This branch of trade, being so long principally managed by the Company's servants for the Company and under its authority, cannot be easily taken out of their hands and pass to the natives, especially when it is to be carried on without the control naturally inherent in all participation. It is not difficult to conceive how this forced preference of traffic in a raw commodity must have injured the manufactures, while it was the policy of the Company to continue the trade on their own account. The servants, so far from deviating from their course, since they have taken the trade into their own management, have gone much further into it. The proportion of raw silk in the investment is to be augmented. The proportion of the whole cargoes for the year 1783, divided into sixteen parts, is ten of raw silk, and six only of manufactured goods. Such is the proportion of this losing article in the scheme for the investment of private fortunes. In the reformed scheme of sending the investment on account of the Company, to be paid in bills upon Europe, no mention is made of any change of these proportions. Indeed, some limits are attempted on the article of silk, with regard to its price; and it is not improbable that the price to the master and the servant will be very different: but they cannot make profitable purchases of this article without strongly condemning all the former purchases of the Board of Trade. CLOTHS, OR PIECE-GOODS. The general system above stated, relative to the silk trade, must materially have affected the manufactures of Bengal, merely as it was a system of preference. It does by no means satisfactorily appear to your Committee that the freedom held out by the Company's various orders has been ever fully enjoyed, or that the grievances of the native merchants and manufacturers have been redressed; for we find, on good authority, that, at that very period at which it might be supposed that these orders had their operation, the oppressions were in full vigor. They appear to have fallen heaviest on the city of Dacca, formerly the great staple for the finest goods in India,--a place once full of opulent merchants and dealers of all descriptions.