If then we have found by actual experience that little or no benefit is derived from the present system, it is at least reasonable to try something else. Abandon for ever all further views of foreign wars; do away with your restrictions; improve and enlighten the people; stimulate their dormant wants and energies by the many means in your power, and in the mean time transfer to the country (by allowing Europeans to make the acquisition of land) a body of gentry possessing the same wants with yourselves, who must contribute powerfully to communicate them to others,look with a friendly eye on the growing prosperity of neighboring states, show a sincere desire to promote their welfare and civilisation," et per ingens beneficium perpetuam firmare pacem amicitiamque,"1 and the result of such a policy will soon be manifest. India will become once more a great commercial country, and you may push the ramifications of your traffic from her into the remotest regions of the East. If, as it is reasonable to suppose, a connexion between countries so remote cannot, in the nature of things, be perpetual, we shall in this manner render it as lasting as possible, and ensure, when it ceases, the reversion of benefits perhaps no way inferior to those which it conferred, as a part of

Nor is such separation incompatible either with the continuance of the consequence, or the patronage, much less the profits, of the Company.

Liv.

2 The state of the countries in the neighborhood of India is not favorable to a very florishing trade; and the existence of a trade with them, at all commensurate with the natural advantages they possess, must, in all probability, be consequent on the improvement which they may be destined to receive from India; but some trade is carried on in almost every direction in which a passable outlet exists from the country. An attempt was made (I think under the administration of the Marquis Wellesley) to establish a commercial intercourse, under the direction of the Company's Government, through Tartary with China. There is a caravan which comes from the confines of these countries to the great annual fair at Hurdwar, and at this place storehouses were erected, and a consignment of goods transmitted to them for sale, on the Company's account, from Calcutta. The foreign merchants arrived with assortments of goods calculated for the usual barter that took place; and, I believe, of all the Company's consignment, red woollen night-caps, such as are used by sailors, were the only very saleable commodity; and the attempt has never been renewed. The experiment affords at least a striking illustration of the disadvantages under which a body, trading on an extensive capital, must endeavor to prosecute an incipient commerce of this sort. The successful management of such dealings belongs to a department of commerce of a very different kind,-to small hucksters and pedlars, who can accommodate their wares to the wants of their customers, and at once stimulate their avidity to acquire the objects of our industry, ascertain their wants, and the extent to which the demand may be carried. These subdivisions in the vocations of commerce, determined by the profits accruing to capitals of different extent, can never, it is plain, exist, but where there are few or no impediments to these various capitals finding their natural and proper employments.

the empire. As it is like oil floating on the surface of water, where no affinity exists; no union takes place, nor can any last, ing mechanical incorporation of parts be effected; and, like oil, we might be skimmed off at any hour without disturbing the fluid below, or leaving a trace behind us that we had ever existed.

The changes that are taking place in the state of the world must contribute to press on our attention the necessity of an alter, ation in our Indian policy. The immense countries lying under a similar climate, and nearer to the great seat of consumption, who have asserted their independence, and who, with the free outlet which they afford to capital from Europe, must pour a large accession of tropical produce into the market of the world, will come in direct competition with India, the rude produce of which has been constantly becoming a larger and larger proportion of its exports. Our system has, by destroying the ancient gentry, extinguished the most important part of the home demand for those articles of whose value the labor constituted any considerable part, and many arts have already been lost, and others are fast disap pearing. The improvements of machinery, in this country, at the same time have diminished the demand in Europe for many of their commodities that were formerly in request; and instead of the muslins and piece goods, &c. which formed, in the early periods of our commercial intercourse, the most valuable parts of an investment, we have been obliged to take quantities of indigo, of cotton, of sugar, of saltpetre, &c. to bring which to market little labor is required beyond what is necessary to produce them from the soil. It is only by setting free the energies of the people and of the country, and by affording every assistance to the versatile power with which capital and industry accommodate themselves to the changes in the state of the commercial world, that we can come out with success from the competition which must

ensue.

Many of the impediments which have hitherto operated to retard the progress of the world, have been suddenly removed; and, if we would keep the place which we hold among the nations of the earth, we must give free scope to the immense resources which we possess. The most blind and the most prejudiced cannot now fail to perceive the gradual and certain process by which the improvement of the world is inevitably accomplishing, and the flow of that mighty current by which the generations of men are borne along, gathering strength and rapidity as it advances in its course, and subjecting to its influence the still or eddy waters that have heretofore been insensible to its power. New nations have risen up to take their share in the common concerns of mankind. The extension of wise, and liberal, and moderaté

