§ A Petition of the Dyers of the honourable united East India Company, was presented and read; setting forth,
§ "That the petitioners have viewed with the liveliest apprehension the Petitions from the various outports to the House, for laying open the trade to India; and that it is by a strict attention to regulations which ensure the superior execution of the different operations in the India Company's exports, that the confidence with which they are received by the consumers has been established, a confidence so complete that a bale of goods marked V. B. I. C. passes in the India market as current as a Bank note does here; and that, by these regulations, the petitioners are obliged to have been a certain length of time in the business before they can be appointed Dyers to the India Company: that, with most of them, it is the only business in which themselves, and their fathers before them, are and have been engaged, and by which they procure subsistence for their families, and those of other trades immediately dependent on them, together giving employment to some 1087 thousands; and that, by the same regulations, they are obliged to have their dye-houses and plants furnished and fitted up in a particular manner, to facilitate and insure the same object; that this is attended with very great ex-pence; and that their property, to the extent of upwards of 200,000l. is embarked in these establishments; and that there is no other trade in which they could employ their knowledge of the business and these establishments; and that the removal of this branch of commerce to the outports would thus take from them the trade in which they have been brought up, and to which alone they are competent, and, by rendering useless the establishments, would deteriorate almost to nothing the large property invested in them; and praying, that no alteration may be made in the long-established system under which the India trade has been, under the repeated sanction of the legislature, hitherto conducted; and that the petitioners may not be deprived of the means by which they earn their livelihood; that their property may not be annihilated; and that speculative and possible advantage to one class of individuals, may not be founded on positive ruin to another."
§ Ordered to lie upon the table.