afterwards at 50 per cent. on the cost price, instead of the 400 or 500 per cent. formerly extorted.[1] Merchants were
under a general disability to traffic in the East without
permission from the East India Company, and the company's charter was occasionally availed of in controlling
unlawful importations. Merchants in England, however,
presented a memorial[2] to the Secretary of State complaining that, as their goods were excluded from "the chartered seas of the East India Company," American
traders had traded with New South Wales to the detriment
of the British. Thus "Americans will monopolize the
advantage of the trade," "and this country will have all
the expense of supporting" the colony.
So resolute was the sailor-governor in enforcing the new regulations about prices that Lord Hobart[3] interposed his authority on behalf of free commerce. The English Government had consented to the proposition to establish a store in order to "reduce to a proper level the exorbitant profits made by speculators, in consequence of the scarcity, which, without such interference, they were able to continue to their own advantage and to the distress and, in many instances, the absolute ruin of the inhabitants." He would support the Governor by a continued supply of articles to be disposed of with such an object in view, but, except "under very peculiar circumstances," the authority of "the government must by no means be interposed, excepting in the prohibition against spirits," in control of private enterprise. What the private instructions to King originally were may be gathered from a despatch from himself to Lord Hobart (9th Nov. 1802):—
"I believe it is no secret either in the department your Lordship has succeeded to, or to His Royal Highness the Commander-in-chief, that several officers, civil and military, had made fortunes by the infamous traffic in spirits which was so long carried on in defiance of every honourable consideration that ought to attach to those who hold their Sovereign's commission. Repeated information of these enormities, and the heavy
- ↑ Despatch—King to Secretary of State, 31st Dec. 1801.
- ↑ Messrs. C. S. and George Enderby and Alexander and Benjamin Champion, Liverpool. General W. H. Gordon (the father of General Gordon who was sacrificed at Khartoum in 1885 by the Gladstone government) married Elizabeth Enderby of the family mentioned in this note.
- ↑ Despatch—Lord Hobart to King, 24th Feb. 1803.
