or misery of their subjects, the improvement
or waste of their dominions, the glory or disgrace
of their administration, as, from irresistible
moral causes, the greater part of the proprietors
of such a mercantile company are, and
necessarily must be. This indifference, too,
was more likely to be increased than diminished
by some of the new regulations which were
made in consequence of the parliamentary inquiry.
By a resolution of the house of commons,
for example, it was declared, that when
the L.1,400,000 lent to the company by government,
should be paid, and their bond-debts
be reduced to L.1,500,000, they might then,
and not till then, divide eight per cent. upon
their capital; and that whatever remained of
their revenues and neat profits at home should
be divided into four parts; three of them to
be paid into the exchequer for the use of the
public, and the fourth to be reserved as a fund,
either for the further reduction of their bond-debts,
or for the discharge of other contingent
exigencies which the company might labour
under. But if the company were bad stewards
and bad sovereigns, when the whole of
their neat revenue and profits belonged to
themselves, and were at their own disposal,
they were surely not likely to be better when
three-fourths of them were to belong to other
people, and the other fourth, though to be
laid out for the benefit of the company, yet to
be so under the inspection and with the approbation
of other people.
It might be more agreeable to the company,
that their own servants and dependants should
have either the pleasure of wasting, or the
profit of embezzling, whatever surplus might
remain, after paying the proposed dividend of
eight per cent. than that it should come into
the hands of a set of people with whom those
resolutions could scarce fail to set them in
some measure at variance. The interest of
those servants and dependants might so far
predominate in the court of proprietors, as
sometimes to dispose it to support the authors
of depredations which had been committed
in direct violation of its own authority.
With the majority of proprietors, the support
even of the authority of their own court
might sometimes be a matter of less consequence
than the support of those who had set
that authority at defiance.
The regulations of 1773, accordingly, did
not put an end to the disorder of the company's
government in India. Notwithstanding
that, during a momentary fit of good conduct,
they had at one time collected into the
treasury of Calcutta more than L.3,000,000
sterling; notwithstanding that they had afterwards
extended either their dominion or their
depredations over a vast accession of some of
the richest and most fertile countries in India,
all was wasted and destroyed. They found
themselves altogether unprepared to stop or
resist the incursion of Hyder Ali; and in
consequence of those disorders, the company
is now (1784) in greater distress than ever;
and, in order to prevent immediate bankruptcy,
is once more reduced to supplicate
the assistance of government. Different
plans have been proposed by the different
parties in parliament for the better management
of its affairs; and all those plans seem
to agree in supposing, what was indeed always
abundantly evident, that it is altogether
unfit to govern its territorial possessions.
Even the company itself seems to be convinced
of its own incapacity so far, and seems,
upon that account willing to give them up to
government.
With the right of possessing forts and garrisons
in distant and barbarous countries, is
necessarily connected the right of making
peace and war in those countries. The
joint-stock companies, which have had the
one right, have constantly exercised the other,
and have frequently had it expressly conferred
upon them. How unjustly, how capriciously,
how cruelly, they have commonly
exercised it, is too well known from recent
experience.
When a company of merchants undertake,
at their own risk and expense, to establish a
new trade with some remote and barbarous
nation, it may not be unreasonable to incorporate
them into a joint-stock company, and
to grant them, in case of their success, a monopoly
of the trade for a certain number of
years. It is the easiest and most natural
way in which the state can recompense them
for hazarding a dangerous and expensive experiment,
of which the public is afterwards to
reap the benefit. A temporary monopoly
of this kind may be vindicated, upon the
same principles upon which a like monopoly
of a new machine is granted to its inventor,
and that of a new book to its author. But
upon the expiration of the term, the monopoly
ought certainly to determine; the forts
and garrisons, if it was found necessary to
establish any, to be taken into the hands of
government, their value to be paid to the
company, and the trade to be laid open to all
the subjects of the state. By a perpetual
monopoly, all the other subjects of the state
are taxed very absurdly in two different ways:
first, by the high price of goods, which, in
the case of a free trade, they could buy much
cheaper; and, secondly, by their total exclusion
from a branch of business which it might
be both convenient and profitable for many
of them to carry on. It is for the most
worthless of all purposes, too, that they are
taxed in this manner. It is merely to enable
the company to support the negligence, profusion,
and malversation of their own servants,
whose disorderly conduct seldom allows
the dividend of the company to exceed the
ordinary rate of profit in trades which are
altogether free, and very frequently makes it