India, which called forth a warm panegyric from a journal
whose g.
presents we shall content ourselves with noticing some objections that praise is worth deservin We confess, that had not the Standard it has publicly called forth. pointed our attention towards it, we should perhaps have passed over The Morning Advertiser,—which with great candour publishes our an article the first sentence of which proves, either that the writer i article of last week entire, and thus gives to its readers an opportunity knows very little about the subject of which he professes to treat, or of judging for themselves respecting its soundness,—urges two. One that he has a very loose way of expressing what he knows. " A great of these we shall dismiss very briefly. Our contemporary finds fault
outcry ," he says, " as our readers are no doubt well aware, has been say, that the prices we gave were such as we and our friends are in within the last year or two .raised against the monopoly of the East the habit of paying. The existence of the variation mentioned by the India Company ; the object of which is to induce the Legislature, at Adeertiser is one of the reasons why• a society should be formed, the expiration of the Charter, to throw open the trade to China and whose object, among other things, will be to enlighten its members our Oriental dominions." And he goes on to talk about delusions and the public not only on the facts, but ou the principles that regulate propagated by " itinerating quacks and hireling writers." Of hireling.
writers there may be as many on the one side as the other ; at least liarity in the plan, nor auytthing to exempt it from the common fate of we should be inclined to believe so, from the power and wealth of the all such plans—failure," is best met by the fact that no such plan as party attacked. The " itinerating quacks" must mean, of course, Mr. that which we contemplate was ever projected in the metropolis, much BUCKINGHAM, who with all his faults is not " three gentlemen rolled less entered on, and therefore no such plan ever failed there ; and by into one." Again, the outcry against the East India Company's the example which we gave last week, of similar societies, instituted
monopoly is not of two years, nor of two dozen years standing; nor is most triumphantly. the object of the present outcry an opening' of the trade to our Oriental
The Advertiser goes• on to state, that we do not take into account dominions, inasmuch as the trade to part of these dominions has never shop-rents, and many other things;; but lie mistakes us. We have been shut, and the trade to the dependencies of the Company was taken all these things into account ; and we _perceive most clearly, opened several years ago. About as much to the point is the display from cases where these items are heavier than in those we cited, that of figures, by which a fact is proved that no one inhis senses ever a rate of profit much inferior to what is charged by butchers, bakers, disputed,—namely, that the trade of the Company has increased during and others, is sufficient for their payment. But then, tradesmen fail ! the last hundred years. The only question is, whether it has increased We admit that they do very frequently. Dr. FRANKLIN remarks, that in the proportion that, judging by the general trade of the kingdom if a man's income were ten thousand a year, and he spent eleven thou- before, and by-the trade to India since the removal of the restrictions sand, he would necessarily become a bankrupt in the long run. It is on the latter, it ought to have done.
exceeds even the extravagance of his charges. subject than the City con-espondent of the Herald. It does not view There is an element in price not specified by our contemporary, and the question as one of pounds, shillings, and pence only. Without but slightly alluded to by ourselves, on which we shall make a remark professing to determine on the respective advantages of the monopoly or two—we mean credit. We know no principle that is less under- and the free trade system, or on the consequences of the latter to British stood or more capriciously applied. The tradesman who sells a pair of India, our able contemporary foresees, in the transfer to the Ministry
shoes is entitled to charge his customer of England of the powers at present wielded by the Company, evils of
] st, Prime cost of the materials ; . a nature so alarming- to the mother country, as (wholly to absorb all 2d, Cost of manufacture, including shop-rent, personal attend- minor considerations of danger or damage to the colony. The amount
ance, &c.; of patronage that the dissolution of the East India Company would 3d, Interest of capital advanced ; throw into the hands of the Minister is so enormous, according to the
4th, Allowance for credit. Standard, that " let him be as honest as Percival or as mild and kind-
When the customer pays ready money, he is entitled to hare the hearted as Goderich. that Minister will owe it to his own virtue, and whole of the last item deducted from his bill ;—now what is the prat- to his own virtue only, if he do not depose the reigning Family and tiee ? In some cases, but not in all, a discount of 5 per cent is abolish both Houses of Parliament." " This," it is added, " may allowed.' So that the utmost difference between the price paid by the seem to be exaggerated language ; but it is not stronger than the honest employer, and the careless, the extravagant, the suspected, the language employed by the King and Mr. Pitt against Mr. Fox's India swindler who after years of dunning pays only a part of his hills, or Bill in 1783."
