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SEASON, 1817-18.

EAST INDIA SHIPS,

With their Managing Owners, Commanders, Principal Officers, Surgeons, Pursers, Time of coming afloat, &c;

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3 Fairlie
Henry Porcher.
Beng.&Bomb.
Lady Lushington.. 612 Bombay
Northampton... 547 Beng & Ben.
Lord Keith...... 599 or Madras

26th December, 1817.

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LONDON, Published by Termission for the European. Magazine by Asperne.32, Cornbill Jan:1.889

Beeston Song Eng!
Esq.

Engraved by HMeyer, from an original Painting by Owen E67" R. 1.

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[WITH A PORTRAIT, ENGRAVED BY HENRY MEYER, FROM AN ORIGINAL PAINTING BY W. OWEN, ESQ. R.A.]

“There are not more useful members in a Commonwealth than merchants-They bind - mankind together in a mutual interchange of good offices; distribute the gifts of Nature; find work for the poor, add wealth to the rich, and magnificence to the great." ADDISON, Spec. 69. The efforts of despotism and the power

T is the happy experience of Great characteristics of commercial useful ness to a class of its inhabitants, who by the integrity of their industry, the respectability of their connexions, the virtuous stedfastness of their principles, and the well earned affluence of their condition, have reflected the high est honour upon their country, and have raised the name of a British merchant to that pre-eminence of honourable distinction which is acknowledged without reserve in every quarter of the globe.

Nothing can be more evident than that the property of usefulness which the author of our motto has attached to the mercantile character in general, must receive its warrant of truth from those qualities which we have thus enumerated; and it is equally clear, that the good faith of our countrymen, sub stantiated by the assent of the whole civilized world, has produced an essential benefit to the common- weal, not only of this country, but of every nation under the canopy of Heaven.

We believe that this assertion may be safely made, when the extent of concern and the multiplied ramifications of intercourse are considered by which the trade of the British Empire is carried on. And so undeviating has been the effect of its liberal system, that in no period, whether of peace or of war, has this extent been circumscribed, or this intercourse impeded.

conquest been put

action by the arch enemy of our land between the necessities of those whom he subdued to his yoke and the pros perity of our national interests. But even tyranny like his, infuriated as it was by the concurrent defeat of his adverse projects, has no otherwise succeeded, than by proving to those whose wants he would have sacrificed to his will, that the privations which he would have inflicted could only be alleviated by the resources of a people, who as merchants were alone able to provide the remedy, and who as the opponents to his phrenzied enmity could alone break through the barriers by which he would have prevented the co-ope ration of their beneficial influence; an influence which was as generously ap plied as it was vigorously exerted, and which, as the result has proved, made its way through every conflict of counter action, to the better conviction of the victims of his overbearing selfishness; while he himself has fallen by his own unwieldy ambition, and now depends for the articles of his subsistence upon those very merchants whose country he once, in the blindness of his pride, stigmatized as a nation of shopkeepers; and has the mortification of knowing, that the measures which be adopted to thwart the progress of their commerce have proved the most accelerating causes of its success" Such joy ambition finds."-It is not, however, because we

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