and a most extensive trade would be carried on between these countries were it not for the difficulties under which the private traders are placed of getting returns. The Company will not allow them to fetch away a single pound of tea, except the little that is required for Hindostan; so that they have little other means of getting payment except by smuggling silver out of Canton at some risk and certain loss, or by paying the proceeds of the cargo into the Company's treasury at Canton, and getting bills, mostly at an unfavourable rate of exchange, on the Company's governments in India. It is seldom that bills can be obtained on England, and then only for a limited amount. Such a mode of carrying on trade is, in some respects, advantageous to the Company, but it is in the last degree injurious both to India and England. The ships that get licences to carry cargoes to China are, for the most part, obliged to return to India in ballast. The whole expense of the voyage is thus made to fall on the outward cargo; and the trade is in this way confined to less certainly than a twentieth part of what it would be were it thrown open, and all individuals allowed either to carry to, or bring from Canton, such commodities as they pleased.

We have already noticed the circumstances under which cotton is obtained in India for the China market. Opium is the other great article of export; and our readers will not be surprised when we tell them that its production and sale are engrossed by the Company. In fact, this monopoly within a monopoly, not long since netted the Company nearly L.900,000 a-year; nor will this appear surprising to those who are aware that, only about nine years ago, that very opium for which the Company allowed the growers 3s. or 3s. 4d. per lb., was sold by them for 60s.! In consequence, however, of the recent introduction of large quantities of Malwa and Turkey opium into the market, its price has been greatly reduced, though it is still three or four times more than it would be were it allowed to be freely produced.

It is, therefore, indispensable, if we would not trample upon all the best rights of the people of Britain and the East, and voluntarily oppose both the increase of wealth and the progress of civilisation, that the Company's monopoly should be utterly destroyed. But this abolition will not be enough. It is further indispensable, that the Company should be prohibited, so long, at least, as they have any thing to do with the government of India, from engaging directly or indirectly in any sort of commercial adventure. Unless this be done, the commerce with India and the East will never rest on a secure foundation; nor will the government of India be properly conducted. Those who are engaged in details about the prices of cotton and indigo cannot

attend to the weightier matters with which they are intrusted. Let them, if they prefer it, give up the latter; but do not let them attempt to be Hamlet and Harlequin-sovereigns and hucksters, at the same moment.

If the Company take an enlightened view of their own interests, they will be the last to object to the measures now proposed. Notwithstanding their monopoly costs the people of Britain L.1,800,000 a-year, it is exceedingly doubtful whether the Company gain any thing by it, after paying the dividend of L.630,000. The mass of accounts laid by them before Parliament are in such a state of confusion, discordant items are so jumbled together, and estimates are so mixed up with real payments, that it is impossible for the most expert accountants to tell what is the real state of their affairs. The Company's own servants seem to know quite as little of the matter as others. They have not produced a single document drawn out on fair mercantile principles, or such as any merchant would think of exhibiting. Mr Rickards, who was examined at great length by both Lords and Commons' committees, and who, from his long experience in Indian affairs, is well qualified to form a correct opinion upon such a subject, contends that, as far as any thing can be learned from the defective accounts produced by the Company, their trade has uniformly been attended with a heavy loss; and that, had it not been for the aid derived from the revenues of India, they would long since have been completely bankrupt. We have very little doubt that Mr Rickards's will turn out to be the correct view of the matter; at all events, however, it is abundantly clear, taking the Company's statements as they stand, that their commercial surplus is absolutely nugatory. They state that it amounted, during the last fifteen years, to L.15,414,414, including interest and insurance, being at the rate of about a million a-year. But they also state, that their commercial assets, or capital embarked in trade, amounts to L.22,787,034, and that their commercial debts, both foreign and at home, amount to only L.2,484,078: taking then the balance of 20 millions, and supposing it to be invested at 4 per cent, it would yield a nett revenue of L.800,000; but the Company owe a large amount of territorial debt, for which they pay 5 per cent, and supposing the commercial assets were applied to pay it off, they would produce to the Company L.1,000,000 ayear. It is, therefore, as clear as the sun at noonday, taking the Company's accounts as they have presented them, that the trade which they carry on does not yield them a single shilling beyond the dividend. They tell us, that they derive from it a surplus million a-year; but, in the same breath, they tell us that

they have twenty millions employed in it. It is therefore obvious, that if they give up the trade, and employ their commercial assets either in extinguishing their own debt, or in loans to others, they will yield them as large a surplus as they affirm they derive from the trade. In so far, too, as the interests of the proprietors of India Stock are concerned, this measure would be for their advantage. The maximum dividend they are entitled to receive is fixed by law at 10 per cent, or L.630,000 a-year; but it may fall to any extent. They, therefore, have no interest in carrying on trade, but the reverse. It may lessen their dividends, and it cannot, under any circumstances, augment them; whereas, according to the plan now suggested, they would be secure of receiving the greatest dividend without any risk of its reduction.

