The supply of the Canton treasury with funds for the provision of the next year's China investment was the ground of this plan. But the Council-General appear still to have the particular advantage of Mr. Sulivan in view,--and, not satisfied with breaking so many of the Company's orders for that purpose, to make the contract an object salable to the greatest advantage, were obliged to transfer their personal partiality from Mr. Sulivan to the contract itself, and to hand it over to the assignees through all their successions. When the opium was delivered, the duties and emoluments of the contractor ended; but (it appears from Mr. Williamson's letter, 18th October, 1781, and it is not denied by the Council-General) this new scheme _furnished them with a pretext of making him broker for the China investment, with the profit of a new commission_,--to what amount does not appear. But here their constant and vigilant observer, the vendue-master, met them again:--they seemed to live in no small terror of this gentleman. To satisfy him for the loss of his fee to which he was entitled upon the public sale, they gave _him_ also a commission of one per cent on the investment. Thus was this object loaded with a double commission; and every act of partiality to one person produced a chargeable compensation to some other for the injustice that such partiality produced. Nor was this the whole. The discontent and envy excited by this act went infinitely further than to those immediately affected, and something or other was to be found out to satisfy as many as possible. As soon as it was discovered that the Council entertained a design of opening a trade on those principles, it immediately engaged the attention of such as had an interest in speculations of freight. A memorial seems to have been drawn early, as it is dated on the 29th of March, though it was not the first publicly presented to the board. This memorial was presented on the 17th of September, 1781, by Mr. Wheler, conformably (as he says) to the desire of the Governor-General; and it contained a long and elaborate dissertation on the trade to China, tending to prove the advantage of extending the sale of English manufactures and other goods to the North of that country, beyond the usual emporium of European nations. This ample and not ill-reasoned theoretical performance (though not altogether new either in speculation or attempt) ended by a practical proposition, very short, indeed, of the ideas opened in the preliminary discourse, but better adapted to the immediate effect. It was, that the Company should undertake the sale of its own opium in China, and commit the management of the business to the memorialist, who offered to furnish them with a strong armed ship for that purpose. The offer was accepted, and the agreement made with him for the transport of two thousand chests.