FIFTHLY, that in India alone, it can be exercised with complete EFFECT and perfect SAFETY.

99. One only topic remains to be noticed, and that addresses itself chiefly to those persons in England, whether manufacturers, stockholders, Indian annuitants, shipowners, underwriters, or others, who are connected with India, and interested in its prosperity.

100. It is vulgarly supposed, and no little pains have been taken to spread the notion, that the body of men in question have no near interest in the establishment of a more liberal system and institutions for British India. There cannot be a more entire or fatal mistake.-None can possibly have a nearer interest than they in the development of the vast resources and powers of that country; and they are cautioned to turn a deaf ear, or rather a wellprepared ear, towards such as, for their close and sordid purposes, endeavor to inculcate this selfish doctrine, and thereby to keep India from obtaining the good wishes and powerful aid of friends in England, in order that they may have her all to themselves, to serve their little turn.

101. Nothing is more undeniably true in political economy than this; that a nation cannot import more than she can pay for by exports. If India be not allowed to make the most of her natural products, in silk, cotton, sugar, indigo, saltpetre, coffee, &c. how is it possible she can take the manufactures of England to any amount? If, in these respects, India were allowed to do her utmost, there is scarcely a limit to her power of taking manufactures. What hinders her from making the most of her products? Why does she not substitute, in her infinitely varied soil and climate, the finer cottons of the West for the inferior staples, which are indigenous to her? Why does she not indefinitely extend the growth and fabrication of silk? Why not improve the manufacture of sugar, according to the more finished processes of other countries?

102. The reason is twofold; 1st, European skill, intelligence, and superintending industry, are excluded from employment, owing to the absurd and pernicious prohibition of colonisation: 2d, European capital is excluded from overflowing and enriching that boundless field, Indian agriculture. What might be done by Eu ropean skill and capital we see, by the creation, in our own times, of the indigo culture and manufacture. It had scarce any exist ence thirty years ago: now it produces, annually, eight or nine millions of pounds, and the finest qualities, equal to the old indigo of Mexico. All this is entirely the work of European skill and capital. It is believed to be owing chiefly to the policy of his Majesty's ministers that India was so far thrown open to enterprise. A second such effort has never been made.

103. But nothing can be done towards this great work without

COLONISATION-not by means of a resort of laboring men; for such there is no room, nor would the climate admit of their working; but by a resort of men possessed of capital, education, and talents to direct the labor of others, and willing to render militia-service in case of invasion or rebellion.

104. COLONISATION can never take place until that absurdest of bye-laws is repealed which hinders Europeans from holding land in their own names, a law that encourages and winks at mendacity and public immorality.

105. COLONISATION can never take place until every man's property and person, of whatever class, color, or religion, be put under the protection of known and equal laws, that leave no pretext for imprisonment, banishment, fine, or confiscation, but by the sentence of impartial, public, and independent tribunals. To this end the power of transportation by government, without trial, and the system of licensing Europeans at all, must be repealed, as the very first preliminaries.

106. COLONISATION would increase the imports of British manufactures into India, not only by adding incalculably to the amount of exchangeable exports-not only by adding immediately and remotely to the numbers of consumers, but also by diffusing a taste for luxuries and conveniences, and gradually raising the standard of want, and thereby of happiness. India is at present at the very bottom step of the ladder of civilised life. The food, raiment, shelter, requisite for mere support of life are all of the commonest and scantiest kind; in consequence of this and of the unfortunate stimulus given to early marriage by the pernicious customs of the Hindoos, the country swarms with redundant-but wretched-population, and the smallest scarcity carries with it the same tremendous effect as in potatoed Ireland.

107. All impartial travellers admit that the districts of India where European indigo planters have settled most thickly are by far the most florishing and prosperous. Such are the undoubted effects of European capital and example. All India might be such as these indigo districts are.

108. But owing partly to the prohibition against investing European capital in land or agriculture, it is prodigiously accumulated in the hands of the great capitalists at the principal settlements. Unable to find a profitable, secure, and reasonable vent, it seeks investment in the public funds, which bear no proportion there to the wants of the capitalists, and which the Company are every day reducing still further in amount, to the great distress of thousands, and disquiet of those who think that one of our great securities for native attachment is the vast quantity of the public funds which they hold in perfect confidence.

