Yet the mere fact which must have filtered through to the seacoast--that thirty millions worth of solid plunder had just been filched away from the treasury of India by foreigners--cannot have been pleasing news. The East India Company, however, seems to have made no great efforts at aggrandisement during the years between the special granting to it of lands by Farokhshir and 1746, when it formally entered into grips with the French East Indian Company, which about this time began that dispute for supremacy in India which virtually ended with the taking of Trichinoply in 1761.
In truth we have very little information indeed regarding the doings of John Company during this period. All we know is that British imports into India fell from £617,000 in 1724 to £157,000 in 1741, which, taken with a corresponding decrease in dividends, would seem to show some depression, some check to trade.
One thing is certain. The Constitution of the Company was not satisfactory. An attempt had been made to avoid a monopoly of large shareholders by ruling that, no matter what the share held might be, it should only, whether £500 or £50,000, carry one vote for the election of the Court of Directors. But this ruling could be, and was, easily evaded. All that had to be done was to split the £50,000 into a hundred £500 shares, registered in the names of confidential agents, who--in consideration of an honorarium, no doubt--voted according to direction. It was not very straightforward, of course; on the other hand, the original ruling was silly in the extreme, since it prevented those who had a real interest in the Company from exercising their due share of influence.
Unfortunately, this faggot-voting brought with it a corrupt atmosphere. Appointments under the Company were a common bribe, and as the Court of Directors had to be reappointed every year, there was endless opportunity for jobbery.
So, after a time, opposition to the monopoly of the trade began once more to take form. Proposals for yet a new company were floated. Parliament once more took up the matter; which was finally settled by the existing company offering £200,000 to Government, and a reduction of 1 per cent. on the rate of interest payable on the previous loan of some three-and-a-half millions (that is to say, a yearly income of £35,000), as payment for the extension of their monopoly till 1766. This offer was accepted, and in 1744 the term of monopoly was still further extended until 1780, in consideration of a further loan to Government of £1,000,000 sterling at the low rate of 3 per cent. Coming as it did in the middle of a very expensive war, the temptation of this pecuniary assistance must have been potent; but there can be but little doubt that, publicly at any rate, the trade of India suffered considerably from the exclusion of private enterprise.
Certain it is that while the English East India Company found themselves forced to reduce their dividends to 7 per cent, the Dutch Company was dividing 25.
Altogether, then, it is not surprising that, until the French, by assuming the aggressive, forced the East India Company to bestir itself, it did nothing of importance in the way of progress.
[THE GAME OF FRENCH AND ENGLISH]
A.D. 1742 TO A.D. 1748
The eye of France had been on India for a century and a half, for it was in 1601 that a fleet of French merchant ships set out from St Malo for Hindustan, but failed of their destination.