294 TRAVELS IN 
illicit trade was not only winked at, but encouraged, by tlie 
servants of the Company, whose salaries, indeed, were so 
small, that they could not subsist their families upon them. 
The supplies, also, for the Cape, of which the Company re- 
served to itself the exclusive privilege of furnishing, both from 
Europe and India, were sometimes so scantily and so tardily 
brought in, that the inhabitants were under the necessity of 
smuggling certain articles of daily consumption out of foreign 
ships for their immediate use. 
As the East India Company considered the Cape in no 
other light than as a conveniency to their commerce and their 
settlements in the East Indies, to which point all their regula- 
tions respecting it tended, their system of policy seemed to 
require that every impediment should be thrown in the way of 
its becoming a flourishing settlement. The petty traffic they 
reserved for themselves, or allowed their servants to carry on, 
at this place, consisted in an exchange of colonial produce for 
the manufactures of Europe and India. And this traffic was 
not only a monopoly in the hands of the Company, or some 
of its servants, but a fixed price, or what is usually called a 
maximum^ was imposed both on imports and exports. Other 
regulations, that were adopted for the government of the 
colony, were little calculated to promote its prosperity ; and, 
although many of these were altered and modified from time 
to time, on the representations and remonstrances of that part 
of the inhabitants, not engaged in the service of the Com- 
pany, yet few of them were productive of public benefit. The 
infiuence of the Company's servants was always sufficient to 
counteract the operation of any measure that promised to be 
o 
