348 HISTORY OF INDIA. [Book II.
AD 1090. forgiven tliem, and out of his princely condescension agrees, that the present Ije put into the treasury of the port, the inercliants' goods be returned, the t<jwn flourish, and they follow their trade, as in fonner times ; and Mr. Child, who did tlie disgrace, he turned out and expelled. This order is irreversible."
Effectsof the While the Company were thus, by a kind of jast retribution, reaping the
Revohition pi- i • i ^ i o
of 1088. bitter fruits of their war policy, another calamity had befallen them. Their great patron James 11. had been driven from the throne which he unwortiiily occupied. The Revolution, which saved the liberties of the nation from civil and ecclesiastical despotism, was no doubt eminently favourable to trade ; but the Company unfortunately stood in a false position. They held a monopoly which a powerful party were bent on wresting from them, and they had them- selves incurred much odium by the rigorous and despotic mea.siu-es which they had adopted in maintaining their exclusive privileges. It would not have been wonderful if, in these circumstances, while they were regarded as almost identi- fied with the dynasty which had just been expelled, they had .shared its fate. The Company, though fully alive to the danger, did not lose heart, but re.solved to leave no means untried that promised to avert it.
The spirit of freedom evoked during the struggle with the last of the Stuarts, was naturally taken advantage of by the opponents of the Company ; and no sooner had William and Mary been seated on the throne, than it was boldly maintained that the crown had exceeded its powers in granting exclusive pnvi- leges of trade, without the consent of the other branches of the legislature. This (question, on the solution of which the very existence of the Company evidently depended, could not be much longer delayed. It was not to be expected that, while thus existing only by a kind of reprieve, they would venture on any large expenditure in new and hazardous enterprises, or even continue their equip- ments on their previous scale. In the season 1 689-90, they sent out only three ships, two of them destined for Bombay, and one for Fort St. George. At the same time, when they were thus curtailing their trade, they made strenuous exertions to increase their revenue; and, still clinging to the idea of becoming an independent Indian power, addressed the presidency of Bombay in the foUow- Aspirations ing tcrms : — " The object of our revenue is the subject of our care as much as cm- revenue trade : "tis that must maintain our force when twenty accidents may intennipt our trade: 'tis that must make us a nation in India: "vvithout that we are but as a great nation of interlopers, vmited by his majesty's royal charter, fit only to trade where nobody of power thinks it their interest to prevent us ; and upon this account it is that the wise Dutch, in all their general ad'ices w^hich we have seen, write ten paragraphs concerning their government, their civil and military policy, warfare, and the increase of their revenue, for one paragraph they wi-ite concerning trade." This language, which certainly sounds strange in a Company which professed to be established "on a purely mercantile bottom," may be partly explained by the change wdiich had taken place in Evu'opean politics.
