a manner far beyond the proportion of the enlargement
of terms. Of this abuse and contempt of orders a judgment may be formed
by the single contract for supplying the army with draught and carriage
bullocks. As it stood at the expiration of the contract in 1779, the
expense of that service was about one thousand three hundred pounds a
month. By the new contract, given away in September of that year, the
service was raised to the enormous sum of near six thousand pounds a
month. The monthly increase, therefore, being four thousand seven
hundred pounds, it constitutes a total increase of charges for the
Company, in the five years of the contract, of no less a sum than two
hundred and thirty-five thousand pounds. Now, as the former contract
was, without doubt, sufficiently advantageous, a judgment may be formed
of the extravagance of the present. The terms, indeed, pass the bounds
of all allowance for negligence and ignorance of office.

The case of Mr. Belli's contract for supplying provisions to the Fort is
of the same description; and what exceedingly increases the suspicion
against this profusion, in contracts made in direct violation of orders,
is, that they are always found to be given in favor of persons closely
connected with Mr. Hastings in his family, or even in his actual
service.

The principles upon which Mr. Hastings and Mr. Barwell justify this
disobedience, if admitted, reduce the Company's government, so far as it
regards the Supreme Council, to a mere patronage,--to a mere power of
nominating persons to or removing them from an authority which, is not
only despotic with regard to those who are subordinate to it, but in all
its acts entirely independent of the legal power which is nominally
superior. These are principles directly leading to the destruction of
the Company's government. A correspondent practice being established,
(as in this case of contracts, as well as others, it has been,) the
means are furnished of effectuating this purpose: for the common
superior, the Company, having no power to regulate or to support their
own appointments, nor to remove those whom they wish to remove, nor to
prevent the contracts from being made use of against their interest, all
the English in Bengal must naturally look to the next in authority; they
must depend upon, follow, and attach themselves to him solely; and thus
a party may be formed of the whole system of civil and military servants
for the support of th