the influence of the Crown, the omnipotence of Parliament, the irregular but powerful jurisdiction of public opinion, should be set at defiance by a body, in comparison, so unspeakably weak as the East-India Company; to believe that a body, composed of elements which have no other point of union, and exposed, on all sides, to jealousies without number, should seriously affect independence, in any other sense than as independence ought to be the ambition of every free subject ;is surely among the most unicenced imaginations that ever assumed the name of opinions. In a period like the present, the Company must always live, if so homely an expression may be allowed, on trial. They subsist but by the breath of the nation; and, if they have ere this shaken cabinets to their foundation, it has only been because the nation was with them, in heart and in hand.

The reader must be weary of this chapter, and he shall not be detained. It is necessary to remind him, however, that, among the effects likely to spring from the establishment of a ministerial government for India, the threatened injury to the balance of the British constitution, forms but a single topic. The change of system must also have a close reference to the welfare of the people of Hindostan; and this subject might suggest many reflexions. Perhaps, indeed, the subject has been partly anticipated in the preceding pages. An endeavour has been made to shew that the supersession, in a political light, of the

Company by the Crown, would totally unhinge and disjoint the forms and arrangements of the Indian service. For whose advantage, however, were those forms and arrangements instituted? Not for ours; but for that of the people of Hindostan. True it is that those works of wisdom and humanity have, like mercy, reacted in blessings on the giver; but this has been their incidental, not their primary and designed operation. Their downfall might involve that of the British constitution, but they do themselves form the constitution of India, and it is an agitating task to reflect how great a portion of the happiness of the natives would probably be buried under their ruins. For what misshapen forms of ancient injustice and exorcised oppression might not be expected to reappear on the scene of Hindostan, if, for the light and regularity that pervade the present system, were substituted the darkness and disorder which have been described in the present chapter?

It may be enquired whether, under the government of the Company, the purity of which has been so greatly extolled, abuses and irregularities never take place? This is merely to ask whether the government of the Company be absolutely perfect. "There are, and must be," said a great man, "abuses in all governments. It amounts to "no more than a nugatory proposition."* It

* Burke.

makes a serious difference, however, whether the abuse be the rule or the exception; and, in the existing constitution of India, it is, beyond controversy, a rare exception. Were the places and emoluments of that country annexed to the Crown, there seems much ground for the apprehension that it would become the rule.

CHAPTER IV.

On the points at present in dispute between His Majesty's Ministers and the Company.

In shortly commenting on the pending disputes between the Ministers of the Crown and the representatives of the Company, it is not necessary to dwell with any minuteness on the past stages of the discussion. The object in this place, is not to criticize the conduct of the negotiating parties, but simply to explain the matters in issue.

The monopoly which the Company have long enjoyed, of the trade with India and China,-a monopoly, however, qualified in its extent, and, if the views afforded in the preceding chapters be correct, strictly defensible on political grounds,has always been regarded with jealousy by a part of our merchants and manufacturers. That jealousy has of late been both heightened and diffused. The mercantile and manufacturing classes of the United Kingdom, almost entirely debarred from the markets of Continental Europe by the policy and power of France, willingly believe that an ample compensation for their losses and privations might be found in the markets of India and China,, and reprobate the system which almost exclusively

confines the commercial use of those regions to a corporation established in London. They solicit, therefore, from the legislature, an abrogation of that system.

The legislative bodies have not yet had the opportunity of deciding on these claims. The Ministers, however, are disposed to confer, on a certain number of the ports of the United Kingdom, so much of the privilege sought as relates to India, while the trade to China shall be continued under the exclusive management of the Company. The Company, on the other hand, consent only to a partial relaxation of their monopoly in the trade with India. They would admit into that trade private vessels clearing out from the port of London, provided that the goods imported by such vessels on their return shall be brought to London and sold at the regular sales in the IndiaHouse. Those sales, it should be remarked, take place at stated periods, under a due previous notice, and are, by law, limited to the method of public auction. With respect to the other ports of the United Kingdom,-that those ports should be prevented from sending out vessels to India, the Company ask, but not very strenuously; while they intreat, as a point of vital moment, that no Indian goods may be admitted into any port of the United Kingdom excepting that of London, or suffered to be sold in any manner, excepting at the sales in the India-House. In these views and proposals of the Company, the private mer