an immediate and large share of the patronage of the Honourable Company in question could alienate us, it is our object to consider, whether any thing more is to be said for the continuance of this monopoly, than would satisfy a sturdy participator in its profits, or a mere rhetorical prize-fighter, who loves the wrong side better than the right. By pursuing this course, we hope to give our readers a fairer view of the real merits of some of the questions involved in this controversy, than, amidst the scramble for gain, they will easily obtain from the interested advocates for either party, or possibly from both put together. At the same time, we will avoid, as far as we possibly can, indulging ourselves in the delivery of any very definite opinion on the subject, but leave the reader to solve our sceptical doubts as sceptically as he pleases.

The work which affords us the opportunity of acting a part so sublimely philosophical, though probably not the best to which the progress of this dispute will give birth in favour of an open trade, is quite powerful enough to affect the monopolists with some portion of alarm. It is a fierce, animated, and ingenious, rather than a very masterly, attack on the East India Company. It bespeaks in the author a very competent acquaintance with Adam Smith, and a pretty extensive, though in some points, apparently, an inaccurate knowledge of the details of East Indian affairs. The last particular, however, we beg to confess, that we mention, if not doubtingly, yet with a proper consciousness of our own very inadequate reading on the subject. The conoscenti have, as we understand, agitated a question which strikes us as supremely unimportant, Whether the author is or is not a nabob? If a writer states truly, and reasons rightly, it seems to be a very idle inquiry, whether he is the importer or the mere retailer of the wares which he offers to the public. At the same time, we can perceive no harm in our suggesting it to be probable, that it is only the latter of these two characters which can with justice be ascribed to this gentleman. To torture the reader with proofs in favour of this idea, would be a culpable waste of letter-press, especially as some of these may collaterally appear in the sequel of our criticism. The only one we shall here notice, is somewhat amusing. The single passage in the book which bespeaks any thing like a claim on the part of the author, to the credit of a personal acquaintance with the East Indies, is the following.

It is believed, that many articles of the firft neceffity might be cultivated in our Indian territories. For inftance, I am pofitively affured, and indeed partly know the fact, that hemp of an excellent quality, and to any extent, might be raised in India, and might be brought to EuJope,' &c. &c. p. 53.

When

When a writer is eager, by a sort of half hint like this, to awaken a vague suspicion of his speaking from personal observation, it seems reasonable to conclude, that if he could have preferred a less ambiguous title to the reputation of originality, he would hardly have forfeited his claim by laches. After this, we may almost venture, in a similar spirit of important obscurity, to say, that we believe, and indeed partly know the fact,' that our author has never crossed the Line.

This is one of those penmen who would write worse if they had a better temper; and who remind us of a torrent that is the more mischievous for rolling along with it a charge of mud and stones. Never was there a publication which breathed less of that honied adulation for which the East is renowned, than that which is now before us; and for this reason, among others, we can scarcely believe that it could possibly have proceeded from the polite pen of an Anglo-Orientalist. At least, on such a supposition, the author has certainly thrown away very little gratitude on his worthy patrons in Leadenhall Street. We doubt indeed, greatly, whether the Honourable the East India Company Bahadur, '-whose fame extends over the whole earth, the wise as Solomon, rich as Croesus, generous as Hatim, invincible as Secunder,' and every thing as every body,-have received so much blunt language from all the Rajahs and Princes Bahadur' whom they have deposed or created, as are here compressed into a thin quarto, by an author who, for any thing that appears, may be a mere trader on the capital of his wits. Malignity, corporation of jobbers, 'abominable spirit of monopoly ;' these, and many others of the same cast, are the titles of ceremony with which he usually salutes the masters of India; to say nothing of the masked battery of irony, which occasionally opens upon those personages with such discharges as patriotic souls!' enlightened gentlemen!' &c. &c. The writer strongly reprobates the abusive and dictatorial language held by the Directors in their Third Report.' If the charge be just, (and, not having had access to the paper in question, we are compelled to take the fact upon trust,) we rejoice that the Directors have been disturbed in their monopoly of abuse, by an interloping competitor who really bids fair to beat them out of that market.

In delivering a few observations on this complicated question, we will adopt the usual partition of it; which we find to be also adopted by the author of these considerations. This divides the commercial from the political department of the subject. The Company trade with India; and they rule it. The division, however, between the two departments, is not, in all respects, absolutely marked; yet we know not that a better could have been found ¿

found; and, at all events, this has now the sanction of use in its favour.

The commercial part of our inquiry will be directed to some consideration of the relative advantages with which a commercial concern may be conducted by a chartered company of merchants, on the one hand, and by private adventurers on the other. Here we must, in some measure, restate arguments pretty well known; but this it is not our purpose to do, unless when they strike us as requiring either to be illustrated or to be qualified. It will be necessary to bring up the rear of our theoretical remarks with references to facts.

Politically, the administration of the East India Company may be viewed, with regard both to its effects on the welfare and happiness of our Asiatic fellow-subjects, and to its effects at home on the constitution. These two views it will be requisite to combine; and, no less so, to compare the influence of the present system in both directions, with what may be augured respecting the influence of the systems most likely to contest the honour of superseding it, in the event of its abolition.

