It will nevertheless be still insisted that government could not, without committing a number of irregularities and absurdities, endow the Company in the manner specified; as also that the Company, when thus endowed, would still have been altogether unequal to the charge of regularly administring a sovereign government. But surely government, if it would not or could not capacitate the Company to regularly govern those countries, ought not to have furnished her the means of oppressing, ravaging, pillaging, and ruining them; to the disgrace of humanity, and the indelible reproach of the British name. Government would have acted a part far more consistent with the rules of honour and humanity, if, instead of furnishing to the Company this military power, it had restrained her from availing herself of the advantage, gained by force and chance, over that mild, unwarlike, but industrious people; and obliged her to leave them to their own government. But then the situation of affairs in those countries, where the nation and Company held such a valuable commercial interest, rendered it highly improper and dangerous to leave the native government to itself: moreover the nation and Company could not, in such case, have acquired the mighty wealth and other benefits that have been derived from the conquest, or assumed dominion, of those countries. Oh wealth, basely acquired, and foolishly applied! Was there then no medium, no middle channel, thro’ which government might have steered the Nation and Company to this same wealth and benefits, clear of all these irregularities, incongruities, inhumanities, and reproaches? Yes surely; and one so obvious and conspicuous, that it is impossible to conceive how government could be so industrious as to shun or miss it. Had the national government taken upon itself the charge of superintending the government of those countries, as reason and the nature of things directed, then would it have furnished them a sovereign, naturally free from all the defects of the Company, and completely endued with all the qualifications of power, ability, and inclination from interest, to protect and regularly govern them. For it is plain, that the national government, possessing supreme legislative, and judicial power, must have been capable of enforcing obedience to the laws which it might have enacted for the good government of those countries; and of punishing disobedience, not only in the natives, but in the ministers whom it would have employed to execute that government; as these must have been its own subjects. And, on the other hand, the nation being an immutable body, and holding this sovereignty in her own right, and by perpetual tenor; her government must have been actuated, by the strong motive of self interest, to exert itself in promoting the real and lasting welfare of those countries. And as to the commercial despotism, it could never have existed under the national government.