nature of clerkships, secretaryships, petty agencies, frequently bestowed on the sons of European gentlemen by native mothers, amounting to 792-'minor situations,' which, as things now stand, escape the grasp of the ministers of the crown'-offals of Indian influence, as they are termed by Mr. Grant, which might commodiously form an assortment with imports of a more precious nature.' In fine, after a laborious display of places, pensions and privileges, followed by a comparison of the effects of influence when placed in the hands of ministers, and in those of the directors, always favorable to the latter, we come at length to the sum total of 'the annual value of the patronage which the ministers of the crown would possess by superseding the Company in the govern ment of India,' amounting to three millions and a half, from which, however, for some reason or other,' (none is assigned,) a round million is struck off on account of ministerial forbearance to make the full use of the powerful engine thus placed in their hands, Assuming the probability of every tenth office becoming annually vacant, it necessarily follows, that the minister would have at the commencement of every session of parliament,' kept snug, of course, for that occasion, vacant offices to dispose of, yielding two hundred and fifty thousand pounds, or, two hundred and fifty places of a thousand pounds a-year.' It also follows that, as nothing is to be struck off for directorial forbearance, the annual amount of patronage is 350,000l., and that each director has vacant offices to dispose of worth 14,58341. every year, or 14 places of a thousand pounds a-year-the odd is about the share with which each direc tor' compliments' the president of the Board of Control. Can any one wonder at the prodigious struggle which is made for a seat in the direction, when so many valuable appointments shower down for distribution among 'the sons and nephews and more distant relations,' and the other connections and dependents of the directors? Nor are these merely the fruits of one solitary year-thirty years enjoyment of them would, on Mr. Grant's data and principles of calculation, give a mass of patronage amounting to 420,000l. which is equivalent to a capital of 4,200,000l.! A director indeed must manage very ill who cannot contrive to retain his directorship for life; it is a copyhold estate, subject to a kind of abeyance of one year in five. To talk of the purity of the re-election, or of the independence of the proprietors, is idle, as far as regards the annual return of the six directors who come in by rotation; they are in fact elected by their brother directors, which is (in itself) a great abuse. Besides, the directors hire most of the ships in the trade; their owners employ the ship-builders, these again the shipchandlers, and these the rope maker, plumber, glazier, painter, &c. all of whom, to secure employment, must get their names on the 24 list list of proprietors; they must vote for a particular person; and no one can doubt that the profits on their respective trades are of too much importance to be sacrificed to the mere gratification of giving an independent vote, especially as they cannot be ignorant that no vote of theirs would raise the dividend on East India stock the fraction of a farthing." But, says Mr. Grant, the independence of the proprietors is proved in a recent iustance, where an old director, out by rotation, was rejected. This solitary exception proves the rule. But what was the fact? This director had, within three years, given away to a near relation, three writerships, value £10,000, which relation sold two of them, and bartered the third for church preferment. Now admitting, as we are willing to do, that the patronage and confidence of this director was grossly abused,'that, as stated in the report of the committee of the House of Commons, nothing appeared from which could be traced any corrupt or improper bargains to any director,' or with the privity or concurrence of any director,' yet when this committee had declared, on the very eve of the election, that the patronage was an article of traffic,' and that it appeared to them not unreasonable to contract, in some degree, the patronage of those who had not been sufficiently watchful in the disposal of it,' we can ascribe no very large share of merit to the independent proprietors' in rejecting the director, thus blown upon, however innocent. The blot was too palpable to be missed. But the case of this director was by no means singular. The committee reported that the existing precautions were not of sufficient force to prevent a very extensive traffic, in the nominations to writerships and cadetcies,' and they mention by name, a dozen directors, (just one half,) whose patronage and confidence had been grossly abused' by the sale and traffic of appointments made by them, through the intermediate agency of brokers, attor nies, taylors, and other mean agents, in consideration of certain sums of money proportioned to their respective values. The question then is no longer, whether the public is likely to be better served by persons appointed by the directors, or by the ministers of the crown; but whether youths of patrician connection, sons and nephews of members of parliament, and younger branches of nobility,' in short, young gentlemen of birth or education, who have a name and character at stake, and who, it may be presumed, have had those just and liberal notions of honour and nice feeling, which distinguish the gentleman from the plebeian, instilled into their minds—whether these, or the illegitimate offspring of nobody knows who, foisted into the service through the 'corrupt agency' abovementioned, or even the indigent and obscure relatives and depon dents dents of directors, are most likely to serve the public ably and honestly? At any rate the appointments on the recommendations of a minister' could not be made with less solicitude for their success, and less heed of their failure,' than those obtained or bestowed in the manner above-mentioned. But then, besides the appointments, the compensations, the pensions, the gratuities, &c., large items,' which it is hinted may amount to some three or four hundred thousand pounds' annually, now enjoyed by the court of directors, being so many substantive means of influence,' would, in the hands of ministers, be capable of indefinite enlargement.' And can Mr. Grant be really so great a stranger to the regulations by which all the offices under government are tied up, as seriously to make such an assertion? Does he not know that if a single additional clerk, with a salary of £80 a-year, be appointed to any of them, a detailed history of all the whys and wherefores' that made such an appointment necessary, must be submitted to the House of Commons? Greatly indeed does he 6 that the individual wishes of the court if he err, supposes of directors, clashing with the general interests of the Company, can be any effectual check to extravagance, compared with that arising out of the suspicious vigilance of the parties in parliament, hostile to the minister. Thousands are the instances in which the liberality