The Court of Directors comments to Clive on the growing chaos in Bengal, 1765

The Directors to Lord Clive, 26 April 1765 

        Treaties of commerce are understood to be for the mutual benefit of the contracting parties. Is it then possible to suppose that the court of Delhi, by conferring the privilege of trading free of customs, could mean an inland trade in the commodities of their own country, at that period unpractised and unthought of by the English, to the detriment of their revenues and the ruin of their own merchants? We do not find such a construction was ever heard of, until our own servants first invented it, and afterwards supported it by violence. Neither could it be claimed by the subsequent treaties with Meer Jaffier, or Cossim Ali, which were never understood to give one additional privilege of trade beyond what the firman expressed. In short, the specious arguments used by those who pretended to set up a right to it convince us they did not want judgement, but virtue to withstand the temptation of suddenly amassing a great fortune, although acquired by means incompatible with the peace of the country, and their duty to the Company.

        Equally blameable were they who, acknowledging they had no right to it, and sensible of the ill consequences resulting from assuming it,  have, nevertheless, carried on this trade, and used the authority of the Company to obtain, by a treaty exacted by violence, a sanction for a trade to enrich themselves, without the least regard or advantage to the Company, whose forces they employed to protect them in it. Had this short question been put, which their duty ought first to have suggested, 'Is it for the interest of our employers?' they would not have hesitated one moment about it; but this criterion seems never once to have occurred.

        All the barriers being thus broken down between the English and the country government, and everything out of its proper channel, we are at a loss how to prescribe means to restore order from this confusion; and being deprived of that confidence which we hoped we might have placed in our servants, who appear to have been the actors in these strange scenes, we can only say, that we rely on the zeal and abilities of Lord Clive, and the gentlemen of the Select Committee, to remedy these evils. We hope they will restore our reputation among the country powers, and convince them of our abhorrence of oppression and rapaciousness.

From: A. Berriedale Keith, ed. Speeches and Documents on Indian Policy, 1750-1921. Vol. I. London: Humphrey Milford, Oxford University Press, 1922, 19-20.