At an early period of the present discussion, Ministers appear to have entertained the same maxim, of confining the import trade from India to the Port of London. They were afterwards led, by a full exposition of all the various interests which remonstrated against that close restriction, to deem it just and expedient to propose (and wise and politic for the East India Company to consent), that _such of the principal out-ports as possessed the means whereby smuggling could best be guarded against_, should participate with London in the import trade from India; reserving exclusively to London, the whole of the trade from China. This alteration of their original plan was suggested by them to the Court of Directors, not as a relaxation of the _existing privileges_ of the Company (which was the nature of Mr. Dundas's proposition in 1800), but as a qualification to take place under _a new Charter_. When Mr. Dundas suggested to the Directors the new principle, of admitting Indian-built ships as the vehicle for carrying on the private trade, he was not treating with them concerning _the renewal_ of their Charter; for they had then an _unexpired term of fourteen years_, in the privileges conferred upon them by the Act of 1793. His proposition, as has been just observed, went to _a relaxation_ of an important part of those _subsisting privileges_; for which he sought to gain their acquiescence; and as his opinion was decided and avowed, "that the ostensible form of Government for India, with all its consequent detail of patronage, must remain as it now is, and that the monopoly of that trade ought properly to continue in the hands of the East India Company;" it was prudent and seasonable in him to dwell upon that point.