TIBET. 
375 
reviving the trade, between Bengal and Tibet. For as security and 
protection are the first essential requisites to the establishment of com¬ 
merce, so profit will prove its best encouragement; it will most pow¬ 
erfully stimulate the industry of the merchant, who is engaged in so 
advantageous an undertaking, and impel him to pursue his plans to 
the greatest possible extent. 
To give full force to the license I have obtained, nothing but form 
is wanting; and, independently of the novelty of written treaties, for¬ 
malities almost unknown in Tibet, I declined soliciting the Regent to 
execute such an agreement, because it could be no longer valid, than 
during the minority of Teshoo Lama; it must have been revocable 
by him, the moment he should be admitted into his office, and could 
never be considered as binding, even upon the government which is 
upheld by his authority, and conducted under the sanction of his 
name. For the Regent possesses no independent powers, but is the 
ostensible instrument of administration, under the guidance of his 
supreme, the Lama : and even supposing the Regent possessed of ade¬ 
quate authority, to enforce a treaty of commerce, yet to have pressed 
him to the conclusion of one, I thought, would have been to abandon 
the great object in view: for i considered the. agency of natives of 
India, stationed at so remote a distance from control, or any check 
to restrain their conduct, as a very dubious reliance, and that the 
benefits resulting from it, would be found, at best, extremely pre¬ 
carious. These reasons suggested to me the expediency, of waving the 
attempt to secure, by written agreement, those privileges to merchants* 
for which the Regent pledged his word; especially as the prospect of. 
