Excerpt from The Right, Interest, and Duty, of Government: As Concerned in the Affairs of the East Indies If the public enquires after ihe'caufes, why the company is under any difficulties not withfianding this (late, they are told of the want of wifdom and power in the compa ny at home, of mifchievous errors in the di reftars, of faetions tu general courts; of11n governable difobedience in their fervants abroad; or peculation of public treafure; of frauds in eztpenditures, of falflioods in accounts; of plundering, p1llaging, and rapine, both p1ibhc and private, of rapacious extortions in trade, which have ruined the commerce and manu factures of the country; of tyranny, in every exertion of that cruel fpirit, which has abfo lutely dellroyed the country itfelf: all this to the {hame and opprobium of the nation may be true; yet thele are but natural, Ihad almot't faid necefiary effeets of a prime original evil which they derive from. The firfi origin of the evil 1s, that the mere/jam 11 56507713 Mae/ove rezgn that a t1ading company have in their hands the exercife of a fovereignty, which that company by its direction within the realm 15 not adequate to, and with which its lervants (the governors and Others, as now conflituted W1th out the realm) (houlcl not be trufted. The ful feting a trading company of merchants, (o'cir cumfianced and lo conflituted, to all'ume the pofieiiion of, and to exercit'e (however acquired and pollhfled) fuch lbvereignty in a manner nu obferved, unregulated by, and independent or the fupreme fovereignty of the (late, is the firfl error. This 13 the original evil: and the man 4 nerin which it hath been exercifed is only a natural and certain mifchief derived from it. 3 1 1 2 But be the conduct of perfons interef'ted in the company and its affairs thll fuch as it has betn; be the conduct of men in power -what it W1l'1; be the conduct of their opponents what it may, as tothe Inrhan afi'ans; the feelings of mankmd in general are at laft routed to a tlate of alarm; they apprehend danger to the (late. People nnw at lafl begin to view thofe Indian affairs, not fimply as beneficial appendages con nected to the Empire but from the participat tion of their revenues being wrought into the very compofition and frame of our finances; f: om the commerce of that country being in diffolubly interwoven with our whole Iyl'tem of commerce; from the intercommunion of fund ed property between the company and the fiate people in general from thefe views begin to tee fuch an union of interef'r, fuch a co-exifl ence between the two, that they tremble with horror even at the imagination of the downfall or th1s Indian part of our lyflem; knowmg that it mutt 11ecAbout the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.