UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA 
 AT LOS ANGELES
 
 '
 
 HINTS 
 
 AN ANSWER 
 
 Letter of the Chairman and Deputy Chairman 
 
 a Company, 
 
 RIGHT HON. ROBERT DUNDAS, 
 DATED 13xH JANUARY, 1809. 
 
 LONDON: 
 Printed for J. J. Stockdale, 41, Pall-Mall 
 
 1812. 
 Price 2s. Crf.
 
 C * t ' 
 
 -t 
 
 PrifiUd by Cox and Baylic, Great Q\u8trMt,
 
 ui 
 
 CO 
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 THE approaching termination of the exclusive 
 privileges of the East-India Company, has naturally 
 given birth to a very general enquiry into the wisdom 
 of the system, upon which the commercial intercourse 
 between this country, and our possessions in the East, 
 has hitherto been conducted. Of those who have en- 
 
 H gaged in the public discussion of this momentous ques- 
 tion, the gentlemen whose correspondence with Lord 
 
 2 Melville has recently been published, are the most 
 conspicuous, and certainly not the least able disputants. 
 That these letters should have excited a very general 
 attention, is by no means surprising. A much less 
 distinct and elaborate statement of the case of the East- 
 India Company, would, under the same circumstances, 
 have been sufficient to awaken the curiosity of every 
 
 man, who feels any interest in a question, to which 
 
 ^Mwneavi 
 probably but very few are wholly indifferent. /Of the 
 
 justice of the reasoning, and the accuracy of the state- 
 ments, contained in the celebrated letter of the 13th Ja- 
 nuary 1809, very different opinions may be entertained j 
 but in one point a sentiment of satisfaction that the \ 
 public are at length in possession of that document / 
 all parties -will probably concur. The adherents of the V 
 
 B Company \ 
 
 357972
 
 Company congratulate themselves, on the appearance 
 of an argument, to which, in their opinion, no satis- 
 factory answer can be opposed. They, on the other 
 hand, who consider the monopoly at present enjoyed 
 by that great corporation, as inimical to the best inter- 
 ests of the country, are not sorry that we are now, 
 fairly and fully, in possession of the grounds upon 
 which the East-India Company rest their claim to a 
 further extension of the term of their monopoly that 
 we have at last an explicit and intelligible defence of 
 their pretensions, compiled with much industry and 
 circumspection, by men of acknowledged experience 
 and ability unanimously approved by the body, to 
 whom the Court of Proprietors Lave committed the 
 direction of their commerce, and the sovereignty f 
 the East and sent forth into the world, as their deli- 
 berate expositiop of the principles, upon which they 
 hope to perpetuate the exclusion of an immense majo- 
 rity of the merchants and capitalists of this kingdom, 
 from all participation with them, in the trade of nearly 
 one half of the habitable world. It is the object of the 
 following pages to examine in detail, the arguments by 
 which Mr. Parry and Mr. Grant have supported these 
 
 i pretensions, and the facts upon which those arguments 
 depend. If it should appear, that the reasonings of 
 those gentlemen are inconsistent with the most simple, 
 and indisputable principles, of political and commercial 
 
 . ) policy and that their facts are directly opposed to all 
 
 that 
 
 )
 
 7 
 
 that can be collected from the most authentic sources of 
 information on the state of India ; if it can be shewn, 
 that the united talent and information of the Directors 
 of the East-India Company, directed to this single ob- 
 ject, have failed in establishing any one of the posi- / 
 tions, by which they hope to gain from Parliament the 
 renewal of their Charter ; it will not perhaps be too 
 much to conclude, that those positions are in themselves 
 fundamentally erroneous, or at least that no concessions 
 ought to be made, till some further, and more con- 
 vincing proof is advanced, that any thing can safely be 
 conceded.^/ 
 
 Whatever opinion may be entertained upon the 
 merits of the Letter of the Directors, the praise of a 
 clear statement of the arguments by which they main- 
 tain their opinions, will not be denied them. The 
 single purpose of this publication, being to controvert 
 the facts and the principles advanced by the Chairman 
 and Deputy Chairman, in their letter of the 1 3th of 
 January 1809, such extracts from that letter, as are 
 necessary to illustrate the argument, have been here 
 republished, and subjoined to the remarks, which have 
 occurred to the writer of these pages. 
 
 B 2
 
 HINTS, 
 
 esc. 
 
 IT is of the utmost importance, in the investigation 
 of any controverted question, that the disputants on 
 either side should ascertain how far their views of 
 the point in debate coincide, before they enter upon 
 any discussion of those topics, on which they are at 
 variance. The writers of the letter, on which it is the 
 purpose of these pages to animadvert, have, in con- 
 formity to this principle, commenced their argument, 
 by stating what they consider, as the foundation of the 
 whole subsequent discussion that, in providing for the 
 future management of India, the Legislature is to 
 introduce no alterations, " incompatible with the con- 
 " tinuance or not reducible to a consistency," with the 
 system established by the regulations of 1784 and 
 1793. 
 
 ' Satisfied, by this declaration, that His Majesty's 
 " Government understand the interests of this country 
 '' and of British India too well, to intend any alteration 
 ' that would subvert or endanger the system by which 
 * those vast possessions have been acquired, governed, 
 ' and improved, and by which alone they can be held, 
 ' to the mutual benefit of their immense population and 
 f of the paramount state, the Court must, of course, 
 
 " believe,
 
 10 
 
 " believe, that the propositions which have just been 
 " quoted, are supposed to be compatible with the con- 
 " tinuance of that system, or reducible to a consis- 
 ' tency with it. These suppositions the Court are now 
 " called upon to examine, and they will endeavour to 
 '* do so with the respect due to the authority with which 
 ' they have to treat, with the duty which they owe 
 " to their constituents, and with that regard for the 
 interests of their country, which they do not intend, 
 " nor feel themselves required to sink, in supporting 
 " the integrity of the present Indian system." 
 
 It may not perhaps be very easy, at once to 
 discover the whole length to which this general as- 
 sumption may lead' or to understand, in what the 
 *' integrity of the present Indian system" may be 
 supposed to consist. It seems however sufficient to 
 observe, in reply to this fundamental proposition, that 
 as the restrictions on the commerce of the East will 
 terminate ly law, ia 1814, it will be for Parliament 
 to investigate the whole subject unfettered by any 
 past regulations. The Charters of 1784 and 1793, 
 may or may not have been founded upon very wise 
 principles of national policy. The investigation of 
 that question may bo an important enquiry for the 
 historian of those days, or an interesting question for 
 the consideration of a mere political theorist. It will 
 however hardly be contended, that the Parliament of 
 these kingdoms is to approach to the decision of this 
 great question a decision, upon which much of the 
 happiness of a large proportion of the human race 
 
 depends
 
 11 
 
 depends tied down to a servile adherence to 
 former precedents ! that in discharging the most 
 awful and important trust, which has ever been com- 
 mitted to any legislative assembly upon earth, they 
 are to reject without inquiry, any principle which 
 may be submitted to their consideration if it is not to 
 be found in the former Charters of the East-India 
 Company ! To say that the magnitude of the ques- 
 tion should induce us to adhere to a system, of which 
 we have already some experience, is to assume, that 
 experience has not proved the system in question to 
 be inconsistent with the interest both of the governors 
 and the governed, (an assumption perhaps which some 
 may be disposed to dispute) and that, if those grants 
 were prudent and politic at the time at which they 
 were made, it will therefore be prudent and politic to 
 continue and renew them in the present very altered 
 circumstances of the world. 
 
 Waving, however, any further consideration of the 
 basis on which the Directors propose to treat with 
 Parliament, for 'the renewal of their Charter, we will 
 proceed to examine the arguments by which they hope 
 to obtain a further prolongation of their monopoly. 
 
 " With respect to the Private Trade, the Company 
 " are not governed by narrow considerations of com. 
 tl mereial profit or commercial jealousy ; and, in fact, 
 " the Indian trade, as an object of gain, has gradual- 
 " ly ceased to be of importance, either to the Com- 
 *' pany or to individuals," , 
 
 That
 
 That the Company are not " governed by narrotf 
 ' considerations of commercial profit," is a position 
 which will not be very much disputed by those who 
 have ever looked at their periodical accounts, or who 
 have any knowledge of the manner in which their 
 commercial concerns have hitherto been conducted. 
 That they are equally exempt from the influence of 
 " commercial jealousy,'* may not indeed be so readily 
 conceded ;-i-nor is it a very convincing proof of theif 
 superiority to such emotions, that they continue to press 
 the exclusion of the Merchants of this kingdom from 
 a trade, which they state to have gradually ceased, as 
 an object of gain, to be of importance to them. It is 
 not indeed very easy to find any other explanation of 
 their anxiety to retain a traffic, which they admit is in 
 their hands unprofitable. 
 
 But, allowing that, in this acknowledgment of 
 their ill success in the Indian trade, the Directors have 
 given a very correct representation of their own ex- 
 perience, their conclusion, that, that trade has also 
 ceased to be an object of importance to individuals, 
 hardly seems to be a very fair consequence. Does it 
 follow that the enterprize, and sagacity, and undi- 
 vided attention of the individual merchant, will be 
 exerted without reward, because the East-India Com* 
 pany have in the same field been unsuccessful ? The 
 Directors, probably, will not seriously maintain, that 
 their commercial knowledge and ability is an exact 
 
 measure
 
 13 
 
 measure of the commercial ability and knowledge 
 possessed by the great body of merchants of this coun- 
 try, and that it is impossible that other men should be 
 more active than their agents, and other speculations 
 more wisely conducted than their own ? 
 
 " The Court are actuated by a thorough persuasion, 
 *' that the unlimited freedom, for which some persons 
 " have, of late years, contended, would have politi- 
 " cal consequences more injurious to the power of 
 *' this country and of British India, than the advan- 
 < tages anticipated by sanguine minds, from an en- 
 " largement of the commerce, could compensate, if 
 " those advantages were to be realized ; and that, 
 " moreover, the expectation of such advantages is 
 *' unfounded, resulting from general presumptions, 
 " which are contradicted by the nature of the Indian 
 " people, climate, an ^productions, and by the expe- 
 
 " rience of more than two centuries." 
 
 - ~ 
 
 The political consequences which are made the 
 grounds of refusing a perfect freedom in the trade 
 to our Indian possessions will be considered hereafter ; 
 but it is denied that any advantages are expected by 
 the merchants and manufacturers, which " the na- 
 ture of the Indian people, productions, and climate," 
 do not entitle them to entertain. Had the Directors 
 been more conversant with the feelings and sentiments 
 of the mercantile body, in the great outports of this 
 kingdom, tjiey would have known that, in those circles, 
 no sanguine hopes of considerable immediate benefit, 
 from the opening of the Indian trade, are indulged ; 
 
 e and
 
 14 
 
 and that the prevailing opinion among that class of 
 men is, that the progress of commerce in India, as in 
 every other part of the world, must be slow ; but, that 
 though slow, it will be gradual, and certain. 
 
 ts Now, with respect to the benefits supposed to be 
 " derivable from opening the trade with India, it is, in 
 " the first place, to be observed, that no material en- 
 " largement, if any enlargement at all, is to be ex- 
 (f pected in the exports of our manufactures to that 
 " quarter. The records of the Company, for two 
 " centuries, are filled with accounts of their endea- 
 '* vours to extend the sale of British products in India, 
 " and of the little success which has attended them. 
 " The French, Dutch, and other European nations 
 " trading thither, have equally failed in introducing 
 ** the manufactures of Europe there. This was not 
 " owing to theiftrading chiefly in the form of Com- 
 '* panics ; the Americans, who within the last twenty 
 *' years have entered into the Indian commerce, and 
 tf traded largely, not as a Company, but by numerous 
 " individuals, each pursuing his own scheme in his own 
 " way, in which course no part of the East is left 
 " unexplored, carry hardly any European manufac- 
 " tures thither, their chief article for the purchase of 
 " Indian goods being silver ; and such has been the 
 *' state of the trade from Europe to India since the 
 
 :time of the Romans. This state results from the 
 * nature of the Indian people, their climate, and their 
 usages. The articles of first necessity their own 
 '* country furnishes, more abundantly and more 
 cheaply than it is possible for Europe to supply 
 them. The labour of the great body of the common 
 people only enables them to subsist on rice, and to 
 
 * wear
 
 ' wear a plight covering of cotton cloth ; they, there- 
 fore, can purchase none of the superfluities we offer 
 them." 
 