We ought, perhaps, by way of preface, to take some notice of a topic, on which the author before us is particularly animated,— the origin and early history of the commercial association with which he is so much offended. This, however, seems to us most superfluous. We are told, that the early India Company made good its establishment under favour of the intense commercial ignorance generally prevalent at the period of its institution. Be it so. But, that those who patronized the institution were ignorant, does not necessarily prove the institution to be bad. The Bank of England, the most useful of all commercial organs, was instituted in times of ignorance; and, if the reader will take the trouble to turn over the history of its formation, he will find it difficult to determine, whether the arguments of its supporters at that period, or those of its opponents, were the more absurd. We are also informed, that the early India Company maintained its ground only by the most scandalous jobbing and bribery. Be this also true. A similar truth may be predicated of the union of Scotland and England.

Further, we do not think our author's representations on this subject quite fair. He quotes these stories of jobbing and bribery partly out of Anderson, without ever hinting to his readers, that Anderson, one of the most enlightened, surely, of the old commercial school, is a staunch advocate for the monopoly of the East Indian trade. Anderson, however, was far from singular in this predilection. Postlethwayt may almost be mentioned,—a man

of

of liberality, and by no means incapable of thinking away his judices*.

pre

Proceeding to consider the first, which is the purely commercial, part of this question, we will suppose that our readers are acquainted with the observations which it has drawn from Dr Smith, or, at least, that they will take instantaneous measures to verify our conjectures, by poring over every tittle of those observations, before they proceed with this humble commentary upon them. Like other commentators, however, we occasionally quarrel with our text. We could wish that Dr Smith had at the outset conceded, as it would have cost him but little to concede, the advantage that may, in some cases, result from planting an infant trade in the nursery-ground of an exclusive company. In the fifth book, however, of his work, he admits, that instances are conceivable, in which a temporary monopoly of this kind may be vindicated upon the same principles, upon which a like monopoly of a new machine is granted to its inventor, and that of a new book to its author †.'

The present question, however, is a widely different one. It is not, Whether an Exclusive Company can be ever useful? but, Whether it can be for ever useful ? not, Whether a patent may be advantageously granted to the first adventurers in a particular line of trade? but, Whether that patent should not, after a season, expire? To retail the reasonings of Dr Smith on this head would be absurd; but we may be forgiven for attempting to mould some part of them into a shape more directly fitted to the present state of the controversy.

That it is for the advantage of every nation to lay out on any particular trade as much capital as can be profitably vested in it, is a proposition which the great author just named has pretty fully illustrated; but he has not particularly supported it against the common objection bottomed on a supposed distinction between a trade of foreign consumption and a home-trade. It being admitted, that the competition incident to an open trade would raise the prices of Indian commodities in India, and lower them in Europe, the champions of monopoly assert, that this fall of profits, however advantageous to this nation, on the supposition of the commodities imported from India being sold at home, must be the reverse of advantageous to it, when (as is now the case) they are'

mostly

Mr Clarkson tells us, that, from having been a champion for the A. frican flave-trade, Poftlethwayt became, what his dictionary evinces him to have been, one of the ftrenuous opponents of that system of murder disguised in the garb of commerce.

tBook. V. ch. I.

mostly re-exported for foreign consumption. In the latter case, they contend, that the foreign consumer must reap the whole advantage, and that at the expense of the English trader. This argument appears to have been first employed by Child, in the year 1677; * it has since been restated by authors of note; and, as we collect from the publication before us, is still built upon by the East India Directors. Fully, therefore, as its fallacy may be implied in several parts of the Wealth of Nations, we shall endeavour to deduce a direct refutation of it from the principles of that work. The present author, it must be observed, fights it only with the weapon of contempt; a weapon which, though perhaps more painful than that of argument, is unfortunately less effective; as a rusty knife may mangle, but will inflict a less deadly wound than a stilletto.

All trade is carried on for the mutual benefit of the traders on the one hand, and the consumers on the other; and, when it is left free, this mutual benefit both guides and limits its extension. At the first emancipation, indeed, of a particular traffic that has been monopolized, the sudden rush of capital into it may reduce its profits too low; but the first persons to perceive this evil, when it occurs, will obviously be those that suffer by it; and, some portion of this redundant capital being withdrawn into more hopeful employments, the evil will thus correct itself. When, therefore, a trade is permitted to expand itself quietly to the utmost, we may depend on it, that such expansion is beneficial to both the parties concerned, that is, to the trading world, and the consuming world. The profits upon it are, indeed, reduced; but then they are not so much reduced, as the capital invested in it is augmented; for profit is always the measure of the spontaneous investment of capital in a particular channel. Individual traders make less, but the trade gain more: Privatus illis census erit brevis, Communis magnus. Now, when the traders and the consumers both live in the same country, then, on an enlargement of the trade, the country gains both ways; in the increased accommodation to the consumers, and in the increased gains of the commercial world. When, as in the case before us, the traders live here, and the consumers are foreigners, then, though both parties gain by extending the trade, this country benefits only by the increased gains of the traders; but still, all this is clear gain. True it is, that, on this supposition, the argument for laying open, and consequently extending the trade, is only half as strong as it is on the former; but then let it be also noted, that, on this supposition, the argument for pursuing the trade at all, is only half as strong as it is on the for

* See Anderson in anno 1677. ·

mer,