In taking ground upon any principle, it is necessary to ascertain whether it applies to the case in point. That it was a great interest to the East India Company to watch and control the trade carrying on under their own licenses, is obvious; and this the Company could not effectually do, unless that Trade, on its return from India, was brought under their own eye, and collected within the sphere of their own control; which is confined to the Port of London. But the case, to which this argument is now applied by the advocates for the Company, is so essentially deficient, that the principles appear to be wholly inapplicable. In this _new case_, the extended trade would be carried on, not under _the Company's licenses_, but under _the provision of Parliament_; and the protection and control of that trade would become the care, not of the Company, but of the executive Government. Here then the determination of that trade would be governed, not by the separate interest of the Company (which alone came within the scope of Mr. Dundas's argument), but by the combined interests of the Company and the Public at large. To this _combined interest_, Mr. Dundas's argument was _not_ directed; and it is a fallacy in reasoning, to apply a partial argument to a general case.
But, let us grant what these advocates assume; that the opinion here delivered by Mr. Dundas, does really apply to the case in question. May not that have happened at the present day, which actually did happen with regard to the regulations of the Charter of 1793? Might not new light be thrown upon a subject in 1813, which was supposed to have been thoroughly investigated in 1800? And, as the candour and openness of Mr. Dundas caused him, in 1800, to avow, that the provisions of 1793 were _inadequate_, and prompted him strenuously to recommend the adoption of a _new principle_; is it not possible that, taking into his view all the circumstances which bear upon the question at the present day, he might, had his life been spared, have been convinced, that the extraordinary and unforeseen changes which have taken place in the political and commercial world, might have now rendered it, not only expedient but, necessary to relax, in some degree, upon the point of the import trade from India?