 
 That the merchants of this country do entertain 
 those expectations of ultimate benefit, from the open- 
 ing of the Indian trade, which the Chairman and 
 Deputy Chairman attribute to them, is indeed not to 
 be denied j nor do they apprehend that those expecta- 
 tions are wholly unreasonable. To prove the fallacy of 
 these hopes, the Directors have recourse to two prin- 
 cipal arguments; 1st. that there is not at present, an<J 
 that there is no prospect that there will be hereafter, any 
 considerable demand in India for the produce or ma- 
 nufactures of this country ; and 2dly. that there is not 
 in Great-Britain, or in the continent of Europe, any 
 market for the produce, or manufactures of the East, 
 which is not already abundantly supplied by the im- 
 ports of the Company. Upon the first of these positions, 
 it may be observed, that it proceeds upon the very 
 inadmissible assumption, that the population of India 
 is always to remain, in regard to the consumption of 
 our manufactures, exactly in their present condition ; 
 and that India is to form an exception the single 
 exception, in the history of the world, to the general 
 truth, that a free commercial intercourse between 
 civilized and uncivilized nations, has invariably been 
 the precursor of a rapid advancement among the latter 
 of all the arts and habits of cultivated society that 
 
 c 2 witk
 
 with the increase of those arts and habits, the com- 
 merce to which they were indebted for their origin, 
 has proportionably augmented that a free trade, is at 
 once the parent, and the offspring, of every liberal art, 
 and every useful science. But, say the Directors, " the 
 nature of the Indian people, their climate, and their 
 usages," form an insuperable obstacle to the operation 
 among them, of these simple, and as it might have 
 been supposed, universal principles of human society, 
 or rather of human nature. What! are not these 
 libelled subjects of the Company, men ? Have they 
 not the common tastes, and feelings, and dispositions 
 of men ? Are the Bramin and the Hindoo, among all 
 the sons and daughters of Adam, alone contented with 
 ff articles of the first necessity," when superfluities 
 and luxuries are placed within their reach? But 
 experience and fact, we are told, have decided the 
 question. For two centuries the Company has been 
 endeavouring to extend the sale of British produce in 
 India, and, as they admit, with very little success. Of 
 .the early records of their transactions, we certainly 
 know but little, and we are inclined to suspect that 
 much is not to be known. But in their more recent 
 history, a very careless enquirer might perhaps discover 
 some events, and some traces of a policy, which 
 would afford a satisfactory solution of the phenomenon 
 io question, without recurring to the revolting suppo- 
 sition, that there is in the Indian people any inherent 
 
 incapacity
 
 17 
 
 incapacity for improvement. That a great corpora- 
 tion, conducting Jts affairs by the agency of a nume- 
 rous train of servants, unconnected with each other, 
 and very remotely, if at all interested in the welfare of 
 their employers, intrusted without any previous disci- 
 pline, with the conduct of the most delicate and per- 
 plexing mercantile transactions, and surrounded with 
 all the pomp of Asiatic state, at a period of life which 
 the sobriety of European manners dedicates to study 
 and seclusion i that a trade so conducted should not 
 easily have been extended, is, indeed, not very unac- 
 countable. But is there not in the constitution of the 
 East-India Company, another circumstance which still 
 more clearly explains why India has for so many 
 generations, been connected with European traders, 
 without having made any progress in European arts or 
 in European civilization ? The truth is simply this, 
 their character of merchants has been sunk in their 
 character of sovereigns. To the maintenance and ex- 
 tension of their territorial empire, objects merely mer- 
 cantile have been sacrificed without hesitation or reluc- 
 tance. Every European whom merit or fortune has 
 thrown into any political, financial, or judicial station 
 in the Peninsula, feels a distinct and personal interest 
 in the permanency and extension of the empire 
 of the Directors. The viceroys and judges of 
 India, are bound to its support by etery motive of 
 vanity, ambition, and interest. In the commercial 
 
 prosperity
 
 18 
 
 prosperity of the Company, none are directly con- 
 cerned but the Holders of East India Stock j and 
 even their interest, in the augmentation of the trade, 
 is little more than nominal. If then it should be un- 
 happily imagined, by these rulers of the East, that their 
 sovereignty can only be maintained by depressing the 
 immense population of India, by keeping them in igno- 
 rance of those artsand habits of civilized life which might 
 one day expand and elevate their minds, can it be doubt- 
 ed, that this imperial policy would be inflexibly pursued, 
 though it were demonstrably ruinous to their interests as 
 traders ? that their objects of state would be enforced by 
 the united zeal and activity of the whole of their military 
 and civil servants in India, and that the lamentations of 
 a few merchants in Leadenhall Street, over the wreck of 
 their commercial prospects, would be either unheard, or 
 heard only to be derided ? Are these speculations gra- 
 tuitous or imaginary ? Let the Letter of Mr. Parry 
 
 . 
 
 and Mr. Grant answer that question. Among the objec- 
 tions they advance, against the destruction of their 
 monopoly, it is one, that it would tend to enrich 
 India rather than Britain, and would facilitate the 
 progress of the former to independence. The im- 
 poverishment of India therefore, aud the retardation 
 of its progress in any of those tastes and feelings, 
 which constitute the chief ornament of social life, 
 however slow and imperceptible that progress might 
 be, forms a fundamental part of the policy of the 
 
 Company.
 
 1$ 
 
 Company. In other words, it is their policy to sacri- 
 fice every thing to their political, and nothing to their 
 commercial interests ; no wonder that their subjects- 
 " can purchase none of their superfluities we offer 
 " them." 
 
 But it is not only the English Company who have 
 been unsuccessful in their attempts to extend the sale 
 of the manufactures of Europe ; the French and 
 Dutch, and more recently the Americans, have equally- 
 failed in the efforts they have made for the attainment 
 of the same object. To the case of the French and 
 Dutch Companies, much of what has been already said 
 of the management and policy of the present rulers of 
 India will, with some modifications, apply. 
 
 The American trade, which has been conducted by 
 individuals is, indeed, differently circumstanced. Why 
 then have the citizens of the United States made all 
 their payments, not in manufactures, but in specie ? 
 For this plain reason, probably ; the Americans are not 
 a manufacturing people. The merchants of Boston 
 and New York pay for every cargo of woollens or 
 hardware, which they ship for India, the expence of 
 freight across the Atlantic the charges of their agents 
 and shippers in this country the increased rate of in- 
 surance which, during the last twenty years (the period 
 of their participation in this trade) lias been raised by 
 the dangers of war, scarcely less upon the risks of 
 ircutral, than those of the belligerent add to this, the 
 
 increased
 
 20 
 
 increased length of the voyage and the facility of 
 shipping a quantity of the precious metals by the 
 smuggling trade with the South American Continent* 
 without deviating a league out of the course of their 
 voyage ; and can it be insisted, that the failure of the 
 Americans to introduce manufactured articles into India, 
 is a proof of any indisposition in the population of 
 nearly one half of the habitable world to use these ar- 
 ticles, which are little less than essential among the 
 other half ? The experiment, we will venture to assert, 
 has never been fairly made. We are taunted with the 
 reproach of being visionaries and speculators, for wish- 
 ing that it should be attempted. We would reply to 
 that reproach, that, in our humb/e, conception, no vi- 
 sions are so frantic, no speculations so monstrous and 
 wild as theirs, who can seriously believe that, from the 
 Cape of Good Hope eastward, to the Streights of 
 Magellan, the world is destitute of those tastes and dis- 
 positions which, under every other latitude, are found 
 to be the master passions of the human character; who 
 believes this monstrous proposition, not only without 
 proof, but in defiance of all evidence, and in contradic- 
 tion to all experience. 
 
 " To these facts and observations, arising from the 
 " nature and circumstances of the people and countries 
 ' of India, one remarkable argument may be added, 
 ** furnished by our own experience at home. In the 
 '* Charter of 1793, provision was made for the export 
 4 ' of British manufactures to India, by any individuals 
 
 " who
 
 ;- si 
 
 rt who rhischt choose to embark in that trade. The 
 
 o 
 
 " Company were required to find them tonnage to a 
 " certain extent, which has always been allotted at 
 " a rate of freight cheaper outward, as well as for 
 " the returns, than the Company themselves pay, or 
 " as the Court think, than private ships could furnish 
 " it. But, in all the time that has elapsed since, 
 " very few applications, and these to a small extent, 
 " have been made, for leave to export the woollens, 
 " metals, and other staples of this country, on private 
 " account, the chief applications having been for the 
 " freight of wine, for the consumption of Europeans.'* 
 
 The Directors have still, however, yet another in- 
 stance to advance of an unsuccessful attempt to intro- 
 duce the manufactures of Europe into the East. The 
 private traders who have engaged in that traffic under 
 the Charter of 1793 have, it seems, carried on a very 
 insignificant commerce, an J that little with the Euro- 
 pean, and not the native inhabitants of India. Now if 
 any thing could prove to demonstration, how little 
 dependence these acute and well informed advocate's of 
 the Indian monopoly place in the whole argument for 
 its continuance, derived from the difficulty wliich has 
 Tntherto been found in introducing European manu- 
 factures into the Peninsula ; the adoption of such rea- 
 soning as this, must amount to such a demonstration. 
 To pinion rheit down by every restriction whicn 
 " commercial jealousy " could devise ; to" Bid them 
 ttftct their gotfdsin the ships of their corhffiefcfei rivals, 
 and in nich proportions by each ship, as* t1l6se rival's 
 
 D should
 
 22 
 
 should determine ;* to deny them any power of regu- 
 lating the time of sailing ; to compel them to apply 
 for freight and to pay, or give security for the payment 
 of that freight, six months before the shipment of their 
 goods ; to call in October for lists of the quantities 
 and qualities of these goods, of which their rivals 
 were to have the carriage in the following April; to 
 subject them to forfeiture of their freight for non-deli- 
 very of those lists ; to afford them no means of remo- 
 val from an overstocked market ; and no factors but 
 such as were licensed by, and dependent on those 
 rivals ; to limit the residence of these agents to the 
 distance of ten miles from their own settlements j and 
 then, because when thus shackled and handcuffed, they 
 have made but little progress in introducing their ma- 
 nufactures into the East ; to turn upon them and say, 
 *' See, you have done nothing you find that India has 
 <* no market for your articles, and that you have no 
 " prospect of increasing your exports " may, if 
 meant as a sort of practical joke, be passable enough, 
 but if intended as serious argument, is really little 
 else but insult. The slave dealers who reproached 
 with stupidity and ferocity the unhappy beings whom 
 the stupidity of their owners degraded, and the ferocity 
 of their drivers brutalized, were hardly less just, or less 
 
 reasonable. 
 / 
 
 1* Let it be inquired; in the next place, whether the 
 " adoption of so great a change in our Indian system, 
 
 " would
 
 r would be followed by the discovery of such new and 
 " valuable productions of the East, as would serve 
 " materially to augment the trade of this country with 
 " the Continents of Europe and America ; for, with 
 " regard to the supply of our home consumption of 
 *' Indian commodities, it cannot be asserted, that the 
 *' importations already made by the Company and 
 " individuals do not abundantly suffice for it, or may 
 ' not, at any time, be extended to the exigencies of 
 " the market ; in which, it may be noted, that a 
 " preference is given to the cotton and silk manufac- 
 " tures of our own country, and to some of the 
 " tropical productions brought from our West-Indian 
 " Colonies. Nor can it be asserted, that new adven- 
 " turers in the Eastern trade, fitting out from Great 
 " Britain, could, with any profit to themselves, fur- 
 " nish the home consumption on cheaper terms than 
 " it is now supplied ; for both the Company, and 
 " British individuals resident in India, must have an 
 " advantage over such adventurers in the provision of 
 *' goods there (British residents in the freight also), 
 ie and yet, of late, the great Indian staple of cotton 
 ** piece goods has been a losing article in this country." 
 
