cessary, and were determined to apply them? No, because you were ignorant of the remedies, and were determined that none should be resorted to. This you virtually assign ed as your reason.

The Duke of Wellington resisted enquiry on the ground that it would extend to some twenty-four topics, and would compel you to examine the operation of the currency, freetrade, and poor laws.

The number of topics is a matter too ridiculous for notice. Is the operation of the laws we have named free from doubt and controversy ? With regard to the change of currency, Ministers declare that it has done no injury, and has had no effect on prices; the great body of you declare the contrary, and Mr Herries admits, that it is of the first importance for the truth to be ascertained. Here is a point which vitally affects the interests of the empire; you cannot possibly legislate correctly on the property and bread of the community, without accurate knowledge respecting it; you are, on your own shewing, utterly destitute of such knowledge; and still you are not to enquire into the causes of public misery, because it will compel you to inform yourselves touching the nature of currency!

Your Free Trade laws have manifestly scattered ruin and misery far and wide; you are divided respecting them, and the country feels and believes them to be erroneous. Your doctrines have been decisively refuted by argument and experiment; your facts are flatly denied, from personal experience, by the interests to which they relate; and your errors, contradictions, inconsistencies, and absurdities, prove that you are grossly ignorant touching the matters to

which these laws refer. Yet you are not to enquire into the causes of public misery, because it will compel you to seek the truth on such matters.

In various counties there is a great excess of population, and the labourers are nearly all paupers; yet you are not to enquire into the causes of public misery, because it will compel you to ascertain whether this evil be capable of remedy.

You prove, by your conduct and confessions, that you are grossly ignorant of the true principles of political economy-that you are grossly ignorant of the mechanism of agriculture, manufactures and tradethat you are grossly ignorant of the sources of national prosperity and destruction: and you avowedly refuse to enquire, lest it should give you the requisite information. In your ignorance, you have by wild changes filled the land with calamity; and you refuse to enquire, lest it should make you acquainted with the only things by which the calamity can be removed. Can the dreadful sufferings of the working classes be mitigated? Can agriculture be extricated from loss and insolvency? Can the distress of the Shipping Interest be relieved? Can the inroads which ruin is making on every class and calling be prevented? You practically confess that you are in total ignorance on these points, and that you will not enquire, because it may dispel your ignorance.

This cannot endure much longer; proceed but a little farther, and it will be retorted on yourselves; take a few steps more, and ignorant change, savage experiment, blind insensibility to proof, and obstinate refusal to enquire and investigate, will find in you their next victims.

India to private traders; and on that occasion all, or nearly all, the Company's servants who were examined, gave it as their opinion, it would be quite impossible to extend the consumption of British goods in India. A gentleman who lately held a high situation at Madras made the re mark, that "the natives of India generally only wear a bit of coarse cotton cloth round their waists, that their food is rice and ghee, and that they are so poor, they cannot possibly afford to purchase any thing European."* How does this correspond with the experience of late years? There have, I understand, been upwards of 30,000 bales of cotton piece goods sent yearly to the eastward of the Cape, and taking the value of each bale at only L.60, the amount of the imports into India of this article alone is L.1,800,000.†

I am very far from supposing that the gentleman alluded to did not give his sincere opinion; but as it is probable the Company's servants, who are now giving evidence tending to discourage Free Trade, are, without being aware of it, somewhat biassed by their own, or their friend's views or interests; and as, in short, I see no good reason why the China trade should not be thrown open, and the merchants of England be thereby enabled to have the chance of extending their trade in that quarter, I incline to think his Majesty's ministers will find it expedient, on the present occasion, to lay the trade open to the manufacturers of this country, who are now much in want of new markets for their commodities.

The Company say they are afraid of the free traders causing disturbances in China; but is it not more likely that the English merchants, now residing at Canton, who smuggle opium into China every year to the amount of L.1,800,000, should cause disturbances there, than that the fair dealer in English manufac

tures, which may be legally imported into the Celestial Empire, should do so? The Company's servants say but little against the opium trade, for this obvious reason-it is all produced in the Company's Indian territory, and on every chest of it they have a clear profit of about 300 per cent!

You perhaps think you have now got me on the horns of a dilemma, for I set out by stating that the Company must be upheld, and you may think that what I have since proposed, reduces their trade to nothing.

The tea trade is the only one, it appears to me, in which the Company should take any interest; and without the monopoly of the British market for it, I am quite sure it will not be in the Directors' power to go on paying the usual dividends. To continue this monopoly is, no doubt, to tax the country for the benefit of the Company; but if, on the other hand, Ministers should take the tea trade out of the hands of the Company, they would have to support a large establishment in China, and which would have to be paid for by the nation. In short, the tax, if the Board of Control do their duty, should be but a trifling one, and not nearly so much opposed to the principles of Political Economy, as the extra tax of 10s. per cwt. on all sugar imported into England, and which does not come from the West Indies or Mauritius; for these colonies are a heavy expense to the mother country, and not therefore worth maintaining; whereas the East Indian possessions very nearly pay their own expenses, and take off a very large, and annually increasing quantity of British manufactures.

