518 THE EAST INDIA EXCRESCENCE. 



Total amount of Debits 60,479,802 

 Total amount of Assets 50,376,996 



10,102,812 

 Add amount of Stock 6,000,000 



Total deficiency 16,102,812 



Here then is a deficiency of more than sixteen millions, according to 

 the accounts of the Company themselves; but when it is remembered 

 that of the sum of 50,376,996/. the amount of the pretended assets, 

 the sum of 10,000,000/. is inserted for fortifications and other mili- 

 tary property, which to a commercial company is not of the value of 

 ten millions of shillings, and that the four ships, the East India House, 

 and other property of the Company, are estimated at more than dou- 

 ble their true value, we find that the deficiency will in reality amount 

 to about thirty millions sterling. 



The East India Company is subject to the same rules of legislation 

 which govern all other joint stock companies, the profit or loss at the 

 expiration of the act of incorporation being the profit or loss of the 

 proprietors of the stock of the company, and not of the nation. Our 

 ministers, therefore, upon general principles, do not possess the right 

 to make up the losses of the proprietors of the stock of this company 

 of dealers in tea, silk, and saltpetre, out of the general revenue of the 

 country. If the proprietors of East India Stock, by reason of igno- 

 rance of the true state of their affairs, or by want of power to con- 

 trol a self-elected Court of Directors, are unprepared to render up 

 their farm of the East Indies in circumstances of solvency, then 

 ought their creditors, and not the overladen people of England, or of 

 India, to sustain the deficiency. The landlord in common life does 

 not discharge the debts of his tenant, and as the East Indies are the 

 property of the Crown at the expiration of the charter of the Com- 

 pany, it is folly to say that the nation is bound to the payment of the 

 territorial debt incurred by the waste of annual millions in the patron- 

 age of Directors, who, upon such a principle, might have increased 

 that debt to an amount of one or two hundred millions. Beyond the 

 amount of the sum due from Parliament to the Company, of which 

 notice of repayment has been served in accordance with the condi- 

 tions of the charter, we most vigorously contend, that the ministers of 

 the Crown have no right whatever to intermeddle with their pecu- 

 niary affairs, and, if no longer solvent, then ought the East India 

 Company to be at once swept away, and the East Indies become sub- 

 ject to the regular government of this country. 



The cessation of the monopoly of the trade to China will form 

 a most splendid event in the history of modern commerce. For, not- 

 withstanding the assertions of the venal writers in the pay of the 

 East India Company, most certain we are that very great results will 

 arise to the manufacturing and shipping interests of this country by 

 the extension of the market for our exports, and the diminution to 

 our labouring population of the price of the luxurious imports from 

 the celestial empire. That the profits to the East India Company 