 Come we now to the enquiry, whether we could 
 find in the Indian market any articles which we might 
 import into Europe, as a return for the commodities 
 which we hope to be able to carry from hence. And 
 here we must again protest against the assumption of 
 the Directors, that the subjects of their immense em- 
 pire, would not be most materially ameliorated by 
 the influence of a free trade, carried on between this 
 country and India. That the demand for the piece 
 
 D 2 goods
 
 goods of the Peninsula, is, at present, very inconsi- 
 derable, and that the supply is consequently small, 
 we do not dispute ; but, would not that demand pro- 
 gressively increase, as the price of these articles pro- 
 gressively diminished ? and would not the Hindoo, 
 tempted by our manufactures, and instructed by our 
 agents, learn to work up these goods at an expence 
 incalculably less than that at which they are made 
 at present ? and should we not have in these articles, 
 when so reduced in price, a sufficient and a profitable 
 return for our exports ? These improvements are not 
 the M-ork of a day it is true ; and, for want of some 
 returns immediately, the trade by which these im- 
 provements are to be fostered and created, will, it 
 is said, be destroyed in its cradle. We reply, first, 
 that the free traders would find, at the first opening 
 of the commerce of the East, some returns for their 
 exports by supplanting the present trade of the Com- 
 pany a scheme which we suspect they will prove 
 hardy enough to undertake, notwithstanding the assu- 
 rance of the Directors of the hopelessness of such a 
 project. We reply, in the second place, that the 
 enumeration of the Chairman and Deputy Chairman 
 does not comprehend all, or even all the most mate- 
 rial exportable articles of the East ; that our mer- 
 chants would probably ship tallow, and hides, from 
 the Cape, and rice, and flax, from the Peninsula, even 
 if the enumerated articles of export did not ztfirst supply 
 
 a suf-
 
 a sufficient return for the manufactures of Sheffield or. 
 Glasgow; that the traders of Liverpool and Bristol 
 would not be under the necessity of returning to the 
 ports of Great Britain in ballast, so long as the decrees 
 of Napoleon, and the fears of Russia, impede the sup- 
 plies we have usually received from the European 
 Continent. 
 
 Thus much in answer to the apprehensions, that 
 our expected trade to the Peninsula will be blighted 
 in its infancy, by the want of returns for our exports. 
 But when we look forward to the probable future state 
 of India, it really becomes difficult to treat with res- 
 pect, the fears (perhaps we should say the hopes) of 
 the Directors, that the East would not ultimately be 
 able to make adequate returns for the exports of Great 
 Britain. Considering the cheapness of labour, through- 
 out almost the whole of these extensive countries < 
 the docility and mechanical ingenuity of all classes 
 of their population keeping it in mind that they have 
 already, in no slight degree, learnt the value of those 
 luxuries, which opulence would bring within their reach 
 -r-and remembering that the operations of banking, 
 and all the other arts which experience has contrived 
 to facilitate the details of commerce, are familiar to 
 them and that in the love of external pomp they are 
 surpassed by no nation upon earth can any man 
 believe can such men as Mr. Parry and Mr. Grant 
 (except indeed when seated in the chairs of the Com- 
 pany)
 
 26 
 
 pany) believe, that such a people as this, will not b<S 
 roused into exertion when the gratification of their 
 taste, their vanity, and their love of gain, will be the 
 immediate reward ? 
 
 These prospects we are told, however, are illusory, 
 and opposed to fact. " From the nature of the Indians 
 " and their division into castes, it is not so easy among 
 " them as in Europe, to meet an increased demand 
 " by increased production."* We have much res- 
 pect for the experience, and the most absolute con* 
 fidence in the veracity of Mr. Parry and Mr. Grant, 
 but we are notwithstanding, somewhat distrustful of 
 the accuracy of this representation. We speak from 
 high authority (and if the assertion is questioned that 
 authority will be produced), in saying, that the re- 
 verse of this statement is correctly true, that the divi-* 
 sion of the Indians into castes, very much facilitates 
 the introduction among any particular caste, of any 
 new habits, fashions, or usages, which may be adopted 
 by the men of principal authority and influence among 
 them ; and that so far from any difficulty existing in 
 producing an increased supply of Indian manufactures 
 to meet any new and unusual demand, that there are 
 to be found throughout the whole extent of Hindostan^ 
 large numbers of persons belonging to all the different 
 manufacturing castes, who are prevented only by 
 
 want 
 
 * See page 20.
 
 27 
 
 want of employment, from engaging in their respec- 
 tive hereditary occupations. Immense numbers of 
 weavers especially, are to be found in this situation. 
 So much for the alledged incapacity of the Indians, to 
 meet any increased demand in consequence of their 
 division into castes. What impediments may arise 
 from the " nature of the Indian people" we have al- 
 ready considered. The sentiments, as well as the 
 sceptre of Aurengzebe, seem to have passed into the 
 hands of these imperial traders. 
 
 " The chief commodities suited to the European 
 " market, which India has hitherto been found to 
 * ; produce, are spices, pepper, drugs, sugar, coffee, 
 " raw-silk, saltpetre, indigo, raw cotton, and above 
 <* all, cotton manufactures of singular beauty and in 
 " endless variety." 
 
 To return to the consideration of the several articles 
 of export from India enumerated by the Directors. 
 The tonnage of the Company we are informed, is suf- 
 ficient for the importation from India of all the spices, 
 pepper, drugs, sugar, coffee, raw-silk, salt-petre, 
 indigo, raw cotton, and cotton manufacture, which 
 the present consumption of Europe demands. We 
 are disposed to admit the truth of this statement, and 
 even to go one step further, and allow, that, supposing 
 the monopoly continued, we do not think it at all im- 
 probable that the present tonnage of the Company 
 will always be sufficient for the importation of so much 
 
 of
 
 28 
 
 of those article*, as the consumption of Europe will 
 on that supposition at any future time demand. Most 
 of these articles can now be purchased by the rich 
 alone, " and being articles of luxury (say the Direc- 
 tors), can only have a limited consumption." As long 
 as they continue articles of luxury (if by that term 
 is meant costly articles), so long unquestionably they 
 trill not come into the hands of those \vho have but 
 little to spare, except for the necessaries of life; but 
 why need it be supposed that this is always to be the 
 case ? That a Corporation, feeling little or no interest 
 in the extension of their trade, will not so encourage 
 the productions of these commodities as to bring then! 
 witfcm the reach of the lower classes of European so- 
 ciety, experience has certainly proved, but is it proba- 
 ble, that free traders will be equally remiss in extending 
 the consumption of the articles of their trade, by lessen- 
 ing in every possible manner the expence of cultivating 
 and producing them ? Three of the enumerated arti- 
 cles of Indian import, silk, cotton, and rierrip> can- 
 not however,, it seems,, ever form any great? staple in 
 the imports from the Peninsula, in consequence of the 
 competition of Italy, Georgia, and Russia. With 
 respect to hemp, it is to be observed, that the uncer- 
 tainty of the supply from the political circumstances 
 of Russia, very materially diminishes the probability 
 of any very formidable rivalship from that country. 
 > raw silks of Italy are produced with much more 
 
 expence
 
 29 
 
 expence than those of India, and though it is true 
 that all the expenses of the voyage from the Peninsula, 
 are saved on the import of the Italian article, yet it 
 is also true, that the specific gravity of silk renders it 
 a very convenient and therefore a very advantageous 
 part of a shipment from the East. Whatever advan- 
 tages the cottons of Georgia may possess from the vi- 
 cinity of that country, yet in any competition with the 
 productions of India, the superior quality of the article 
 which experience has shewn, might, under an improved 
 state of culture, be raised and imported from thence, 
 would always give an indisputable preference to the 
 Indian trader, in every market in which the finer kinds 
 of cotton were in request. With respect to the three 
 last articles, it is also to be observed, that the ameliora- 
 tion in the state of Indian manufactures and husbandry, 
 , which the advocates for a free trade to the Peninsula 
 confidently and as we think not unreasonably expect, 
 as the result of that measure, will give to the products 
 of that country, great additional advantages, in a com- 
 petition with the manufactures or produce of any 
 other part of the world. 
 
 " But were it indeed otherwise, where, in the pre- 
 " sent circumstances of the European Continent, could 
 " new commodities, imported into this country from 
 " India, find a vent, when many of those already 
 " made, and of articles which the Continent used to 
 " take off, remain in our warehouses ?" - 
 
 E In
 
 so 
 
 In failure of every other argument, to prove that 
 :m> extension of the present trade with India can 
 be made with advantage to the importer, \e are at 
 last referred to the present state of the European 
 Continent. 
 
 We have before had occasion to hint a suspicion of 
 some lurking distrust in the -minds of the Directors 
 themselves, of their own reasonings, and we are the 
 more confirmed in that suspicion, by their condescend- 
 ing to seek support from such an argument as this. 
 
 Is it so clear that the present is to be the permanent 
 state of the Continent ? May we not, without the im- 
 putation of being very visionary speculators, hope, 
 that the time is not far distant, when an empire ac- 
 quired and maintained by means which humanity never 
 sanctioned, will be overturned by the -sure though 
 tardy vengeance of insulted nature. It is not indeed, 
 it is not an unwholesome lesson for all unlimited 
 sovereigns, whether they rule as individuals or as 
 companies, to learn, that dominion -acquired by plun- 
 der, is but too certainly destroyed by the same means 
 which were used for its acquisition ; that the bloodshed 
 which precedes the establishment of a despotic throne, 
 is but the 'first and the least sanguinary act in the fatal 
 tragedy, which despotism has too frequently exhibited 
 upon the great theatre of the world. But if the Direc- 
 tors will compel us to eKainine how this great question 
 
 is
 
 V 31 
 
 is affected by the present circumstances of Europe ; if 
 they will have us introduce this element into our cal- 
 culations ; why then we ask, are there no circumstances 
 in the present state of Europe or of Great Britain, 
 which call upon the Parliament of those kingdoms for 
 immediate relief ? Have we no manufacturers unem- 
 ployed, or employed only in the destruction of the 
 public peace and security ? Have we no unusual im- 
 pediments to commercial speculation, which can only 
 be removed by opening new channels for our enter- 
 prize ? and ; it is at this time, under such " present cir- 
 cumstances," that we are called upon to throw the ' 
 whole traffic with 400 millions of people into the hands 
 of a Bankrupt Company, of a Company who by their 
 own confession, are ceasing to look to that trade as 
 an object of gain, and whose decreasing capital bears 
 but too just a proportion to the progressive diminution 
 of their exports ? But it will be objected^ the legislature 
 would in vain endeavour to appease present distur- 
 bances, and to allay present heats, by holding out the 
 prospect that in the year 1814, a new trade will be 
 opened to our needy manufacturers. That the legisla- 
 ture will not so create new resources for the present 
 supply of these manufacturers, we admit ; but will they 
 not create consolatory expectations ? will it not be an 
 additional and powerful argument in the mouth of 
 those who are exerting their authority and influence to 
 promote internal peace and good order amongst us, if 
 
 K 2 they
 
 32 
 
 they can say to these unfortunate suffei'ers, that their 
 representatives are not indifferent to their distress, that 
 the influence qf this mighty Company has weighed 
 less with them than the wants and necessities of their 
 constituents, and that the government has established 
 some claim to the gratitude of their subjects by omitting* 
 no measure which could be devised for their relief ? To 
 us, in truth, a view of present circumstances would lead 
 to very different conclusions from those formed by the 
 Directors, were not such considerations really unde- 
 serving of serious attention, in forming a decision of 
 which it is not too much to affirm, that the consequen- 
 ces will be felt in ages, when all the awful projects and 
 apprehensions which now agitate every corner of the 
 civilized world will be consigned to oblivion. 
 