109. Thus the public funds rise prodigiously,. and the general

rate of interest falls vastly below the level at which it would stand if capital were free to find its level in employment, whether agricultural or other.

110. The consequence of this unnatural rise of funds and fall of interest is, that the government seize the occasion of paying off capital debt, and reducing interest, thereby adding immeasurably to the distresses of absentees, annuitants, and others, in England; of public charities, settlements, &c. &c. in India, all of which are invested in the stocks, because they are arbitrarily hindered from investment in landed property. But for this unjust prohibition, the acts of government in paying off and reducing interest would be quite right: as it is, they profit by their own violence and wrong. 111. These are some of the views which it was at one time hoped the freedom of discussion by the Press in India might have helped to accomplish. Certain it is, that without a Free Press there, none of the benefits mentioned above, as so anxiously desired for India by her real friends could, even if procured, be preserved against the vast power and influence of a government, which may be said substantially to hold in its hands the legislative, judicial, and executive powers, with all patronage, and not a corporation or institution of any kind to oppose it in any thing. It was believed that the shortest and surest way to obtain these benefits, in the first instance, was to bring men's minds, by dint of discussion, to see the necessity for such improvements. Perhaps this may have been the very reason why, from its outset, the Indian Press was viewed with such unmeasured hostility and alarm. It cannot be expected that the Company or the Company's servants should take the same interest in the improvement of the resources of India, and the happiness and productive powers of the people, that others do who are virtually colonists, from birth or connexions, or whose fortunes and families are staked on the welfare of that country. The revenue of India already overpays its charges-what more could the Company gain by troubling themselves with dreams of improvement? What could the Company's servants gain beyond their salaries, of which they are quite secure in the present condition of the country?

- 112. It is now for the merchants and manufacturers of this country to determine whether they choose to support the present close system, or to compel-for compel they can, if they will-a more liberal one. Of one thing, however, they may be assured, -that the question of the Press is inseparably bound up with their interests and those of India-interests which are but one and the same, AND WHICH MUST SOoner or later prevail.

A PROPRIETOR OF INDIA STOCK.

A

LETTER

ΤΟ

CHARLES BUTLER, ESQ.

OF LINCOLN'S INN,

IN

VINDICATION OF ENGLISH PROTESTANTS

FROM

HIS ATTACK ON THEIR SINCERITY

IN THE

"BOOK OF THE ROMAN CATHOLIC CHURCH."

BY C. J. BLomfield, d. D.

BISHOP OF CHESTER.

THIRD EDITION.

LONDON:

1825.

A LETTER,

&.c.

SIR,

HAVING frequently had the pleasure of meeting you in society, and of profiting by your instructive and agreeable conversation, it is not without reluctance that I address you in this letter of expostulation; nor should I do so at all, but that my station in the Church enables me, and therefore, I think, requires me, to oppose the evidence of actual observation and experience to an unfounded, and, I believe, an unguarded statement, in which you have severely reflected on the Clergy of the Established Church. In doing this, I hope I shall not employ any argument, nor use any expression, which may justly give offence to a person, whose talents and learning entitle him to respect, and whose general candor and moderation deserve that a single deviation from them should be met with remonstrance rather than rebuke. Most sincerely do I wish that religious controversy could always have been carried on in that tone of mildness and moderation which, a few instances only excepted, pervades your "Answer to Dr. Southey's Book of the Church." That it has been otherwise, is indeed a melancholy proof of the infirmity of the human mind; but it is at the same time a signal example of that merciful provision of the Divine Wisdom, which makes evil productive of good. There appears to be just ground for apprehending, that, if the passions of men had not been engaged in the great question of religious reformation, reformation itself might never have taken place. If the early remonstrances of those, who were the first to set forth the corruptions (as we hold them to be) of the Roman Church, had been listened to with meekness, and of the corruptions themselves if the most flagrant had been repressed, the rising spirit of inquiry and purification might perhaps have been lulled to repose, and the season of renovation postponed to a later age. The light of truth has been elicited by collision-a collision which has indeed too often generated heat as well as light; but such is the condition of out nature. No man laments it more