IX. Resolutions of a General Meeting of the Committee of Ship-Owners for the Port of London, held the 9th 2. Various Returns of Thames and Indian-built Shipping, X. Dépêches et Lettres interceptées, &c. Copies of the Original Letters and Dispatches of the Generals, Mi- nisters, Grand Officers of State, &c. at Paris, to the Emperor Napoleon, at Dresden; intercepted by the advanced Troops of the Allies in the North of Germany. 481 XI. Inchiquen, the Jesuit's Letters, during a late Residence in the United States of America; being a Fragment of a Private Correspondence, accidentally discovered in Europe, containing a favourable View of the Man- ners, Literature, and State of Society, of the United States; and a Refutation of many of the Aspersions THE QUARTERLY REVIEW. OCTOBER, 1813. ART. I.-Reports and Papers on the Impolicy of employing Indian-built Ships in the Trade of the East India Company, and of admitting them to British Registry. London. 1809. The First Report of the Commissioners of His Majesty's Woods, Forests, and Land Revenues. Ordered by the House of Commons to be printed, 13th June, 1812. OF the Resolutions passed by the House of Commons as the ground work of an act for continuing, for a further term, to the East India Company their exclusive privileges, the seventh runs thus: That it is expedient that ships built within the British territories in the East Indies, and employed in the commerce between India and the United Kingdom, should, during the present war, and for eighteen months after the conclusion thereof, be permitted to import any goods, wares, or merchandize, the produce or manufacture of any countries within the limits of the East India Company's charter, or to export any goods, wares, or merchandize, from this kingdom to the British settlements in the East Indies, or to any of the places within the said limits, (with the exception of China,) in the same manner as ships Britishbuilt, and duly registered as such, and that after-the expiration of the period above mentioned, the said India-built ships should be liable to such other provisions as parliament may from time to time enact, for the further increase and encouragement of shipping and navigation.' By this Resolution, the private trade, so far from gaining any enlargement of a privilege already granted by the act of 35 Geo. 3. (which allowed the importation of goods from India and China in ships not British-built, nor registered as such, during the continuance of the war then raging, and for eighteen months after its conclusion, which privilege was further extended by the act of 42 Geo. 3. to such ships during the continuance of the exclusive trade granted to the East India Company,) may, in fact, be said to have suffered an abridgment, both as to time and place. As China, however, was generally excepted from all the provisions of the intended bill which regarded the opening of the trade, little or no objection was made on that score to the Resolution in question. Let us now see in what manner it has been introduced into the new charter. VOL. X. NO. XIX. A charter. The 30th section of the act, after recapitulating the heads of the clauses of the two acts abovementioned, thus proceeds :'Be it enacted, That the same shall continue and be in force until the first day of August, one thousand eight hundred and fourteen, unless any provision shall be made respecting the same in the next session of parliament.' When it is considered that the first copy of the new charter was sent out in the Acorn, which left England about the middle of September, and would not reach India till the month of January, 1814; that consequently six months only will be allowed to the merchant to collect and send home India produce in India-built ships, without the risk of incurring legal penalties, it will appear, that the new charter, instead of opening a wider field for the capital and industry of the private trader, has very considerably narrowed the ground on which he stood under the provisions of the old one. The British residents too, who had hoped for an extension of the means of remitting their fortunes to England, must experience a disappointment equally vexatious in finding those means more restricted than before; and the native subjects will be left in a more hopeless condition as to any increased demand for the produce of their manufacture and agriculture than under the system which has just expired. These grievances will unquestionably be felt as the first fruits of that liberal and enlightened policy which was, if not to destroy, at least to qualify, an oppressive monopoly. Had the legislature in its wisdom limited the size of India-built ships to which the indulgence was to be extended, and left the time as before, the clause would then have been consistent with the ostensible views of the government, as expressed in the seventh Resolution; and all the benefits to Great Britain and India would have resulted from it, which, we will charitably suppose, were intended; free, at the same time, from any admixture even of those imaginary evils which, we doubt not, have had their share in rendering nugatory one of the most important of the Resolutions of the House of Commons on this question. Happily that Resolution must be reconsidered at an early period of the present session. The directors indeed are far from being unanimous in their opinions as to the policy and expediency of employing India-built shipping; and it is remarkable enough, as appears from the collection of papers before us, that, while a special committee of eight or nine of them was drawing up a report, which evinces more of hostility against the proprietors of India-built ships, than of argument against the employment of them, the directors at large were advertising, through their governments in India, a