What happened with regard to raw silk is still more remarkable, and tends still more clearly to illustrate the effects of commercial servitude during its unchecked existence, and the consequences which may be made to arise from its sudden reformation.  On laying open the trade, the article of raw silk was instantly enhanced to the Company full eighty per cent.  The contract made for that commodity, wound off in the Bengal method, which used to sell for less than six rupees, or thirteen shillings, for two pounds’ weight, arose to nine rupees, or near twenty shillings, and the filature silk was very soon after contracted for at fourteen.

The Presidency accounted for this rise by observing that the price had before been arbitrary, and that the persons who purveyed for the Company paid no more than “what was judged sufficient for the maintenance of the first providers.”  This fact explains more fully than the most labored description can do the dreadful effects of the monopoly on the cultivators.  They had the sufficiency of their maintenance measured out by the judgment of those who were to profit by their labor; and this measure was not a great deal more, by their own account, than about two thirds of the value of that labor.  In all probability it was much less, as these dealings rarely passed through intermediate hands without leaving a considerable profit.  These oppressions, it will be observed, were not confined to the Company’s share, which, however, covered a great part of the trade; but as this was an article permitted to the servants, the same power of arbitrary valuation must have been extended over the whole, as the market must be equalized, if any authority at all is extended over it by those who have an interest in the restraint.  The price was not only raised, but in the manufactures the quality was debased nearly in an equal proportion.  The Directors conceived, with great reason, that this rise of price and debasement of quality arose, not from the effect of a free market, but from the servants having taken that opportunity of throwing upon the market of their masters the refuse goods of their own private trade at such exorbitant prices as by mutual connivance they were pleased to settle.  The mischief was greatly aggravated by its happening at a time when the Company were obliged to pay for their goods with bonds bearing an high interest.

The perplexed system of the Company’s concerns, composed of so many opposite movements and contradictory principles, appears nowhere in a more clear light.  If trade continued under restraint, their territorial revenues must suffer by checking the general prosperity of the country:  if they set it free, means were taken to raise the price and debase the quality of the goods; and this again fell upon the revenues, out of which the payment for the goods was to arise.  The observations of the Company on that occasion are just and sagacious; and they will not permit the least