I30 TRAVELS IN 
credit, and' of their political influence in their Indian pos-- 
sessions. Driven to the necessity of raising revenues, by di- 
rect or indirect means, to defray the contingent expences of 
the year and to keep together their numerous establishmentSy 
and of maintaining their existence by temporary expedients,, 
their finances were reduced at length to such a state, that 
their capital was employed to pay the interest of their debt. 
In order, therefore, to reform some abuses, and for the better 
regulation of their affairs in India, certain commissioners were 
appointed in 1792, under the name of Commissaries General, 
to proceed from Holland, without delay, upon this important 
office. 
Finding, on their arrival at the Cape, that the resources of 
Government were nearly exhausted, the colony in most de- 
plorable circumstances, and a general complaint among the 
inhabitants of the want of a circulating medium, they con- 
ceived it too favorable an occasion to let slip of converting 
the public distress into a temporary profit for the state ; in- 
creasing, at the same time, the revenue of the latter, while 
they conferred a seeming favor on the former. They issued, 
through the Lombard bank, a loan of such sums of stamped 
paper money as might be required to satisfy the wants of 
those who could give the necessary securities; the whole 
amount being limited to the sum of one million rixdollars. 
Thus, by this transaction. Government created for itself a 
flet revenue of about 25,000 rixdollars a year, free of all de- 
ductions, witl^out risk and without trouble, from a fictitious 