who never pays them at all—is one shilling in twenty ! We shall best On the language employed by his late Majesty, we shall not pre- illustrate the absurdity of this notorious practice among Common smile to comment ; but it surely does not require so much perspicuity an example n a higher department of business. Sup- as our contemporary possesses, to perceive that the language of Mr. pose A. to have a vessel proceeding to China ; B. another freighted to PITT towards his political rival, especially when describing that mea- New fork; C. a third bound for the Baltic ; and D. a fourth in the sure by defeating which Mr. PITT contrived to turn him out of office, Canal Basin, about to start for the terra incognita of Paddington ;— is to be received with sonic grains of allowance. If there had not and by way of completing the parallel, let D.'s barge be of last week's been very a-eat exaggeration in Mr. Pains language, how comes it that launching ; C:s battered by twenty years' service ; B.'s rotten, leaky, the India Bill of Mr. Fox has, with a few modifications been actually and worthless ; and let A. be a thief, who according to general esti- carried and operated on for so many years, without moving the crown mate will not scruple to sink the ship as soon as he gets out of liar- from his Majesty's head, or displacing its smallest ornament ? And hour, in order to pocket the insurance ;—what would be said of the if the patronage of India would so fearfully- augment the power of the underwriter that attempted to exact the stuna rate of premium from Minister, how comes it to be so very feeble an instrument in the hands each of these four parties ? who asked from the barge that was about of the twelve gentlemen who meet in conclave in Leadenhall Street ? to be dragged five miles along a canal, as much as from the ship that If it would enable the Minister to depose the King, why might it not was to sail for three times as many thousands, with all the hazards of enable the Honourable Board of Directors to dispost the Minister, and such a passage augmented by the known roguery of the captain and thus to secure at once the integrity of the Great Charter, and of their owners ? Yet this is precisely what is done to the public by the own? dealers in boots and butcher-meat every day of the year. Their rule_ But were we disposed to admit the potency of the Standard's objec- is an inversion of all the dictates of common sense : it levies an enor- bon, (and we are not disposed to deny it all due weight), have not the mous and unjust tax on the good, in order to relieve the bad customer patriotic fears of our contemporary led him to jump to a conclusion from paying what is fairly due. From this tax, which is much hea- that his premises do not warrant ? The principal question that is at ' vier than any that the exigencies of the State compel us to pay, and present agitated by men of plain unsophisticated understandings, is the • which is raised on principles and for purposes that it is impassible not propriety of opening the trade to China. Now, what are the facts in re- to condemn, it is the primary object of our society to relieve its gard to that trade ? An American vessel may ship a cargo of English members. goods in the port of Liverpool, carry them to Canton, and there dispose • Some fears have been expressed, lest our plan should operate inju- of them in the face of the East India Company, thus competing with I riously on the tradesmen whose charges we aim at reducing. We are them in their own particular market, which we are told no one can ' not called on to discuss an objection like this. We are consumers, manage but themselves, and combating them with weapons drawn from their own armoury. A subject of Great Britain dares not do this. Ought such a state of things to remain ? Ought we to continue Voluntarily to shut ourselves out from a lucrative trade, only that it may be enjoyed by. strangers? We hear much of our mercantile, much of our shipping distresses,—and no journal can declaim with more elo- quence on these topics than does the Standard; is this the way to mend them ? Suppose the trade to China thrown open to-morrow, would .that render the Minister absolute ? There is another question —the coasting trade of India. Were that trade open to every English- man (subject always to the local duties imposed by the Company, which if impartially laid on, no one could dispute), would the Minister by direct consequence become the arbiter of the Crown and the Par- liament? Were any Englishman that has capital and inclination allowed to purchase property and to settle in Bengal, (subject always to its internal regulations), in the same way as any Englishman may in Jamaica,—(and we must say, our firm opinion is that it is only by in- ducing Englishmen to settle in India that our dominion there can be preserved,)—would that destroy the liberties of Great, Britain? And what more than the abolition of the tea monopoly, the opening of the coasting trade, and permission to English subjects to live and trade in the colony of India, as they do in every other colony, do the people of England want? If the machinery by which the political condition of the East is at present directed be really the best, (and we presume that this is capable of being shown,) who would desire to see it changed ? Not we, assuredly. True, the Company's revenue may be diminished—we do not affirm it will—what then ? The Company must be content to practise a virtue which it has hitherto despised, but of which it is now beginning to perceive the value—the virtue of economy. There may be fewer writerships to sell, and the price may fall in the market ; but we cannot foresee anything very terrible in such an event. As to the protection of India, the most effectual way to provide for that is to interest as many persons and as much capital in its defence as we possibly can. If British gold and British enter- , prise be once fairly pledged to the retention of India, we may smile at the grumblers against " half-batta," as fearlessly as we now do at Colonel EVANS'S vision of a plump of Cossack spears peeping some fine morning over the ridges of the Himale.
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