gard to the Company: But it is not true with regard to the British merchants,-who are ready, with large capitals, to embark in the trade. It was not true with regard to the Ameri cans, who, before the fatal disputes about the rights of neutrals, carried on so large a traffic with India. In the reasonings of the Company on this alleged connexion, the only specific point which is ever presented, is the remittance of the surplus of the revenue. The surplus of the revenue, they say, cannot be remitted but by means of the monopoly. They may just as well assert that it cannot be remitted without a Chairman, a Deputy Chairman, and four-and-twenty Directors. There is surely no natural or necessary connexion between the remittance of money, and a monopoly of trade. But there are two decisive answers to this strange assertion. In the first place, there is no surplus of revenue to remit; there never was any; and, as things now stand, there is every reason to think that there never will be any. In the second place, if there were ever so great a surplus, a King's ship, or any other ship, could carry it, if in the shape of bullion; and bills of exchange, if goods to a sufficient amount were the preferable shape. Adopt the doctrine of the East India Company, and England ought to have an exclusive corporation for carrying on the trade to Ireland, and the trade to Scotland; because there, too, a connexion exists between the commerce and the revenue; and there, too, it might as well be said, the surplus of the revenue cannot be realized without a monopoly of the trade. The only difference between the two sets of cases, is local distance, on which the circumstance in question has no dependence. If no monopoly, therefore, is necessary for realizing the surplus of revenue frou Scotland and Ireland; for the very same reasons, none would be necessary for realizing it (if there were any) from India.

Another assertion of the Company is, that a free trade cannot be permitted, because a free trade would produce colonization, --and colonization would produce inssurrection and revolt. Now, supposing the last branch of this deduction to be granted, why, we would ask, should free trade lead to colonization ? Trade requires but few agents in a foreign country. A few men of capital, or their agents, and a few clerks, repairing thither to make a fortune, and return, could not well colonize a country already overpeopled. As for handicrafts and labourers, there are three good reasons why any influx of them need not be dreaded. In the first place, they cannot afford the expense of the voyage;-in the next place, the wages of labour in India are so low, that they would be immense losers by the emigration; -and, in the third place, the climate and the language and manners of the people are so different from their own, that

their condition would be wretched. In these circumstances, to talk of colonization becoming dangerous, by the admixture of Britons, in a country containing fifty millions of inhabitantsamong whom, for centuries, the Britons could hardly form a distinguishable ingredient-is really ludicrous.

In fact, wherever plain good sense has been applied to the subject, free from the misleading influence of personal interest, the absurdity of all apprehensions on the score of colonization has sufficiently appeared, Lord Cornwallis saw it distinctly; and, in contemplating freedom of trade to India, as that which not only ought to happen, but that which, in fact, would, to all appearance, very soon happen, he declared, that nothing was wanting but arrangements for a tolerable administration of justice, to render all the colonization which would ensue, in the highest degree advantageous. In his minute in council, of the 11th of February 1793 (one of the noblest monuments of his government), on the reform of the administration of justice in India, he says, Should the restrictions on the trade between this country and Britain be withdrawn, or lessened, it will crate a further necessity for strengthening the hands of justice. The idea of the agents of Europeans, or the officers of government, being able to commit oppression with impunity, ⚫ must be eradicated. The people will then feel themselves secure • in their persons and property; and a spirit of industry will ani⚫mate both the manufacurer and the cultivator of the land. The agents of European traders may then pervade every part of the country without injury to the people; and it will be enriched, in proportion to the extent of their demands for its produce and manufactures.' 2d. Rep. by Sel. Com. 1810, p. 108.

After such a hint as this, the Directors cannot pretend to be taken at unawares. If the very highest of their own servants are so deeply impressed with these opinions, they may form a judgment of what are the sentiments of the rest of their coun

tryinen.

The authority of Lord Wellesley is, to the honour of his judgment and frankness, clearly and strongly on the same side of the question. In arguing with the directors the question of indulgences to private trade, he was led to consider their objection drawn from the pretended danger of colonization. He turns it to their eye on all its sides; and exposes its futility, in every supposcable state of circumstances. He shows, that the powers of the Government, whether in the hands of the Company or in any other hands, are not destroyed by granting, whether more or less of the freedom of trade. He concludes with a remark which is but too often applicable to the policy of the Company. It is remarkable,' he says, that the principle which

• has

has hitherto regulated the commercial intercourse between India and England (i. e. the monopoly principle) has actually 'occasioned the very evils which it was intended to avert. The operation of this erroneous principle (i. e. the monopoly principle) has forced the trade between India and Europe from a channel in which it could have been controlled and regulat⚫ed without difficulty, into the hands of foreign nations, where it cannot, without considerable difficulty, be subjected to any ' degree of control, regulation or restraint. The same mistaken policy has invited from Europe and America adventurers of every description; and by the number and activity of these foreign agents, has menaced the foundations of your commercial and political interests throughout every part of Asia, and even within your own dominions. '- • It does not, he adds, appear probable that any increase of the private British trade of India would necessarily produce a proportional augmentation in the number of British agents resorting to your dominions; the British merchants now resident in India being equal to the conduct of much more extensive concerns, and likely to be employed by persons engaged in commercial concerns at home, who might easily conduct their operations with India through those British subjects actually established within your dominions. On the other hand, foreigners generally deal directly with the natives, or with foreign houses • of agency.

