The perplexed system of the Company's concerns, composed of so many opposite movements and contradictory principles, appears nowhere in a more clear light. If trade continued under restraint, their territorial revenues must suffer by checking the general prosperity of the country: if they set it free, means were taken to raise the price and debase the quality of the goods; and this again fell upon the revenues, out of which the payment for the goods was to arise. The observations of the Company on that occasion are just and sagacious; and they will not permit the least doubt concerning the policy of these unnatural trades. "The amount of our Bengal cargoes, from 1769 to 1773, is 2,901,194_l._ sterling; and if the average increase of price be estimated at twenty-five per cent only, the amount of such increase is 725,298_l._ sterling. The above circumstances are exceedingly alarming to us; but what must be our concern, to find by the advices of our President and Council of 1773, that a further advance of forty per cent on Bengal goods was expected, and allowed to be the consequence of advertisements then published, authorizing a free trade in the service? We find the Duanne revenues are in general farmed for five years, and the aggregate increase estimated at only 183,170_l._ sterling (on a supposition that such increase will be realized); yet if the annual investment be sixty lacs, and the advance of price thirty per cent only, such advance will _exceed the increase of the revenue by no less than 829,330l. sterling_."