We should be making a heavier demand than we have ever done upon the patience of our readers, were we to enter upon any examination of the statements of those who contend, that, without the surplus derived from the China trade, the government of India could not be carried on. As well might it be said, that the government of Great Britain could not be carried on without the revenue of Shetland. Supposing the Company's accounts to be quite correct, and supposing that they are debarred from trading, and that their commercial assets are invested as above stated, the entire defalcation in the funds at their disposal would not exceed L.600,000 a-year. But the revenue of India amounts to from twenty-four to twenty-five millions; and to imagine that it could not be made to defray the expenditure, were it diminished about one-fiftieth part, is something too ridiculous to deserve notice. If the Company will but enforce a little of that economy which is now the order of the day, they will procure for themselves a ten times larger surplus than they even pretend to derive from their trade.

We submit, that this statement is decisive of this part of the question, admitting the Company's accounts to be accurate. But in truth and reality they are most inaccurate. The trifling surplus which they exhibit has no real existence. It is not more substantial than one of Mr Sadler's harangues. The Company's monopoly imposes a direct tax of nearly two millions a-year on the people of Britain; it cripples and depresses our commerce by shutting us out of the best markets, at the same time that it inflicts incalculable injury on the Eastern world. And in return for all this it produces to the Company-absolutely nothing! The invaluable privileges enjoyed by them--privileges which, had they been enjoyed by private individuals, would have produced a profit of 100 per cent-have been swallowed up in

the abuses inseparable from monopoly. Nothing so monstrous was ever heard of as the proposal to continue such a system. If the Company are wise, they will voluntarily withdraw at once and for ever from their trading concerns, relinquishing the monopolies they have so long enjoyed, so much to the injury of others, and so little to their own advantage.

ART. II.-1. Specimens of the Russian Poets. Translated by JOHN BOWRING, LL.D. 2 vols. 12mo. London: 1821-3. 2. Batavian Anthology, or Specimens of the Dutch Poets. By JOHN BOWRING, LL.D. 12mo. London: 1824.

3. Ancient Poetry and Romances of Spain. Selected and Translated by JOHN BOWRING, LL.D. and H. S. VAN DYK. 8vo. London: 1824.

4. Specimens of the Polish Poets. By JOHN BOWRING, LL.D. 12mo. London: 1827.

5. Servian Popular Poetry. Translated by JOHN Bowring, LL.D. 12mo. London: 1827.

6. Poetry of the Magyars. By JOHN BOWRING, LL.D. 8vo. London: 1830.

THE HE translator is to poetry what the adventurous merchant is to commerce. He circulates the produce of thought, varies our intellectual banquets, teaches us that some accession to our stores may be derived even from those quarters which we had regarded as the most sterile and unpromising, and thus adds another link to the chain of social and kindly feelings which should bind man to his fellows. In this commerce of mind few have laboured more assiduously than Dr Bowring. At one time ' he hath an argosy bound for Tripoli, another for the Indies, a third for Mexico, a fourth for England'-ventures, in short, enough to bear a royal merchant down'-and yet, with the exception of one cargo under Dutch colours, where he appears to have had a partner, he seems to trust entirely to his own taste and research in the selection of his commodities. His varied and almost Mithridatic acquaintance with the languages of modern Europe, extending even to their less classical or almost forgotten dialects, and that liberal spirit in literature, which so extensive a field of enquiry is sure to produce, seemed peculiarly to mark him out as one fitted to transfer to his country those strains which had conferred celebrity on their authors in their own; or which, though their origin and authorship are lost in

the darkness of antiquity, had long cheered the peasant in his sledge amidst the frozen snow, or been associated with the jollity of the harvest and the vintage, or the more tranquil mirth of the cottage fire.

It is true, it may be said that no very accurate idea of the poetry of a foreign nation, separated from ourselves by seas and continents, and still farther separated in mind by diversity of habits and feelings, can be gained by the labours of any one translator; and the observation is well-founded to a certain extent. The edifice he seeks to illuminate is no doubt too vast to be fully enlightened by a solitary torch; but at least it is probable that in moving with him along its vast halls and long arches, the light he carries will strike occasionally on objects of splendour or value; that our eyes will catch dim glimpses of treasures in its inner recesses-sudden openings into far-off gardens, the trees of which, like those which dazzled Aladdin in the cave, seem bright with the tints of the diamond, the ruby, and the emerald; and that the result of this hasty glance may be a desire to return and to investigate for ourselves, and with more leisure and minuteness, the scenes.of which we have caught these dim but pleasing outlines. He who transfers a single strain of true and natural poetry, however simple, however brief, from another language to ours, performs no mean service to literature, and, it may be, to the interests of civilisation in general. He has thrown, as it were, the first plank over the gulf which separated two nations, has taught them that they have feelings, d eyes, organs, ، dimensions, affections, passions,' in common,-has awakened a spirit of literary enterprise, and pointed out, if he cannot guide us through, the promised land. Other adventurers will soon throng after him; a broader bridge will be thrown over the channel that divided them; an exchange of feelings and associations may take place; the old may impart to the new some portion of the polish which long civilisation has produced; while it receives in return a new infusion of the freshness, rapidity, and wild vigour which characterise an infant literature, thus bartering its Persian ornaments of gold and silver to receive repayment in a Spartan coinage of iron.

The interest of Dr Bowring's earliest work-his Specimens of the Russian Poets-was in a great measure that arising from surprise; from discovering that, in the country which, until the days of Peter the Great, had never made its voice heard among the dynasties of Europe, there had grown up, almost with the suddenness of an exhalation, a poetical literature betraying no marks of its barbaric origin; possessing, in fact, the very qualities which are most commonly found associated with a long-esta