Indian Antiquary Vol 47

Author(s): Richard Carnac Temple, Devadatta Ramkrishna Bhandarkar
Publisher: Swati Publications

Page 37

FEBRUARY, 1918)
AUSTRIA'S COMMERCIAL VENTURE IN INDIA
33
duties on this article at Madras, and am ready to pay any other legal demand that can be made thereon by your Government. On these terms I request the favor of an order for its being released.
I have the honor to be &ca. Chinsurah 2d. September 1779.
(Signed ) WILLIAM BOLTS, Lieut : Col : in the Service of Their Imperial Majesties. Mr. Barwell. 76 By the orders of the Company we can hold no intercourse with Mr Bolts ; of course can give no reply to his letter,
Consultation at Fort William, 29 September 1779.7?
Read the following letter from Mr Bolts. Honble. Sir and Gentlemen,
On the second instant I did myself the honor of addressing you a letter relative to four boats loaded with redwood, the property of the subjects of Her Imperial Majesty, my so vereign, which, in consequence of your orders, were on the 27th of August past, seized by your Custom House officers on the river, and conducted within the districts of your Town of Calcutta. Not having had the honour of an answer to that letter, to which I beg permission to refer, and much less obtained restitution of the red wood, I must now look upon the said property as lost, to Her Majesty's subjects, and shall therefore trouble you no farther on that head.
At the same time, Honble. Sir and Gentlemen, I am sorry to be under the necessity of informing you that other officers of your Government, at Fultah, have been extremely troublesome, not only in obstructing the lawful business of Her Imperial Majesty's subjects and insulting her flag, but in having even gone so far as to prevent the officers and men of the ships under my command from obtaining provisions and the common necessaries of life.
It is not necessary for me to inform you. Honble. Sir and Gentlemen, that the commerce under my directions is " under the protection of the Empress Queen, belonging to a Company erected in Germany ”; or that "this commerce is not contrary to any treaty at present subsisting", since you have been formally advised thereof by the Honble. Court of Directors for Affairs of the Honble. the United Company of Merchants of England trading to the East Indies. But whatever may be the orders of that Honble. Court, perhaps too much dictated by a commercial jealousy equally as illfounded as at this period ill timed, permit me to address myself to you on this occasion, not as to the agent of a commercial society, but as to a tribunal appointed by an act of the British Legislature to the National Government of the British Dominions in Asia. In this point of view it will be needless for me to call to the recollection of gentlemen of so superior knowledge, what great events have often sprung from small causes, or how easy a spark may at first be quenched, that in its consequences must produce a conflagration.
I must confess after the amicable treatment which we have lately received at the other British Presidencies of Bombay and Madras, where we have been permitted even to trade on paying the established duties, and after seeing the friendly manner in which the ships and subjects of other European States are received at the British Ports in Asia, it is matter of the greatest astonishment to me, ignorant as I am of any differences subsisting between our respective sovereigns, to find your Government here so extremely hostile towards the
76 Richard Barwell (1741-1804), member of the Supreme Council 1773-178L. TT Bengal Public Consultations (1779), XXXII, 549-554.