This desire of being employed, and of rendering themselves necessary, in men whose only business it is to be employed in trade, is considered by the gentlemen of the board as no trivial offence; and accordingly they declare, "they have established it as _an invariable rule_, that, _whatever deficiency_ there might be in the Dacca investment, no purchase of the manufactures of _that quarter_ shall be made for account of the Company from private merchants. We have passed this resolution, which we deem of importance, from a persuasion that private merchants are often _induced_ to make advances for Dacca goods, not by the ordinary chance of sale, but merely from an expectation of disposing of them at an enhanced price to the Company, against _whom a rivalship_ is by this manner encouraged"; and they say, "that they intend to observe the _same_ rule with respect to the investment of other of the factories from whence similar complaints may come." This positive rule is opposed to the positive directions of the Company to employ those obnoxious persons by preference. How far this violent use of authority for the purpose of destroying rivalship has succeeded in reducing the price of goods to the Company has been made manifest by the facts before stated in their place. The recriminatory charges of the Company's agents on the native merchants have made very little impression on your Committee. We have nothing in favor of them, but the assertion of a party powerful and interested. In such cases of mutual assertion and denial, your Committee are led irresistibly to attach abuse to power, and to presume that suffering and hardship are more likely to attend on weakness than that any combination of unprotected individuals is of force to prevail over influence, power, wealth, and authority. The complaints of the native merchants ought not to have been treated in any of those modes in which they were then treated. And when men are in the situation of complainants against unbounded power, their abandoning their suit is far from a full and clear proof of their complaints being groundless. It is not because redress has been rendered impracticable that oppression does not exist; nor is the despair of sufferers any alleviation of their afflictions. A review of some of the most remarkable of the complaints made by the native merchants in that province is so essential for laying open the true spirit of the commercial administration, and the real condition of those concerned in trade there, that your Committee observing the records on this subject and at this period full of them, they could not think themselves justifiable in not stating them to the House.