3. By that loss, voluntarily incurred, they may throw the greatest part of the trade into the hands of the private traders.
4. They will lose the patronage of India, and the establishments depending upon it; which they will thus compel Parliament, contrary to the disposition of Government, to place under different arrangements.
5. The accounts between the Public and the Company must be referred for investigation to Commissioners of Inquiry, to be finally settled and adjusted.
It is now for the Proprietors, after well considering these two alternatives, to determine, under which of the two their dividend will be most secure.
With regard to Constitutional objections against taking the Government of India out of the hands of the Company (upon which objection their confidence in their present pretensions chiefly reposes), it is difficult to conceive that the wisdom of Parliament, after the experience of so many years, is unequal to the task of devising a system as good as that of the Company, without incurring the evil which those Constitutional objections suppose. The Company's Government, it must be recollected, has been a production of chance, and has grown by the progress of accidental events. It has, indeed, answered far better in practice than could have been expected, if we consider its origin; and therefore, it is not desirable that it should be materially altered; neither is it likely that any such alteration of the system should be contemplated, unless the indiscretion of the Company should impose upon Parliament the necessity of resorting to that measure. But it certainly does not seem to be a measure insuperably difficult, to preserve whatever is really good in the present system, and even to remedy some of its defects, without departing from the path of experience, and resorting to improvements of theory and experiment.
There is one point of view, however, in which such a system would acquire an evident advantage over that which has hitherto obtained: viz. that it would, in every Session, be liable to the revision of Parliament, and to the immediate correction of every error which might be observed, and to such further continual improvements as experience might direct; not being embarrassed by the compact of a Charter.
GRACCHUS.