can be effectually supported?" Or, in other words, "if you establish an engine (the privilege to individuals of sending ships of all sorts and sizes, from all the ports of Great Britain to India), by which they must both be eventually destroyed?"

The question, then, which we have here to examine, appears to be strictly this:-Whether the dangers apprehended by the East India Company to the safety of their Asiatic territories and China trade, from the indiscriminate admission of the ships of individuals to the trade of India, be imaginary, fallacious and pretended, or founded in foresight, wisdom, and experience?

Before entering on this inquiry, it may be proper to remark, that all the opponents of the Company have either egregiously mistaken, or affected to mistake, the real nature of the question. They have all regarded or affected to regard the trade to India as a monopoly, which, as shall be presently shown, is very contrary to the true state of the case. Some of them have represented it as a losing trade; and, with sufficient inconsistency, have accused the East India Company of selfishness, in seeking to preserve a losing trade. With a still higher degree of inconsistency, they have manifested the most eager desire to participate in this "losing trade;" as if presuming themselves capable, as individuals, with capital and other advantages so greatly inferior to the Company, of converting it into a profitable one. While, indeed, they affect grounds of public utility, they show, by the whole tenor of their reasoning, that in seeking to invade the privileges of the East India Company, they have no other view than the fallacious one, in this case, of private gain. It was necessary to their object to represent the interests of the public, and of the East India Company, as at variance, and utterly irreconcileable; and their own interests as identified with those of the public. It also happened that, in the comparatively stagnant state of commerce and manufactures last year, the persons most immediately suffering under those evils, like drowning men grasping at straws, were led to hail the era of the termination of the Company's exclusive privileges, and of the establishment of an Open Trade to India, as that of the termination of their own misfortunes. In considering an open trade, and an increased consumption of British Commodities in India, as synonimous terms, they all seemed

ships

Dears

to concur. Ignorant of the character of the inhabitants of Asia, they regarded the regulated trade of the Company, as that which alone prevented this increase of consumption. They branded it with the name of Monopoly; and armed with the authority of Dr. Adam Smith, they declared all monopolies to be mischievous, and, with that of Thomas Paine, to be contrary to the imprescriptible rights of man.

The consequences of the admission of these principles would go much farther, than those who have advanced them, to serve particular purposes, could wish. They would go the length of laying open the trade to India to all the world. But we shall limit our reasoning to the boundaries of the British empire. If, upon the principle of universal right, the trade to India be laid open to some parts, with what justice can the same privilege be withheld from other parts of the British dominions? If it be an inherent right in the merchants of Bristol, Liverpool, and Glasgow, to trade with India, is it not equally so in the inhabitants of the Orkney and Shetland Islands, of the West Indies and North 'America?

Το argue seriously, or at any length, against these abstract and inapplicable doctrines, must here, I should apprehend, be unnecessary. The East India Company, however, while they refuse to bow to the authority of such wild and vague hypotheses, have done themselves honor by not narrowing the question, as if it only involved the opposing interests of different bodies of men. The Court of Directors have, on the contrary, throughout their correspondence with Ministers, argued the case as it may be supposed to affect, in every grand view of policy and expediency, the interests of the nation at large; considering their constituents not as an isolated Corporation, but as members of the state, identified, in all their relations, with the great body of the community.

It is a notorious fact that the trade to India, so far from being of the nature of a monopoly, is already as open and unrestrained as is consistent with just and rational views of public utility. The tonnage, which, under the idea of extending the commerce of individuals, has been appropriated to private trade, by the Bill of 1795, is four times greater than has ever been claimed, by those for

whom it was intended.' Of sixty-three thousand tons allotted for this purpose, during the last six years, only sixteen thousand (about one fourth) were filled up; leaving forty-seven thousand tons to be paid for by the Company, on account of the Public.

Here is no monopoly, or impolitic restrictions on trade. On the contrary, greater facilities are held out to the private Merchant, and that too at a great inconvenience and enormous expense to the Company, than he chooses to avail himself of. If more tonnage than the law allots, had been required for the accommodation of the private trader, the liberal conduct of the Company in other respects evinces that they would have readily granted it.

They did actually, on several occasions, allow to private traders from India several thousand tons more than was allotted by law. The fact, indeed, is that, although a certain quantity of tonnage is specified by the act of 1793, for the accommodation of the individual Merchant, it was for the discretion of the Court of Directors to have allowed more, had it been required.

