Page:History of India Vol 8.djvu/146

112 ture, concealed the real state of affairs, and endeavoured to bolster up their credit by magnificent but fictitious dividends, until after 1746 their embarrassments compelled them to make sudden and startling reductions.

The remedy of the French ministers, whenever anything seemed to go wrong with their Company, was to appoint special commissioners to supervise the direction, notwithstanding the Company's protests that all their misfortunes were due to overinterference. In England, the East India Company's administration was managed independently by great merchants, with a long traditional experience of Asiatic affairs, with a strong parliamentary connection, with a very extensive business all over the East, and with a large reserve of capital on hand.

In a comparison of the two systems, we have on the French side of the Channel a Company propped up by lottery privileges and tobacco monopolies, subsisting on grants in aid from the treasury. On the English side, we have a rich corporation making annual loans to the government in aid of war expenses, borrowing millions at a very low interest, and using this great financial leverage to obtain from the ministers exclusive privileges and the extension of their charter. In England, the superior wealth and naval instincts of the nation were directed with all the energy and active play of free institutions; in France, the natural ability and enterprise of a courageous and quick-witted people were fatally hampered by a despotic bureaucracy, by