and after he had reluctantly consented to the capitulation, he put a period to his existence with a pistol. His death atoned for his mistake, and Gordon may rank with the commandants of Longwi and Verdun.
The finances of the East-India Company were found in a disordered state, and it had contracted a heavy debt with the bank of Amsterdam. Corruption and disorder prevailed in the settlements abroad, and neglect and abuses in all the departments at home. A multiplicity of useless offices had been created for the purpose of pensioning the friends of the stadtholder, and of the expenditure of large sums no reasonable account could be given.
But the extensive warehouses of the company were full of the precious commodities of the East; and the people had the satisfaction to learn, that should their intercourse with India be suspended for seven years, there would still remain in the store-houses of the company an ample provision of the spices and drugs of Asia. An intercourse is kept up with the settlement of Batavia, chiefly
