where the ploughman, flying from the tax-gatherer, is obliged to take refuge under the wings of the monopolist. No dispute arises amongst the English subjects which does not divulge the misery of the natives; when the former are in harmony, all is well with the latter. This monopoly continuing and gathering strength through a succession of contractors, and being probably a most lucrative dealing, it grew to be every day a greater object of competition. The Council of Patna endeavored to recover the contract, or at least the agency, by the most inviting terms; and in this eager state of mutual complaint and competition between private men and public bodies things continued until the arrival in Bengal of Mr. Stephen Sulivan, son of Mr. Sulivan, Chairman of the East India Company, which soon put an end to all strife and emulation. To form a clear judgment on the decisive step taken at this period, it is proper to keep in view the opinion of the Court of Directors concerning monopolies, against which they had uniformly declared in the most precise terms. They never submitted to them, but as to a present necessity; it was therefore not necessary for them to express any particular approbation of a clause in Mr. Mackenzie's contract which was made in favor of their own liberty. Every motive led them to preserve it. On the security of that clause they could alone have suffered to pass over in silence (for they never approved) the grant of the contract which contained it for three years. It must also be remembered that they had from the beginning positively directed that the contract should be put up to public auction; and this not having been done in Mr. Mackenzie's case, they severely reprimanded the Governor-General and Council in their letter of the 23rd December, 1778. The Court of Directors were perfectly right in showing themselves tenacious of this regulation,--not so much to secure the best practicable revenue from their monopoly whilst it existed, but for a much more essential reason, that is, from the corrective which this method administered to that monopoly itself: it prevented the British contractor from becoming doubly terrible to the natives, when they should see that his contract was in effect _a grant_, and therefore indicated particular favor and private influence with the ruling members of an absolute government.