almost incalculable in its worth; that the improvement in our manufactures, in naval skill and architecture, and in the languages and literature of Asia, have been in the preceding much indebted, and in the latter, mainly owing to this commercial corporation, (of whom it would be difficult to say whether their mercantile or their military exertions were the greatest), were I not repelled by the irksomeness of detail, and encouraged by the hope that the principles of gratitude have not departed from a land in which they were once supposed to hold their favoured abode. Let us therefore proceed to examine the nature of our present trade with India, and the effects which have resulted from the opening thereof (as it is termed) since 1814. Before doing so, however, I cannot avoid offering a few remarks for the removal of two or three mistaken ideas respecting the East-India Company's and the free trader's, commerce, previous, and subsequently to, the last renewal of the charter. 1st. It has been alleged that the trade carried on by the East-India Company was one of bullion, principally as regarded the exports from England to India and China; and that, in fact, the Company did not pay sufficient attention to British manufactures as a medium for commerce. Independent of the moral obligation by which the Company have ever considered themselves bound on the latter part of the assertion, a very few figures will disprove the charge. With regard to India it is unnecessary to say any thing, because, as Lord Althorp observed,* that country yields several million of tribute to England annually ; I therefore turn to China, and perceive a decreasing exportation of bullion from the commencement of our intercourse, and an increasing shipment of merchandize. In the debate on Mr. Alderman Waithman's motion, 3d July 1832. Indeed the calculation of bullion for the latter period is brought down too far, for as it is stated in the Edinburgh Review: since 1820 the "East-India Company have not exported a single shilling in bullion;" on the contrary, the Company are now importing large quantities of bullion into England.+ 2d. It is alleged that the Company's trade was "always verging towards a decline" from an early period, and that it had dwindled to nothing at the conclusion of the last charter. The following refutation will prove the untruth of this assertion. MERCHANDIZE§ exported from ENGLAND by the EAST-INDIA COMPANY. Mr. Milburn, from whose Parliamentary compilations the foregoing tables are derived, says, with reference to • No. CIX., April 1832: article on the Precious Metals, p. 56. + Vide Sir Charles Forbes' speech in Parliament, 3d July 1832. The whole export commerce of England seems to be declining in value: At the end of the last century, real value of exports £37,193,736. § Bullion is purposely excluded. ...... the last period particularly:66 more than one-half (i.e. £10,700,000) consisted of the staple manufactures of England, woollens.”* If it were necessary to demonstrate yet further the absurdity of the charge, I might quote other writers, such as Mr. Crawfurd, who makes it a matter of censure against the Company that they expended £1,668,103, in order if possible to extend the consumption of British manufactures in China!+ Let us now examine the Company's import trade into England for a century, and observe therefrom whether the returns shew a declining commerce. MERCHANDIZE imported into ENGLAND by the EAST-INDIA How incontrovertible is the denial which the two foregoing tables present, to the assertion of Mr. Crawfurd, that "for a full century, at least, reason, common sense, and the principles of science have been alike set at defiance to serve the purposes of a party; set at defiance, as experience has amply attested, for the virtual purpose of obstructing the commerce of England, and arresting the progress of improvement in India !"+ It is unnecessary to prove by another detail of figures, * In 1822 the East-India Company lost £500,000 by the burning of their factory at Canton of this sum three-fifths were in woollens. + Chinese Monopoly examined, p. 24. p. 1. Crawfurd's Free Trade and Colonization of India, second edition, 66 that an export trade which progressively increased from £117,875 to £2,141,380, and an import trade which augmented from £1,291,295 to £6,043,409 annually, was neither always insignificant and fluctuating, nor generally retrogressive;"* I therefore turn to observe what progress the Indian free-trader has made since 1814; whether it has been, as Mr. Crawfurd boldly asserts, steadily progressive, and devoid of the fluctuation and retrogression which monopoly traffic always and generally exhibits." (P. 4.) In my endeavour to elucidate the truth, I will not, as Mr. Crawfurd has done, use "official" or "relative" value, according as it makes for or against my argument: I will endeavour to quote, from the Parliamentary papers, the quantity of the articles exported and imported, as the fairest way of judging the question; nor will I conceal, as the same impartial writer has done, that in 1814 and 1815 one of the most devastating wars with which the world was ever cursed had subsided, and set afloat an immense quantity of capital used in government loans, &c., and a vast number of ardent and intelligent minds, seeking employment, while the amount of transport shipping made available for purposes of trade, was such as to reduce the cost of freight to one-fourth of what it had been during the war: neither will I omit to state, that the East-India Company had for more than two hundred years been preparing the way for the free-trader, not by a "piddling commerce" but by one amounting to upwards of £8,000,000 • Free Trade and Colonization, before referred to, p. 1, et passim. + Mr. Gordon, in his evidence before Parliament, speaks of freight from India, being in 1814, £25 per ton, which at present, he says, is not more than thirty shillings; the witness added, “ I have known freights at fifty guineas a ton on the Company's ships before the opening of the trade; it is as low as fifteen shillings a ton at present." Commons' Evidence, 22d February 1831, p. 35. Mr. Crawfurd, Free Trade, &c., p. 3. annually, and by obtaining the highest reputation for British manufactures* wherever they could be introduced; † and it would be unjust to neglect adverting to the wonderful productive power of machinery since 1814, particularly in the article of cotton goods, which in the export trade to India alone has supplanted £2,000,000 worth of native manufacture. Equally unfair would it be for me to refrain from mentioning the throwing open of the Malay peninsula to the free-trader,-the new commercial relations with foreign powers in the Gulph of Persia and other places, the doubling of the East-India Company's army since 1814, and the consequent increased demand for British goods, the heavy supplies requisite for expensive wars against the Goorkhas, the Pindarries, the Burmese, &c.-the great accession of territory during the period,― and the naturally increasing wants of the natives themselves, as they accumulated wealth, and became habituated to the conveniences and luxuries of life, previously introduced among them by the East-India Company; § and of which • A fact honourably testified by Mr. Walter Hamilton. The mission of Messrs. Bayley and Rutherford to the N.W. frontier, is one instance out of many of the strenuous efforts of the East-India Company to extend the knowledge of, and a taste for, British manufactures. Mr. Gordon states in his evidence this fact, which is sedulously kept out of sight by Mr. Crawfurd; it is as follows: "At the opening of the free trade, Calcutta exported to London two million sterling in cotton piece goods; at present it receives instead, two million sterling of British manufactured cotton," p. 36. Abstract this £2,000,000 to Calcutta, and the other sums which British cotton manufactures have produced in different parts of India, at the expense of the poor Hindoo weavers, (to the number of several million), and where, I ask, would be the triumphant boast of Mr. Crawfurd as to the quantity of the free trade, leaving for the present out of sight the more important question of profit? § Mr. Gordon, Mr. Ritchie, and other mercantile men, when asked what articles have been extended in consumption by the free-traders since 1814, invariably mention "cotton goods and speltre:" the former, be it observed, having driven the Hindoos out of the home market, and the latter, the Chinese out of the Indian market; render ing |