Bolts concluded his rant with a warning about the financial stability of the Company: ‘The Company may be compared to a stupendous edifice,’ he wrote, ‘suddenly built upon a foundation not previously well examined or secured, inhabited by momentary proprietors and governors, divided by different interests opposed to each other; and who, while one set of them is overloading the superstructure, another is undermining the foundations.’47 It proved a prophetic passage. For, only five months later, the EIC’s financial foundations gave way in the most spectacular fashion.