 It would really be diverting, if the subject were not 
 too serious for mirtb, to observe the language held by 
 these incorporated merchants on the subject of their 
 monopoly. " The refusal of the Company to make 
 concessions " to the people of these realms, are sup- 
 posed by their official advocates to have been the origin 
 of certain unfounded complaints. Truly this new 
 dynasty might well take a lesson of courtesy from some 
 of the abdicated sovereigns of the East. The florid 
 exuberance of style in which the stately language of 
 oriental diplomacy is clothed, is at least some token of 
 real or assumed respect for those to whom it is address* 
 cd, and to us ordinary folks, it would scarcely seem 
 
 less
 
 33 
 
 less preposterous should these new potentates embellish 
 the entries in their ledgers and day-books, with the 
 tropes and rhetoric of those very eloquent personages, 
 than that they should adopt in these their state papers 
 the dignified tone of European cabinets. This, how- 
 ever, we admit is mere verbal criticism, and though 
 in point of taste, we think such sort of phraseology 
 is not the most happily selected, we are not very soli- 
 citous to dispute that matter with them. 
 
 " And hence may appear the inapplicability of that 
 *' argument, which has sometimes been urged in favor 
 " of enlarging, or rather opening the Indian trade to 
 " individuals, ' that they should be allowed to brinw 
 " e home the surplus produce of India which the Com- 
 ' c e pany did not require.' There can be no room for 
 " additional importations, when the ordinary scale 
 " proves too large. But in the use of this plausible 
 *' plea, respecting surplus produce a there was alwaj r s 
 " a great fallacy. It seemed to imply, that there was 
 " a stock of commodities in India which continually re- 
 " mained undisposed of, whereas nothing is more evi- 
 " dent, than that the productions of any country will 
 " be regulated by the demand, and that no agricul- 
 " turists or manufacturers will go on from year to year 
 *' to produce that for which they have no sale. The 
 * term, as connected with the Company, might also 
 " convey the idea, that they were the only purchasers 
 " in the country ; whereas, at that very time, Britislr 
 " residents and foreign nations had the privilege of 
 " exporting goods to the western world, and there 
 " was a great coasting and internal trade from one 
 '* part of India to another. But the argument for 
 
 " permitting
 
 34 
 
 *'- permitting individuals to export the surplus produce, 
 " included full}', though not professedly, the principle 
 " of transplanting British capital to India, in order to 
 " raise produce there ; a principle which, it may be 
 " thought, this country has already carried sufficiently 
 <e - for in its other distant dependencies, and which 
 ** could not be applied to India without political con- 
 
 The concession which the Company "refused to 
 make, is one which we apprehend will never be so- 
 licited again, " a liberty to bring home the surplus 
 " produce of India, which the Company did not re- 
 ** quire," that is we suppose a permission to go into 
 the Indian market, to buy up whatever reruse articles 
 the Company's agents might be unwilling to purchase. 
 To granting this certainly not very, presumptuous 
 request, the Directors it seems had two objections j 
 1st. That there was no surplus produce to be found in 
 the Peninsula, inasmuch as the supply of Indian wares 
 would not of course regularly exceed the regular 
 demand of the purchasers of those articles. Now, ad- 
 mitting the accuracy of this statement, one of two 
 consequences we submit, must have been the inevitable 
 result of permitting these buyers of surplus produce to 
 enter into the market either they would have found 
 nothing to purchase, and would have desisted from the 
 attempt or their intervention would have created a 
 surplus produce, and they would then have been able 
 to ship whatever cargoes they might have chanced to 
 
 require.
 
 require. This latter result we certainly imagine would 
 have been the consequence of such a concession, and 
 so probably thought the Directors ; nor is it a matter 
 of much surprize, that, under the influence of such ex- 
 pectations, they should have refused to grant the desired 
 indulgence. Another principle it seems of very alarm- 
 kg import was also included in this request of our 
 merchants, ** the principle of transplanting British 
 capital to India, in order to raise produce there." Of 
 the evils likely to arise from the adoption of such a 
 principle, the Court of Directors appear to entertain 
 no small apprehension, and indeed, no man will re- 
 proach them with having in their own commercial trans- 
 actions been guilty of this fatal error. 
 
 But why, may we, not ask, should this transfer f 
 British capital to India be deprecated, as -a policy 
 jpregnant with so much evil ? If, by being transplant- 
 ed to a kindlier soil, it can be rendered more produc- 
 tive ; if ks increased returns are to be poured back 
 into the bosom of the country from which itself was 
 derived ; if, instead of lying as it now lies, and as in 
 our advanced state of society it must always, in some 
 degree remain, uncultivated and unimproved, it were 
 used to call forth the activity, to stimulate the inven- 
 tion, and to ameliorate the condition of millions of our 
 fellow creatures and fellow subjects, and, by a chain 
 of causes as immutable as the course of nature itself, 
 ultimately to ameliorate our own ; would any wise 
 
 man
 
 man lament such an employment of our wealth would 
 any body of men, wholly exempt from " commercial 
 " jealousy ," lament it ? To the very hasty and im- 
 perfect sketch we have attempted to give of the pro- 
 bable effect of a free trade, on the vast regions now 
 under our dominion in the East, we refer for the proof, 
 the only proof which the nature of this discussion 
 enables us now to give, of the justice of those expec- 
 tations. 
 
 Resolved, however, to justify, at all events, the 
 severity of their refusal to the merchants of this coun- 
 try of any participation, even in the surplus produce 
 of India, the Directors next, (not wholly in consis- 
 tency with their former argument) proceed to observe, 
 that some surplus produce (taking that term as appli- 
 cable to all that exceeds the wants of the Company 
 themselves) may be raked within their empire* but 
 that " British Residents and foreign Merchants have 
 " the privilege of exporting goods to the Western 
 " world." We can easily understand, that it may be 
 much more convenient to the Company to acquiesce in 
 a " surplus" trade, carried on by British Residents 
 and foreign Merchants, than in any commer.ce in which 
 British Merchants should immediately participate. 
 British Residents are not very dangerous rivals, and 
 " foreign Merchants'" are to be found under that, or 
 some other equally convenient ambiguity of name, 
 
 in
 
 in almost every traffic established on the face of th6 
 globe. 
 
 " With respect to the Americans, they owe their ad- 
 " vancement and success in the Indian trade to the trea- 
 " ty made with them by our Government in 1794, to the 
 *' belligerent state of Europe since that time, and, 
 *' above all, to the neutral character they possessed, 
 ** which enabled them to navigate more cheaply, more 
 " expeditiously, as well as more safely than our oier- 
 " chants or the Company could, and to supply many 
 " parts of the European Continent and of South 
 " America, to which our ships had no access. These, 
 K with the increase of the consumption of eastern 
 '** commodities among themselves, are the true causes 
 " of the growth of the American trade with India ; 
 " and even the abolition of the Company's privileges 
 f would not have transferred the share they acquired 
 " of it to OUT merchants, because it could not have 
 '* lessened the advantages under which the Americans 
 '* then carried it on, nor have gained us either the 
 " supply of their internal demand, or admission to 
 * c many ports which were open to them. What the 
 " Company could do, In the way of regulation, to 
 4t reduce the inequality between the American traders 
 *' and our awn merchants, you know, Sir, was effected, 
 " as soon after the expiration of the treaty of 1194 as 
 " His Majesty's Government thought expedient." 
 
 Among those foreign merchants, into whose hands 
 this trade has fallen, the Americans are, unques- 
 tionably, our most formidable and active rivals ; and 
 die Directors feel it especially important to shew, 
 chat the intervention of that enterprising people into. 
 
 F the
 
 38 
 
 the commerce of the East, has not been owing to any 
 " erroneous policy on the part of the Company." 
 Several European nations having (we are informed) 
 from the native Sovereigns of India, the right of 
 possessing settlements and carrying on trade there, 
 " we could not interrupt the exercise of it, whilst 
 " they remained at peace with us." To which of 
 the European nations does this description apply at 
 present ? and may not that policy be, without injus- 
 tice, stigmatised as unwise, which has, at an im- 
 mense expence of blood and treasure, expelled the 
 nations of Europe from their trade and settlements 
 in the East not for the purpose of rendering those 
 settlements advantageous to Great-Britain not for 
 the purpose of " bringing that trade into the Thames," 
 but to give the citizens of the United States, still 
 greater facilities in underselling us, not only in their 
 own markets, but in Turkey, in South America, in 
 the North of Europe, in short, in every market in 
 which we still might have entered into competition 
 with them? That competition it seems, however, 
 would have been ineffectual. The advantages of their 
 " neutral character " enabled the Americans to carry 
 on this trade so " cheaply and expeditionsly," that 
 even " the abolition of the Company's privileges 
 " would not have transferred the share they acquired 
 " of it to our merchants." Some counterpoise against 
 these advantages, might, it is supposed, have been 
 
 found
 
 39 
 
 found in the power which, as sovereigns of India, 
 the Company possessed of laying additional duties 
 upon this American traffic, but all that could be done 
 in the way of regulation, was, it appears, "effected, 
 " as soon after the expiration of the treaty of 1794, 
 " as His Majesty's Government thought expedient." 
 That treaty expired in 1806, since which period 
 we have completed the conquest of all the settlements 
 of which the nations of Europe were in possession 
 throughout India ; and is it to be contended, that 
 the wealth of Great Britain is to be squandered in 
 . making distant conquests, of which a neutral is to 
 reap all the benefit? that we have conquered Batavia 
 and the Mauritius, without having acquired a right 
 of regulating the traffic of those settlements for our 
 own benefit? Great, indeed, are the advantages of 
 neutrality, if it can claim such privileges as these j if, 
 in addition to all the means of cheapness, security 
 .and dispatch, with which the American trader can na- 
 vigate the ocean, he is to be admitted to a free trade 
 with all the settlements which our arms have acquired, 
 exempted from those duties and restrictions which 
 .every state has an unquestionable right to impose 
 upon the trade of foreigners, with its own colonial 
 establishments, and is to possess these advantages, not 
 in common with our own merchants, but in preference 
 .to them, and even to their absolute exclusion. 
 
 F.3.
 
 40 
 
 Upon this part of the subject, it becomes, however, 
 unnecessary to enlarge, from our being, fortunately, 
 in possession of a most important and conclusive proof 
 of the ruinous effect of this preference of American 
 to British traders, in the letter of the Marquis Wel- 
 lesley, dated at Fort William, 30th September 1800. 
 To this most interesting document, we beg leave to 
 refer those who may doubt whether, in this instance 
 at least, the policy of the Company has not been 
 " erroneous." 
 
 Among the terrors which have taken possession of 
 the Company, in the prospect of a free intercourse 
 between this country and the East, the fear of a 
 " ruinous competition in the markets, both at home 
 " and abroad, appears to be the most predominant." 
 Upon this subject something has already been advanced 
 in the course of these remarks, and much more, at a 
 more convenient opportunity, might easily be offered. 
 Strange, indeed, are the apprehensions with which 
 men are haunted, when their reason and their memory 
 have submitted to the dominion of fancy. History has 
 been written to no purpose, and philosophy has com- 
 mented on it in vain, if, in these days, men, to whom 
 
 ^^^A . * 
 
 both philosophy and history are familiar, are still 
 watching with anxiety the proportionate amount of 
 exports and imports, and trembling, lest the prodiga- 
 lity of our merchants should plunge us into a traffic, 
 of which all the loss would be sustained by Britain, and 
 
 eli
 
 41 
 
 all the benefit acquired by India. ff, indeed, our 
 merchants acted in corporations, and not as indivi- 
 duals, had they no personal interest, to stimulate 
 their activity and to awaken their circumspection, 
 had they, in short, all the vices of joint stock com- 
 panies, there might be some justice in these alarms. 
 Considering the expectations, however, which the 
 Company entertains of the total dissolution of their 
 own commercial existence, tt.e concern which they 
 express for the future mercantile disasters of the coun- 
 try, must be admitted to be at least a very liberal and 
 disinterested anxiety. 
 
