But the Directors, from the day on which they had obtained their charter, had persecuted the interlopers without mercy, and had quite forgotten that it was one thing to persecute interlopers in the Eastern Seas, and another to persecute them in the port of London.

Hitherto the war of the monopolists against the private trade had been generally carried on at the distance of fifteen thousand miles from England.

If harsh things were done, the English did not see them done, and did not hear of them till long after they had been done; nor was it by any means easy to ascertain at Westminster who had been right and who had been wrong in a dispute which had arisen three or four years before at Moorshedabad or Canton.

With incredible rashness the Directors determined, at the very moment when the fate of their company was in the balance, to give the people of this country a near view of the most odious features of the monopoly.

Some wealthy merchants of London had equipped a fine ship named the Redbridge.