With Atè by their side, come hot from hell, Shall in these confines, with a monarch's voice, Cry havoc! and let slip the dogs of war.
Yet I readily agree that it may be proper to send out a well-chosen commission of visitation and inspection, with adequate and efficient powers from Parliament; though I am greatly deceived, if they do not find that matters are much exaggerated. The Reports to the House of Commons from Committees are generally very false mediums to view the object they treat of through: they are moved for common by persons interested in the event, sedulously attended by them, and the materials are too often modelled and made up according to their views, and to serve their purposes. I have therefore ever greatly regretted the abolition of the board of trade, the fair, candid judges in these matters, or who might be made so. The argument from the abuse to the use, is not a fair consequence; and I sincerely and earnestly recommend the re-establishment of that board. From the revenues of the Duchy Court of Lancaster now vacant, and a small gleaning from the enormous overgrown sine-cures in the Exchequer, this may be done without expence, and with great emolument to the Crown and to the public.
It is, besides, the height of absurdity, to think the Indians are unhappy because they do not live under the same constitution as the inhabitants of this island. The government in that country, for a very long period of time, has been so unsettled, that no form of it that has any stability, or affords any degree of protection to the subjects that live under it, can be pronounced to be a bad one: in every other case, the weaker are almost sure to be exterminated by those that are stronger.
I should esteem it, in such uncertainty of doing any good of any kind, extremely improper for the public to make a common cause with the East-India Company, further than I have already stated, and likewise by assisting them with some necessary pecuniary aid in their present distress. The consequences of the public taking upon themselves the direction of the Company's trade, or even of their territorial acquisitions, I apprehend would be most ruinous. No nation has ever attempted any thing of this kind without being greatly losers by it, even where government was carried on principles infinitely more favourable to such an enterprise than the free constitution of this country admits of.