 " And, in the first, place, it would, in substance 
 " and in form, entirely abolish the qualified monopoly 
 " which the Company still enjoys of the Indian trade. 
 " The admission of all private merchants, at their 
 " pleasure, and of their ships, into that trade, would 
 " make it as perfectly free as the trade to our American 
 " or West-Indian colonies. There would, as to India, 
 ' be an end of all exclusive privilege of trade." 
 
 We are now to consider the effects of the proposed 
 change upon the East-India Company and upon British 
 India. Of these the first is, " that the admission of all 
 " private merchants at their pleasure and of their ships 
 " into" the Indian trade, " would, in substance and in 
 " form, entirely abolish the qualified monopoly which 
 " the Company still enjoys" of that trade. To say 
 the honest truth, we are not very well able to refute this 
 reasoning. However sceptical other men may be, vre 
 
 fed
 
 42 
 
 feel ourselves compelled to admit, that the destruction of 
 the Company's monopoly would be inconsistent with its 
 existence, and that they would not alone be able to 
 speculate in the Indian trade, when other men might 
 engage in it at their pleasure. Having therefore very 
 fairly made this concession, we are relieved from the 
 necessity of examining the very elaborate argument, 
 with which it has so ably and irresistibly been sup- 
 ported. 
 
 In the other alledged mischievous consequences of 
 throwing open the Indian trade, we are not disposed 
 quite so readily to acquiesce ; the mere enumeration is 
 however not a little alarming. The destruction of the 
 -Company in their political capacity ; a ruinous compe- 
 tition in the markets both at home and abroad ; disap- 
 pointment and consequent discontent ; a violation of 
 the territorial rights of the Directors ; the destruction 
 of all East-Indian sales by public auction; the aban- 
 donment of their factories ; want of employment among 
 the commercial branch of their civil servants j the im- 
 practicability of procuring bills upon Great Britain ; 
 the disuse of their ships ; the ruin of the China trade ; 
 the sacrifice of our revenue j and, the loss of India ! 
 Awful indeed is the responsibility of those whose task 
 it is to legislate for the world, but to legislate under the 
 apprehension, that consequences such as these are de- 
 pendent on their decisions, may well overwhelm the 
 w.eak and intimidate the firmest minds. In this deba- 
 ting
 
 43 
 
 ting age and nation, but few, probably, amongst us, 
 and but very few indeed of our legislators, can be so 
 little versed in political dispute, as not to be on their 
 guard against that sort of ruse de guerre, which is so 
 commonly practised in almost every description of 
 public controversy. To overwhelm an opponent with 
 a detail of the miseries and destruction, to which his 
 measures or his projects tend, while all proof of the 
 approach of those miseries, and the probability of that 
 destruction, is withheld in stating the evils to which 
 the adoption of one alternative will lead, to omit any 
 mention of the mischiefs which will probably be conse- 
 quent upon the otherto attribute to the schemes of 
 your adversary all the wretchedness and disaster, fot 
 which the mismanagement of preceding generations 
 has prepared the way, are among the most cheap and 
 easy arts to which men, diffident of the opinions for 
 which thej- are disputing, are accustomed to resort. 
 But though this species of attack is easy, the assailant 
 can thus impose upon his antagonist a duty sufficiently 
 arduous. It throws upon him the burden of disproving 
 the widest and most sweeping assertions, and subjects 
 him, when his proof is completed, to the mortification 
 of being told, that he has left untouched the particular 
 views and arguments, upon which the conclusions of 
 his opponent depend. He, however, who voluntarily 
 engages in the contest, has no right to complain of 
 those practices, which the usages, rather than the laws 
 
 of
 
 44 
 
 of political warfare, have established, So far, there- 
 fore, as it may be practicable, compatibly with that 
 brevity which it is our purpose to ensure, we will pro- 
 ceed to consider in order the several disastrous conse- 
 quences, which the Directors assure us will be the 
 result of opening the trade to the Peninsula. 
 
 " The loss of the Indian monopoly, such as it was 
 " left by the Act of 1793, would lead, by no slow 
 " process, to the entire subversion of the Company, 
 I ** both in their commercial and political capacity, and 
 ft of that system which the Legislature has appointed 
 " for the government of British India, of whicn system 
 " the Company forms an integral and essential part. " 
 
 r 
 
 First then it seems that the subversion of the Com- 
 pany in their commercial and political capacity, will be 
 the consequence of the loss of the Indian monopol}'. 
 Some men might question whether this consequence, 
 admitting its probability, would really be an event 
 much to be deprecated j with the political part of that 
 subject, however, we have at present no concern. 
 
 That the subversion of the Company, in its commer- 
 cial capacity, would be the issue of the proposed al- 
 teration, is, we certainly think, very highlj- probable ; 
 and why should that result be lamented t Could the 
 loss of a trade, to which they have ceased to look as an 
 object of gain, cause any diminution of their revenue ? 
 or rather, would not the duties, which, as sovereigns 
 of the Peninsula, they would levy upon the then aug- 
 mented
 
 45 
 
 merited trade of their empire, be a source of revenue 
 of which they are now wholly destitute. That some 
 direct influence may be acquired by their authority in 
 the markets of the East, over those by whom those 
 markets are supplied, may be allowed ; but it must also 
 be remembered, that trade is a system of reciprocal 
 obligation, and that any power so gained will be pretty 
 fairly balanced by the dependence which, in the same 
 transactions, will be necessarily incurred. Nor is it in 
 the estimate of the consequences, of which the loss of 
 their monopoly might be productive, to be forgotten, 
 that much of an indirect, but most powerful influence, 
 might be acquired, by displaying themselves to the 
 Asiatic world in pomp and splendour, befitting their 
 exalted station, not as the brokers and pedlars of Eu- 
 rope truckling for some paltry bargain, but boldly 
 claiming the sovereignty of India, and becoming in 
 profession what, in intention and policy, they have so 
 long sought to be. 
 
 " If the change itself did not occasion the fall of 
 " the Company, the disappointments which the private 
 " adventurers could not fail to experience would, by 
 t( them, be charged to the influence of the remaining 
 '" privileges of the Company, and they would nofl 
 " rest until the whole were extinguished." 
 
 Descending at length to less momentous considera- 
 tions, the Directors discover, amongst the evils which 
 a free trade with India would call into being-, one ca- 
 
 e lamity
 
 lamity which does not at first sight appear to wear a 
 yery alarming aspect. ** The disappointments of pri- 
 vate traders would be charged to the influence of the 
 remaining privileges of the Company." That com- 
 plaints and reproaches would be more effectual to un- 
 dermine whatever privileges the Company might then 
 retain, than they have been to subvert those of which 
 they are now in possession, is not very credible ; at 
 least, the Company having made a fair experiment 
 of the in utility of concessions, would have then a much 
 stronger argument, to disprove the policy of yielding 
 to such complaints, than any of which they are in 
 .possession at present. 
 
 The justice of the territorial claims of the Directors, 
 it is not within the object of these pages to discuss. 
 
 " With the cessation of their Indian trade, their 
 ** Indian subordinate factories, which have been reared 
 ** in the course of more than a century, and which 
 " are the seats of the best manufactures produced in 
 ** the country, roust be abandoned, and all the com- 
 *' mercial branch of their civil servants be thrown out 
 tf of employ. Their purchases of goods at home, for 
 * the Indian market, must also cease, with the circu- 
 *' lation of money which has enabled them to support 
 tl their credit in England, and to provide for the pay- 
 ** nient of bills, which it has been long and necessarily 
 " the practice to draw on them from India ; a practice 
 t( which, under such a change of circumstances, could 
 " not be continued: and, in general, the great aid 
 *-* which the political affair.s of British India have, at 
 
 " all
 
 47 
 
 " all times, derived from the commercial credit and 
 " resources of the Company, with the reciprocally 
 " beneficial co-operation of the different parts of the 
 " Company's system, must thus be destroyed. la 
 " like manner, the Company must cease to employ 
 " the numerous class of excellent ships they have en- 
 ft gaged for the Indian trade, ships constructed for 
 " warlike defence as well as for commerce, and ren- 
 " dered expensive onlj*, by being necessarily destined 
 t( and fitted for the performance of political services." 
 
 Of the ruinous effects of throwing open the Indian 
 trade, the next which the Directors proceed to con- 
 sider, arc the abandonment of their factories, want 
 of employment for their commercial servants, the im- 
 practicability of rinding bills upon Great Britain, the 
 disuse of their shipping, and . the want of means of 
 conveying naval and military stores. To all this re- 
 presentation, the answer appears perfectly simple and 
 obvious. If the effect of the opening of the Indian 
 trade will be permanently to diminish the commercial 
 dealings between this country and the East in that 
 case, much of the evil here stated, may not improba- 
 bly result from the adoption of that measure. That 
 such will not be the effect of an open trade, we have 
 already endeavoured to prove, and we trust not wholly 
 
 \ 
 
 without success. But supposing what for the purpose 
 of the present argument, it is amply sufficient to sup- 
 pose^ that the -trade with the East when conducted by 
 individual merchants, will be only equal in amount 
 to that which the Company carries on at present, will 
 
 c 2 not
 
 48 
 
 not the subordinate Indian factories be as necessary for 
 the conduct of that trade, as of the commercial 
 dealings which are now transacted there ? and will not 
 the commercial servants of the Directors, in proportion 
 to their skill aud experience be fully occupied as con- 
 signees or as correspondents of the private traders of 
 Great Britain ? That those factories would, in the 
 case supposed, cease to be the establishments of the 
 East-India Company, and that those commercial ser- 
 vants would (quoad their commercial character) cease 
 to be the servants of the Company, may perhaps be 
 conceded, but as these factories and commercial ser- 
 vants constitute a part of that mercantile system of 
 the Company, " to which they have ceased to look as 
 an object of gain," and which is in truth rather a 
 burden and a loss ; in what manner can the Directors 
 be injured by this mercantile disunion from a, con- 
 nexion which, so far as it is mercantile, is of no ad- 
 vantage to them, while all the rights of sovereignty 
 over their servants, and of territorial property in their 
 factories, are maintained inviolate. 
 
 The same reasoning will extend to the other supposed 
 injurious consequences of an open trade, which are at 
 present under our consideration. The private com- 
 merce, which is to occupy the markets, now supplied 
 by the Company, is not very likely to be carried on 
 without the intervention of Bills of Exchange, nor. is it 
 very easy to conceive how the annual amount of these 
 
 bills
 
 49 
 
 bilk should, (on the supposition upon which \re are 
 now proceeding) be less in the one system than in the 
 other. 
 
 But on the destruction of their monopoly, it seems, 
 the ships now charged by the Company must be laid 
 up, since being built for warlike defence as well as 
 commerce, they would be unsuited to the purposes of 
 private merchants, and the supplies of naval and mili- 
 tary stores, which have usuaHy been conveyed in them, 
 must consequently cease to be exported. Why the 
 means of " warlike defence " are not as necessary for 
 the individual merchant as for the Company, yet re- 
 ^mains to be told. Why a corporation possessing a 
 capital of ^22,567,953 and burdened with a debt ex- 
 ceeding that capital by more than 6 millions, should be 
 better able to take up very expensive shipping than the 
 merchants of these realms whose capital engaged 
 only in one branch of trade (the W r est Indian) exceeds 
 the amount of the Company's capital and debt put 
 together is still to be discovered, and why, these 
 merchants, who we are informed will be unable to assort 
 any cargoes for the Indian market, should refuse to 
 give the Company freight for their warlike stores in 
 their half empty vessels, on pretty reasonable terms, 
 the Chairman and Deputy Chairman have left us to 
 enquire. 
 
