The National Register. — London, England, 1813-01-31 00:00:00

THE NATIONAL -REGISTER. , • Cur Iting, Coastitation, anD Laths. PUBLISHED AT NO. 11. NEWCASTLE-STREET. STRAND. PRICE f • POLITICAL DISH) MI ON. EAST INDIA QUESTION. SUNDAY, JANUARY 31, 1813_._ comparatively confined : we have extended it widely ; we have made war on Princes and Nations, abon , hed Dynasties, and subjected a hundred Stites : we have spent " our blood and treasures." ....Whence flowed that blood and those treasures? You have spent Enklish blood; for you have nut only con stantly raised the main strength of your wiry in the United Kingdoms, but you arc obliged to borrow the services of 25 or 30,000 British regulars, whom you do not even Fay, to secure your authority.—You have spent English trea sures; for if you had not half-ruined yourselves through your spirit of conquest, that wealth would base circulated through our land, and you would not have added to our taxes by the weight of the loans necessary to keep the ves sel of your monopoly from foundering. You have thus spent the blood, and in a peliod of heavy taxation and dif ficulties, you have increased the expenses, of that nation, against whom you are now exerting every nerve to keep even a partial opening of your trade for ever closed ! You have " laboured," you tell us, you have made " sacrifices :" for whom but for yourselves ? Did you toil for the honour o r advantage of England, whose merchants you would now ex chide fi ()in the limited profits. not of your labours and sa crifices, but of their own entei prise and risks, whilst you freely share your trade with foreigners? if your labours have not succeeded, if your sacrifices have proved vain, are they to suffer finr your incapacity or imprudence ? If conquest led you to ruin, they will not subject states, but enrich their own. Your failure, if you WU inaint. , :n that your trade is not worth dividing because unprofitable, renders the adoption of a new system necessary, and makes it a duty on the part of Government to let abler hands ex plore that field which, under your management has remained barren. But if, as it is well known, this assertion is un founded in fact, and only made to create indifference among British merchants to an extension of trade from which they are told they can derive no benefit—if you have really enctewed your commerc:ial revenue, with the tcriitories entrusted to your care, and yet are com: , elled to ieceive the assistance, in troops and money, of your country, to maintain your empire, how have your affairs been manag f:d? flow then are you entitled to a renewal of that charter, which at fist placing the superintendance and direction of a few factories only into your hands, has by a course of sanguinary wars and acts of more than dubious character, made you arbitrary governors over a population of sixty millions ? You took a lease of our East Indian esn te, farmed it, enclosed the waste grounds around, and thus enlarged it. On this field your activity has been employeu for many years, and although you Were unable to fuldi the conditions on which the lease was granted, has br...en veral time. renewed. It is now once kuth . e exviring. anal. No 266. MR. ricwroa —Although you have announced your in tention not to espouse either part in the pending, discussions, until sufic•ient information shall have been produced to lustrate eve!) , bearing of the subject, 1 trust you will not reject communications for or against, when their nature is in other respects unobjectionable. lam confirmed in that be lief by the consideration, which cannot fail to strike you also, that by so doing, you will contribute all in your power , to throw lig ht on one of the most interesting and important questions that have ever demanded the impartial scrutiny j and deeply weighed judgment of man—a question, which, although studiously confined by the advocates of monopoly within the narrow bounds of almost individual interest, is of so extensive a nature as to affect the welfare, not only of the United Kingdoms and British India, a population of about eighty millions, but. perhaps of the whole world, by the changes it may produce in the condition, manners, customs, and even reii i .,ion of our Hindustan dependents, and of the Pagan nations beyond. Confident in your liberality, which' 1 trust, will equally insert the teplies of my opponents' should any start-aeainst me, I shall endeavour, in this letter if I an, able, and if not, in succeeding comtnunications, both by refutation and exposition, to give the view of this mo mentous subject, which I think most consonant with the true interest of all parties, with moral and political justice, with humanity and religion. 1 shall begin by setting aside the claim of right lately advanced by the advocates of monopoly, with a degree of audacity which has happily failed to awe the minds of the , people into an unguarded acknowledgment of the justice of their pretensions. A bold falsehood, asserted with all the so lemnity of truth, sometimes passes for it, and acting with all - its energy, produces double mischief. But when exposed at its birth, all its baleful influence recoils upon the cause from which it has sprung. " Let us declare, let us defend, let us vindicate our dear rights," has been the langmge of the monopolists at their numerous meetings. What are those rights ?-LThey are mute, for they cannot explain what does not exist. But, with the subtlety cf skilful logicians' defeated in their grand charge, they have recourse to ma noeuvres : they endeavour to obtain by perplexing, what they could not gain by storm.—" It is true that we have no positive right, beyond the duration of our Charter, to the ad vantages of the East India monopoly, or of any other arising out of it, but we have a claim to the renewal of those rights, very nearly amounting in itself to a right, and given us by our labours and sacrifices to improve the possessions entrusted to our care. When our Charter was granted, our territory, was vol. VI. No CCLXII.. • r . • .'t 4 ‘ls'