GRACCHUS.
LETTER V.
Tuesday, January 19, 1813.
The writers, who have recently undertaken to defend and justify the opposition of the Court of Directors to any extension of the Import Trade from India to the out-ports of the kingdom, have laid a peculiar stress upon an opinion conveyed in that part of Mr. Dundas's Letter of the 2d of April 1800, in which that Minister was considering "the agents to be employed at home; to manage the private trade of individuals from India, and to take care of their interests in the cargoes of the returning ships." He states his opinion, that "there is no use of any interference by the Company; that the great interest to be attended to on the part of the Company, is, that no goods come from India that are not deposited in the Company's warehouses; and that the goods, so imported, be exposed at the Company's sales, agreeably to the rules prescribed for that purpose."
In taking ground upon any principle, it is necessary to ascertain whether it applies to the case in point. That it was a great interest to the East India Company to watch and control the trade carrying on under their own licenses, is obvious; and this the Company could not effectually do, unless that Trade, on its return from India, was brought under their own eye, and collected within the sphere of their own control; which is confined to the Port of London. But the case, to which this argument is now applied by the advocates for the Company, is so essentially deficient, that the principles appear to be wholly inapplicable. In this new case, the extended trade would be carried on, not under the Company's licenses, but under the provision of Parliament; and the protection and control of that trade would become the care, not of the Company, but of the executive Government. Here then the determination of that trade would be governed, not by the separate interest of the Company (which alone came within the scope of Mr. Dundas's argument), but by the combined interests of the Company and the Public at large. To this combined interest, Mr. Dundas's argument was not directed; and it is a fallacy in reasoning, to apply a partial argument to a general case.
But, let us grant what these advocates assume; that the opinion here delivered by Mr. Dundas, does really apply to the case in question. May not that have happened at the present day, which actually did happen with regard to the regulations of the Charter of 1793? Might not new light be thrown upon a subject in 1813, which was supposed to have been thoroughly investigated in 1800? And, as the candour and openness of Mr. Dundas caused him, in 1800, to avow, that the provisions of 1793 were inadequate, and prompted him strenuously to recommend the adoption of a new principle; is it not possible that, taking into his view all the circumstances which bear upon the question at the present day, he might, had his life been spared, have been convinced, that the extraordinary and unforeseen changes which have taken place in the political and commercial world, might have now rendered it, not only expedient but, necessary to relax, in some degree, upon the point of the import trade from India?
At an early period of the present discussion, Ministers appear to have entertained the same maxim, of confining the import trade from India to the Port of London. They were afterwards led, by a full exposition of all the various interests which remonstrated against that close restriction, to deem it just and expedient to propose (and wise and politic for the East India Company to consent), that such of the principal out-ports as possessed the means whereby smuggling could best be guarded against, should participate with London in the import trade from India; reserving exclusively to London, the whole of the trade from China. This alteration of their original plan was suggested by them to the Court of Directors, not as a relaxation of the existing privileges of the Company (which was the nature of Mr. Dundas's proposition in 1800), but as a qualification to take place under a new Charter.
When Mr. Dundas suggested to the Directors the new principle, of admitting Indian-built ships as the vehicle for carrying on the private trade, he was not treating with them concerning the renewal of their Charter; for they had then an unexpired term of fourteen years, in the privileges conferred upon them by the Act of 1793. His proposition, as has been just observed, went to a relaxation of an important part of those subsisting privileges; for which he sought to gain their acquiescence; and as his opinion was decided and avowed, "that the ostensible form of Government for India, with all its consequent detail of patronage, must remain as it now is, and that the monopoly of that trade ought properly to continue in the hands of the East India Company;" it was prudent and seasonable in him to dwell upon that point.