import trade from India to the out-ports of the kingdom, involves a question of the last importance to the British Empire in India, and to the British Constitution at home; and those writers affirm, that the Directors do not deduce the danger of those great interests from the question of the out-port trade, but from the question of disturbing the present system of administering the Government of India.

Yet he can discover neither error nor want of candor in his statement. If those advocates will take the pains to follow the whole argument of the Directors, on the present occasion, throughout, they must be sensible, that his statement cannot be controverted. The Directors, indeed, avoid expressing their proposition in the fair and distinct form in which it is here drawn out; yet such is the proposition in effect. For, if the whole of it be reduced into a form of syllogism, it is no other than this :

"Whatever shall cause the subversion of the present system of Indian Government, will cause danger to the Empire and Constitution.

"But, pressing the extension of an import trade from India to the out-ports, will cause the subversion of the present system of Indian Government.

"Therefore pressing the extension of an import trade to the outports, will cause danger to the Empire and Constitution.”

If we question the minor proposition, and ask, Why, pressing an import trade for the out-ports, should necessarily cause the subversion of the existing system of Indian Government? the answer of the Directors is already given :-Because they will not continue to carry on that Government, if an import trade from India should be granted to the out-ports. Thus, the original statement is demonstrably established; and all the logic of the City cannot overturn it.

The Directors must permit the words "will not; " for, with the record of the East India Company's history before us, it is impossible to say they cannot. In proof of this assertion, let us take a review of that history, and let us examine, what evil resulted to the Company, during the period that the import trade from India WAS ACTUALLY extended to the out-ports of Great Britain.

When the first, or London East India Company, had incurred the forfeiture of their Charter in 1693, by the non-payment of a stipulated sum of money, their privileges were immediately restored to them, and confirmed by letters patent, granted by King William III. upon this express ground:-" Considering how highly it imports the honor and welfare of this our kingdom, and our subjects thereof, that a trade and traffic to the East Indies should be continued; and being well satisfied that the same may be of great and public advantage; and being also desirous to render the same, as much as in us lies, more national, general, and extensive, than Aitherto it hath been," &c.

This principle, of promoting a more national, general, and extensive trade to India, than had subsisted under the then existing Company's exclusive Charter, gave rise to a new measure in the year 1698, in an Act passed in the 9th and 10th year of the same king, entitled, Au Act for raising a sum not exceeding two milhous, &c. and for settling the trade to the East Indies. The parties subscribing towards that loan, were formed into a Society, called The General Society of Merchants, &c.; and such of them as chose to unite their subscriptions, and to form a joint-stock, were incorporated under the name of The English East India Company, &c. The General Society possessed the privilege of an export and import trade with India, with the power of bringing their import cargoes from India to the OUT-PORTS of the kingdom, in the same manner as is proposed by Government at the present day; with this only difference, that the General Society of Merchants were not restricted as to the ports at which they should enter, whereas Government have now proposed, that merchants should be restricted to such ports as can best afford the means of guarding against the depredations of smuggling.

The regulations, which were adopted for ships importing from India to the out-ports, are to be found in the Act 9 and 10 WilLiam III. c. 44. s. 69. and were as follow:

"Provided always, and it is here enacted, that no Company, or particular person or persons, who shall have a right, in pursuance of this Act, to trade to the East Indies, or other parts within the limits aforesaid, shall be allowed to trade, until sufficient security shall be first given (which the Commissioners of the Customs in

England, or any three or more of them for the time being, are hereby authorised and required to take, in the name and to the use of his Majesty, his heirs and successors), that such Company, or particular persons, shall cause all the goods, wares, merchandise, and commodities, which shall at any time or times hereafter, during the continuance of this Act, be laden by or for them, or any of them, or for their, or any of their accounts, in any ship or ships whatsoever, bound from the said East Indies, or parts within the limits aforesaid, to be brought (without breaking bulk), to some port of England or Wales, and there be unladen and put to land, &c. And that all goods and merchandises belonging to the Company aforesaid, or any other traders to the East Indies, and which shall be imported into England or Wales, as aforesaid, pursuant to this Act, shall by them be sold openly and publicly, by inch of candle, upon their respective accounts, and not otherwise."

Upon this Act of the 9th and 10th of William III. was built, in the following year, that famous Charter of the Company, upon which they rest the weight of their pretensions; and that very Charter, as is here rendered incontestable by the Act itself, comprehended the principle of an Import Trade from India to the OUT-PORTS of the kingdom.

