tellectual culture, both' as inlets of direct knowledge, and as the channels through which the least educated man of this age imbibes, in a few years, the result of the experience and meditation of the human race during a progress through innumerable generations.

A man, whose condition as an animal, is lower than that of the species in the imaginary period placed before the use of language or the invention of picture-writing, and who yet exhibits rude lineaments of almost every intellectual power and moral sentiment, receiving aid and instruction, perhaps cure, from science, which he repays by information to be extracted from no other being, is a spectacle well calculated to inspire reverence for cultivated intellect, and lefty hopes of the attainments of mankind. Had the lot of this helpless creature been cast among savages, or even among some of those barbarians whom we still continue too much to admire, he must have perished from his own helplessness, if his sufferings had not been abridged by their humane barbarity. How different is the state of a civilized community! Compassion springs up, as it were, by the side of every signal calamity, to soothe where it cannot heal. The science which civilization produces is called forth in the service of the benevolence which it fosters. The education of Massieu is the boast of philosophy on the continent of Europe; and in the present Memoir, one of the wisest and most celebrated men of our own country deems it a worthy exercise of his powers to endeavour to obtain from the liberality of Governinent, through the interposition of a learned Society, the means of placing Mitchell in a situation where he may be observed and instructed at least, if not cured; so that the boundaries of knowledge may be enlarged by the same means which relieve the sufferings of an interesting individual, and lighten the burdens of a meritorious family.

ART. XIII. Papers relating to the East-India Company's Charter, &c. viz. Copies of the Correspondence that has taken place between the President of the Commissioners for the Affairs of India, and the Chairman and Deputy-Chairman of the Court of Directors of the East-India Company; together with the Minutes of the Court of Directors of the said Company, respecting the Renewal of their Exclusive Privileges; as laid before the Proprietors of East-India Stock, at their General Court, on the 25th of March 1812.

T

HESE papers, which have been printed for the use both of the Members of the House of Commons, and of the Pro

prietors of East-India stock, afford not only a view of the various propositions brought forward by the Ministry, on the one hand, and the Court of Directors on the other, on the subject of the renewal of the Company's charter, but also a condensed and authoritative statement of the arguments by which the Honourable Company continue to plead for a renewal of the monopoly. It is a publication, therefore, peculiarly adapted for suggesting those reflections which the existing state of the national deliberations on the grand subject of the government of India, and the trade with that country, appears to us at the present moment most particularly to demand.

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We have already made several efforts to dispel some of the delusions which unfortunately overshadow this subject; and to direct to it the salutary inquiries of independent men; who have hitherto (to use the language of a celebrated Committee of the House of Commons on this very subject) been fa⚫tigned into such a despair of ever obtaining a competent knowledge of the transactions in India, that they are easily persuaded to remand them back to that obscurity, mystery and intrigue, out of which they have never been forced upon public notice, but by the calamities arising from their extreme mismanagement. But though we have good reason to think that we have not altogether laboured in vain, we are still more certain that fresh forts are required, not only to communicate the knowledge in which on this subject most men are so far in arrear, but to excite in regard to it any thing like the proper degree of interest and curiosity. It is far from being generally understood, what important interests of our own, and our posterity, are involved in the discussion. In the space to which we are now compelled to restrict curselves, it is a very general view of the interests of the several parties concerned which it is possble for us to take. We shall endeavour, however, to trace the outline. To fill it up, must be left to the capacity or demand of future occasions.

There are three principal parties whose interests are involved * Ninth Report of the Select Committee 1783, drawn up by Mr Burke. The Report continues, This mismanagement has itself (as your Committee conceive) in a great measure arisen from dark cabals, and secret suggestions of persons in power, without a regu lar public inquiry into the good or evil tendency of any measure, or into the merit or demerit of any person entrusted with the Company's concerns. There have been various inquiries since the time of the above quoted Report; but the question is, whether they have been so conducted as to throw light upon the subject, or, as far as possible, to keep it wrapt in pristine darkness.

in the questions of Indian trade and government. These are, the East-India Company; the British nation; and the people of India.

1. The relative magnitude and importance of these several interests and parties, is no mean part of the consideration, in any rational attempt to think wisely on this interesting subject: but fortunately, the difficulty of weighing them in the balance is not extraordinary. The first is, out of all comparison, the least to be regarded or attended to; and wherever an incompatibility of interests occurs, the conclusion of all the disinterested men in the world must be, that it is the Company's which ought to give way. Between the British nation and the people of India, the one greatly below 20,000,000; the other, it is said, not below 70,000,000 of souls; there may appear to be as little reason for hesitating. But, allowing a good deal for superior power and intelligence, and a great deal for selfishness, we shall not dispute our own title to the first place in our own consideration,-but content ourselves with merely expressing a hope, that it will be thought rather unreasonable to sacrifice either the interests of the British nation, or those of 70,000,000 of our subjects beyond the water, to the East India Company.

