1830.] the Company's Charter. 501 



nifest much more avidity for the highly-seasoned condiments of ex- 

 aggeration and misstateinent, than for the flavourless simplicity of truth. 

 And we need no political economists to inform us that in these cases the 

 supply is always fully equal to the demand. On the present occasion, 

 the pending discussions upon the renewal of the Company's charter, 

 and the interest excited by other coincidences, have proved very hot- 

 beds for raising polemical pamphlets and articles ; and since, as Dr. 

 Johnson observes, "he that vilifies established authority will always 

 find abettors/' there has been a great preponderance, with respect to 

 activity and vehemence at least, on the side of those to whom the 

 Company appears to stand in the same relation as Carthage to the 

 Romans, and who would seem resolved to destroy the monster, which 

 they have dressed up for the nonce as a moral Guy Faux, by any means 

 and at any hazard. 



Some of the writers to whom we allude are influenced by interest, 

 some by vindictive feelings, excited by alleged oppression at the hands 

 of the rulers of the East ; and one author, whose career as a pamphleteer 

 in the good cause commenced in 1828, and the termination of whose 

 labours can only as yet be seen, in dim prospective, deep in the womb 

 of futurity, is the victim of theories as headstrong and untractable as 

 the most wilful " allegory on the banks of the Nile," and does not appear 

 to possess any control whatever over the " furor scribendi" with which 

 he is afflicted. But the exertions of these gentlemen are by no means 

 confined to the agency of the pen and press, nor is one hand content to 

 grasp only a single weapon of offence. Mr. Buckingham is the editor 

 of a periodical publication which is esteemed by all whose opinions it 

 espouses as the very mace which is to destroy the many-headed Hydra 

 of Leadenhall-street ; but he also travels the country to preach a 

 crusade against the existing government of British India ; and at the 

 moment when British manufactures are selling in the bazars of Calcutta 

 at prime cost, or somewhat under, and American vessels are taking them 

 as a return freight, descants in glowing language upon the consumptive 

 capacities of the Eastern World, and holds up to execration the greedi- 

 ness of the monopolists who exclude their fellow-countrymen from such 

 markets. Another gentleman is not only a most energetic pamphleteer, 

 to say nothing of occasional appearances in the pages of the Oriental 

 Herald, and the columns of the Times, but, being like Cerberus (Mrs. 

 Malaprop's " gentleman with three heads"), he also figures as the dry- 

 nurse of the delegates from Liverpool., and flapper in ordinary to sundry 

 members of a committee now sitting in the neighbourhood of Westmin- 

 ster Hall. Nothing but the alcohol of determined animosity could 

 support weak humanity through such labours; and there can be no 

 doubt that " a good hater," provided he possess competent talent and 

 judgment, is a valuable partisan. For he must have made but poor use 

 of his powers of observation, who has arrived at years of discretion, 

 without being aware that a very large proportion of the " most thinking 

 public" are much more easily influenced through the medium of their 

 feelings, passions, and prejudices, than by any appeal to their reason ; 

 that many, even of those who do not expect to get any thing in the 

 scramble, are always ready to club their voices to swell the clamour in 

 favour of pulling down that which has long been set up ; and that hun- 

 dreds will read and pin their faith to declamation and invective, who 

 cannot spare time to collect and weigh evidence, to pore over documents, 



