The City of London, indeed, is _now_ an exception, and apparently a very weighty one, to this general call; but it will lose much of that weight with the Public, and must fall into the scale of an interested party, when it is recollected, that so long as the question between the Company and the Public was, whether the commerce with India should remain a strict monopoly, or whether a participation in it should be granted to individuals, under the restriction of importing to London the commercial interest of the metropolis was powerfully incited against the Company; and that, to that great commercial interest, supported by the weight of Mr. Dundas's opinion, and to the more enlarged view which Lord Wellesley took of the subject, the extension that has hitherto been given to the private trade with India is to be attributed. The experience of twelve years has now proved, that both India and the parent state have greatly benefited by that extension; and it has followed, as a necessary consequence of that experience, that the active and intelligent merchants of the other large ports of the United Kingdom, have urged their fair pretensions, to be admitted to a share in the profits of that widely diffused trade; by sending their merchandise from their own ports, and by receiving the returning cargoes into their own warehouses, in those ports.
A reference to the printed papers (as has already been signified) will show, that the Court of Directors were prevailed upon to concede _the first_ of those points, but that they have been immoveable with respect to _the second_; although their own commercial knowledge must have made it evident to them, that the concession of the first, that is, _a free export_, would be nugatory, unless supported by the benefit arising from the _freedom of import_; which is not only in the proportion of four to one in amount to the export, but is requisite to give that unity to the concern, without which great commercial establishments cannot be kept up.
Such is the state of the question, or, as it has been called, by some strange perversion of ideas, the _negotiation_, between the Company, as applicants for a renewal of their Charter which is about to expire, and the Government, through whose aid it is to be solicited, or at least, without whose concurrence it is certainly very questionable, whether they would be able to obtain it. These are the circumstances, under which the affairs of the East India Company must necessarily, and speedily, be brought forward, for the consideration of Parliament. Can it, then, be considered an exaggerated view of the hazards of such a situation, to suppose, that some guardian of the public purse may deem it requisite to inquire, whether the application for pecuniary aid from Parliament ought not to be preceded by a substantial proof, not of concession, for they have in fact nothing to concede, but of something like accommodation on the part of the Proprietors? And in that event, might it not be questioned, whether, since the dividend of 10 per cent. was sanctioned upon an assumption, that the revenue of the Company yielded a _surplus_ of upwards of a million; now, when instead of a surplus, a _deficit_ is admitted to exist, the dividend ought not to be reduced, not merely to the standard from which it had been raised under the supposed prosperous state of the Company's affairs, but to a standard to be regulated by the amount of the ascertained profits upon their own trade, under whatever circumstances it may hereafter be conducted?