Did they not, with the most commendable liberality, offer the County of Cornwall to export annually to China, twelve hundred tons of tin, freight free;" although, were they only to consult their own convenience, they could supply that market with the same article upon better terms from various parts of India? Have they not, upon a similar principle of accommodation, made an annual sacrifice of £.50,000, for the special encouragement of the woollen manufactures of this country?

To call a trade, conducted upon such principles, a monopoly, is équally contrary to reason, and to fact.

But, besides allotting more tonnage annually to individual Merchants, than these have been disposed to occupy, the Company have shared, in another way, the fruits of their commerce with the public. The payments which they have, at various periods, made to the state, from 1768 to 1812, amount to £.5,135,319; or at the rate

' Vide Papers respecting the negociation for a renewal of the East India Company's exclusive Privileges, &c. p. 129.

2 Ibid. p. 89.

of one hundred thousand pounds, and upwards, annually;' to say nothing of the immense revenue arising from their well-regulated trade.

"It is a solecism," as has been well and truly observed by an eloquent Proprietor of East India Stock," "to call that trade a monopoly, which admits the whole country to a partnership in its eventual gains; and which allows any Merchant, or Trader, to export to or import from India, to an extent considerably beyond what has ever been claimed." That is not a monopoly, of which every person, and every association, by purchasing stock, may be come members; whose sales are regulated, the prices being left at the pleasure of the buyers; and their amount annually laid before Parliament. The East India Company, in short, is not a private Corporation, trading exclusively; but the British nation, trading under legislative regulations to India.

It will not be supposed, by any man of sense, that the Company would be disposed to make the great sacrifices, which have been here alluded to, merely to humor the caprices, or to fall in with the false notions of interest of particular descriptions of men, had they not powerful motives, arising from other sources than those of mere commercial profit, for wishing to retain the exclusive privilege of the navigation to India: for this alone, if I understand the matter right, is what the Company contend for, as essential not only to the security of their China Trade, but to the permanent safety of their Indian empire. They will, I am persuaded, have no objection to make the farther sacrifice of allotting to the use of the private Merchants, as much more tonnage, than was granted by the Act of 1793, as there may arise a demand for. But surely, since this can be shown to be essential to the safety of their dominions, they have a right to expect that all trade to India should continue to be carried on, in ships, under their immediate controul, or exclusively in their service,

The question, then, as it at present stands, between his Majesty's Ministers and the East India Company, does not respect the ex

1 Vide Papers respecting the negociation, &c. p. 57.

2 Mr. Randle Jackson-vide his speech delivered at a General Court of Pre prie tors, 5th May 1812, p. 13.

clusive privilege of trade, but the exclusive privilege of navigation; and divides itself into three branches ::

1. The admission of private ships into the trade of India, from the Port of London only.

2. Their admission from the outports.

3. The admission of ships of inferior burthen into the trade. It was upon the scale, contemplated in the first branch of this proposition, that Lord Melville proposed the alterations in the Indian system of trade should be carried into effect. Even on this comparatively limited scale, as at first intended by his Majesty's Ministers, the measure will appear to be more than sufficiently pregnant with mischief; while the benefits to be expected from it, are, according to the acknowledgment of Lord Melville himself, at least extremely doubtful. But the two ulterior branches, brought forward by the successor of that nobleman, immediately after his retirement from the Board of Controul, are peculiarly well caleulated to aggravate and accelerate the evils, which would have been occasioned by the original branch in a smaller and a slower degree.

These evils I propose to consider in the following order; and to show:

1. That the establishment of an unlimited intercourse, by Private Ships, with India, would inevitably lead to the colonization of that country; which could not but terminate in its separation from Great Britain.

2. That this intercourse, particularly if carried on from the outports, and in ships of small burthen, would be productive of irregularity, smuggling, depredations, and even piracy, in the Indian Seas that its immediate effect would be materially to injure the Company's regular trade to China; and that it would endanger the permanency, or occasion the entire interruption of the intercourse with that country, to the utter deprivation of an article, become essential at least to the comforts of the inhabitants of this country, if not an absolute necessary of life.

3. That, at home, the public revenue would suffer an immense loss, and the commodities of India an alarming deterioration, in consequence of the smuggling which would unavoidably ensue, and become with private adventurers a principal occupation, through