ecause the greater part of the capital of all these
companies, and perhaps the whole capital of some of them, is furnished
exactly as the British is, out of the revenues of the country. The civil
and military servants of the English East India Company being
restricted in drawing bills upon Europe, and none of them ever making or
proposing an establishment in India, a very great part of their
fortunes, well or ill gotten, is in all probability thrown, as fast as
required, into the cash of these companies.

In all other countries, the revenue, following the natural course and
order of things, arises out of their commerce. Here, by a mischievous
inversion of that order, the whole foreign maritime trade, whether
English, French, Dutch, or Danish, arises from the revenues; and these
are carried out of the country without producing anything to compensate
so heavy a loss.

[Sidenote: Foreign companies' investments.]

Your Committee have not been able to discover the entire value of the
investment made by foreign companies. But, as the investment which the
English East India Company derived from its revenues, and even from its
public credit, is for the year 1783 to be wholly stopped, it has been
proposed to private persons to make a subscription for an investment on
their own account. This investment is to be equal to the sum of
800,000_l._ Another loan has been also made for an investment on the
Company's account to China of 200,000_l._ This makes a million; and
there is no question that much more could be readily had for bills upon
Europe. Now, as there is no doubt that the whole of the money remitted
is the property of British subjects, (none else having any interest in
remitting to Europe,) it is not unfair to suppose that a very great
part, if not the whole, of what may find its way into this new channel
is not newly created, but only diverted from those channels in which it
formerly ran, that is, the cash of the foreign trading companies.

[Sidenote: Of the silver sent to China.]

Besides the investment made in goods by foreign companies from the funds
of British subjects, these subjects have been for some time in the
practice of sending very great sums in gold and silver directly to China
on their own account. In a memorial presented to the Governor-General
and Council, in March, 1782, it appears that the principal money lent by
British subjects to one company of merchants in China then amounted to
seven millions of