294 INTERCOLONIAL COMMERCE. trade in their outward-bound voyage. By the ac- counts given at this time of the capacity of differ- ent parts of the Indian Islands to purchase invest- ments of Indian commodities, compared to the present, we must be prepared to admit the morti- fying concUision, that the wealth and commerce ot those states has greatly declined since they were subjected to the control of Europeans. Two hun- dred years ago, our East India Company, when they had to compete in the same commodities with the Portuguese, the Dutch, and a crowd of Ara- bian, Persian, and Indian merchants, declare, that Bantam could take ol? yearly cotton goods to the extent of 60,000 rials. The "dhole imports of Bantam certainly do not at present amount to so much. They describe themselves as selling, under the same circumstances, 40,000 rials' worth at Macassar, now a port ruined by the monopoly ; and in the little cluster of the Banda Isles, at present containing a population of about 2000 inhabitants, mostly slaves, they could dispose of 50,000 rials' worth. The circumstances which contributed to ruin the industry of these places have been gene- rally described in the preceding parts of this work. The monopoly companies, from want of know- ledge, and finding the impossibility of exercising the same control over the colonial trade which their influence at home with their respective legislatures enabled them to exert over the direct trade, were
