The Letters of Gracchus on the East India QuestionMiles, William Augustus
History
The Letters of Gracchus on the East India Question
Miles, William Augustus
East India Company; India -- Politics and government -- 1765-1947
Yet it is this point, which one of the parties interested affirms, to be
"a question of the last importance to the safety of the British Empire
in India, and of the British Constitution at home;" and therefore
undertakes to resist it, with all the determination which the importance
of so great a stake would naturally inspire. But, when we compare the
real measure in question with the menacing character which is thus
attempted to be attached to it, we at once perceive something so
extravagantly hyperbolical, something so disproportionate, that it at
once fixes the judgment; and forces upon it a suspicion, that there is
more of policy and design, than of truth and sincerity in the assertion.
That objections to the measure might arise, capable of distinct
statement and exposition, is a thing conceivable; and, these being
stated, it would be a subject for consideration, how far they were
removable. But to assert, in a round period, that the safety of the
empire in Europe and Asia is fundamentally affected in the requisition,
that a ship proceeding from Liverpool or Bristol to India, might return
from India to Liverpool or Bristol, instead of to the Port of London,
is calculated rather to shake, than to establish, confidence in those
who make the assertion. Yet this is the question which the country is
now called upon to consider, as one tending to convulse the British
Constitution. Surely, if the foundations of the empire in both
hemispheres have nothing more to threaten them, than whether the
out-port shipping shall carry their cargoes home to their respective
ports, or repair to the dock-yards in the port of London, the most timid
politician may dismiss his alarms and resume his confidence. When the
East India Company, by conceding a regulated Export Trade, have at once
demonstrated the absurdity of all the predictions which foretold, in
that Trade, the overthrow of the Indian Empire; we may confidently
believe, that the Import Trade will prove as little destructive, and
that its danger will be altogether as chimerical as the former.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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