investigations which proved that the trade in that commodity had been conducted in a manner which, whilst securing enormous profits for the few, had pressed very hardly on the many. He endeavoured to reduce this evil by placing the trade on a settled basis which, whilst it would secure to the natives a supply of the article at a rate not in excess of that which the poor man could afford, would secure to the servants of the Company fixed incomes on a graduated scale. His scheme, he knew, was far from being perfect, but it was the best he could devise in the face of the refusal of the India Office to increase salaries, and certainly it was a vast improvement on the system it superseded. Whilst it secured to the Company's servants in all departments an adequate, even a handsome, income, it reduced the price of salt to the natives to an amount from ten to fifteen per cent, below the average price to them of the preceding twenty years.
This accomplished, Clive proceeded to reconstitute the Calcutta Council. According to the latest orders then in existence this Council was composed of a president and sixteen members: but the fact of a man being a member of Council did not prevent him from accepting an agency in other parts of the Company's territories. The result was that many of the members held at the same time executive and supervising offices. They controlled, as councillors, the actions which they had performed as agents. There had been in consequence great laxity, much wrongdoing, complete failure of justice. Clive remedied
