The Governor-General, Mr. Hastings, and the Council, tell the Directors, "that the supply for the investment has arisen from _casual_ and _extraordinary_ resources, which they could not expect _always_ to command." In an earlier minute he expresses himself still more distinctly: he says, "If the internal resources of a state fail it, or are not equal to its _occasional_ wants, whence can it obtain immediate relief but from _external_ means?" Indeed, the investment has not been for any long time the natural product of the revenue of Bengal. When, by the vast charge and by the ill return of an evil political and military traffic, and by a prodigal increase of establishments, and a profuse conduct in distributing agencies and contracts, they found themselves under difficulties, instead of being cured of their immoral and impolitic delusion, they plunged deeper into it, and were drawn from expedient to expedient for the supply of the investment into that endless chain of wars which this House by its resolutions has so justly condemned. At home these measures were sometimes countenanced, sometimes winked at, sometimes censured, but always with an acceptance of whatever profit they afforded. At length, the funds for the investment and for these wars together could no longer be supplied. In the year 1778 the provision for the investment from the revenues and from the monopolies stood very high. It was estimated at a million four hundred thousand pounds; and of this it appears that a great deal was realized. But this was the high flood-tide of the investment; for in that year they announce its probable decline, and that such extensive supplies could not be continued. The advances to the Board of Trade became less punctual, and many disputes arose about the time of making them. However, knowing that all their credit at home depended on the investment, or upon an opinion of its magnitude, whilst they repeat their warning of a probable deficiency, and that their "finances bore an unfavorable aspect," in the year 1779 they rate their investment still higher. But their payments becoming less and less regular, and the war carrying away all the supplies, at length Mr. Hastings, in December, 1780, denounced sentence of approaching dissolution to this system, and tells the Directors that "he bore too high a respect for their characters to treat them with the management of a preparatory and gradual introduction to an unpleasing report: that it is the _only substantial_ information he shall have to convey in that letter." In confidence, therefore, of their fortitude, he tells them without ceremony, "that there will be a necessity of making a large reduction, or possibly a _total suspension_, of their investment;--that they had already been reduced to borrow near 700,000_l._ This resource," says he, "cannot last; it must cease at a certain period, and that perhaps not far _distant_."