facturers of Manchester and Birmingham should be excluded from trying whether they could, by penetrating into the country, induce the Indian people to buy some of those wares which all other people in the world to whom access could be found, were enticed to deal in. He would ask upon what principle our manufacturers should be denied the opportunity of making this experiment, especially as it was stated in evidence that for the last twenty years the people of India had not bought a single new article of British produce? This, he was persuaded, could not be the case, if the people of those extensive territories were accessible to the enterprise of

a private trader under the discretion of this famous Company, in praise of which so many writers had been lately in such activity, as to deluge the country with their productions. Among these writers he had lately seen the name of Macpherson, who was, he understood, pretty remarkable for book-making, and this gentleman, in a work entitled "The History of the India Company," asserted,-what would the House conjecture?-why, that the commercial and political administration of that Company was as near perfection as possible. Who paid for the writing of this book he did not know, though certain reviewers had hinted pretty strongly at the matter. In opposition to all these writ-British manufacturers. But he trusted that ings, there were but few on the other side. One of these few, however, very recently published, had just come under his view, and among other extracts of letters from Calcutta it was stated that the Indian government, aware no doubt of the object of the pending discussion, had imposed a duty of 8 per cent. upon all cotton exported by private merchants, while the India Company were to pay no duty whatever. Such was the liberality of the Company towards private traders, and he hoped the right hon. the Chancellor of the Exchequer and the noble lord (Castlereagh) would take care to provide against similar exactions in future: for if the agents of the Company should be at liberty to exercise such partiality, the opening of the India trade to private merchants would be quite a mockery, as no mer chants could calculate upon success against the rivalry of the India Company, if opposed by such a system. As to what the House had heard upon the subject of smuggling, which it was alleged must go to a great extent if the trade were extended to the out-ports, and so fully opened to private traders, it was a fact generally reported, that there was more smuggling from the ships of the India Company than from all the shipping of England besides. The report was, indeed, justified by the extreme precautions generally taken to prevent such smuggling, revenue cutters being uniformly sent to watch the ships of the India Company as soon as they were understood to come within reach of land. Now, with respect to the danger said to be apprehended from the introduction of strangers into India, he thought the apprehension quite chime. rical, while he could not help considering it as most extraordinary, that the manu(VOL. XXVI. )

opportunity for such access would in future be fully granted, and not left to the discretion of the agents of the India Company. The hon. gentleman quoted the authority of lord Wellesley in support of the opinion that the trade of India should be so fully open as to enable British merchants to bring home the whole produce of India, which the India Company were notoriously unable to do, and which in consequence was in a great measure exported by foreigners, who could, as well as our own private merchants, carry on the India trade with more advantage than the Company, because they incurred less expence in freight or shipping, required a less crew, and could accomplish the voyage within a much shorter period, the American ships having often performed the voyage to and from India in four or five months. From these considerations, and persuaded that the opening of the trade would operate to increase the shipping, the seamen, and the revenue of England, he declared his intention to support the original Resolution.

Sir William Curtis spoke in favour of the East India Company, which from its original establishment had contributed most materially to benefit the country-a Company whose shipping and various resources had often been most successfully employed for the service of the empire-a Company which had, by introducing the article of tea, actually contributed no less than four millions to our annual revenue. With such claims, he thought the claims of the East India Company entitled to the peculiar attention of the British parliament. He was astonished to hear the hon. gentleman who had last sat down adduce the failure of an alderman, in a speculation to Botany Bay, as an argument against (2 Y)

the East India Company. That alderman, whoever he might be, seemed to know very little of the business of a merchant, although the part of the country to which he presumed him to belong was allowed to produce men of very acute knowledge. With respect to the shipping employed by the East India Company, he would appeal to any man of sense, whether they could be built for 251. per ton? Could any private ship, built at such an expence, be capable of contending against an enemy of the description opposed to the ships of the Company or could such private ships be fit for the service of the country, in the event of a war breaking out, under such circumstances as the Company's shipping had to contend with?

Mr. Abercromby Robinson replied to the statements of Mr. Thomson with respect to the sale of private property in the Company's warehouses. The regulation of duties which had been alluded to, had not proceeded from the Court of Directors, but was merely local, and he was clearly of opinion that no alteration should take place in that respect without the sanction of the authorities at home. He should vote for the Amendment, though he was of opinion it did not go far enough.

country-why, it would be a dispensation of Providence to which we ought to submit. He thought the House ought to negative the Resolution before them, or to exclude the Amendment.

Mr. Marryatt argued in favour of opening the trade. He treated the danger which was apprehended from the influx of strangers into India as chimerical; and contended, that the Company themselves appeared to have abandoned that ground of opposition, because it was futile to suppose, that more danger was to be apprehended from persons proceeding from the out-ports and returning there, than from those who proceeded from the out-ports, and afterwards entered the port of London. With respect to the increased facility of smuggling he observed, that the large vessels of the Company afforded greater opportunities for the concealment of goods, than the comparatively small ships which would be employed by the private merchant could present. And he was convinced, that many years would elapse, before the private trade would give rise to so much smuggling, as was at present carried on in the ships of the East India Company,

