It is very remarkable in what manner their vehement pursuit of this object led the Directors to a speedy oblivion of those equitable correctives before interposed by them, in order to prevent the mischiefs which were apparent in the scheme, if left to itself. They could venture so little to trust to the bounties given from the revenues a trade which had a tendency to dry up their source, that, by the time they had proceeded to the thirty-third paragraph of their letter, they revert to those very compulsory means which they had disclaimed but three paragraphs before. To prevent silk-winders from working in their private houses, where they might work for private traders, and to confine them to the Company's factories, where they could only be employed for the Company's benefit, they desire that the newly acquired power of government should be effectually employed. "Should," say they, "this practice, through _inattention_, have been suffered to take place again, it will be proper to put a stop to it, which may _now be more effectually done by an absolute prohibition, under severe penalties, by the authority of government_." This letter contains a perfect plan of policy, both of compulsion and encouragement, which must in a very considerable degree operate destructively to the manufactures of Bengal. Its effect must be (so far as it could operate without being eluded) to change the whole face of that industrious country, in order to render it a field for the produce of crude materials subservient to the manufactures of Great Britain. The manufacturing hands were to be seduced from their looms by high wages, in order to prepare a raw produce for our market; they were to be locked up in the factories; and the commodity acquired by these operations was, in this immature state, carried out of the country, whilst its looms would be left without any material but the debased refuse of a market enhanced in its price and scanted in its supply. By the increase of the price of this and other materials, manufactures formerly the most flourishing gradually disappeared under the protection of Great Britain, and were seen to rise again and flourish on the opposite coast of India, under the dominion of the Mahrattas.