might convert the supposed representatives into party-men, could never make a partisan of the Company itself. In the mean time, it is necessary to remember, that the evil is of a limited extent, that it may very probably admit of still further limitation, and that India has a sort of parliament of its own, though a very imperfect one, in the court of stock-proprietors.

Such, it strikes us, are the two principal imperfections necessarily adhering to the constitution of the Company. The great virtue of this constitution unquestionably is, that by means of it, the immense patronage of India is prevented from falling into the hands of the minister of the day, in which it might prove a most efficient and dangerous instrument of corruption. This consideration is, it seems, carefully held up to public view by the Company and their advocates, and it indubitably forms a fair argument in their favour; nor does it appear to us of the smallest moment to inquire, whether the motives from which it is urged, be patriotic or selfish. We ought' (says this author) to know the men who raise the objection, better.' But, with great submission to him, we ought not to know either the men who raise the objection, or the man who has here endeavoured to refute it. We ought to know only the pro and the con, and to determine accordingly.

The fund of patronage which a colony, using that term properly, affords to the crown, is by no means in proportion to its size; because size gives it political weight, and consequently, a voice in its own government. Where even the appointment of a colonial officer is left solely to the king, the minister may often be obliged, in making it, to consult the wishes of the colonists. In some instances, however, a colony has had the sole power of chusing even its own governor; as, for example, Connecticut and Rhode-Island, before the disruption of America. It is obvi ous, that this can never be the case with the inhabitants, white and black, of our East-Indian possessions, while they continue, as now, without a recognized constitutional existence. Were India to become a colony, the crown might be more safely trusted with what patronage the colonists would quietly suffer it to 12tain; but it is to be recollected, that if the Company were abolished, a long interval must elapse before India could be completely colonized, allowing that it would ever be colonized at all; and that, during this interval, the tide of ministerial influence might be so swelled by the patronage of that country, as very seriously to menace our liberties. In the hands of the Company, all this power may reside, at least with safety to the balance of the constitution.

The author answers this argument by saying, that to talk thus, VOL. X. NO. 20.

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is to traduce the English constitution, which sufficiently provided checks against mal-administration, without the necessity of resorting to an anomalous, monstrous, and dangerous authority, which it neither knows nor sanctions. But this reply, to treat it favourably, seems extremely vague. To say, that we ought not to annex, in perpetuum, to the office of cabinet-minister, one or two hundred more of close boroughs, or, which is equipollent, a command of as many dead votes, appears to be no libel on the constitution, but rather the reverse.. If the constitution knows nothing of the India Company, it knows as little of India and its patronage, and its peculiar relation to this country. The case is a new one. But if we are, in a sort of Talmudistic spirit, to make an amulet of the letter of the constitution, why do we not act fully up to our own principle? Why do we not extend all the forms of our own system to our fellow-subjects in the East? Why do we not issue writs for darkening the House of Commons with representatives of the black population of India? Why do we not increase our peerage by a body of delegates from the Hindoo or Mussulman aristocracies; not forgetting to variegate the bench of bishops, by interspersing it with fifty expounders of the Koran, and one hundred and fifty Pundits learned in the Vedas?

The spirit of the constitution surely forbids any great increase of ministerial patronage, or at least, without the institution of additional checks somewhere. The misfortune, however, of committing all this patronage to the ministry, and then instituting checks, is, that the patronage will only enable them to buy off the checks. The plunder will defend itself. It is somewhat whimsical in this writer to contend, that the controul of Parliament will prevent the evil, when the very objection to the evil is, that it weakens that controul. This is, as if the crew of a vessel driven by a current, should attempt to stop her course by all hands pulling the ropes. It seems, therefore, a question at least, whether we ought not to vest the influence alluded to, in some other independent quarter; no matter whether it be the India Company or not.

There is, however, this argument for chusing the Company as the deposite of Indian patronage, in preference to any new body, that it is already established; and however we may modify it, or whatever is to be done with its commercial privileges, the known principles of legislation enjoin us, rather to avail ourselves of forms already in use, than to be eager for the credit of inventing others. Some share in the management of Indian affairs, must, of course, go along with this patronage, wherever it is lodged; because it is preposterous to pay men, and give them no work for

their pay. Neither let us be too much alarmed by the mere whistling' of such names,' as complexity, anarchical government, and so forth; or of such cant ambidexter phrases as imperium in imperio; all which may be used against the worst system and against the best. The charge of confusion, as we have already observed, may easily, so long as men deal in generals, be urged against every one of those organized combinations of obedience and resistance, which we call governments; along the whole interval between the dreadful unity of despotism, and the uniform multiplicity of anarchy; between the point where all is obedience without resistance, and the point where all is resistance without obedience.

The author informs us, however, that the Directors are already a dangerous instrument of influence in the hands of ministers, and that, if they were not so, they would be too powerful, and amazingly apt to rebel. Whatever be the fact, we see no reason why they should necessarily be either the one or the other. If the balance be not exact, make it so. But, in saying that the Company is now a slave' to the cabinet, the author, we think, hardly does them justice, and too much forgets recent events. We do not mean, however, to praise the present constitution, or the late acts of the Company, or to blame them. All we say is, that this constitution may be made a good one, if it is at present otherwise.

