Having hitherto taken a view of those parts of the India Question, which more immediately relate, to the commercial interests of this country, and to the Proprietors of East India Stock; let us now advert to the deportment of the Directors towards the Ministers of the Crown, in their last communication made to the Court of Proprietors. It appears, from the printed papers, that as long back as the month of April, the President of the Board of Control put the Court of Directors in full possession of the _final opinion_ of His Majesty's Ministers; concerning the privileges of trade which, they conceived, it would be their duty to submit to Parliament, as the basis of a Charter. Early in the month of December, a deputation from the Court of Directors appears to have been admitted, by special appointment, to a conference; in which it is known to every clerk and messenger about the offices, as well as to every member of that deputation, that the three Secretaries of State, the First Lord of the Treasury, and the Chancellor of the Exchequer attended. And it is equally notorious, that two subsequent meetings were held, between the same parties. We are warranted to infer, from the letter of Lord Buckinghamshire, that the discussions which took place at those several conferences, were declared to be open and unreserved; with a view that the Members of Government, and the Members of the Deputation, might freely, and without restraint of form, deliver their reasons for the opinions which they respectively held. The impression which the Court of Directors received, from the conduct of the Ministers of the Crown, in those conferences, is manifested in the Letter from the Chairman and Deputy Chairman to the President of the Board of Control, of the 30th December, in which "they return sincere acknowledgments for the attention with which their representations had been listened to, in the various interviews with which they had been honoured by his Lordship, and His Majesty's Ministers, who attended." In conferences of this nature, and between parties thus relatively circumstanced, all that was to be expected from the Ministers of the Crown was, that they should listen with attention to the representations made to them, and should reply to those representations, so as to command the acknowledgment of the inferior party. If, in the issue, (to use the words of Mr. Dundas to the same authorities in 1801,) "after having reviewed their opinions with the most jealous attention, and after having weighed, with the most anxious care, the arguments brought forward, it was still their misfortune to view the subject in an opposite light" to that which presented itself to the judgment of the Directors; it was not to be expected, that they should surrender their own judgment to that of the Directors, who stood in the anomalous character of defendants and judges in their own cause.