I have had occasion in some of my former letters, to exhibit specimens of the logic which the Company have at times employed in vindication of their monopoly, and in deprecation of that dreaded foe to monopoly-free trade. In more instances than one, the advocacy of the Directors, and of the hireling Swiss amanuenses whom they are known to have employed, resembles very much the pleadings of an eminent barrister, who has lately enhanced his notoriety, from a new practice he has introduced into the English bar, of arguing in favour of his opponent, and against his own client. For their imprudent, although most candid and correct admissions, nay, the arguments gravely drawn by themselves from the statements thus laid down, if they go to prove any thing at all, must be held to prove a great deal more than the Company, or their hireling scribes, ever intended that Government or the country should believe. In 1681, the Company, inter alia, aver that a free trade would afford an unlimited vent for British manufactures of all kinds, and diminish, to an unprecedented degree, the price of every Indian commodity; positions which no man of ordinary intelligence will attempt to controvert, however much he may be disposed to question the inference absurdly drawn from these premises, namely, that such a state of things would tend to the injury of the kingdom's interest. Such has ever been the policy of the Company, artfully to associate the common weal of the country with their own private interests, and carefully to conceal a truth which has all along been legibly inscribed upon the whole of their proceedings, that their private selfish interests are not only different from, but at direct variance with, all the other classes and departments of the country.

Soon after the Revolution which established in this country a liberality of sentiment and an efficiency of public administration, hitherto unknown, the Company were destined to encounter an opposition to the renewal of their charter, which, but for the consummate address and the most flagrant corruption, which history, perhaps, ever recorded, then practised, must have proved successful. The villanous proceedings of the Directors in buying up opposition, bribing members of Parliament, and tampering with Government, in which not a less sum than 170,000l. was expended, are fully authenticated by Parliamentary documents, and can only be compared with similar villanous proceedings in 1720, and at subsequent renewals of their charter. So deeply sensible were the corrupt and profligate Directors of the advantages of their monopoly, and so resolutely were they determined to maintain it by whatever means and whatever hazards, that they frequently brought themselves to the verge of bankruptcy by the liberality of their bribes, and more particularly in 1708, by a bonus of corruption, by which they contrived to buy over to their interests a new Company which threatened their ruin.

The leading motive which animated the Directors to contest so strenuously, and to encounter so many sacrifices in defence of their monopoly, was the immense gains which, as individuals under the cover of the Company, they derived from the maladministration of its affairs; for at the same moment that they had by their largesses and bribes reduced their constituents to a state of financial distress, bordering on bankruptcy, they themselves were revelling in the profusion of an iniquitous prosperity. It was a sense of remediless oppression, occasioned by these shameful proceedings, that gave rise to the formation of the Ostend Company in 1714, under the auspices of the Emperor. This Company, which was destined to be but of short duration, was formed by the united capital and enterprise of English and Dutch merchants, who were excluded by the prohibitory statutes of their own countries from any share or advantage arising from the India trade. So beneficial were the consequences of this liberal establishment during the few years that it was suffered to exist, that the supply of every Indian commodity was unprecedentedly increased and cheapened, and the exclusive Companies were compelled to reduce by one-fourth the amount of their exorbitant dividends. The fate of the Ostend Company is known-it died, not a natural, but a violent death, by the hands of its envious and monopolous rivals.

A strong analogy may be traced betwixt the character of the East India and that of the South Sea Company, or bubble as it has more properly been designated-in both, the interests of the people were sacrificed to the necessities or profligacy of the state; in both the arts of dissimulation, the most flagrant corruption, and the deepest villany were practised, with this solitary feature of difference that, whilst imprudence led to discovery in the one case, an artful policy continued to elude detection in the other, till it was too late to administer a remedy.

In 1730, the Company's exclusive charter again expired. On this occasion, a great body of the most considerable merchants in the kingdom came forward with an application to be incorporated into a trading Company, but without any exclusive privileges, thus opening up the India trade to all classes of British subjects. This magnanimous proposal was enforced by the offer of three millions sterling, as a price or equivalent for the great public blessing thereby to be obtained. But the golden arguments of the old Company once more prevailed to secure to them the peaceable and exclusive possession of their lucrative monopoly for thirty-six years longer. The leading argument which the Company on this occasion employed to dissuade Government from dissolving their rotten corporation, was the immense sums which their Directors at home, and factors abroad, contrived to squander: in order to have rendered the argument complete, they ought to have added to the catalogue of expenditure the still greater sums that were squandered in buying up votes and bribing members of Parliament.

From this period down to 1766, and 1785, the history of the Company is interesting only as affording an example of gross and flagrant mismanagement. More than once their Directors, as individuals, or in their representative capacity, were placed at the bar of the nation as criminals and delinquents; some of them were committed to the Tower, others visited with fine and forfeiture, and others, like the dangerous peace-breaker, bound over under strong though inadequate securities, for their future good behaviour. Antiquity had by this time begun to cast around this anomalous Establishment her venerable shade. Defeated in every effort to obtain public justice, an excluded and oppressed community seem to have at length settled down into a kind of acquiescent despair, and thus to have established in favour of the Phoenix of monopoly a prescriptive and immutable right in all time coming, to sport with the national resources, and to squander their own.

The Company's Charter again expired in March, 1814. By a provision in this act, the debt of the Company was to have been reduced to two millions, and their capital stock to have been increased to twelve millions. When the time for count and reckoning, however, arrived, it was found that the India debt, instead of being reduced to two millions, had risen to thirty! So much for the golden dreams fostered by the golden arguments of the Company. India, hitherto to use the words of Dr. Smith, has been 'not a gold mine, but the project of a gold mine.'

