or manufacturing speculations, and India may continue for ever stationary in wealth, civilization, and happiness. With such protection no man can presume to assign limits to the advancement of which that neglected portion of the British empire is capable. It has been well observed that," in England, "the advantages of large capital are evi“dent;—in all our large undertakings, 66 money is as powerful as steam, because, "like that power, we are enabled to confine "it, and to apply its force on the particular

66

point and in the particular direction which

supposition that Englishmen are proprietors or farmers of the land on which the indigo plant is grown, which they are not permitted to be. They procure the plant on contract, and extract the colouring matter, in which process very little fixed capital is requisite. The average value of indigo annually exported from Calcutta is £2,500,000.

" is required. But take from us the laws "of our country, and the advantages of "public competition, which bind and pro"tect our capital, and money, like steam, "becomes impotent as smoke."* The writer of the above passage justly glories in the security enjoyed by his countrymen, which has given existence to so many miracles of comfort, splendour, magnificence, and power; and yet there is a dependency subject to the legislature of that same country, from the Englishmen resident in which, security of person and property, the only foundation of all prosperity, is withheld!

* Quarterly Review, No. LXXI. p. 99, on Cornish mining

in South America.

A

FURTHER INQUIRY,

&c. &c.

CHAPTER I..

ON THE EAST-INDIA COMPANY, CONSIDERED AS AN ORGAN OF GOVERNMENT AND OF TRADE.

THE circumspection with which the work of British legislation proceeds has seldom been. more signally exemplified than in the acts of Parliament relating to India. To take a short step once in twenty years; to adventure at long intervals to relax and untwist some of the cords of monopoly; to be persuaded, after a careful observation of the phenomena that it was safe and expedient, first, to permit private merchants to ship a limited quantity of goods in the Company's ships-then to permit an unlimited quantity of private goods to be shipped in private

B

ships of not less than 350 tons burthen-then to permit ships of even a smaller size to navigate the eastern seas—evinces a degree of patience, temperance, and caution, which must conciliate the most timid and satisfy the most prudent. At last the fulness of time seems to be come, when the nation is prepared to receive arrangements founded on a resolution that the East-India Company is in no way advantageous as a commercial or political institution, but rather an expensive incumbrance and obstruction, which ought long ago to have been removed.

It is now almost universally agreed that the Company has long outlasted the purposes for which it was created, or in the fulfilment of which it could ever usefully participate. The first voyages, under Queen Elizabeth's charter, partook of the romantic character of an argonautic expedition; and for upwards of a hundred years there was, in the frame of the society, a principle of vitality which sustained them under all the vicissitudes of their own fortunes and of national revolution. During all that period their constitution was perfectly adapted to their functions; but after commercial intercourse with the several countries in the east had been securely established, and after the national force had been mainly instrumental in the acquisition of