be fixed at nine per cent. The Council annulled
the agreement, and reduced the duty to two and an half per cent. On this
Mir Cassim ordered that no customs or duties whatsoever should be
collected for the future. But a majority of the Council (22nd March,
1763) resolved, that the making the exemption general was a breach of
the Company's privileges, and that the Nabob should be positively
required to recall it, and collect duties as before from the country
merchants, and all other persons who had not the protection of the
Company's _dustuck_. The Directors, as the evident reason of the thing
and as their duty required, disapproved highly of these transactions,
and ordered (8th February, 1764) _a final and effectual stop to be put
to the i