INDIGO. 



45 



advices from you respecting it of any posterior 

 date, we have also deemed it necessary to carry 28 Aug. isoo. 

 om^ observations to what has been passing in the 

 indigo trade in the course of the last two or three 

 years. 



2. We are sorry to find that, on the whole, a 

 very unfavourable change has manifested itself 

 within that period, in the state both of the indigo 

 manufacture of Bengal and its dependencies, and 

 of those who have been carrying it on ; so that the 

 quantity produced has considerably fallen off, and 

 a number of the adventurers in that branch have 

 been reduced to great embarrassment. 



3. Considering this subject, in its primary and 

 most important view, as involving the establish- 

 ment of a great medium of profit and of union 

 between those countries and our own, we have 

 examined into the causes of this decline, and we 

 are induced to trace them in a great measure to 

 the war and its consequences, which have pro- 

 duced a high increase in the expense of procuring 

 money, in the rates of insurance, in the amount 

 of freight, and latterly the imposition of a new 

 duty ; whilst, on the other hand, the very same 

 causes have contributed to depress the markets 

 here : and to these adverse occurrences may be 

 added, as we understand, successive bad seasons 

 in India, and the result of a too eager competition 

 between the manufacturers there, those especially 

 of Bengal and of Oude. 



4. As 



