But, the judgment and reasoning of Mr. Dundas, elucidated by the arguments of Marquis Wellesley, (which were founded on the knowledge of what, at the time, was passing under the eye of the Governor-General,) had not influence upon the Court of Directors, sufficient to make them adopt the proposition of the President of the Board of Control; and still less, the enlargement of that proposition, as suggested by Lord Wellesley; who represented, "the great advantages that would result to the Sovereign State, by encouraging the shipping and exportation of India; and, that if the capital of the Merchants in India, should not supply funds sufficient for the conduct of the whole private Export Trade from India to Europe, no dangerous consequences could result from applying, to this branch of commerce, capital drawn directly from the British Empire in Europe:" thereby taking that trade from foreign nations, whose participation in it was become "alarmingly increasing."
These distinct and concurring opinions, of the President of the Board of Control and the Governor-General, could not prevail upon the Court of Directors to "alter the opinion they had delivered." They accordingly drew up paragraphs, to be sent to the Governments in India, conveying their final resolutions and instructions.—"The British residents in India," they said, "aided by those who take up their cause here (viz. the King's Ministers and the Merchants of London), desire to send their own ships to Britain, with private merchandise; and the principle of employing British capital in this trade, is also contended for. This trade, although it might for a time be carried on through the existing forms of the Company, would at length supersede them; the British commerce with India, instead of being, as it is now, a regulated monopoly, would deserve, more properly, the character of a regulated free trade; a title, which it is to be feared would not suit it long."
Such is the substance of the paragraphs which the Directors had prepared, upon the propositions we have been considering; although both the one and the other of those propositions explicitly provided, that all the private trade with India, export as well as import, should be confined to the Port of London. The Board of Control, though no longer presided at by Mr. Dundas, interposed its authority; and, on the 2d June, 1801, the Directors were enjoined not to send those paragraphs to India.
The language of the Court of Directors in 1813, upon the question of the Import Trade, is, as has been already affirmed, feeble and languid in comparison with that which the same body employed in 1800 and 1801, with regard to the admission of India-built ships in the carrying trade between Britain and India; but Indian-built ships have, from that time to the present, been employed in that trade, and none of the alarming consequences, which the Directors had predicted, have resulted from that practice.
May it not therefore be reasonably assumed, that the alarm under which they now profess themselves to be, would prove to be equally unfounded; that the direful influence upon the Constitution and Empire, which the Directors tell us is to be apprehended, from any change in the existing system that shall admit private ships returning from India to import at the places whence they had cleared out, would be found to be as little entitled to serious consideration; and that neither the public revenue, nor the immediate interests of the Company, would be endangered by an experiment, which the Government and the Company would be equally bound to watch; and which Parliament could at all times control, and if necessary, absolutely bring to a termination?
GRACCHUS.
LETTER IV.
Saturday, Jan. 16, 1813.
Having hitherto taken a view of those parts of the India Question, which more immediately relate, to the commercial interests of this country, and to the Proprietors of East India Stock; let us now advert to the deportment of the Directors towards the Ministers of the Crown, in their last communication made to the Court of Proprietors.