It was on these calculations that the Commissioners appointed by the States of Holland founded their hopes of the future relief of the Company, and with these prospects they closed their report, the care and future fate of the Company devolving from that time chiefly on the Commissioners appointed at their recommendation to proceed to India, in order to carry into effect, on the spot, the reforms proposed. Of these new Commissioners, Mr. Nederburg, then first advocate to the Company, was appointed the chief. The Indian Commissioners sailed from Europe in the year 1791. At the Cape of Good Hope they made such changes and reforms as may be said to have fully effected the object of their commission. The importance, however, of the Cape being comparatively small, it is not necessary to enter into any detail of the measures adopted there. The more momentous part of their trust was undoubtedly to be discharged in India, where they arrived in 1793. If the talents of these Commissioners were to be estimated by the benefits which resulted from their labours, we may safely pronounce them to have been incompetent to the task they had undertaken; but such a criterion cannot with any justice be applied. A continuance of peace with Great Britain was of course reckoned upon in all their calculations, and war with that power broke out almost immediately afterwards. With regard to the abandonment of several forts and factories to the eastward, to which their attention had been particularly directed, the result of their deliberation and inquiry was, that the continuance of the Company's establishment on Celebes was indispensable for the protection of the Moluccas; that at Timor reductions had been made, in consequence of which the revenues covered the expenses; that after mature investigation the Japan trade was shewn to yield a nett profit of 200,000 florins; that with regard to the West Coast of Sumatra the revenues had been made to exceed the expenses, and the pepper collected in that neighbourhood left still some profit to the Company. With respect to the institution of public sales at Batavia for Japan copper, spices, and sugar, on the introduction of which it was supposed the establishments in Western India might be for the most part reduced, they were of opinion, after deliberating with the Council of India, and after a personal inquiry into the actual state of the private trade at Batavia, that chiefly for the want of an adequate means among the purchasers such sales were entirely impracticable, and that it would therefore be preferable, after making some partial reductions in the expense, to continue the establishment in Bengal and the coast of Coromandel, but that Cochin on the Malabar coast might, perhaps, be advantageously abandoned[7].