The form and condition of the security which was to be given by the out-port merchants, will be found in the Act, 6th Anne, c. 3. entitled, "An Act for better securing the duties on East India goods." By that Act, the security to be given was fixed "at the rate of 25007. sterling for every hundred ton their ships or vessels shall be respectively let for;" and the only restriction imposed upon the import trade from India was, that it should be brought "to some port in Great Britain.”

Thus, then, any man who looks but a little beyond the objects which lie accidentally before his eyes, may see, that the measure now suggested by Government, instead of being a wild and airy speculation, a theoretical innovation, a new, untried, and dangerous experiment, on which we have no ground to reason from experience (as it has been ignorantly and falsely asserted), is nothing more than reverting to an ancient principle, involved in the Company's applauded Charter of the 10th of William the Third, and to the practice of our forefathers in the brightest period of our domes

tic history; a period, in which the British Constitution received its last perfection, and from which the present power and greatness of the British Empire, in the East and in the West, dates its origin.

Having sufficiently proved and established this great fact, let us next inquire, what history reveals to us of the consequences of that import trade to the out-ports, that can tend, in any degree, to justify, or give support to, the Company, in determining to resort to an alternative which, they acknowledge, will subvert the system of Indian Government (and thereby shake the Constitution at home), rather than renew the measure of a regulated trade to the out-ports.

We have not to deduce these consequences from abstract hypothesis, but from historical testimony; let us, then, observe what that testimony unfolds. No evil, of any kind whatever, resulted to the incorporated, or Joint Stock Company, from the privilege enjoyed by the out-ports. On the contrary, that Joint Stock Company, issuing out of the General Society of Merchants (which, as has been above stated, soon became the English East India Company), rose above all their competitors, notwithstanding the power of importing, without limitation, to any of the ports of the kingdom; and such was the rapidity of their progress, that they overcame the former, or London Company; they obtained a surrender of all their rights to St. Helena, Bombay, and all their other islands and settlements in India; they at length received that ancient Company into their own body; and finally became the United East India Company of the present day. And so little did the competition and free import of the general merchants tend to obstruct the growth of the United Company, even in the age of its infancy; and so "superior were the advantages they derived from trading with a joint-stock (to use the words of one of the Company's most strenuous champions), that at the time of the union of the two Companies, out of the whole loan of twomillions, only 7000l. then remained the property of the separate traders of the General Society; and this sum also was soon ab-. ́ sorbed in the United Company." If then the Company, starting

1 A Short History of the East India Company.

originally with only a joint stock, against a competition in the out-ports of the kingdom, with a power to import to those outports, outstripped and overcame all their competitors; what can they seriously apprehend from a renewal of the same experiment, in the present momentum of their power, and when they are able to unite with their joint-stock, the whole of the revenues of their present empire in the East?

But it may be asked, if no better success is likely to attend the commercial speculations of the out-ports, why is so strong an effort made, to admit them to a share in the India trade? The answer is obvious. When Mr. Dundas, in the year 1800, so forcibly expressed his opinion against any such admission, he did not ground that opinion upon a question of ports, but of commercial capital. He considered the capital of the Company as sufficient for all the advantage which the public, in the aggregate, could derive from the India Trade; and he maintained, that the aggregate interest of the public would suffer from any measure, tending "to divert any larger proportion of the commercial capital of the country from a more advantageous and more profitable use." But the circumstances of the world are become materially altered, since the period of 1800. The commercial capital, of which Mr. Dundas then reasoned, is deprived of that advantageous and profitable employment which his argument supposed, and is therefore without application or direction; from whence it has resulted, that the operation of commerce is interrupted, and its activity suspended. The allowing that capital to be partially directed to the markets of India, would therefore, under present circumstances, have the great national advantage, of recovering the activity and spirit of commerce, and of encouraging an extensive public interest which is at present disappointed, if not dormant; and, whenever a more prosperous state of things should return, the capital so engaged for a time, would, from the nature of commerce, unquestionably recal itself, and seek again a more profitable market, if any such should open. In the mean time, the East India Company, adding to their joint-stock all the revenues of India, need bardly know, because they could not feel, that they had any competitors in the markets of India. And, as the Executive Government was able to guard the out-ports against smuggling in the