It may be well to call to the recollection of the East India Company, that they owe their present state to an assertion of those very rights to open trade which have now been brought forward; for, when the first, or London East India Company had experienced certain disappointments and failures, various adventurers came forward with claims similar to those which have been alleged by the merchants of the present day, and obtained an incorporation, to the prejudice of the old Company; and although the old, or London East India Company, afterwards effected an union with the new, or English East India Company, and with them gave origin to the present Company, yet the UNITED EAST INDIA COMPANY should not forget, how much the activity of the Indian trade was stimulated by the assertion of the rights of their predecessors, _to participate in the trade which had been granted exclusively to a former Company_. GRACCHUS. FOOTNOTES: [1] The _rights and pretensions_ of the Company are fully considered in the Tenth Letter. [2] Considerations on the Danger of laying open the Trade with India and China, p. 13. [3] Ibid. p. 18. LETTER II. _Wednesday, January 13, 1813._ It is a distinguishing character appertaining to Britons, to express forcibly their feelings, whenever they think they discover any disposition to encroach upon their rights. It is not therefore to be wondered at, that the communication of the papers, on the subject of the East India Company's Charter, which was made by the Directors to the Proprietors, on the 5th instant, should have produced the effect which was then manifested; of an almost unanimous disposition, to support the Directors in their resistance of a measure, which, at the time, was regarded as an invasion, on the part of the Government, of the established rights of the East India Company. But now that the momentary ebullition of that spirit has had time to subside, and to give place to cool and sober reflection, it may not be unacceptable to the Proprietors at large to look calmly and attentively into the subject; and to examine its bearings on their own substantial interests. It must be manifest to every man, who will only refer to the accounts which have been published in the Reports of the Select Committee of the House of Commons, that, from the magnitude of the Company's debt, it would be impossible to calculate the time at which the Proprietors could contemplate any augmentation of their present dividends of 10½ per cent.; even though the Charter, instead of being within one year of its expiration, had an extended period of twenty years to operate.