and munificence of the court of directors are freely, and we doubt not properly, exercised, unknown to the public, or disregarded by it. Indeed the happy confusion in which their accounts, civil, military, commercial and political, have hitherto been jumbled together, sets all scrutiny at defiance; but from the moment that the minister of India should become responsible, all his accounts and all his patronage would be canvassed and sifted, even to their minutest fractions. But then the minister may be careless or corrupt enough to turn a deaf ear to public convenience and established usage.' He may also, unchecked, appoint or displace the individuals constituting one of the Indian governments; and, armed with the terror of this power, he may secretly transmit to these individuals, whatever orders he will.' When, instead of argument, we have recourse to may-bes, there is no limit to the hypothetical corruption and improper practices, chargeable to a minister. We regret to find so respectable. a writer as Mr. Grant countenancing, by his adoption, those vague and illiberal charges which it has of late years been too much the fashion to bring against public men. He even extends this unworthy feeling of suspicion to the whole British parliament, which he seems to consider as utterly incompetent for the active and circumstantial superintendance of Indian affairs.' That empire, we are told, moves in a trajectory of its own,' not to be inspected inspected by large deliberative bodies, meeting in a distant quarter of the globe. But it is not merely incompetent; the attention of his readers is called to a most important consideration,' which is, that, by a skilful distribution of Indian patronage among members of parliament, the minister is enabled to conciliate the very persons by whom he is to be controlled; by multiplying his offences, he propitiates his judge.' As to any checks or restraints on the distribution of Indian patronage, as far as parliament is concerned, in the inspection and execution of those restraining laws, Mr. Grant views them with sovereign contempt. How far he imagines his argument to be strengthened by setting off the purity of the Court of Directors against the general corruption of the King's ministers and the whole House of Commons, we willingly leave for the decision of his readers. The notion, (long since, as we thought, exploded,) that the accession of Indian patronage to the crown would endanger the constitution, is revived by Mr. Grant; but it has evidently lost the commanding influence which it once exerted over the public mind. We are old enough to remember the extraordinary effect which the India bill of Mr. Fox (passed afterwards in a modified form by Mr. Pitt) produced on the general feeling;-though we believe that the carricature print of Charles Fox running away with the India House on his shoulders,' contributed more towards it than the pamphlets and speeches distributed then, as now, with all the profusion of a sovereign company. Those times are past; and the public sentiment is entirely changed. The miserable expedient of placarding the walls of the metropolis with, 'No Bristol stones, but real India diamonds,'-No opening Liverpool warehouses to fill London poorhouses,' &c. entirely failed. These are not the days, in our estimation, in which a few Indian appointments, thrown into the scale of the crown, would have any effect in destroying the balance of the constitution. When so many mock-patriots, and mob-popularity-hunters, are constantly on the watch for opportunities of plucking a feather from the wing of prerogative, there is no great danger of the influence of the crown soaring too high. Nor, until we can be brought to entertain the same sentiments of the representative body of the nation, which Mr. Grant appears to do, will we believe that, among the 658 members which compose this body, even half a dozen will be found base enough to forsake their party, and barter their principles, for one of those Indian writerships or cadetcies, which a corrupt minister may have stored up for the commencement of every session of parliament.' We rather wonder that Mr. Grant, with his ingenuity, should not have been able, in the event of the supersession of the direc tors, tors, to discover some other channel into which the Indian patronage might be diverted from the ministers of the crown. Why, for instance, should not the sons and nephews of officers wounded in the service, or of retired officers, whether civil or military, after long, faithful and meritorious services, be considered in the distribation of that patronage, which is now bestowed on the sons and nephews of the directors? Or, to effect a more general participation, why not dispose of the Indian appointments to such as, on examination, shall be found duly qualified as to talent and respectability, and thus create a fund for the relief of decayed officers, whether European or native? Another consideration might have suggested itself. It appears from evidence taken before the committee of the House of Commons, that disaffection prevails, as might naturally be expected, among the deposed rajahs, omrahs, khans, &c. who, by our conquests, have been deprived of office, power and wealth. It would be some compensation to these disappointed men, were certain situations in the government thrown open to such of their sons as might be willing to qualify themselves to fill them; and by thus uniting their interests with those of the British government in India, their attachment to it might be secured. But, though we think that the patronage might, without much danger, or loss of purity, pass into other hands than those of the directors, we should still say, let them retain it, provided they are disposed to shew a little more liberality in other respects-let them retain their army, their revenues and their dominion-let them retain even, for the present, the exclusive trade to China; but let the trade of India be open and free, and let the outports of the kingdom divide the benefits of it with the metropolis, even at the hazard of checking the growth of the latter, which is thought by many to be a sink of vice and misery quite capacious enough already. 'On the Points at present in Dispute between his Majesty's Ministers and the Company,' which is the title to the fourth and last chapter, we see nothing to add to our opinions contained in a former article. It is, in fact, little more than the letter of Mr. Grant and Mr. Parry, of the 13th January, 1809, addressed to Mr. Dundas, put into another, and, perhaps, not an improved shape. Mr. Grant is pleased to reckon us among the literary antagonists of the Company, who contemplate a radical change.' We are surprised at this charge; and we call upon him to point out a single passage in our examination of the question now at issue, that can, by any possibility, be tortured into such a construction. We meant to render good service to the Company by deprecating the violence of the general clamour raised against it; we incidentally mentioned, as the opinion of many well informed persons, that a reform might advantageously be introduced into the home establishment, |