The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke

sum of twenty lacs of rupees at eight per cent, or two hundred thousand pounds sterling, to
be repaid by drafts to be drawn on the Company by their supra-cargoes in China, provided
the opium consigned to them should arrive safe; but that, if the adventure failed, whether by
the loss of the ships or otherwise, the subscribers to the above loan were to be repaid their
capital and interest out of the Company's treasury in Bengal.

That the said Warren Hastings, having in this manner purchased a commodity for which he
said there was no sale, and paid for it with money which he was obliged to borrow at a high
interest, was still more criminal in his attempt, or pretended plan, to introduce it
clandestinely into China. That the importation of opium into China is forbidden by the
Chinese government; that the opium, on seizure, is burnt, the vessel that imports it
confiscated, and the Chinese in whose possession it may be found for sale punished with
death.

That the Governor-General and Council were well aware of the existence of these
prohibitions and penalties, and did therefore inform the supra-cargoes in China, that the
ship belonging to the said Henry Watson would enter the river at China as an armed ship,
and would not be reported as bearing a cargo of opium, that being a contraband trade.

That, of the above two ships, the first, belonging to Cudbert Thornhill, was taken by the
French; and that the second, arriving in China, did occasion much embarrassment and
distress to the Company's supra-cargoes there, who had not been previously consulted on
the formation of the plan, and were exposed to great difficulty and hazard in the execution
of their part of it. That the ship was delayed, at a demurrage of an hundred dollars a day, for
upwards of three months, waiting in vain for a better market. The factory estimate the loss

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