the ground that their ancestors were the men who had crucified Jesus Christ, and having frightened them by his refusal into coming back with 2000 shekels, admitted them, saying, "Poor men, they had no hand in the crucifixion!"[1] The rapacity of these men was destroying the very sources of wealth, while a malignant fate seemed to pursue even the halting and ill-directed efforts of the Directors to check the evil, the existence of which they could not deny. The ship in which Governor Vansittart, Mr. Scrafton, and Colonel Ford were sent out in 1769 as supervisors, was never heard of again. A great famine decimated Bengal in 1770. On the 1st January 1771, the cash balances in the Treasury at Fort-William had sunk to 3,542,761 rupees. The bond debt was £612,628, and had increased to £1,039,478 by 1st January 1772. And yet it was difficult to excite attention to these facts. "The East India Affairs," writes Shelburne to Chatham, "do not catch the active public, who discover neither indignation at the conduct of persons there, nor anxiety to secure that object, while every man of every party acknowledges a blow to be impending in that part of the world which must shake to its foundation the revenue, commerce, and manufactures of this."[2]
Trading on the public inattention, the General Court, on the 26th September 1770, came to a resolution to profit by a clause in the Act of 1769, under which, if the revenue allowed of it, they might increase the dividend to 12½ per cent. Emboldened by impunity, they took a similar course in the two succeeding years. But vengeance was following close on their heels. On the 8th July the General Court found itself face to face with an estimated deficit of £1,293,000 for the ensuing three months, at a period when, owing to several great commercial failures, the money market was already very tight, and on the 10th of August the Chairman had to apply to the Government for a loan of £1,000,000. This was refused except on conditions. A Parliamentary inquiry followed.