The circumstances and aspect of the times afford the strongest grounds to believe, that the abolition of the East India Company's chartered privileges is at hand, whether we consider the character of the present administration, the present state of the country and its foreign and colonial relations viewed absolutely, or viewed in connection with the posture of affairs, in 1814, when the present charter was granted. From the present administration, if there remain but the vestige of consistency, the country has every thing, the Company have nothing to expect. The Premier's brother, Lord Wellesley, who governed India with credit to himself, and honour to the country, has more than once given the verdict of his sound and enlightend judgment, against the illiberality and narrow policy of the Company. In a letter to the Court of Directors in 1800, he tells them that beneficial consequences of the utmost importance, would certainly result to the British Empire in India from any increase of its active capital, which is known not to bear a just proportion to the productive powers of the country.' And what have the Company done in deference to the salutary advice from this high quarter? Positively nothing; but on the contrary, with a contumely commensurate with their illiberality, they have exerted themselves to the utmost to exclude capital from vesting itself in India. Sir Robert Peel, also, who may well be considered a competent judge in affairs relating to commerce, in a letter to the same

body in 1797, accuses them of a positive breach of contract, in refusing themselves, and denying permission to others, to bring home cotton at a reasonable freight, which had caused a rise in the price of cotton of 100 per cent.' It is not to be doubted that these high authorities will have some weight in the settlement of that question which is now second to none that affects the interests of this great commercial country. The present Government is one that can neither be tampered with on the one hand, nor intimidated on the other; and if even-handed justice has already been dealt out to one class of British subjects, it cannot, and will not, be withheld from another. If ever there was a time more favourable than another, when the India question could be dispassionately and equitably settled, that time is the present, when Britain is at peace with all the world-when, by a magnanimous act of national justice, the discontented millions of Ireland have been bound by the ties of common allegiance, and when the half-famished millions of our manufacturing population loudly demand an extension of our commercial enterprise and relations. What was the state of the country when the India question was last brought under the eye of the legislature? A foreign power overawed our armies on the Continent, and our fleets on the remotest parts of the ocean; our allies were intimidated; our colonies invaded, our national existence endangered, Was that the fittest time for the calm and deliberate consideration of a question which more nearly concerned our commercial than our political welfare? But now that peace has been restored, peace at home, and tranquillity abroad, what is there now that should prevent an impartial and equitable settlement of a question that concerns not our welfare only, but our very existence as a commercial country?

A liberal line of policy in regard to trade and commerce is gaining ground over the world. In most countries, and in most departments of commerce in every country, the exclusive and prohibitory system, in its most obnoxious form, has vanished, and given place to the introduction of liberal and more enlightened views, on the great subjects of commercial economy. We now search in vain for those numerous strong holds of exclusion and monopoly, which so long impeded the progress of European improvement. One port after another, and one market after another, has been declared free. Cadiz under the reign of a monarch, who is little liable to be charged with an excess of that spirit of liberality, or love of innovation, which it has become so fashionable to decry, has been declared a free port. The principal ports of Europe and of America, with their numerous markets and extensive commerce, have long been declared free; and what is still more worthy of notice, from the striking proof which it affords of the growth of a liberal spirit in commerce, Venice, proud exclusive monopolising Venice, once the mistress of the ocean, the commercial lawgiver of Europe, has, by

a late edict of the Emperor, been declared a free port. Let not then the friends of free trade with India despair.

The genius of Britain is decidedly commercial-its laws, customs, institutions, all partake more or less of this character, and the great majority of its whole population have derived their wealth and importance, and still depend for their maintenance upon one or other of the numerous and diversified avocations which commerce affords. Even the landed interest, as it is distinctively styled, that powerful interest which preponderates so exclusively in the cabinet and councils of the nation, derives its elevation and influence directly or more remotely from the accessions of wealth and power, which commerce through her thousand channels, has infused into the country. Let internal industry decay-let commerce bid adieu to our shores, and the value of land and produce become nominal and unimportant.

It has become too much the fashion (for there are fashions in politics as well as in attire) to laud the wisdom and benignity of the British Constitution, as if it had reached the maximum, the utmost possible point of perfection in its domestic affairs, foreign relations and colonial dependencies. Commerce in this country may have attained an unrivalled growth; but to whom has it been indebted for its prosperity? To the monopolist and his abettors? No; solely to the industry, spirit, intelligence, and enterprise of the British merchant. Commerce has grown up and flourished amongst us, not by dint of legislation, but in spite of legislation; not by dint of monopoly, but in spite of monopoly. Does any one doubt the truth of the position? 'Go Sceptic,' we would say, to India, search the records of her commercial history-peruse the black annals of corruption at home, and cruelty abroad, and read in characters engraven by the iron hand of oppression, the foredooming lessons of approaching retribution, which modern maladministration has caused to resound from the banks of the Ganges to the banks of the Thames; and if sturdiness strangles conviction, let not your scepticism be set down to the want of evidence.' Can that be styled legislative wisdom, which chartered and which perpetuates the East India Company's monopoly? Can that claim the title of legislative benignity, which tolerates and encourages a system under which British subjects are persecuted, the sable Natives of India enslaved, idolatry patronised, inhumanity rewarded? Shame to the boasted age of civilization and refinement in which we live-shame to an enlightened government, under whose auspices the idolatrous rites of Hindooism are openly supported, the Hindoo widow immolated, the helpless infant sacrificed!

There can be little doubt that the prevalence of ignorance and of superstition in India, notwithstanding all that has been done by the missionary and the philanthropist, in that ill-fated region, is mainly attributable to the exclusive and monopolous privileges and authority of the East India Company. Their aim, I have formerly shewn,