74 
must acknowledge for ourselves, that the proposition of the Com-' 
pany conveyed to us an idea so degrading, that nothing but some 
immediate assurance of completing the great object we all bear 
in mind, could have overcome our repugnance to it. We cannot 
better express our sense of it, than by supposing the case possible, 
of an officer of rank in his Majesty’s army, on his regiment being 
effectually reformed, a proposition to recommence his service in 
another regiment under the youngest ensign of it. 
But, Gentlemen, it was not this pride alone that occasioned our 
non-acceptance. We have learnt, that to very junior servants, with- 
out a very prevalent interest, Bengal does not afford those great ad- 
vantages which were to compensate for our loss of rank: from our 
informations, the service there is so overloaded in the junior part 
of it, that a person ranking only from 1773, cannot reasonably 
hope in the present slate of things to attain the higher offices by 
course of service in less than thirty-five years. It is our misfortune 
that we had not an interest to surmount those impediments: and 
as to the advantages that were to result to a servant of fourteen or 
fifteen years standing, who must then of course be past thirty, life 
is so uncertain in this country, and the period so remote, that we 
could not reasonably hope ever to enjoy the benefits of them: even 
at this place also, a servant can hardly hope to arrive in council 
from his first entrance in less than thirty years: yet, unpromising 
as they are, we thought the prospects of a senior or junior mer- 
chant still better by continuing with his rank in the present line of 
service. 
These were the reasons which induced our non-acceptance of 
the offers of the Honourable the Court of Directors, and which we 