*

If we were not unaccountably disposed, indeed, to consider every thing in India as an exception to what holds in all other places, we should scarcely require authority for so very plain a proposition. Does it follow, because Britain opens her ports to all the nations of the earth, that Britain is inundated with foreigners, or colonized by all the different nations who flock to her shores? No: The people of the different nations who trade with her, hardly ever have any concern with more than a few mercantile houses at her trading sea-ports ; because it is the interest of individuals to have ready at these sea-ports the goods for which foreigners present a demand; and because the foreigners obtain them cheaper from these merchants, than by employing agents to collect them up and down the country for themselves. But it is very evident, that the causes which produce these effects in England, must produce them in India. Nay, in this latter country, a free trade would have the immediate effect of diminishing the number of Europeans now employed in collecting and preparing the investment, and of throwing a much greater proportion of the commercial

Letter from the Governor-General to the Court of Directors,

dated Fort William, 30th September 1800, parag. 61 to 67.

commercial labour into the hands of the natives. The great saving of expense that would accompany the substitution, would alone ensure its universal adoption: Nor is it possible to account for the employment of so many Europeans in this branch of the Company's service, without taking into consideration the patronage and appointments that are thus provided for its dependants. A free trade, therefore, would obviously have the effect of diminishing, instead of increasing, the European population. And here, again, we have an exemplification of Lord Wellesley's striking remark, that the Company's expedients are apt to produce the very consequences which they pretend that it is their wish to avoid.

Capital is the instrument of trade. Without capital, there is no such thing as trade; and trade is always, cæteris paribus, in exact proportion to capital. But Lord Wellesley says, The produce and manufactures of the British territories in India have increased to an extent far exceeding the amount which the capital applicable to the purchase of the Company's investment can embrace.'* How cruel, then, is the treatment of our Indian subjects, if this inadequate capital is all that we will allow to approach them! How absurd our policy, if we allow the capital of foreigners to employ itself without limitation in this productive field, while we rigidly exclude from it our own! In a very remarkable document, the Third Report from the Special Committee of Directors on the Private Trade, in March 1802, the Company declared themselves absolutely without resources for trade. The Company's investment, say they, has been usually provided from three sources-Surplus revenue, which is now absorbed by the state;—the fortunes of individuals to be remitted home ;-and the sale of the Europe exports in India. As the private traders have intercepted the second, and forestalled the third, it is but just, on behalf of the Company, to call on them to point out what ⚫ still remains. ' + With submission, we think it would be a very unreasonable call. What possible concern have the pri vate traders in finding resources for the Company? But a very reasonable observation on the part of the traders, and of the nation at large, would be, that if the East India Company are without resources for carrying on the Indian trade, the more reason there is that others should be allowed to engage in it.

6

Of the incapacity of the Company to carry on the trade to India, Lord Wellesley presented them with a pretty forcible proof in 1800. From the accompanying statements,' says his Lordship, Your Honourable Court will observe, that the • trade

* Letter, ul suya, par. 31.,

† Report, p. 22.

trade of America and Portugal, with the port of Calcutta alone, in 1799-1800, amounted to-imports 8,181,005 Sicca rupeesexports 7,130,372 Sicca rupees. On the other hand, the imports of the British subjects in the year 1799-1800, amounted only to 4,787,101 Sicca rupees, and the exports to 6,766,649.* It thus appears, that the resources of the Company are not adequate to one half of the trade actually carried on,-not to speak of what might easily be carried on.

As far back as the year 1799, Mr Dundas (the late Lord Melville) admitted, in his budget speech on the 12th of March, that the Company were so completely stript of funds for carrying on the trade, that the purchase of investments had been 'made principally by money raised on loans at a high rate of interest, from which the debts in India had increased beyond all reasonable bounds.' + In the year 1800, on the same occasion, he said, that the great supply by which the trade had 'been carried on, was from loans, which would appear in the ad⚫dition made to the debts.' And as there has been a regular deficit in the finances of the Company from that period to the present, it follows, without any further proof in detail, that the commerce must have been every year supported by the same ruinous expedient. It is no wonder, therefore, that the investment has diminished.

We have already exhibited an account, containing the amount of the Company's Indian investment. The following is a statement of the profit and loss on that investment.

Year.

Profit.

Loss.

-Such is the prosperous result of the Company's import trade from their own dominions. With regard to their exports, they content themselves, in the same memorable document, with a general declaration, that it is well known, that since the commencement of the war in 1793, they have in general lost by them.' But a trade which exhibits such a picture of profit

VOL. XIX. No. 37.

* Letter, ut supra, par. 35, 36.

Q

+See his Speech, as given at great length, and with authoritative exactness, in the Asiatic An. Reg. vol. 1.-Proceedings in Parl. p. 114, Ibid. vol. 2. p. 20.

Exposition, &c. ut supra, No. (A) p. 29.

Ibid. p. 2.