Is danger apprehended from extending the patronage of the crown? Certainly the very reverse. Patronage, and jobbing in shipping and in supercargoes to the extent of little less than two millions a year, would be cut off from a body but too apt to be identified with the ministry. In short, we are thoroughly persuaded, that, until we appear purely in the character of merchants, and throw off that mixed and suspicious character which we now think so imposing, we shall never be able to disarm the jealousy of the Chinese, or regain the ground we have lost under the present system; for we ought never to forget, that our exclusion from all the ports of China but one, has arisen from the maladministration of the monopoly companies. It is now worth while to consider how far this monopoly has tended to enrich themselves. It has long been perfectly well known and avowed, that the China trade of the East India Company is the only one that, for many years, has been in any degree profitable. It is the only one accordingly of which they have insisted on retaining the monopoly. But, if it be asked, how it alone should have been profitable, does it not naturally occur to answer, because it is a remnant of barbarism to make no distinction between the two crimes, it is as little natural to jump at once across all the gradations of guilt, from the severest punishment to a very light one. If the Chinese are too severe, we are probably too lenient. At all events, we have no right to go within their jurisdiction, and insist that the offences which our countrymen there commit, shall be judged of and punished according to our standard of guilt,—or that our point of honour, in screening brother offenders, should be countenanced and favoured. Nor is it creditable to us, that this end should be sought and attained, by corrupting their Courts of Justice, and bribing their Judges to get up a mock-trial, farcical, if it were not vitious and contaminated with perjury. Our supercargoes exhibit us there in the disgraceful light of suborners of perjury, and corrupters of Judges, for the purpose of screening offenders undeniably guilty of culpable homicide. Their conduct, however, in this particular, is but a part of that general system of bullying which forms the most characteristic and most reprehensible feature in their ordinary course of proceeding. The Chinese, no doubt, are easily intimidated; and particular points may often be gained by a threatening and violent demeanor; but, in the long run, it cannot fail to alienate them from our cause, and to increase and confirm that dislike and distrust, from which our interests are ultimately in such hazard of suffering.-Our Select Committee play a game at brag with the Chinese: But, it is admitted, even among gamesters, that they who brag always, must infallibly be ruined in the end. here alone that they have been compelled to pay some attention to justice and fair dealing in their transactions? In India, they have been under no such necessity; and the result is matter of history. There they soon surmounted all rivalry and control. They made extensive conquests-established the most rigorous monopolies-excluded all competitors, and especially their own countrymen-multiplied offices and establishmentstill, after two centuries of successful ambition, the trade, from which they had so jealously debarred all rivals, became a source of loss to its monopolists, and was at last thrown open to the rest of the nation. The actual result, too, of this last step, is worthy of all consideration. The Indian trade, which was a losing one in the hands of the East India Company, has, under the system of freedom, become a most flourishing branch of the foreign trade of the kingdom, in the short period of three years, and increased from 26,320 tons to 102,956; in other words, has been nearly quadrupled; while the Company's trade has, at the same time, fallen from 26,000 tons to 10,000. The manufactures of this kingdom have been exported in quantity and variety far. surpassing the most sanguine expectation; and the native produce of India has flowed in in the same proportion. If such have been the immediate consequences of a free intercourse with the Hindus, and other nations of Asia, believed, of all people, to be the most alien to our habits, and the most inveterately attached to their own, what may not be hoped from an empire containing at least a hundred and fifty millions of people-the richest, the most ingenious people of Asia-and who alone, of all the nations in that quarter, understand the value of social order, and have laws of sufficient vigour to maintain it; and, finally, who, under a rigid system of monopoly, consume more than a million and a half's worth of our manufactures and produce, exclusive of the great commerce with British India, amounting, in goods and tonnage, to 2,200,000l., without including the great traffic of the Oriental Islands? One object of the last ill-fated and ill-directed mission was, if we are rightly informed, a proposal to admit our trade into a second port of China. The object was at least most desirable, though not, we think, to be attained by any such means. The effects of the present restriction to that of Canton are incalculable; and would be but faintly depicted, by supposing that all the trade between Europe and Asia were confined to a single port in the former, and that not a central one, but upon some of its extremities. It is even worse than this; inasmuch as China is a greater country than Europe, less broken by navigable seas, and less accessible to commerce; with infinitely less naval skill, and, in all respects, less economy in the transport and circulation of merchandize. The actual trade of Europe with China, is in reality little more than a trade with the province of Canton-or, in other words, with one out of fifteen provinces of the empire-and that not the largest or the richest: For, in reality, the greater part of the imported articles never go out of this district. The principal exports to China, at present, are, cotton wool and woollens, lead, iron, tin from Europe, opium from Bengal; and what, in vulgar commercial language, are called Straits' produce, that is, the productions of the Oriental archipelago, bees' wax, Malay tin, and Malay camphor; rattans, birds' nests, tripang, tortoise shell, gold, betel nut, &c. Many of these articles are so bulky, and costly in transportation, that the consumption is necessarily confined to the province where they are landed; and of others it extends no further than to the neighbouring province of Kyangsi. Bombay cotton is consumed in these two provinces only; Bengal cotton, which is reckoned better, is sent, in small quantity, as far as Fokien. Lead is consumed in Canton only-so is iron; and even tin is mostly circulated there— though, from its greater value, a small part of it finds its way to Kyangnan. Fokien