Sir A. Arbuthnot adds very appropriately a passage from a note by the late Prof. H. H. Wilson in his continuation of James Mill's History of India (1845, vol. i. pp. 538-539), a passage which we also gladly insert here:
"It was stated in evidence (in 1813) that the cotton and silk goods of India, up to this period, could be sold for a profit in the British market at a price from 50 to 60 per cent. lower than those fabricated in England. It consequently became necessary to protect the latter by duties of 70 or 80 per cent. on their value, or by positive prohibition. Had this not been the case, had not such prohibitory duties and decrees existed, the mills of Paisley and of Manchester would have been stopped in their outset, and could hardly have been again set in motion, even by the powers of steam. They were created by the sacrifice of the Indian manufactures. Had India been independent, she would have retaliated; would have imposed preventive duties upon British goods, and would thus have preserved her own productive industry from annihilation. This act of self-defence was not permitted her; she was at the mercy of the stranger. British goods were forced upon her without paying any duty; and the foreign manufacturer employed the arm of political injustice to keep down and ultimately strangle a competitor with whom he could not contend on equal terms."
See details in the Field of Nov. 15, 1884, p. 667, courteously given in reply to a query from the present writer.
Thomas Rastall or Rastell went out apparently in 1615, in 1616 is mentioned as a "chief merchant of the fleet at [Swally] Road," and often later as chief at Surat (see Sainsbury, i. 476, and ii. passim).
Pera o sapal, i.e. 'for the marsh.' We cannot be certain of the meaning of this; but we may note that in 1543 the King, as a favour to the city of Goa, and for the commodity of its shipping and the landing of goods, &c., makes a grant "of the marsh inundated with sea-water (do sapal alagado dagoa salgada) which extends along the river-side from the houses of Antonio Correa to the houses of Afonso Piquo, which grant is to be perpetual ... to serve for a landing-place and quay for the merchants to moor and repair their ships, and to erect their [bankshalls] (bangaçaes), and never to be turned away to any other purpose." Possibly the fines went into a fund for the drainage of this sapal and formation of landing-places. See Archiv. Port. Orient., Fasc. 2, pp. 130-131.
We do not know what word is intended, unless it be a special use of Ar. baṭan, 'the interior or middle of a thing.' Dorn refers to a note, which does not exist in his book. Bellew gives the title conferred by the Prophet as "Pīhtān or Pāthān, a term which in the Syrian language signifies a rudder." Somebody else interprets it as 'a mast.'