With respect to the government of the Company in India, if indeed we can call them governors, it was formerly oppressive enough; but we are much afraid, that this would have been the case under any system. The African slave trade continued long after the African Company became bankrupt. Our colonies in America did not treat the Indians of the West much better than the early adventurers from this country treated their namesakes in the East. There is, in effect, no instance, or hardly one, in history, of a stronger nation having come into close contact with one decidedly weaker, it being supposed that the weaker has no chance of a powerful ally, but the strong became oppressors. We ar dently hope, that we are now repairing, in a measure, these wrongs. Of the late wars, indeed, in India, the Directors themselves profess to disapprove. This is a good symptom; and if (as is said) they act, in this instance, not from a sense of justice, but of interest, we rejoice that they have discovered the necessary coincidence of their interests and their duties. It was for not seeing this, that they have been all along censured. But they must yet do much, before they think of resting on their oars, or living on their fame.

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present form of Indian administration, taking it, however, be it always remembered, at its best possible. To examine particular regulations on the subject, is beyond our knowledge and our ability. It is now incumbent on us, shortly to consider, what, if the Company should be abolished, is the most probable alternative?

There seem to us to be four answers to this question, and these four, we suspect, conveniently include all the rational answers that can be made. In the event supposed

First, The trade may be laid open, and the system of government transferred to the King and Parliament; while yet the entrance of settlers into British India continues to be greatly clogged, and all political existence to be denied them.

Secondly, The trade may be laid open, the entrance of settlers freely permitted, the Company altogether abolished, and the patronage transferred to the Crown.

Thirdly, The same as the first; only, that the political power and the patronage of the directors remain with them.

Fourthly, The trade and country may be both entirely laid o pen, while the Directors retain their patronage, and generally the degree of political power which they now possess.

With respect to the first plan, we shall make three remarks. In the first place, this plan leaves, in unabated force, all the objections so strongly urged by Dr Smith, and so eloquently by Burke, against the mischiefs resulting to the East Indies from their being necessarily made the prey of temporary residents. What force there is in those objections, we cannot stop to inquire; and shall only hint, that, though the system of temporary residence may have its faults, yet those faults are capable of much correction by law, and, in fact have, in the present instance, received such correction; and further, that the opinion, that the hope of in future providing for their children by procuring them employments in the same line, and other conspiring causes, may greatly tend to inspire the Anglo-Indian residents with something of a patriotic feeling towards the country where they pass the best years of their lives.

In the next place, this plan would lay very serious restraints on that freedom of trade, which is the main object of its establishment. It would in fact make the commerce of India, if we may affix to it such a title, a sort of regulated royal monopoly. It would raise a hope of freedom that must be disappointed; and probably, any frequent exercise, by a royal government, of a power of excluding residents, would be still more odious than the preventive monopoly of the Company, which saves men the trouble of being sent home, by hindering them from being sent out.

In the last place, the objection of the probable abuse of patronage, when lodged in Ministerial hands, not only remains, but applies with augmented force. If the ports of India be made all free, while yet a good deal of jealousy is to be exercised in watching the movements of those who arrive in them from abroad, it must be most evident that the charges of inspection will be prodigious, and of course a door is opened to the creation of new offices.

Nothing more, we conceive, need be said of a plan, which seems to unite in itself the evils of almost all the systems that can be adopted. It would, indeed, prevent the possibility of colonization, but perhaps at a greater expense than the advantage

is worth.

The second of the plans which we mentioned, is that perhaps which will most conciliate popularity. Before, however, any thing can be said upon it, a previous question ought to be agitated; Would a complete liberty of commerce in the East Indies, and an unqualified permission of ingress to European settlers, tend to colonization? The Directors seem to believe, that India would, by these regulations, be converted into a prodigious colony in the course of half a century. To this sentiment we cannot entirely accede. Our view of the subject amounts to this, that it, in some measure, depends on accident, whether or not, under the supposed circumstances, India would become a colony ;but that the affirmative opinion is the most probable. Our zealous author, however, can never even enter the same room with the Company; he, therefore, flies off at all points, and declares the apprehension of colonization to be wholly chimerical." Hardly a single Englishman, he contends, will ever think of settling in the East Indies; an opinion hardly quite consistent with his ideas of the immense opportunities afforded by the East for the extension of commerce, and of the probability that the emancipation of the Indian trade would occasion a considerable influx of British capital into that quarter of the world. He cannot but know, that men love to follow their capitals into distant lands, and that, wherever we find foreign capital fairly domiciliated in a country, we may surely reckon upon our not having long to look for the capitalist.

The great argument which he uses on this point, is founded on a comparison between America and Hindustan; a comparison which we do not think decisive. America was indeed a new country, and afforded an infinitely greater scope for the elasticity of population to operate, than can be expected in a country that has been settled for centuries. But the author seems to forget, that no old country is fully peopled; and if we may say that population

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