pointed against the Company of his own day, were within the privilege even of oratorical truth! It will be fruitless to pretend, with some objectors, that the improvements in question have been effected, not through the means of the present system, but in spite of it. Such objectors, Burke might have been apt to class with the preachers of that vulgar democracy, which affects to teach that the British constitution has proved beneficial, not by means of its monarchial elements, but in spite of them. There can be no sounder, no safer tests of the goodness of a system, than the practical advantages which it produces, and its susceptibility of gradual improvement. Where these are found together, as in the Indian constitution they are incontrovertibly found together, prejudice against any material change of principle becomes reason, and the speculative innovator, however specious his propositions, is not to be derided as a theorist, but repulsed as an enemy.

Hence appears to grow forth a second remark; which is, that, when any measure is recommended, from which even a remote probability of danger to the existing Indian system can be shewn, a weighty burden of proof falls on the advocates of such a measure. Let it be imagined, that some farther relaxation is proposed of the qualified monopoly possessed by the Company in the commerce of India. Let the Company be supposed to resist the project, on the ground that it would, by a circuitous, perhaps, but by a very likely process,

endanger the security of their political power. Could any thing be less reasonable than for the champions of the proposal to contend that, the presumption being always against monopoly, the business of proof rested wholly with the Company? So far as the unmixed question of monopoly extends, the assertion might be just. But, when even a prima facie argument is produced on the part of the Company, that the desired change would vitally affect the political part of the Indian system, at that moment they have, beyond all doubt, devolved the burden of proof on the innovator. Nor, again, would it be sufficient for the innovator to shew, even by the most unexceptionable chain of reasoning, that the possibility was, on the whole, against the occurrence of the mischiefs apprehended by the Company. A measurement of probabilities is admissible only between things of the same kind,-between quantities of the same order; but commercial and political advantage do not fall under this description. The certainty, however unquestionable, of commercial advantage, can never be set against the likelihood of political loss, however faint. An empire cannot be prosperously ruled on a contingent tenure. The political welfare of the fifty or sixty millions of persons who constitute the population of British India, cannot live on the thin element of mere probability.

CHAPTER II.

On the probable effects of allowing to British Subjects in general, a right, complete or very partially qualified, of trading to, and of residing in, British India, and any part of it.

ANY material innovation on our present Indian system, would probably involve one or both of the two following consequences:

First, That of allowing to British subjects in general, a right, complete or very partially qualified, of trading to, and of residing in, British India, and any part of it.

Secondly, That of transferring, entirely, or in great part, the civil and military functions now exercised by the Company, as the sovereigns of India, together with the patronage attached to them in that character, to some other person or persons.

It is scarcely worth while to observe, that the greater part of those who contend for the total abolition of the present system, fully contemplate a change in both these respects. There are others, however, who recommend only a partial abrogation of the privileges of the Company, and would leave that body in possession, some, of the substance of its political power and patronage, without its

commercial monopoly, others, of the substance of its commercial monopoly, without its political power and patronage. The former, or at least most of them, would confer on all British subjects a general right of trading to, and of residing in, any part of British India. The latter would vest in some other hands the political functions and patronage now belonging to the Company. It would not, indeed, be easy to conceive any thing amounting to a material innovation on the present system, to which one or both of these consequences should not be appendent; and it is, in point of fact, notorious, that one or both of them are distinctly anticipated by the generality of those who are decidedly advocates for such in novation.

It is, therefore, at once safe and just, by way of ascertaining what evils might be likely to arise from any considerable change in the present system, to enquire what evils would probably be connected with a change in either of the two particulars mentioned. This enquiry it is now intended to undertake; and, in the present chapter, it shall be considered what would be the operation, both im mediate and eventual, of an arrangement which should extend to all British subjects the liberty of trading to, and of residing in, the British dominions in the East, and any part of those dominions. It has been believed, not only by the advocates, but also by many of the opponents, of the Com

pany, that the result of conferring such a liberty on British subjects in general, would be the colonization of India. Dr. Adam Smith casts it as a reproach on the exclusive companies which have managed the Indian commerce of England, Holland, and other European nations, that, with the exception of Batavia, no colonies have been formed in their Eastern dominions. Speaking of "the genius of exclusive companies," he observes that it is "unfavourable to the growth of new "colonies, and has probably been the principal "cause of the little progress which they have "made in the East-Indies. The Portuguese car"ried on the trade to Africa and the East-Indies, "without any exclusive companies, and their "settlements at Congo, Angola, and Benguela,

on the coast of Africa, and at Goa in the East"Indies, though much depressed by superstition "and every sort of bad government, yet bear "some faint resemblance to the colonies of Ame "rica, and are partly inhabited by Portuguese, "who have been established there for several "generations."* Some of the followers of Dr. Smith, refining on the doctrines of their master, have maintained, not only that colonization must be the natural result of a free influx of Europeans into the East, but that even the restricted and modified intercourse, of which the present system allows, between Great Britain and her Eastern

* Wealth of Nations, Book IV. Ch. vii. part 3.