zardous. The
loss of interest on the advances, sometimes the loss of the
principal,--the expense of carriage from Patna to Calcutta,--the various
loadings and unloadings, and insurance (which, though borne by the
Company, is still insurance),--the engagement for the Ordnance, limited
in price, and irregular in payment,--the charge of agency and
management, through all its gradations and successions,--when all these
are taken into consideration, it may be found that the gain of the
Company as traders will be far from compensating their loss as
sovereigns. A body like the East India Company can scarcely, in any
circumstance, hope to carry on the details of such a business, from its
commencement to its conclusion, with any degree of success. In the
subjoined estimate of profit and loss, the value of the commodity is
stated at its invoice price at Calcutta. But this affords no just
estimate of the whole effect of a dealing, where the Company's charge
commences in the first rudiments of the manufacture, and not at the
purchase at the place of sale and valuation: for they [there?] may be
heavy losses on the value at which the saltpetre is estimated, when,
shipped off on their account, without any appearance in the account; and
the inquiries of your Committee to find the charges on the saltpetre
previous to the shipping have been fruitless.

BRITISH GOVERNMENT IN INDIA.

The other link by which India is bound to Great Britain is the
government established there originally by the authority of the East
India Company, and afterwards modified by Parliament by the acts of 1773
and 1780. This system of government appears to your Committee to be at
least as much disordered, and as much perverted from every good purpose
for which lawful rule is established, as the trading system has been
from every just principle of commerce. Your Committee, in tracing the
causes of this disorder through its effects, have first considered the
government as it is constituted and managed within itself, beginning
with its most essential and fundamental part, the order and discipline
by which the supreme authority of this kingdom is maintained.

The British government in India being a subordinate and delegated power,
it ought to be considered as a fundamental principle in such a system,
that it is to be preserved in the strictest obedience to the government
at home. Administration in India, at an immense distance from the seat
of the supreme authorit