That distinguished Body will scarcely venture, we presume, to maintain, in direct terms, that they should be so sacrificed. But we are not a little alarmed at the tone in which their advocates have begun to talk of their rights to the territory and the exclusive trade-rights which they rest upon the sovereignty which they allege they themselves have acquired from the native powers; and with which, they more than insinuate, that the Legislature of Great Britain has no more business to interfere, than with the rights of any other sovereign. The manifest absurdities that are implied in this audacious doctrine, are such as to require no refutation. It is quite enough, and indeed too much, to reply in one word, that this pretended Sovereign --the East India Company-is itself a creature of the British Legislature, created for a limited period, and not only subject, in all its proceedings, to the control of the supreme power from which it originates, but depending for its very existence upon its good pleasure.

With regard to the Company, then, the first of the parties concerned, it is enough to say, that there can be no doubt that Parliament has a right to do what it pleases with the trade and the government of India as soon as the charter expires; and it seems equally manifest, that it is the interest of the Company to recognize that right. The only grounds then upon which that Body can propose or suggest any thing as to these great ques

tions of policy, must be, that what they propose is for the beMeft of the nation at large: And this leads us at once to the consideration of the interests of this second party.

2. The Honourable Company then maintain, that it is for the interest of the nation that the territory and trade of India should remain in their hands, and upon terms nearly the same as before. Let us hear their reasons. First of all, they have the old serviceable plea of their having been formerly thought competent to this great trust. The East India Company have managed the territory and the trade in time past; and therefore they ought to manage it in time to come. According to this very convenient argument, any thing mischievous needs only a beginning, to be entitled to endless duration. An abuse exists; therefore, it ought to continue to exist. An abuse has long existed; it is still more entitled to perpetuity.

Another plea equally familiar, and almost as commonly perverted, is, that experience ought not to be sacrificed to speculation; the meaning of which is, that a narrow and partial experience should always be preferred to a large and enlightened one; or rather, that experience of evil should make all prudent people cling to it the closer, and resist, with all their might, any speculation as to the means of its reinoval.

The Company indeed seems aware, that these general maxims can do them no service; and they come, at last, to the real merits of the case. And here they assert, first, that the opening of the trade would be attended with no advantage-because it is a trade which admits not of any enlargement, either in the export or the import branch.

That a trade between two vast portions of the globe, differing widely in soil, climate, and productions, and accessible to one another by means of a moderate voyage, should at auy one moment be declared incapable of increase, must excite a gentle emotion of surprise, we imagine, in every man who is moderately acquainted with the natural principles of traffic,with the physical qualities of the globe, and the moral nature of man. What is the cause of trade ?That one country is peculiarly adapted to the production of one set of commodities, and another of another; and that, by the mutual exchange of those commodities, the comforts and accommodations of all are multiplied and increased. Hardly any two regions can be conceived, in this respect, more adapted to one another, by diversity of soil and climate, than rope and the countries washed by the seas included in the Company's monopoly, embracing the principal shores both of Africa and Asia.

The picture, however, which the Company now draws of this

vast traffic, affords an amusing contrast to the representations in which they used formerly to indulge. After exhausting for ages all the powers of their rhetoric, in conveying to us the most lofty ideas of its importance, they tell us, all of a sudden, that it is, and ever must be, quite insignificant. The particulars and the causes of this opportune decay are equally curious and important.

It seems the cotton manufactures of England now rival the piece-goods, as they are called, of India. The necessity of the existing high duties on the latter, proves this statement to be fallacious. But the productive powers of the soil and trade of India are not limited to one sort of fabric; and fifty new articles, we doubt not, could be produced, were the vivifying powers of individual enterprise, and of augmenting capital, to be allowed their free operation. Of this indeed we have a striking proof and example in the culture of indigo, now so important an article in the cargoes from India; which is entirely the fruit of the intelligence, capital, and adventure of private merchants, under all the enormous disadvantages which the monopoly of the Company imposes upon them. The fact is, as may be proved undeniably by figures, that, under the cheap freight, the expedition and economy of private trade, all the more valuable productions of the soil-not to speak of the arts actual or possible of India-might be brought to Europe with a profit.

But the war, it seems, operates to the diminution of the importations from India; and accordingly, in their letter to the President of the Board of Control, of 13th of January 1809, where they argue the question of the monopoly, among the causes which they assign for the insignificance of the trade, the Directors add, that the almost incessant wars which have prevailed ' for the last sixteen years (wars still without any near prospect of termination), have reduced the value of that trade to a very low point. Now, upon this matter, we are happily relieved from the necessity of refuting the learned Directors, by finding that they have taken that trouble themselves. In their Third Report, dated 25th March 1802, the Special Committee of the Court of Directors give it as their clear, unequivocal conviction, that it will be impossible for the Legislature, by any regulation whatever, to bring to the river Thames, in time of peace, the same quantity (in bulk and value) of the produce and manufacture of India, which has been brought here in time of war... This, too, was no hasty opinion suggested by the convenience of the moment, but a doctrine familiar to the Company in their moments of maturest deliberation. In the late Lord Melville's famous letter, of 30th June 1801,