 It is however unnecessary to deny, that the disuse of 
 a large proportion of the shipping at present engaged 
 
 in
 
 50 
 
 in the trade to India, would be among the very pro- 
 bable consequences of throwing open that trade to 
 private speculation. But in truth we do not think that 
 the case of the Directors will be much indebted to this 
 argument. On the contrary, we are inclined to sus- 
 pect, that it is a concession which they have somewhat 
 unwisely and unwarily made. Visionary as our mer- 
 chants may be, they have not yet learned to speculate 
 sp wildly as to charter ships of eight, ten, or twelve 
 hundred tons burden, for a voyage which can be made 
 with incomparably more cheapness, safety, and dis- 
 patch, by vessels of one half or one third of that 
 tonnage. The Company, true to their principle or." 
 despising all " narrow consideratons of commercial 
 profit" have indeed neglected this as well as other 
 calculations, which to men, to whom considerations of 
 that kind are familiar, might have appeared important. 
 That British Merchants should refuse to take up the 
 shipping now chartered by the Company, can we sup- 
 pose arjse only from this that the Company's ships 
 are not well adapted for the trade in which they are 
 engaged. For what reason then have they so long 
 been employed ? To that question, some have replied, 
 by referring to the influence of the Shipping Interest 
 in the Court of Directors, others by calling to mind 
 the habitual carelessness and imprudence of Joint Stock 
 Companies the Chairman and Deputy Chairman by 
 telling us that they " are destined and fitted for the 
 
 performance
 
 51 
 
 perfqrmace of political services " adopting the last as 
 the most authoritative explanation of the practice in 
 question, still it seems impossible to evade the conclu- 
 sion that here at least the commercial interests of the 
 Company have heen sacrificed to their interests as 
 sovereigns that so far as this most material article of 
 expence is concerned, their imperial is incompatible 
 with their mercantile character, and that, if in no other 
 yet certainly in this respect, the trade with India will 
 be more cheaply and advantageously conducted by 
 private merchants than by the East-India Company. 
 
 " But there is no reason to believe the evils would 
 " end here. The monopoly of the China trade, which 
 "it is proposed to continue, would not be safe. 
 < British ships, when permitted to range at pleasure 
 " through the Indian seas, however interdicted from 
 " that trade, would attempt to participate in it, either 
 " by resorting to it as the country ships do, under 
 " color of carrying on the coasting trade, or by other 
 " means obtaining teas, and the other productions of 
 '' China, at the most convenient Indian ports. Love 
 " of gain, disappointments in other ways, the hope 
 " of impunity, would stimulate their conductors to 
 " break through restrictions imposed in this countrj*. 
 " British subjects, who now navigate the Indian Seas, 
 " sail from some one of our established settlements 
 *' there, and are amenable to the laws of it : it would 
 " not be so with men having no domicile in India. In 
 41 ranging the numerous islands and coasts of the 
 tf Eastern Seas, where they would be unknown, and 
 " whehce they could not be followed to England by 
 
 " complaints,
 
 52 
 
 < complaints, the probability of impunity might tempt 
 ** them to commit upon the weak natives, accustomed 
 " to repose confidence in Englishmen, acts of injustice 
 * and licentiousness, which would wound the national 
 * character, raise complaints throughout India, and 
 set the people against us." 
 
 There are but two other points in the letter of the 
 Directors to which we shall solicit die attention of our 
 readers. 1st. The apprehensions entertained that our 
 private merchants, " ranging the numerous islands 
 and coasts of the Eastern Sea," would be tempted to 
 ' commit upon the weak natives, accustomed to repose 
 confidence in Englishmen, acts of injustice and licen- 
 tiousness, which would wound the national character, 
 raise complaints throughout-India, and set the people 
 against us." The same fears apply to China, with 
 this difference only : that there we should set the Em- 
 peror against us. That men will be licentious where 
 they can be so with impunity, we are not so ignorant 
 of men as not to believe, nay, were we incredulous 
 upon this point, perhaps a glance at the history of 
 Modern India itself might suffice for our conviction. 
 But that men will be habitually licentious where they 
 Lave a strong immediate private interest in restraining 
 their passions, we are not so wholly unacquainted with 
 the power of self-interest as to think very probable. 
 If the ruinous competition in the Indian Market of 
 of which the Directors speak is not a phantom of their 
 
 own
 
 53 
 
 6wn creation ; it is surely somewhat incredible that men, 
 with their hands full of unsaleable wares, should not 
 rather assume the obsequious civility of the private 
 tradesman, than the insolent licence which in the mere 
 agent of a vast Joint Stock Company, would be natural 
 and intelligible. 
 
 " In China, where the effects of such a spirit would 
 " be most to be feared, we could exercise no authority, 
 " sufficient to controul men not within the reach of the 
 ". Indian Governments, or to defeat their schemes and 
 " associations for eluding the laws. Practice would 
 * c embolden them, and time increase their numbers. 
 " It is hardly conceivable they would not venture upon 
 " irregularities which would offend the Chinese Go- 
 " vernment, who, whilst the delinquents escaped to 
 " England with impunity, would doubtless take satis- 
 " faction of the national factory ; and the pride and 
 " jealousy of that government, alarmed by repeated 
 " instances of this nature, from the desultory visits of 
 " a new order of Englishmen, insubordinate to the 
 " representatives of the nation, might determine to 
 " dismiss the whole together." 
 
 The inconveniences anticipated from the petulance 
 of our traders in Borneo or -Sumatra, would, we con- 
 jecture, however, produce very little alarm at Lea- 
 denhall Street, if the sensibility of the Directors, were 
 not excited for the preservation of the peace and 
 good order of China also. We are aware that the 
 apprehensions entertained by the Directors on this 
 ground are not confined to themselves, but that many 
 
 H Wen.
 
 men, who have no immediate personal interest in tha 
 continuance of the monopoly of the Company in the 
 China trade, are disposed to acquiesce in the justice 
 of these alarms, and such, indeed, appear to be the 
 views of His Majesty's Ministers in their observations 
 of the 2d March 1812.' Upon this question, we wish- 
 to. suggest a few considerations, which may tend to 
 shew the fallacy of the representations which have 
 been so assiduously circulated, in relation to this part 
 of the subject: and, 1st. we must observe, that the 
 agents of the Company at Canton 'are the mere factors 
 of a great commercial establishment, and not the 
 servants of the Sovereigns of India. No one, who 
 knows any thing of. the haughty spirit of the Court 
 of Pekin, will, for a moment believe that the agents 
 of the Company can derive any protection from the 
 violence or insults of the Emperor of China, from 
 their connection with a body of merchants, whose 
 power that magnificent person considers- probably 
 with the most supreme indifference; and for whose 
 occupation, except as it may supply him with some 
 of the conveniences of life, he doubtless entertain* 
 the most unqualified contempt. So far, then, the in* 
 dividual merchant will, at least, be on an equality 
 with the agent of the Companythat they will be 
 equally destitute of any means of acquiring respect 
 or toleration, except what they may derive from the 
 guod character for submissiveness and orderly beha. 
 
 viour
 
 55 
 
 vlour, ivhich they may respectively establish. That 
 this is a very difficult task to any description of men 
 need not be denied ; nay, we will even say, that, 
 however we might feel as merchants, we should, as 
 men, be sorry if it were otherwise than difficult. But, 
 in considering which of the two classes of persons, 
 who would be engaged in that occupation, would be 
 most likely to conduct themselves with the deference 
 and regularity which Chinese pride or policy might 
 exact, it seems hardly questionable, but that the 
 master supercargo and seamen of a Bristol or Liver- 
 pool trader, would far surpass in quietness and docility 
 the commander and crew of a China ship in the em- 
 ploy of the Company: and if the comparison should 
 be extended to the factors on shore, the result would 
 be still more clearly in favour of the agent of the 
 private merchant. 
 
 In the first place, it must be remarked, that the 
 East-India Company are in possession of the market 
 and that the private trader could only hope to make 
 a profitable voyage by supplanting, in some degree, 
 so powerful a rival. To this end, the arts of insi- 
 nuation and address would be the most obvious and 
 natural path. 
 
 2dly. The inferior bulk and peacefnl appearance 
 of the ships of the private trader, would tend much 
 to diminish any jealousy which the government of 
 China might entertain of the objects of the individual 
 
 H 2 merchant.
 
 5G 
 
 merchant. But that the same government should feel 
 some apprehensions of the immense armaments of the 
 Past-India Company, is considering the paltry marine by 
 which that great Empire is defended, no very extraor- 
 dinary or unwarrantable instance of suspicion. 
 
 3d. It would hardly escape the penetration of that 
 very jealous people, that much less was to be feared 
 from any number of insulated individuals, than from a 
 body of men whose identity of interest and connexion 
 with one common head, would enable them to conduct 
 any lawless enterprize which they might be supposed to 
 meditate, with vigour, celerity, and effect. 
 
 4th. The complement of one of the Company's 
 China ships is very much larger in proportion to its 
 tonnage, than the crew which any private merchant 
 would hire for the navigation of the vessels, which 
 would be fitted out from Liverpool or Glasgow. There 
 would consequently be little danger of any long or 
 frequent absence of the common seamen, from the 
 vessels of the latter. Attention to the ordinary busi- 
 ness of the ship, and the task of taking in the cargo 
 
 / 
 
 and necessary stores, wculd provide ample occupation 
 for that number of hands, which the economy of pri- 
 vate speculation would prescribe. Idleness and conse- 
 quently licentiousness would of course prevail most in. 
 that service, in which the duty to be performed was 
 least constant and laborious. ' 
 
 5th. From.
 
 5th. From the system adopted by the Company of 
 bringing home the produce of their China trade in 
 large fleets, which sail at stated intervals their ships 
 ]ie at Canton for a much longer period than would be 
 necessary, to take in the cargo which could be sent to 
 Europe in the single vessels of private-traders how 
 much in such a situation, delay must increase the 
 temptation of committing those excesses, which are so 
 much apprehended, it seems hardly necessary to men- 
 tion. 
 
 6th. It is supposed, that the superior respectability 
 of the captains and crews employed by the East-India 
 Company and their larger establishments of petty offi- 
 cers, would insure a more prompt and ready obedience 
 and greater severity of discipline in their vessels, than 
 could he obtained in the ships of mere private adven- 
 turers. Without entering into a comparison which 
 must be useless and might be offensive, it may be 
 sufficient to say in reply to that suggestion, that if 
 our merchant service contains any men of talent, reso- 
 lution, integrity, and experience, who, are not num- 
 bered among the servants of the East-India Company, 
 such are precisely the men whom aiay merchant would 
 select for his masters and supercargo, in a voyage of 
 such importance and difficulty as that in question. If 
 such men are to be found (which it is to be presumed 
 will not be disputed) and if when found, they would 
 be selected for trust and command in a voyage to 
 
 China
 
 58 
 
 China (which probably few will doubt), why are we 
 to anticipate any defect of discipline in vessels so com- 
 manded. Obedience is the fruit of fear or affection or 
 respect, nor is it easy to understand how the captain 
 of a Company's ship, should be more able or more 
 likely to excite these emotions, than such officers as 
 we have already described. 
 
 7th. It is obvious that, in proportion as the trade 
 carried on between this country and China increased, 
 the importance of that intercourse would rise in the 
 estimation of the government of the latter country. 
 Prejudice and ignorance may do much, but their 
 power has its limit. The Mandarins will at last be- 
 lieve, that a traffic which supplies them with any 
 luxuries, amusements, or gratifications, of which, 
 without that traffic, they would have been destitute, 
 cannot be wholly unworthy even of their attention 
 and support. If a free trade with China will have the 
 effect of extending the commerce of China, which it 
 is not very easy to question, may we not reasonably 
 hope, that their deep rooted jealousy of foreign con- 
 nexion will at length be overcome, by daily expe- 
 rience of the substantial comforts and advantages of 
 which that connexion might be made productive. 
 
 To some, however, all these considerations may per- 
 haps appear insufficient, to shew that the extension of 
 the trade with China, to private merchants, would not 
 excite all the jealousy on the part of the Chinese 
 
 government
 
 government of which the Directors are apprehensive. 
 To allay the fears, the excessive fears, as they appear 
 to us, of such persons, \ve would venture lastly to 
 propose, as a practical method of obviating the sup- 
 posed inconvenience, that all British subjects at Can- 
 ton, and generally throughout |he parts of China, 
 should be placed under the control of a consul, to be 
 appointed for that purpose by His Majesty ; that he 
 should be entrusted with very large and ample powers 
 of laying under arrest ; and even, if necessary, of 
 punishing by fine or imprisonment, on board any 
 British ships in the port of Canton, any person OF 
 persons who might be guilty of any species of excess, 
 by which the Chinese government or any of its officers 
 were likely to be molested , and that, to provide foe 
 the due exeeution-of his orders, he should be entrusted 
 with an authority (for that purpose only) over all the 
 seamen and others belonging to any British vessel lying 
 in that port j of such a measure the' minor regulations 
 and details would be for the consideration of Parlia.^ 
 incnt. 
 
