Page:History of merchant shipping and ancient commerce (Volume 2).djvu/478

 adequate benefit for such a sacrifice." This privilege was, however, made use of to a considerable extent by private merchants in India, and also by the Company's servants returning from India, many of whom invested a portion or the whole of their fortunes in the produce of India suited for the English markets.

Notwithstanding the privileges secured by the Act of 1796, and the superintendence of the Board of Control, the finances of the Company again fell into the same unprosperous state in which they had previously been, although accounts of a large surplus revenue to be immediately derived from India were issued from time to time to the public, and various Acts of Parliament were passed for the appropriation of surpluses which never had any existence except in the imagination of the persons who framed them!

The wars in which they had been engaged with the Mahrattas, and other powers in the East, although they had terminated in a vast accession of territory, did not add to the pecuniary resources of the Company, and were consequently disapproved of at home. During 1808 and 1809 they were particularly unfortunate, having lost in those two years four outward-bound and ten homeward-bound ships , the cargoes of these vessels, with the advances made to the owners, including 60,729l., the value of one of the ships which belonged to the Company amounting to no less than 1,048,077l. The calamities