These restraints and encouragements seem to have had the desired effect in Bengal with regard to the diversion of labor from manufacture to materials. The trade of raw silk increased rapidly. But the Company very soon felt, in the increase of price and debasement of quality of the wrought goods, a loss to themselves which fully counterbalanced all the advantages to be derived to the nation from the increase of the raw commodity. The necessary effect on the revenue was also foretold very early: for their servants in the principal silk-factories declared that the obstruction to the private trade in silk must in the end prove detrimental to the revenues, and that the investment clashes with the collection of these revenues. Whatsoever by bounties or immunities is encouraged out of a landed revenue has certainly some tendency to lessen the net amount of that revenue, and to forward a produce which does not yield to the gross collection, rather than one that does. The Directors declare themselves unable to understand how this could be. Perhaps it was not so difficult. But, pressed as they were by the greatness of the payments which they were compelled to make to government in England, the cries of Bengal could not be heard among the contending claims of the General Court, of the Treasury, and of Spitalfields. The speculation of the Directors was originally fair and plausible,--so far as the mere encouragement of the commodity extended. Situated as they were, it was hardly in their power to stop themselves in the course they had begun. They were obliged to continue their resolution, at any hazard, increasing the investment. "The state of our affairs," say they, "requires the utmost extension of your investments. You are not to forbear sending even those sorts _which are attended with loss_, in case such should be necessary to supply an investment to as great an amount as _you can provide from your own resources_; and we have not the least doubt of your being thereby enabled to increase your consignments of this valuable branch of national commerce, even to the utmost of your wishes. But it is our positive order that no part of such investment be provided with borrowed money which is to be repaid by _drafts upon our treasury in London_; since the license which has already been taken in this respect has involved us in difficulties which we yet know not how we shall surmount." This very instructive paragraph lays open the true origin of the internal decay of Bengal. The trade and revenues of that country were (as the then system must necessarily have been) of secondary consideration at best. Present supplies were to be obtained, and present demands in England were to be avoided, at every expense to Bengal.