contract for building ships in that country: and it also appears that, while the said committee were searching for facts to prove the impolicy of the measure, measure, their governors and best informed servants in India were endeavouring to impress them with a sense not only of its utility but absolute necessity. These are mysteries to which we shall not waste our time in seeking for a clue. It cannot however fail to be observed, that the act, as it now stands, involves the court of directors in strange inconsistencies. While they affect to dread the very name of colonization, they or their pretended advocates force upon the Company a measure which makes it absolutely impossible for their servants and other residents in India to remove their property and families from thence; for as to private merchants fitting out ships in England to sail empty to India, in the hope of finding cargoes purchased for them, in the shape of produce, as a remittance, we are greatly mistaken if those who may be induced to try that experiment will find their account in sending them a second time. But those of all others who will feel this measure to press upon them most severely are the millions of our native subjects, who might have experienced some relief from the heavy annual tribute levied upon them of sixteen or seventeen millions, had a vent been opened for their surplus produce, various articles of which would be no less useful to our home manufactures than others of them would be for the British navy. But the influence of some unfriendly planet would seem to have prevailed against the more favourable intentions of government; and this is the more extraordinary, as the ministers of the crown, we believe, have had but one opinion on the political bearing of the question. The Committee of Ship-building is composed of a wealthy body of men, who possess great influence in the India direction, as far as shipping is concerned. These gentlemen, so far back as 1797, submitted to the late Lord Melville their apprehensions respecting the employment of India-built shipping. His lordship's opinion was directly at variance with the allegations of their memorial. He told them in distinct terms that their apprehensions were not only groundless, but that the prohibition which they aimed to establish was an act of great injustice, and would, in its tendency, have an effect on the interests of the ship-builders in the Thames directly the reverse of what they seemed to suppose. * His lordship however confined the injustice of the proposition to the effect of depriving a large description of the subjects of Great Britain of a right which those of the West Indies or Canada, or of any other foreign dependency of the empire, were entitled to enjoy: but we shall venture to extend the unjust and injurious operation of the prohibition to the natives of India, who have an undoubted right to send to England the produce of their * Letter to the Committee of Ship-builders, 1st July, 1797. own territories in ships of their own building. It was in vain that his lordship endeavoured to convince them that their own immediate interests would be injured by driving away the India-built shipping from British ports; that it was a great error to suppose the prohibition would make a proportionate degree of room for the shipping of the East India Company; that, on the contrary, it would have no other effect than that which it has always had, of driving those ships with their cargoes into foreign ports, and thereby establishing in foreign countries an Asiatic commerce, founded on British capital, and of depriving the ship-builders of the benefit which, in various shapes, results to the country, and to themselves in particular, from the refitting of those ships in the river Thames. Lord Wellesley went still further than Lord Melville; he considered the employment of ships built in India no longer merely a question of expediency, or of liberal commercial policy, but of absolute necessity; unless indeed we were determined to make a present of the most valuable part of the Indian trade to foreign nations. We confess that, in whatever way we view the subject, the clause appears to us exceedingly impolitic. Had the building of ships in India, and the admitting of them to a registry in England, been restricted to such as should be of 800 or 1000 tons burden and upwards, no material injury could be sustained by those who have been loudest in their complaints, many important advantages might have resulted to the native Indians, and to the trade and commerce of this country; and, above all, such a regulation would have been the certain means of lessening the consumption of English oak timber, of which we have before us the alarming prospect of a serious scarcity at no very distant period of time. Those interested in the regular shipping of the East India Company,' observed Lord Melville,' would do well to consider the benefits they already enjoy, in place of endeavouring to cramp and check the just pretensions of others. They ought to recollect the rapid progress they have made from the time of the commutation act; and, above all, they ought to recollect that it always has been considered as a very problematical question, how far, consistently with the national interests, so much of the ship timber of the country ought to be appropriated to its commercial concerns, in the manner practised by the builders of India shipping;' and he adds, we have a national resource in India, which ought to lead to the reverse of any invidious or unjust discouragement being given to the ship-building of India.'* As our concern, at present, with the obnoxious clause in the India bill extends no farther than as it affects the state of naval tim * Letter to the Chairman of the East India Company, 2d April, 1800. |