opinions, has been great. The power of man over the material universe is making daily and rapid advances; and the sciences, which in their infancy were cradled in the East, have found their way back in their maturity from the opposite direction of the globe, to dissolve the spell by which the minds of mankind are enchained. These events have already widely extended the active sphere of human affairs, and cannot fail to be the forerunners of still greater changes in the state of the world. Experience has sufficiently shown, that it is not the progress of these great causes by which the destiny of mankind is accomplished, that are the sources of violence, and the subversion of governments; but the weak and foolish attempts of those who will not accommodate themselves to their influence to stay and arrest them. The friends of order and of the welfare of the world will see in them only the manifestation of the ways of Providence to man; and, co-operating humbly in the great design of universal beneficence, endeavor, by removing the obstructions which impede their effect, to render their progress equable and safe. Such is the limit of the task allotted to man in the furtherance of his own improvement; and, as in the material world his power extends no further than to the means of moving bodies from one place to another, and bringing substances into contact whose agency on each other effects 1 all the physical wonders that we see; so in the moral world, he can do no more than encourage or repress those active qualities of human nature from which government and science, the arts of life, and all rational religious belief, have emanated; and by which these blessings must be improved and upheld. The power to be thus exerted may appear to be but little; but it is, in fact, as infinite as the objects which the faculties of the human race are capable of effecting. The timely removal of the obstacles to the progress of a people, may anticipate by ages the period of their civilisation, -may supersede the necessity of long and violent struggles,— may emancipate the minds of many other nations, and add largely and rapidly to the general stock of benefits which mankind enjoy. That the result of the mighty and overruling principles by which the improvement of the world is brought about, is certain and infallible, independent of all voluntary aid from man, and in spite of all opposition, must be apparent to whoever will consider the silent and imperceptible manner in which they have forced their way;-subverting governments, and whole conditions of society wherever they have proved incompatible with their operation, while they transmitted the fruits of their knowlege and experience

Ad opera nil aliud potest homo, quam ut corpora naturalia admoveat et amoveat; reliqua natura intus transigit. BAC. Nov. Org.

to some less objectionable constitution of mankind. It is the business of the wise and enlightened statesman to determine the laws by which these principles are regulated, and the ends to which they tend; and by accommodating his measures to their results, to link the greatness of his country with a process which must succeed.

Restrictions of every kind, wherever they exist, are to us a disadvantage; they are a certain deduction from our prosperity. Give us but a free and open market for the produce of our industry, and we need fear no approach to our pre-eminence among mercantile nations; we possess a command of capital,a commercial credit,—a manufacturing skill,-a knowlege of machi nery, a navy, such as never before existed ;-a fund of advan tages which, if rightly used, may enable us to keep possession of the market to as distant a period as the human eye can stretch into futurity. If then abandoning a system of colonial aggrandizement, which can no longer be pursued with advantage, we would build our greatness on the foundations which we ourselves may lay, and bend our endeavors to stretch our dominion over the wants of the universe, the attempt may now be made with every prospect of success. In this respect India holds out immense advantages; not only may she become a customer, to the extent of the wants of eighty millions of people, blessed with the most genial climate and the most prolific soil of the globe, but she may be made the centre of improvement to the surrounding countries, and the day-spring of a better science, and a purer religion, sent forth from her again to illuminate the eastern world.

If nations may be supposed to be the objects of the moral dispensations of Providence, and to be accountable for the use of the power which they possess, a heavy responsibility must attach to us for the fate we are to mark out for a people whose, government we have usurped. I would intreat those who determine the measures applied to this portion of the empire to think of the importance, not only to the interests of this country, but to the future history of the earth, of the views which they adopt, and that it depends on them to confer on the world the greatest benefit it has ever received at the hands of man. These are magnificent objects,-objects worthy the ambition of a nation; and if we would steadily pursue them, they are completely within our power; not, indeed, in the course of a lifetime; but those who would benefit the world, must be contented to sow what others are to reap, and to trust to the slow and safe innovation of time for maturing the harvest for which they have labored. But even in our own time we might hope to see the progress of improvement in India sensibly advanced, and every step that it makes is replete VOL. XXVI.

Pam.

NO. LI.

R

with advantages. We might hope to see useful knowlege making its way among the rising generations-we might hope to see some more definite connexion established between the landed interest and our government-we might hope to see a body of European gentry transplanted to the country, creating at once active wants for our commodities, and rendering its capital available for the legitimate objects of commerce,-we might hope to see the native states convinced, by experience, of our pacific and friendly views, imitating our improvements, and valuing our alliance; and whatever may be the fate of our political connexion, we might hope to see the foundation laid of an imperishable influence over the country, in the indelible impression we had stamped on the people. "Hæc nova sit ratio vincendi; ut liberalitate, et misericordia nos muniamus. Id quemadmodum fieri possit, nonnulla mihi in mentem veniunt, et multa reperiri possunt.-Sed de his rebus rogo vos ut cogitationem suscipiatis."

Cæs. ad Bal. et Opp. Frag.