Mr. Forbes complained of the restrictions laid upon the private trade, and should the sovereignty be continued to the Com pany, he feared any explanation that might be made would be of little avail. He wished the Company had confined themselves to the China trade, and left that of India open to the private traders. The Company should be bound to give every facility to private trade, and no alteration on the subject of the existing duties should take place without the sanction of the government at home. But the Company wished to establish an exclusive trade in India, and these lords of Asia were in the practice of opening shops for breeches, pantaloons, stockings, and similar articles, as stated in private letters, of which the hon. gentleman read a va

Mr. Thomas Courtenay-said, he had listened to the speech of the hon. director who spoke last with much pleasure, because its tendency was to bring the House back to the real question before it. The hon. chairman of the Company had spoken early in the evening; but true it was, he had said something about Smithfield, and something about Billingsgate, as if to put them in mind that the question really related to the city of London; yet, nearer to the question he had not gone. He, however, could not withhold his surprize from the conduct of those who opposed the system that was wished to be esta. blished, for they would thereby support an untried, unmitigated, and outrageous system of monopoly-he would say further, that the supporters of the Amend-riety of extracts. In the year 1793 the ment could not be considered the friends even of the present system. The transfer of British capital to India he could not consider, with an honourable director, as a danger; it was not considered as such by lord Wellesley. He thought the people of India had a right to as great an extension of the private trade as was possible to accomplish; and if ultimately Mr. Astell lamented, that notwithstandthe increase of the trade of India shoulding the various services which the empire become such as to supersede that of this had derived from the patriotic exertions

number of Europeans in India had amounted to 15,000, now they were 30,000, and piece goods had become in great request among the natives. The investments order. ed from India this year, by the Company, amounted to four millions sterling-double the value of what had ever been ordered before.

of the Company, a disposition was manifested on all sides of the House to destroy a system that had produced so much good. He contended, that, however the gentlemen who opposed the Company might exclaim against monopoly, the proposition which they supported recognized that principle, since the trade was to be thrown open to only a few favoured ports.

ampled patriotism! to permit the East India Company, in the generous enthu siasm of their feelings, to plunge into it themselves! The out-ports, like so many Curtii, were preparing to leap into the abyss which they had dug, as it were, by their own petitions; but the East India Company rushed between them and perdition, and were willing to sacrifice themMr. Canning observed, that when he selves for the good of their country: for considered the most wide and complicated himself, however, he must own that he did nature of the subject they were then dis- not precisely see the necessity of this selfcussing, he was not surprized that many devotion on the part of the Directors. gentlemen who had spoken upon it were He really thought the gentlemen of the tempted to wander into more discussive out-ports were tolerably shrewd and disdisquisition, embracing all the topics con- cerning, and not in that state of infantine nected with it. But, while he thought innocence, and in that simplicity of ignothat some advantage resulted from allow-rance, which rendered them objects of ing to hon. gentlemen the liberty of such the humane interposition of parliament. diffusion, he could not but think it would He was rather inclined to think they be more advantageous if they were to might safely be left to take care of themconfine their debate to the specific sub-selves. The question, however, narrowed ject under discussion; and that more es- to its true limits, presented itself in a state pecially on a night, when, by their vote, that the House need not long deliberate they were about to express their opinion what to do. It had been complained by upon the merits or demerits of the great the Directors that the proposition, as it cause to be tried before them. The sin- stood, would infallibly subvert their emgle question was, not whether the Indian pire in India, throw its commerce into empire was to be shaken by the influx of confusion, and create distress from one end adventurers-not whether the ruin of the of the kingdom to the other; and they out-ports was to take place from the eager fancied they had found a panacea for ness of injudicious speculation-but whe- those evils in recalling to the port of Lonther all ships going to India (for wisely or don all the ships allowed to go from this unwisely, it had been determined that country. But what relation, what proporships should go out from certain out-ports), tion was there between the evil and the were to be confined, on their return, to remedy? If it were true, that sending the port of London. He, for one, was forth adventurers from hence would demost willing to admit that the motion of stroy all our interests in India, that the althe hon. member (Mr. Baring), had been legiance of our subjects there would be brought forward, according to his own de-impaired, that discord would be sown, and claration, from pure benevolence, from ruin become inevitable, by what possible pure kindness, from pure mercy to the magic, he would ask, could the simple out-ports. It did not originate in any de-calling back of the ships to the port of sire to uphold the interests of the East London, not cure, but relieve those evils? India Company; it was not to preserve How was it to happen, that he who, when to that body its exclusive monopoly; it in India, would exhibit in his conduct the was not to exclude the rest of the country worst features, that he who would foment from participating in the benefits of the dissention among the natives, who would Eastern trade! No-it was to step be- embroil our affairs, and who would weaken tween the rashness of adventurers and our authority, was to be transformed, not their ruin; it was to implore the interpo- only into an innocent, but into an highly sition of parliament in behalf of heedless meritorious and useful being, by the mere men who did not foresee their own dan- circumstance, that the ship in which he ger; it was to prevent that House from in- had sailed from Liverpool would, on its flicting on those whose petitions loaded return, enter the port of London? What their table, the intolerable grievance of relation, then, was there between the cirgranting the prayer of their petitions; it cumstances?—There was this relation, and was to snatch the out-ports from that he wished the hon. gentleman had openly awful gulf of ruin into which they were and candidly stated it as his plan: it would precipitating themselves; and oh! unex-render the whole system useless—it would