still retained its castles and warehouses, its fleet of fine
merchantmen, and its able and zealous factors, thoroughly
qualified by a long experience to transact business both in the
palaces and in the bazaars of the East, and accustomed to look
for direction to the India House alone. The private trader
therefore still ran great risk of being treated as a smuggler, if
not as a pirate. He might indeed, if he was wronged, apply for
redress to the tribunals of his country. But years must elapse
before his cause could be heard; his witnesses must be conveyed
over fifteen thousand miles of sea; and in the meantime he was a
ruined man. The experiment of free trade with India had therefore
been tried under every disadvantage, or, to speak more correctly,
had not been tried at all. The general opinion had always been
that some restriction was necessary; and that opinion had been
confirmed by all that had happened since the old restrictions had
been removed. The doors of the House of Commons were again
besieged by the two great contending factions of the City. The
Old Company offered, in return for a monopoly secured by law, a
loan of seven hundred thousand pounds; and the whole body of
Tories was for accepting the offer. But those indefatigable
agitators who had, ever since the Revolution, been striving to
obtain a share in the trade of the Eastern seas exerted
themselves at this conjuncture more strenuously than ever, and
found a powerful patron in Montague.

That dexterous and eloquent statesman had two objects in view.
One was to obtain for the State, as the price of the monopoly, a
sum much larger than the Old Company was able to give. The other
was to promote the interest of his own party. Nowhere was the
conflict between Whigs and Tories sharper than in the City of