 " If this extreme case be not supposed, which how-* 
 ** ever is too probable and too momentous in its conse- 
 '* quences to be hazarded, can it be doubted, that whilst 
 ** the duties on tea continue at even the fourth part of 
 te what they are at present, private English ships ad- 
 " venturing to the Eastern Seas will not, by means of 
 " country vessels and intermediate ports, if by no other 
 " means, procure teas, and revive the practice of 
 
 " smuggling
 
 60 
 
 " smuggling them into this kingdom? The eonse- 
 <* quence seems inevitable, and the ships of our own 
 ' country, especially if allowed to chuse their port of 
 ' discharge, as the proposed change seems to require, 
 " would have facilities, which those of foreign Europe 
 '* or America could not command. How the immense 
 ' revenue, now derived by Government from the very 
 ' high duties on tea, could, under such circumstan* 
 " ces, be realized, or a substitute found for them, may 
 be an important, and, to all appearance, a most 
 " difficult subject of enquiry." 
 
 To the indiscriminate admission of private merchants 
 into the trade with China, the Directors have however 
 another objection, though like cautious advocates, 
 they have very wisely postponed the mention of that 
 argument, which they expected to tell most forcibly J 
 to the conclusion of their enumeration of the evils 
 impending over us, by the projected alterations in our 
 Indian system, "the immense revenue now received by 
 " government, from the very high duties on tea," 
 would it appears be with very great difficulty < realiz- 
 ' ed." The grounds of this supposition are not very 
 intelligibly stated. We collect, however, from the 
 whole of the Letter of the Chairman and Deputy 
 Chairman, that this supposed defalcation in the 
 revenue, is expected to arise from a system of smug- 
 gling, to which it is believed the opening of the trade 
 with China will give peculiar facilities, and from the 
 adventurers in that trade being allowed," as the 
 
 proposed
 
 61 
 
 proposed change seems to require, " to chuse their 
 *' own port of discharge." Of the history of smug- 
 gling, the Writer of these pages is willing to confess, 
 that be knows but little ; and in the absence of any 
 reasoning, to shew the probability of the extension of 
 this practice, in consequence of the projected altera- 
 tions in the system of our China and Indian trade, it 
 certainly becomes difficult to disprove the assertion 
 which has been made by the Directors. There appear 
 notwithstanding to be one or two considerations, which 
 might excuse some degree of incredulity, as to the 
 justice and accuracy of this opinion. Of all men, Mr. 
 Parry and Mr. Grant will be the last to deny, that 
 whatever other effect the opening of the commerce of 
 the East may produce, it will, at least, be the cause 
 of a great competition in our own markets, and that in 
 consequence of that competition, the prices of tea, as 
 of every other article of import from those countries, 
 will be " reduced still lower " than they are at present. 
 Now, in what consists the temptation to smuggle teas 
 from Canton to Liverpool, or (what for our present 
 purpose amounts to the same thing) from Boston to 
 Liverpool, upon the present system of Chinese mono- 
 poly ? First, the article is brought into the market 
 here, free from the expence of the ad valorem duties, 
 which, in a lawful voj'age, would be payable upon 
 the sales at the East-India House in London. Secondly, 
 the East-India Company, having in the fair market a 
 
 I monopoly
 
 62 
 
 monopoly of the article, regulate both the quantities 
 and the qualities of the teas they purchase in China, 
 so as to keep up the price of that commodity in the 
 markets o( Great-Britain. The smuggler consequently 
 not only sells his wares exempt from the duty, but he 
 sells them in a market m which the value of the article 
 is unnaturally and very considerably raised. Thirdly, 
 the East-India Company may be supposed, like most 
 other similar establishments, to make their purchases 
 at a rate somewhat exceeding the fair value of the 
 commodities they purchase. The smuggler has all 
 the advantage of the circumspection and wariness of 
 individual self-interest in making up his charges. He 
 therefore brings his gCods into a market, in which his 
 only rival is one who lias bought at a higher rate than 
 himself. iBut now suppose the trade with China to be 
 thrown open to private merchants. The smuggler, it 
 is true, will still have the advantage over the fair 
 trader of saving upon his sales the duties payable to 
 o-overnment. But neither will he come into market 
 
 fi 
 
 artificially raised, nor will his competitors in the 
 market be less active, cautious, or intelligent, than 
 himself, in purchasing their commodities. So far then, 
 it does not seem very intelligible, that a free trade 
 should increase the gains of smugglers, or augment 
 their numbers. But there is a remedy against this 
 apprehended evil, exceedingly simple, efficacious, 
 and obvious. A ** ruinous competition" will of 
 
 course
 
 fif 
 
 course increase the amount of sales and consequently 
 the whole amount of the duties upon those sales. 
 Some diminution, therefore, in the duties, might be 
 made without any diminution in the revenue, or in 
 other words, the temptation to smuggling may, at : o 
 expence to the public, be considerably dimmish; d. 
 Farther, by admitting the private trader into a partici- 
 pation in the Chinese trade, the legislature weuld at 
 once raise in the fair merchants and their agents, a 
 whole army of Custqm-House Officers as vigilant, 
 because as much interested in the defection of frauds, 
 as the persons who are officially entrusted with the 
 discharge of that dut}*; and, lastly, by removing 
 from the port of London, a considerable proportion 
 of the imports from the East, we should, m s >me 
 degree, render useless all the wonder '. ul a ,d unequalled 
 facilities, which, ijptwjthstandipg its expensive esta- 
 blishment of revenue offic.ers ; that port ' possesses for. 
 evading the execution of the laws. For these, among 
 other, reasons we are very sceptical as to the inmry, 
 which it is supposed the customs will s 1 -stain, from, 
 the projected alteration in the system, of Brit.sh inter- 
 course with the East. 
 
 Among other monopolies, it has been the object of 
 the petitioners to Parliament, to destroy that which is 
 now enjoyed by the port of London, in the exclusive 
 possession of al) the import of East-Indian commodities, 
 this proposal would excite great alarm and very 
 1 2 loud
 
 64 
 
 loud clamour, they by whom it was made of course 
 expected that this clamour should be made not only 
 the substitute, but the single substitute for argument, 
 has excited no Astonish oient ; but it has been somewhat 
 surprizirg to the merchants of the great outports of 
 this kingdom, that they should have been called upon 
 to disprove the policy of throwing the whole of this 
 immense traffic into one of the cities of this empire, 
 to the exclusion of all the outports of Great-Britain 
 and Ireland. The least which can be expected of men 
 who are soliciting so immense .an exclusive privilege, is 
 that they should be provided with a clear and producible! 
 defence of the justice of their demands. Hitherto 
 they have found it either prudent or necessary to de- 
 cline so hazardous an attempt. We may collect how- 
 ever from what has hitherto appeared upon this subject, 
 that the great grounds of argument of the persons 
 " interested in the port of London," will, when they 
 condescend to argue the question at all> be as fol 
 lows : 
 
 1st. It may be said that there is a large body of 
 men now occupied in the City of London, in the ser- 
 vice of the East-India Company, who would by the 
 proposed alteration be thrown out of employ, and that 
 much of the capital invested in their respective trades, 
 by the wholesale tea-dealers, and others connected with 
 , be Company, would be rendered unprofitable. 
 
 The
 
 65 
 
 The importance of these considerations no man will 
 be disposed to dispute; but when their just weight shall 
 have been allowed them, to what will it amount ? The 
 sum and substance of human wisdom, consists in com- 
 promizing well between opposite difficulties the com- 
 pletion of human folly, in refusing to avoid a greater 
 evil, by submitting to a less. The shippers and ware- 
 housemen, and tea-dealers of the City of London, will 
 scarcely attempt to prove that the national detriment 
 which we shall sustain by their loss of employment, is 
 greater than what will be incurred by refusing to nine 
 hundred and ninety-nine of every thousand of the 
 merchants and manufactures of this country, all com- 
 mercial intercourse with one half of the habitable 
 world. Their case may be an efficient make-weight 
 in the balance of argument, but if brought forward as 
 a single counterpoise to the considerations to which 
 it is opposed, its influence is absolutely imperceptible. 
 That much individual loss and disappointment would 
 be sustained by these classes of men, it is needless to' 
 deny ; but, perhaps, that loss has been somewhat over- 
 stated. Much of the labour and the capital now en- 
 gaged in the East-India trade in the metropolis, would 
 probably be transferred to the outports, and much 
 might advantageously be diverted to other occupations. 
 But above all it must not be forgotten, that the evil 
 sustained by the citizens of London, would be the exact 
 measure and the immediate cause of the benefit ac- 
 quired
 
 66 
 
 quired by the inhabitants of the provinces ; and that 
 to the C u; m unity at lar^,e i. is a matter of little or no 
 moment, whether J^itius in London, or Sttnftronius in 
 Liverpool, is enriched by the East-Ind'an trade. The 
 c$se of these persons is (as far as it is worthy of our 
 attention) a case for compensation. 
 
 Sdly. It may be urged in behalf of the Port of 
 London, that the coasting trade is materially promoted 
 by the import of East Indian goods being restricted to 
 the Thames. We doubt much whether, in point of 
 fact, this statement is correct. The iniand navigation 
 from London has, of late years, been so much im- 
 proved, and the overland communication with every 
 town and village in the country, has been rendered 
 so cheap, easy, and expeditious, that, except for very 
 bulky articles indeed (and such are not the goods 
 ^numerated by the Chairman and Deputy Chairman, 
 as constituting the imports of India) it does not seem 
 very likely, nor indeed is it to be believed that much 
 tonnage is engaged in the coasting trade. But not 
 to, dispute the fact, let us consider what it is which 
 we sacrifice to this object, when, for tne promotion 
 cf it, we abandon the whole imports of the East 
 to the port of London. First, all the risks incurred 
 c loss by capture in the Channel (which, if the port 
 pf discharge were at Cork, or Liverpool, or Bristol, 
 would be avoided) are necessarily sustained by ships 
 which are compelled to discharge their cargoes in the 
 
 Thames.
 
 67 
 
 Thames. Secondly, the consumers of tea, or any 
 article of import from the East, have, in addition to 
 the price of the article itself, to pay a profit to the 
 broker and wholesale dealer in London, which, if the 
 sales were conducted at the outports, might be saved. 
 Thirdly, all the costs of carriage inland or coastwise, 
 and of double warehousing, are likewise a charge 
 npon the commodity, which might be materially di- 
 minished by opening the outports to the reception 
 of East Indian merchandize. Fourthly, the principle 
 upon which this argument proceeds, would, if extend- 
 ed to its fair consequences, lead tA very extraordinary 
 results indeed. If it be expedient to ship teas in 
 coasting vessels from the Thames to the Humber, 
 rather than to permit a direct importation into the 
 latter river, why not extend the same reasoning to the 
 import of sugar ? why not to that of hides, or hemp, 
 or tallow ? Why, to the great and manifest injury 
 of the coasting trade, are chairs and tables suffered 
 to be sold in the public streets which have not made 
 a probationary voyage to Leith or to the Orkneys ? 
 Why all this except that we have discovered that 
 though the promotion of the coasting trade is a good 
 thing, yet that it is not the first of all political objects 
 that it is of much less importance, for instance, 
 than the cheapness of all articles of universal use 
 and dispatch in their arrival at their destined markets. 
 
