Affairs in India had in the mean time taken a very unfavourable turn. Even during the three years of the government of Mr. Verelst, a man of good judgment, of industry, and the purest intentions, a deficiency of funds was severely felt. This was not so much from a decline in the revenues, though Lord Clive had perhaps estimated them beyond their real amount, as from various other causes. The civil, military, and commercial expenses were daily increasing, when the steady hand that had checked their natural tendency to excess was removed. Immense sums were spent on building forts, barracks, &c.: the system of overcharge, and waste, from design or carelessness, again pervaded every branch of the service: the pay of the whole superior officers, civil and military, which had formerly been chiefly defrayed by the Salt Society, now fell directly on the revenues. The whole course of commerce, which had been disordered for some years, was disordered still more by the immense investments raised for the Company, not as formerly in exchange for bullion or silver imported from Europe, but from the revenues of the country itself, and with all the disadvantageous circumstances attending a political monopoly; for, while the exportation of bullion to China continued, even the sums formerly brought by foreigners had ceased; as the English, who had large private fortunes to remit home, supplied them liberally with funds in India, in exchange for bills on Europe, which prevented for a time the importation of the precious metals as merchandise. Clive's last act had been to withdraw the Europeans from out-stations, and to limit their interference with the internal trade; a measure which, however exceptionable it would be in a country where equal law existed, had become absolutely necessary where European delinquency had no adequate check, and where the grossest injustice could be practised by white traders and their agents, on the timid and defenceless natives. Soon after the Company had abolished the Salt Society, professedly on the general principle of hostility to monopolies, and to restore the trade to the natives, they published the order declaring the trade open to all, whether natives or Europeans; an act by which, contrary to their intentions, they in reality restored a more grievous and exceptionable monopoly than that which had existed before. Besides all this, the unfortunate and ill-conducted war on the Coromandel Coast, made it necessary to send large sums from Bengal to that quarter.