arriving immediately at the public treasury of Britain, and being there applied to the diminution of taxes, and consequent reduction of the price of necessaries and labour, would have proved a gentle universal shower, reviving our decayed and drooping manufactures and commerce. But neither could government be induced to confer this sovereignty on the Company, by any motive of regard to the true interest of the proprietors: seeing it was palpably evident that this charge, being so unmeasurably superior to her powers of supporting it, must unavoidably crush her to ruin, and, along with her, the countries subjected to her rule; and, it is to be feared, even that community of which she forms a part. Whereas, if the national government had taken into its own hands, and carefully administered the government of those countries, whilst it continued the Company in possession of her commercial privileges, she would have continued to divide, in the first place, the six per cent. which her commerce, (unaided by revenue) afforded; even when burdened with the necessary expence of a small military force maintained for the guard of that commerce in those foreign countries, and which must have been equal to four per cent. on her capital: but this commercial military expence being rendered in a great measure unnecessary, by the immediate protection of national government, the saving thereof would have added two per cent. to her dividend: and the equivalent, which government would have paid for her fortresses, munition, &c. being added to her capital stock, would have encreased her dividend nearly one per cent. more; whilst her stock itself would, at this day, have been really, and intrinsically worth 220 l. instead of ........ its present real and intrinsic value. It would be insulting the understanding of ministry, to suppose that it had been restrained from assuming this sovereign charge, by any delicacy of regard to the ideal right of the Company; derived from either conquests, as subjects; or from the sham grant of a man, who had not power to dispose of a single bega of land, nay, not of a cocoa-nut-tree in that country; and consequently whose grant of the sovereignty of Bengal could contribute nothing more to investiture or possession, than his grant of the crown of Britain could. Though if we should (for the sake of argument) suppose, that ministry had really admitted some such right, we must still esteem its acquiescence in that right a most absurd and wildly mistaken indulgence; seeing it evidently tended to the ruin of the party whom it meant to favour.