least, for a few hard facts; instead of which, he has put us off with many hard words. The general strain of the facts here adduced, and the corollaries of reasoning, amounts to this :-Such and such articles are produced in India, and, undoubtedly, they would be produced in far greater quantities, if it were not for the dead weight of the Company, and their monopoly.' That this assertion is partly true, we have already intimated our belief; but we want to learn, how facts accord with that belief. What documents are there on the subject? What is actually doing, in the way of direct encouragement, to the growth of Indian industry? The Directors profess to send out strict annual orders to their servants in the East, enjoining a diligent search for new channels of trading adventure. Are these orders really sent? Do they arrive? Are they obeyed? Are they successful? The answer is,-the dead weight of the Company, and their monopoly. It was our intention, however, to cull, if possible, out of this vast store of information, every particle which seemed capable of being turned to any profit; a work of no very great labour, excepting the toil of search; when, to our great mortification, the merest accident gave us reason for strong suspicion, that what facts the author reports, he does not report with accuracy. Chance threw into our way a printed document on the subject of the Indian hemp, about which (as has been observed) this author partly knows so much. It is, like the book before us, anonymous; and far be it from us to vouch for the accuracy of either; but the document to which we refer, is very minute in all its statements, and has the air of demi-official authority. It bears the date of last year. * Now, let us compare accounts. writer whom we are reviewing, says, The The Company and their fervants, however, have given no facility to the proper cultivation of this article (Sunn hemp), and its introduction into this country. On the contrary, they have neglected or opposed this object. › The paper before mentioned tells us, that the Court of Direc-. tors have been at vast pains and expense, to promote the cultivation of Sunn hemp in various parts of Bengal; that the culture has not only been attended to by the most scientific men in India,' but the best means of dressing, and the most commodious mode of packing it, have been minutely studied, as, upon reference to the voluminous records on this subject, will appear;' that the East India Company have, in this country also, taken no small trouble in their endeavours to introduce it to public use, at an expense individuals could not have subjected themselves to.' Now, the Z 4 * Obfervations on the Sunn hemp of Bengal. worst worst that can be supposed of this account, is, that it is the Company's own partial statement of their achievements ; and then, we have them here laboriously recommending to public use, (for such is the whole drift of this paper), an article, the use of which they have neglected or opposed. Really the cause of free trade is not so desperate, as to require such lavish employment of stratagem in its support. This, however, is not the single instance of our author's inaccuracy. A detection in one instance, induced us very carefully to sift several others of his statements, which we found equally erroneous, but which our limits will not suffer us now to canvass. They refer to cotton, silk, sugar, and so forth. The conclusion is, that our author partly knows' a great many things. To make him some amends, we must observe, that, on this beach of his subject, he treats with successful severity an opinion he: she tells us, by the Directors, that British capital ought in event to be exported to India, for the purpose of stimulating the productive powers of that country. We have not been able to examine the statements of the Directors on this point; but the opinion just quoted, seems, when delivered in all its latitude, so much at variance with their common topics of argument, and so unnecessary for their cause, that we cannot help hoping our author has here done them injustice. We can conceive cases, in which the opinion, or at least something like it, might be held sub modo, with perfect impunity. The private trade of the Americans with India is very largely discussed in this publication; we know not with what accuracy of information, but certainly with some force and plausibility. Through this track we do not follow him, because it does not, in our apprehension, form an essential part of the debateable ground of the question. The Americans will certainly out-trade the East India Company, when we are at war, and perhaps, also, when we are at peace; but this, like the rest of the examples so often adduced in the present controversy, fails to prove the fact of a very decided inferiority, on the part of the Company, in commercial skill and alertness. At the same time, perhaps, it proves that the Indo-American trade should be somewhat more clogged than it is. We would not be harsh towards foreigners; but if there be fair political reasons for imposing partial restraints on a particular branch of our own commerce, we see not that it is our bounden duty to love strangers better than our own countrymen. But it is impossible for us to attend with minuteness to this part of our author's remarks; and still more preposterous would it be to waste much of our reader's time upon the state of the private Indian commerce from this country, or the encourage ments, ments, be they less. or more, afforded to the private traders by the Company, who seem now to have become something between a regulated and a joint-stock company. We ought, perhaps, to make a few comments on the state of their finances; but without supposing him intentionally to have misrepresented any thing, we cannot trust the accuracy of our author's accounts. That a good deal of disorder now pervades the financial concerns of the India House seems generally admitted; possibly more than is admitted by the Directors; and yet, possibly, they are not so near the last stage of dilapidation as the present writer would fain, persuade us. We say this, however, as much on general principles, as from particular inquiry. We know perfectly, how easy it is to prove the approaching ruin of any thing on earth, if we are only allowed to do it by calculation. The financial world seems divided into two orders of men, the croakers and the boasters, The former can demonstrate by figures, that every nation in Europe, Asia, Africa and America, is on the borders of bankruptcy; that