Of all the articles of inland trade, that of salt was by much the most important. Its manufacture and trade had always, to a certain extent, been a monopoly, and was generally farmed or granted for a price, as a boon, to some favourite of the prince. Being a necessary of life, the demand was great and steady; and the capital employed in the trade being limited, the return on it was very large. It seems, under the frugal management of the natives, to have amounted to 200 per cent. After the deposition of Meer Jaffier in favour of Cossim Ali, planned, as we have seen, by Mr. Holwell, and imprudently executed by Mr. Vansittart in 1760, not long after Lord Clive's departure, the abuses of the English private trade in this and all its other branches, no longer sufficiently checked by the Governor, increased daily. Fortunes were amassed with singular rapidity; and such was the certainty of gain, that native capital flowed plentifully into the hands of the English merchant, who employed it himself, or permitted the trade of natives to be carried on covertly under his name. It could not be otherwise; for, while the native purchased the commodity at a high rate, paid an enormous duty, and was subject to all the expense and annoyance of frequent tolls, exactions, and stoppages, the English had become possessed of the principal salt works, paid no duty, and carried their wares at pleasure about the country for sale free from all demand or exaction whatever. Cossim Ali, a prince of great sagacity, and no mean financier, remonstrated with Mr. Vansittart on the abuses exercised by the English, and still more under their name, all over the country, to the oppression of his subjects, and the ruin of the public revenues; for not only did the Gomashtahs, and others in the service of the English, refuse payment of customs, but they insulted, and sometimes even insolently punished, on their own authority, the officers of the native Government. Mr. Vansittart, quite aware of the justice of the complaints, and not unwilling to remedy them, as far as the little power left in his hands by the rapacity of his Council, and his own want of vigour, would allow, at length entered into a treaty with the Subah[70], by which, among other stipulations, it was agreed, that the English should be allowed to engage in the inland trade, but subject to duties; and, in particular, were to be allowed to purchase salt, subject to a low duty of 9 per cent. only, and might transport it about the country, free from all the transit duties paid by the Subah's own subjects.[71]