is supplied abundantly with the latter article, from its foreign trade with the Malayan archipelago. Now, the difference in freight between the East India Company's rates, and that of the licensed trade, amounts, on the price of lead, to 20 per cent., and on that of iron to 15;—so that a free trade, independent of the wonders effected by economy and competition, would greatly reduce the price of those articlespush the circulation of them further--and, of course, incalculably augment that consumption, even without opening any new channel of circulation. Such is the demand for the more valuable commodity of woollens, and so much are they suited to the climate and the taste of the people, that they are actually diffused among them from the Tropic to the Great Wall, and probably even beyond both. The productions of the Malayan islands are brought to China by our Indian country traders to Canton; and by the Chinese Junks, to a larger extent, to the province of Fokien: But the want of a market for the staple article of tea, occasioned by the rigid monopoly of it where alone it is in extensive demand, frustrates the effects of the apparent freedom in this trade, and renders its benefits partial. Such is the suitableness of the productions of the Malayan countries to the wants of China, and the safety and facility of the intercourse between them, that we will venture to assert, that were Europeans to be entirely excluded from the ports of China, but a free trade permitted in tea, Europe, through this channel alone, would be cheaply and abundantly supplied with that necessary of life. The present condition of the trade necessarily subjects the exports to similar inconveniences as the imports. If we will not sell cheap to the Chinese, the Chinese cannot sell cheap to us. The black teas, forming two-thirds of the whole exports, are procured by the East India Company by barter, and therefore loaded directly with the monopoly price of the European goods, and all the inconveniences of this clumsy, unsatisfactory, and barbarous mode of transacting business. It is no wonder that we find the American teas of the same kind 70 per cent. cheaper, while there is no such extraordinary difference in the green teas, which are purchased by both in the open market. The teas, silks, and nankeens, labour under the same inconveniences in their transport to the mart of Canton, which obstruct the circulation of European commodities to the distant provinces. The black teas are brought from Fokien, many hundred miles by land carriage, over precipices, mountains and defiles, chiefly by the labour of men; and every old lady in England feels the effect of the toil of these Chinese porters, and of the high prices obtained for our broad-cloths by the mercantile skill of the Company's agents. The green teas and raw silks are brought three times as far as the black teas, coming all the way from the province of Kiangnan, on the eastern extremity of the empire. The port from which the black teas ought naturally to be exported, is Muoy, in the very province which produces it-the same which embraced the principal part of our early traffic-and from which we were expelled for our misdemeanours; and the green teas, raw silk, and nankeens, are cheaply and safely conducted and exported from the great emporium of Hang Cheu-fu. Had a free trade prevailed with China for the last half century, we think it extremely likely that we should by this time have had an extensive commerce with these and many others of the ports of China, instead of being, as we now are, confined to a single port, acknowledged by all to have no natural connexion with the great export and import trade of the country, and to be useful only in as far as it serves for the introduction of goods for the consumption of its own province, or that of Kiangsi. From the most authentic information we have been able to collect, we are fully satisfied that the European trade, even on its present footing, is not only of consequence to the port and province of Canton, but to the Imperial treasury itself; and that it is only necessary to extend it, or, in other words, to VOL. XXIX. No. 58. G g render it free, to make it thoroughly popular among the Chinese, and to render the people and the government so dependent upon it, that they will never wish to free themselves from its agreeable bondage. We should therefore conclude, with confidence, that a desire to extend its benefits would, in no long time, induce them to open other ports. Even if this should not occur, however, the advantage would be incalculable; and it is by no means unlikely that some revolution in China will speedily put it in our power to obtain all we desire, by using with discretion the advantages which our local situation must give us in such an emergency; and, having once acquired the privilege of admission to the Chinese ports, we may trust to the mutual interests of the parties for its continuance. We are told, indeed, by those interested in prolonging the present system, that any innovation will produce the risk of losing the Chinese trade altogether; and the nation is occasionally alarmed with the risk of defalcation of revenue, from any alteration in the present system of collecting the duties. Nothing, it appears to us, can be more chimerical than these apprehensions. It is certain, and indeed admitted, that a change in the present system would not be disagreeable to the Chinese: They would, on the contrary, hail it as a blessing; and we should no longer have to reproach them with their gross partiality for the Americans and their trade.' An alteration in the present mode of collecting the duties on tea in this country, would be unquestionably attended with the greatest advantage to the revenue, in place of deteriorating it. In the first place, we say, that the most blundering government never wanted ingenuity to raise a tax, when a taxable subject existed. If teas are brought cheaper into this country-and we are sure that, in a free trade, they will-the consumption will inevitably increase; and the duties along with it. Under the system we have recommended, the duties on tea will inevitably become one of the greatest branches of the public revenue; smuggling will diminish, as the temptations to it from exorbitant prices are removed; the same causes will secure teas from adulteration; and, finally, we shall enjoy a share, and probably the greatest share, in the carrying trade of this commodity, now in the hands of our great commercial rivals, who have neither our capital nor our enterprise. It is in the recollection of many of us, that, during the peace which followed the American war, the monopoly prices of the East India Company, and the high duties paid to the Crown, enabled the nations of the Continent to supply us with no less than three fourths of the whole tea used in these islands. To protect the monopoly, the |