as for England, she was ruined long ago, only that she has the ingenuity not to discover it, and to walk about, like some of the worthies of the Romish calendar, with her head in her hand; that the sinking-fund is only a destructive remedy against destruction; and that, whereas it was formerly thought that nothing but accumulation could save us from the ruinous consequences of war, so now, it is certain, that nothing but war saves us from the ruinous consequences of accumulation. We need not describe the opposite sect of the boasters, as this gentleman seems in no danger of being converted by them. His accounts are gloomy in the extreme; but, without any great disposition to think very favourably of the pecuniary state of the India Company, our knowledge of his own sect, made us from the first quite sure, that he would be led to exaggerate the embarrassments under which the Company labour. An impartial representation of them, indeed, is highly desirable to the public, who have no time to turn up musty leger-books, and can hardly expect an accurate account from the newspapers. But we cannot give the praise of impartiality to this author, so far as we have had means of examining documents. Our means, however, were not quite so ample as might have been wished; but as the parliamentary papers which he has quoted, are of easy reference, we did not fail to examine these, and have found in his pages what must in fairness be considered errors of magnitude. He says, • Let any man, however, take the trouble to look over the accounts annually fubmitted to Parliament under the name of the India Budget, and and he will fee good reason to dispute this plea; he will fee that the revenues of India, up to 1802-3, for ten years, were, The charges L. 94,756,281 L. 11,502,864 -being more than eleven millions above the actual charge. p. 62-3. Now, we instantly took this advice, and turned over the debates on this budget; where we find that the author omits the following diminution of this balance. Interest on the bonded debt Supplies to Bencoolen L. 8,163,218 1,357,969 L. 9,521,187 1,981,677 Subtract this from the above sum of 11,502,8647., Again, now. In the Reports, in 1792, it is admitted, that there was a lofs on the India exports; and there is no reason to suppose there is a profit Take this account, however, as it is given: there are various payments, part of which are called political; but in the whole, including every charge, and comparing the payments and profits, (including in the latter the articles mentioned), there is the following balance. L. 13,779,507 12,797,796 Total profits Total furplus in ten years L. 981,711 In this account, there are many articles which are not commercial profits. Such are the profits on private trade, amounting, in ten years, to 1,482,056%; and the amount of annuity from Government, in ten years, above 362,000l. Thus we have near two millions, which do not arife from trade;' &c. p. 60. Now, on looking into this matter, it does appear to us, that the Company were not so wrong in their manner of making up this charge. By the act of the 33d Geo. III., the old duty and allowance of 7 per cent. paid to them on the private trade, are reduced to 3 per cent., for which they bear the expense of unshipping, selling, and otherwise managing the imports in that trade; and the same act also requires them to furnish annually a certain quantity of tonnage for that trade. Paying and including in the charges deducted from their own commerce the expense incurred on account of the private trade, we should think they may fairly set the 3 per cent. received from the private traders against that expense; or, which is the same thing, if they deduct that expense from the profit of their own trade, the allowance which *See Debates, 19th July 1804. they they receive on account of the private trade, may, without any great inaccuracy, be added to their account of profit. Further, for a loan out of their commercial capital to Government, they receive an annual interest of 36,2001. Now, we presume that, as they charge their trade with the interest which they pay on the money they borrow from the bank and otherwise, they may bring the interest received from Government to the credit of their trade. We have noticed other inaccuracies, which induce us to regard all these accounts of the author's with an eye of some suspicion. But we cannot descend into any further details. So far as this part of the present work goes, we do think the question still rests very much on those general grounds, in which, in the former part of our remarks, we have attempted to place it. It is certainly surprising, that India should offer so small a vent for our commerce, both of exports and imports. But the character of the people, indolent and feeble as it is, may certainly afford, in part, an explanation of this phenomenon. We think, too, that the argument used by the Company, from the immemorial use of bullion in the export trade to India, by no means a contemptible one. At this moment the practice continues of carrying silver to India for goods; and this not only on our part, but on that of all the other nations, the Americans themselves not excepted, who possess a commercial footing in those regions. This surely looks as if European commodities could not find a market of any extent in the East. Perhaps, also, some allowance should be made for the effects of the institution of casts. Certainly, notwithstanding a sort of latitude which is afforded to the Hindus, as Mr Colebrook informs us, these unnatural partitions seem, in practice, to be maintained with extraordinary punctilio; and one effect of this absurdity must be, that, supposing a great increase of demand for any particular species of labour, the supply cannot be furnished in time to meet it. But we have no space to develop these ideas. We shall, therefore, depend on the candour of the reader for supplying whatever he finds defective in our short statement of them. In the case of China, at least, it seems pretty certain, that no great extension of our commerce could, on any system, be effected. We know not by what accident the commercial part of the present inquiry has occupied us much longer than we originally intended. Some attention, however, must now be paid to the political grounds on which the East India Directors defend their monopoly. This is generally thought to be the strongest part of their case, and we will, therefore, use every effort, consistent with our limits, to do it full justice; but, so far as we shall espouse, |