The shipping establishments of the Company shew, more than any thing else, how readily large chartered bodies fall into the rear of the rest of the community in respect to improvements. The Directors should give up this branch of their patronage, as

soon as the charters of the ships now in their employ shall have expired, and allow the tea to be brought home in ships of not less than 400 tons burden, the owners of which may be able to give the Board of Control, or the Court of Directors, sufficient security that smuggling shall not be allowed on board. If ships of this burden were to be taken up for the single voyage from China only, the vessels which are sent out annually to New South Wales and other parts of India, and often return with little or no cargo, would be tendered to the Company at a third or a fourth of the freight which is now paid for the tea. In this way, every old woman in Old England would find her advantage in the change of system, for her tea would cost her much less than at present; nor would the revenue suffer, for though the duty (being an ad valorem one) would be less on every pound of tea than at present, the increase in the consumption (a natural consequence to a regular and steady diminution in the cost) would more than make up the difference to the revenue.

You will infer from what I have just said, I propose the Company shall not be allowed to tax the tea at the public sales in London, at higher rates than may be sufficient to cover the prime cost in China, the freight of it home, and a per centage, by way of profit, to enable the Directors to provide for the usual dividends on the Company's stock, as heretofore.

I confess, on the other hand, that, even on the ground of the general public advantage, I think the tea trade should be continued in the Company; for their permanent establishment in China, their ample funds, and means of resistance to oppression, when threatened by the Chinese, are advantages which can never be possessed, in the same degree, by individual merchants, however respectable; but, on the other hand, his Majesty's Ministers ought not to listen to the Company's advocates, who say, that the gentlemen who navigate their ships are superior, by birth and education, to sailors in general, that they have often beat the French in time of war,-and that the revenue derived from tea would not

be safe in other hands. If I may judge from the length of the half-pay navy list, England is not likely, for a long time to come, to be in want of officers for her ships of war, should she require more than she does at present; and even the article of tobacco (which pays 300 per cent du. ty, in place of 100 per cent, as tea does,) has never been cumbered with an extra freight to secure the duty on it.

It will be necessary, however, should the China trade be thrown open, that a chief be appointed at Canton by his Majesty's Ministers. This chief ought to have full power to control all parties that may offend against the regulations that must be established for the welfare of the Free Trade, and to settle any disputes that may arise between the Company and the new comers.

As to colonization, I suspect it will not be carried to any great extent in India. The country is not new-it has been long under the plough-and is moderately peopled; hence agriculturists will find much less encouragement than they expect.

Indigo is already cultivated to an extent to supply the wants of nearly the whole world. Coffee, cotton, and sugar, have all been often tried. I understand that Mr B.'s coffee plantation, in your neighbourhood, has not done much good. A plantation which was carried on for ten years, at Dacca, has lately been abandoned, the produce being invariably of inferior quality, like that of Ceylon and Sumatra, probably owing to the excessive drought which prevails in Bengal from November to June, and to the heavy rains which follow, and continue while the berry is on the bush, and prevent it from filling properly. Another large plantation which had been commenced near Calcutta, is, I understand, not likely to meet a better fate than the Dacca

one.

During the years 1814 to 1819, when large shipments were made to England of India cotton, a great many experiments were made to improve the quality of it, but without success: the seed brought from America had generally lost its vegetating quality before it reached its place of destination; or, if it did produce plants,

the quality of the cotton obtained from them, after the first year, was nothing superior to that produced from country plants. I do not mean to say, that it is impossible to improve the quality of the cotton now grown in India, but that every attempt that has yet been made, (and they have been many,) has virtually failed to do so. There is, indeed, a small annual plant grown near Dacca, from the cotton of which the India mul-mul muslin is made; this cotton, though of short staple, is silky and beautiful, but then it costs generally about 7d. per lb. at Dacca, and hence more of it has never been sent to England than a few bales, by way of trial; and even in times when cotton generally was 100 per cent higher in Europe than it is at present, the Dacca article was not found to answer. Bishop Heber says, that seeing this cottonplant growing near Dacca, he asked the people what they did with the produce of it, and was told," it was all sent to England, where it could be manufactured into cloth much cheaper than in India."* So much for random information! The cotton, as just stated, is all manufactured in the neighbourhood of Dacca. In short, there is still more cotton manufactured in Hindostan than in all England; a reference to the Honourable Company's records, and to other sources of information, equally satisfactory, puts this beyond all doubt.

In the present distressed state of the West India Colonies, it will not be in the power of Ministers to equalize the duties on East and West India sugars, and while the duties on that from the East Indies continue as at present, I do not expect that much of it will be imported into Eng

land; the application of British skill and machinery, however, may by and by produce the article in India at a cheaper cost, and of a better quality, than heretofore, and in that case, it will come into more extensive com petition with the produce of the West Indies, in the markets of the continent of Europe, than it has yet done.

The Company are spending large sums of money every year in endeavours to instruct the natives of India; but it appears to me they are going the wrong way to work. They hold out no inducement for the natives to study English, Persian being the only language really necessary in the situations of emolument to which natives can aspire, and it is as much a foreign language to the judges and judged in India, as French is to the people of this country. Let the Company's code of laws be translated into, and the business of the Courts of Justice be carried on in English, and you'll soon see thousands of natives, not only conversant with the English language, but with English books and English customs.

It might be objected to what I have just proposed, that all the servants in the judicial branch of the Company's service should be conversant with Persian and Arabic. I reply, that even now few of the judges have more than a slight acquaintance with Persian, and still slighter with Arabic; and that the law language of Hindostan, would be as unintelligible to a Persian of Ispahan, as Canton-English would be to the Bishop of London. It is readily admitted, that the judges, in order to be able to do their duty effectually, should be acquainted with the dialects of the people, over whom they preside;