 Third,
 
 68 
 
 Third, the last objection which we aintidpate to the 
 admission of the outports to a participation in the com- 
 merce of the East, is, that the present mode of col- 
 Jectinq; the ad valorem duties on teas and other articles 
 
 O. - 
 
 by public sales, could not be conducted without great 
 loss to the revenue, except in the sale room of the 
 East-India Company. In answer to this assertion, we 
 will venture to suggest three plans for that purpose, 
 either of which we apprehend would, if adopted by 
 Parliament, provide for the collection of these du- 
 ties in Glasgow or Liverpool, as effectually as if 
 they had been raised upon sales in Leadenhall Street. 
 
 1st. All the different kinds of tea might be classed 
 numerically, according to the quality and value } the 
 duty payable upon a given quantity of each class to 
 be a settled and permanent sum that sum to be as- 
 sessed bv the principal revenue officer at each port, 
 upon all the different classes of tea which might be 
 found in any particular cargo. This system has long 
 been acted upon in America and with complete 
 success. 
 
 2dly. The sales of tea might still take place as at 
 present in the port of London, and general averges 
 might be taken, by which the estimated value of the 
 article as imported into the other ports of the empire 
 should be regulated. Upon this principle the tax on 
 sugar is at present raised, or 
 
 Sdly. The
 
 69 
 
 ~ Sdly. The public sales might take place at the dif- 
 ferent ports of discharge. Public warehouses might be 
 provided for the reception of* the goods, and the sale& 
 take place in the different ports of the kingdom at 
 stated and convenient intervals, under the inspection 
 of the same officer or officers to be appointed for that 
 purpose. By these persons, returns to be authenticated 
 as might be provided, would be made from time to 
 time to the proper office in London, and upon hre> 
 reports the ad valorem duties might be easily and un- 
 objeetionably raised/ 
 
 11 But a more serious consequence than all the? 
 would still remain. A free trade to India wonld* 
 ' unavoidably, draw after it the residence of numerous 
 and continually increasing Europeans there, what- 
 " ever prohibitions might, at first, be opposed to their 
 << settling in the country. When all restraint to the 
 *< importation of ships atfd goods is taksn off, men 
 f l innstbe allowed to follow their property, and to re- 
 main at the place where they land it till they have 
 " disposed of it : they must be allowed to navigate the 
 " Indian Seas, and to return to the same place when 
 * their business calls tlfem : they will thus, insensibly, 
 " and with hardly reasonable grounds for opposition, 
 " domiciliate themselves ; nor would an unsuccessful 
 " trade prevent them, but many' would seek to idem- 
 * nify themselves on shore for their losses by the voy- 
 r ' ao-e. The instances of such settlements will be nu- 
 " mcrous, and it will be impossible for any police to 
 * f follow up the cases of individuals, and continually 
 to exercise a rigorous system of exclusion. This ha; 
 
 K "
 
 70 
 
 " not hitherto been done, though attended with cora- 
 paratively little difficulty ; and the attempt would 
 " soon, under the new order of things, be abandoned 
 " as hopeless. Colonization must, in such case, fol- 
 " low. Large communities of Europeans will struggle 
 " for popular rights : new feelings with respect to the 
 " mother country, new interests and attachments will 
 " then spring up ; and in a region so remote, so rich 
 " and so populous, and so accustomed to yield to the 
 " ascendency of the European character, the tendency 
 " and process of these things cannot be difficult to 
 '* conceive." 
 
 Having said thus much upon those parts of the letter 
 of Mr. Parry and Mr. Grant, which appear to have a 
 more immediate and pressing importance, we shall 
 not detain our readers long with commenting upon 
 the preceding passage. For himself, the writer of 
 these pages must most explicitly disavow any intention 
 of giving his very insignificant opinion in favor of the 
 present independence of India. He is deeply impress* 
 ed with the conviction that disaster and wretchedness 
 \vould be the certain and immediate consequences of 
 such a revolution ; that a rac* of men in a state of 
 society such as that in which the mass of the population 
 of India is placed at present are morally incapable of 
 acquiring or maintaing political liberty, or of justly 
 appreciating its value were they able to acquire it. 
 But at the same time he humbly conceives that neither 
 in Hindoostan, or in any other country upon earth, it 
 is the wisest mode of preserving subordination, to 
 
 keep
 
 71 
 
 keep men in a state of ignorance and depression ; to 
 debar them from any communication with their supe- 
 riors in education and in knowledge, and to diminish 
 by every means which ingenuity can devise, the num- 
 ber of those sympathies and common interests which 
 connect the governors and the governed. To ordinary 
 apprehensions it appears not very intelligible, how the 
 encrease of British settlers should be hostile to the 
 permanency of the British Government in India. Ra- 
 pidly as our empire in the East has grown, and widely 
 as it has extended, however beneficent its influence, 
 or noble its form, it will be laid prostrate with the 
 first blast of the tempest, unless the roots and fibres 
 by which it is upheld are deeply and tenaciously dis- 
 persed throughout the whole population of the Indian 
 Peninsula. 
 
 But strange are the inconsistencies of terror. 
 While the Chairman and Deputy Chairman feel their 
 thrones tottering under them, in the prospect of their 
 own countrymen settling in their dominions, they are 
 throwing open their harbours, their cities, and their 
 factories to foreign merchants and to foreign intrigue, 
 " to establish foreign influence, and to aggrandize 
 " foreign power in India."* Granting, however, that 
 they may have some pretext of danger to justify their 
 timidity, must not ages elapse before any British power 
 
 K 2 in, 
 
 Sec Lord Welleilcy'* JUtUr, page 34.
 
 7.2 
 
 jin-thc Peninsula can become so formidable as to threat* 
 en the repose of its present sovereigns ? And shall we 
 throw from us the means of rendering this empire in. 
 dependent of the trade of America and Europe ; of 
 acquiring wealth sufficient to baffle the force of the 
 most formidable conqueror who ever menaced the hap- 
 piness of the world; of extending commerce and ci 
 vilization, and opulence, over an immense portion of 
 the habitable globe, because some two or three hun- 
 dred years hence, India may shake off the authority 
 pf the Court of Directors! Human foresight is not 
 strong enough to calculate the value or the probability 
 of such remote contingencies. In matters of state po* 
 licy, as in the details of private life, we must, in some 
 degree, be content to live extempore. 
 
 There is ohe among the many objections which 
 might be made to these very hasty remarks, which we 
 are anxious notf to leave unnoticed. We are, it may 
 be said, contemplating as a.desirable event, the intro* 
 duction into India of a system of mechanical labour, 
 which would form a dangerous competition to the 
 Manufactories established amongst ourselves. They 
 who entertain this apprehension can certainly have but 
 Very slightly considered the essential distinction betweeil 
 our own staple commodities and those of the Peninsula, 
 or the state of the machinery of this country, to the 
 production of vyhich all the science and accumulated 
 experience of Europe has been made to ^contribute. 
 
 It
 
 It must further be observed, that the cheapness of 
 labour in India, will long prevent the establishment or 
 use of expensive machinery in the manufactures of 
 that country. As an illustration of the superiority 
 which this circumstance must at all times give to oar 
 own merchants in a trade with any part of the world, 
 in which the same means of facilitating labour are un- 
 known we refer to the calculation subjoined to these 
 pages, extracted from a letter published by Mr. Lee 
 of Manchester, than whom no man has a more accurate 
 practical acquaintance with subjects of this nature* 
 (See page 15 J. 
 
 Having said thus much as to the letter of Mr. Parry 
 and Mr. Grant, the writer of these sheets trusts he 
 shall be excused, if he adds one word as to his motives 
 in giving publicity to these observations, that they are 
 neither very original or very profound, he does not need 
 to be told, but having written them to answer a tem- 
 porary purpose, he has not aimed to give any new view 
 of this most important subject, but to recall to mens 
 recollection those acknowledged principles and obvious 
 truths which it appeared to him to be the object of the 
 letter of the Directors to discredit. No authorities 
 have been quoted, because without incumbering a dis- 
 cussion which has already very greatly exceeded its 
 intended limits, they could not have been introduced. 
 In the approaching parliamentary enquiry into the 
 subject of the Last-Indian Charter, an opportunity will 
 
 perhaps
 
 74 
 
 perhaps be afforded of substantiating in a much more 
 ample manner than would have been practicable here, 
 the accuracy of the facts, and the justice of the rea- 
 soning, which are barely glanced at in these pages. 
 The author feels that what he has written must depend 
 for support on its own value, and can derive not a par- 
 ticle of weight from his name or authority j he is there, 
 fore the less unwilling to say, in justification of his own 
 literary pretentions, and as an apology for numberless 
 defects of composition, that he has been compelled to 
 write what he now submits to the judgment of the 
 public, in a few hours snatched with difficulty in the 
 course of one week, from pressing professional avo- 
 cations. 
 
 Mr. LEE'S
 
 Mr. LEE'S Calculation of Labour in Britain and India. 
 
 The Quantity of Mule Spindles in Great Britain, appears, 
 hy actual survey to be 
 
 4,200,000, producing a quantity of Cotton Yarn, at least 
 equal to that which can be spun in the same 
 time by Four Millions Two Hundred Thousand 
 Persons, in India; the wages of each are sup- 
 posed at 2d. per Day 5 but in Britain 
 70,000 Persons would produce the same Effect, by 
 Machinery, at 20d. per day; consequently 
 I Person in Britain will be equal to 
 60 in India ; but, in consequence of a more ex- 
 pensive apparatus, and various contingencies, 
 I will state that 
 1 Person is equal to 40 in India ; 
 
 40X2d=6s. 8d. which is the value of labour for Spinning in 
 India, to correspond with that of one person 
 in Britain, or as 6s. 8d. to Is 8d. 
 
 It is, therefore, evident that one Spinner by Machinery in 
 Britain will produce yarn at one fourth the price that it costs for 
 the same Quantity of Workmanship in India j supposing the 
 Wages of the former to be Is. Sd. and of the latter to be 2d. 
 per day. 
 
 The following statement is a comparison of the cost of 
 labour in producing Yarns, in Britain, and India, for One 
 Pound Weight, from No. 40 a 250, and likewise of the Valua 
 of the Labour and Material combined, 
 
 BRITISH. INDIA. 
 
 S O u S o 
 
 o 
 
 
 s 
 
 
 B 
 
 a 
 
 
 a %* cL 
 
 K^ 
 
 o 
 9 
 
 a 
 
 o 
 
 
 
 
 o 
 
 3 
 
 O 
 
 No. B | 
 
 . 
 
 d. 
 
 *. 
 
 d. 
 
 s. 
 
 d. 
 
 d. 
 
 s. 
 
 d. 
 
 *. 
 
 d. 
 
 40 2 
 
 . 00 
 
 i 
 
 6 
 
 1 
 
 
 
 2 
 
 6 
 
 3 
 
 3 
 
 4 
 
 3 
 
 7 
 
 60 1 
 
 . 75 
 
 2 
 
 
 
 1 
 
 6 
 
 3 
 
 6 
 
 35 
 
 5 
 
 8* 
 
 6 
 
 
 
 80 1 
 
 . 50 
 
 2 
 
 2 
 
 2 
 
 2 
 
 4 
 
 4 
 
 4 
 
 8 
 
 10J 
 
 9 
 
 3 
 
 100 1 
 
 . 40 
 
 2 
 
 4 
 
 2 
 
 10 
 
 5 
 
 2 
 
 5 
 
 11 
 
 11 
 
 12 
 
 4 
 
 120 1 
 
 . 25 
 
 2 
 
 6 
 
 3 
 
 6 
 
 6 
 
 
 
 5 
 
 16 
 
 
 
 16 
 
 5 
 
 150 1 
 
 . 00 
 
 2 
 
 10 
 
 6 
 
 6 
 
 9 
 
 4 
 
 6 
 
 25 
 
 
 
 25 
 
 C> 
 
 200 
 
 75 
 
 3 
 
 4 
 
 16 
 
 8 
 
 20 
 
 
 
 6 
 
 44 
 
 7 
 
 45 
 
 I 
 
 250 o 
 
 . 50 
 
 4 
 
 
 
 31 
 
 
 
 35 
 
 
 
 8 
 
 83 
 
 4 
 
 84 
 

 
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