Not long after it began its operations, letters from the Court of Directors reached Bengal, disapproving of the plan of the first year's Society, and commanding the trade to be thrown open, and left entirely to the natives. In coming to this resolution, they were not so much influenced by any views of the particular merits or demerits of the new plan itself, as by consideration of the mischiefs which had for several years attended the general system of internal trade carried on by the English gentlemen with a high hand, free of duties. Their orders, repeatedly sent out, to pay the legal duties to the Nabob, and to keep within the meaning of the Emperor's firman, had been totally neglected, or provokingly evaded. Repeated revolutions had been the consequence, and immense suffering to the country. "We are fully sensible," say the Court of Directors[82], "that these innovations, and illegal traffic, laid the foundation of all the bloodshed, massacres, and confusion which have happened of late years. We cannot suffer ourselves to indulge a thought towards the continuance of them, upon any conditions whatsoever. No regulations can, in our opinion, be formed, that can be effectual to prevent the like consequences which we have seen." They desire, however, that the duties, as forming part of the revenues of Bengal, should not be abolished. In a letter of the same date, to Lord Clive, the Directors, after bestowing the greatest and most merited praise on the penetration with which he had at once discerned their true interest in every branch of their concerns; the rapidity with which he had restored order, peace, and tranquillity; and the integrity which governed all his actions, proceed to give their resolutions on the inland trade. "The vast fortunes," they observe, "acquired in the inland trade have been obtained by a scene of the most tyrannic and oppressive conduct that ever was known, in any age or country. We have been uniform in our sentiments and orders on this subject, from the first knowledge we had of it; and your Lordship will not, therefore, wonder, after the fatal experience we had of the violent abuses committed in this trade, that we could not be brought to approve it, even in the limited and regulated manner with which it comes to us, in the plan laid down in the Committee's proceedings. We agree in opinion with your Lordship on the propriety of holding out such advantages to our chief servants, civil and military, as may open to them the means of honourably acquiring a competency in our service; but the difficulty of the subject, and the short time we have at present to consider it, have obliged us to defer giving our sentiments and directions thereupon, until the next despatch." The letter concludes with entreaties to him to remain for another year in India, and with holding out the prospect of some solid permanent retribution, corresponding to his most important services.