"حياة ومراسلات اللواء السير جون مالكوم، قائد فرسان وسام الطُهر، المبعوث السابق إلى بلاد فارس وحاكم بومباي؛ من رسائل ومذكرات غير منشورة. في مجلّدين. المجلد II." [‎٨‎١] (٦٥٤/٩٨)

EXAMINATION BEFOKE THE HOUSE OF COMMONS. 81
trade of indigo, which had before chiefly gone through Caubul to
Persia, was turned to the port of Calcutta.
Have you found it practicable to promote the sale of English
and European commodities there?—I had no means of promoting
the sale further than by establishing that intercourse which ren
dered the communication, more amicable and easy; the trade was
perfectly open to Bushire, and being carried on chiefly by Persian
merchants themselves, who had resort to ^very port in India, I
can have no doubt they carried every article to their own country
that would produce them profit; but the consumption of Euro
pean articles in Persia, with the single exception of woollens, is,
I believe, very trifling, chiefly on account of the general poverty
of the mass of the community, and also from their own country
furnishing all such articles as are necessary for their habits of life.
The tendency of these questions, put by the Com
pany's counsel, was to establish that it was neither neces
sary nor expedient to open the trade to India and the
Gulf. The committee, in taking up the examination,
which was resumed on the 7th of April, ranged over a
much wider expanse: the feelings of the natives gene
rally, the discord between the Hindoos and Mahom-
medans, the population of the large towns, the state of
the Indian army, the effects of reducing or increasing the
number of the Company's European troops, and the in
vidious distinctions between the King's and the Com
pany's service. On this last subject he gave his evidence
as on one which for years had been pondered by him
with, much anxious thought, and perhaps some bitterness
of spirit:
Did not Lord Cornwallis in 1794 recommend to his Majesty's
ministers a plan for new modelling the army in India?—He did,
in a letter to the President of the Board of Control.
Was not one of the principal objects of the plan to prevent the
continuance or revival of those discontents and jealousies which
had so often manifested themselves between the King's and Com-
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