the East India Company, adding to their joint-stock all the revenues of India, need hardly know, because they could not feel, that they had any competitors in the markets of India. And, as the Executive Government was able to guard the out-ports against smuggling in the period of the infancy of the Company, they might and ought to feel a perfect confidence, that the same authority can guard them equally now, in the present period of their maturity.

Thus, since history renders it indisputable, that an import trade from India to the out-ports of the kingdom has been heretofore exercised under Acts of Parliament, and that it may be perfectly compatible with the highest prosperity of the East India Company; since the Executive Government can guard it against smuggling at the present day, as well as in the reigns of King William and Queen Anne; and since a great and urgent national interest reasonably demands it, both from Parliament and the Company; the present moment furnishes a most fit occasion for the Company to consider, Mr. Dundas's solemn call upon "their wisdom, policy, and liberality," made by him to them in the year 1800; and also, his weighty admonition, that "if any thing can endanger their monopoly, it is AN UNNECESSARY ADHERENCE TO POINTS NOT ESSENTIAL TO THEIR EXISTENCE."

It has been called illiberal, to question the motives of the Directors, in refusing their consent to an import trade to the out-ports. But, with the facts of history, which have been here produced, staring us and them in the face, it would be impossible not to question those motives. No man can entertain a higher respect for the East India Company, as a body politic and corporate, or contemplate with higher admiration the distinguished career which it has run, than Gracchus; but, at the same time, no one is better persuaded of the operation of policy, in a body circumstanced as they are. And it is more especially necessary to watch that policy, and to be free to interpret political motives, at the present crisis, because, at the eve of the expiration of the Company's last Charter, in 1793, certain rights were anxiously alleged on their behalf, in a work entitled, "A Short History of the East India Company, &c." rights absolutely unmaintainable, and utterly incompatible with the sovereignty of the Empire, and the freedom of the Constitution; and the allegations then made, appear now to assume the form of a practical assertion. To those alleged rights, therefore, it will be advisable early to call the attention of Parliament and of the nation.