Produced by Richard J. Shiffer and the Distributed Proofreading volunteers at http://www.pgdp.net for Project Gutenberg. (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive.) [Transcriber's Note: Every effort has been made to replicate this text as faithfully as possible, including obsolete and variant spellings and other inconsistencies. Text that has been changed to correct an obvious error is noted at the end of this ebook.] THE PROPER LIMITS OF THE GOVERNMENT'S Interference with the Affairs of the EAST-INDIA COMPANY, ATTEMPTED TO BE ASSIGNED. WITH SOME FEW REFLECTIONS Extorted by, and on, the distracted State of the Times. By JOHN, EARL of STAIR. ----And beshrew my soul, But I do love the favour and the form Of this most fair occasion; by the which We will untread the steps of damned flight, And, like a 'bated and retiring flood, Leaving our rankness and irregular course, Stoop low within these bounds we have o'erlook'd, And calmly run on in obedience. LONDON: PRINTED FOR J. STOCKDALE, OPPOSITE BURLINGTON-HOUSE, PICCADILLY. MDCC LXXXIV. Entered at Stationers' Hall. THE PROPER LIMITS OF THE GOVERNMENT'S Interference with the Affairs of the EAST-INDIA COMPANY, &c. Each day's experience proves the fallibility of conjecture, even when established on apparently the surest foundations. Having stated, indeed materially and substantially proved, that the annual peace expenditure of the state, if decently, not profusely, nor even amply provided for, could not be performed for less than sixteen millions five hundred thousand pounds; and having asserted, with truth, that the annual receipts have scarcely, on the most productive years of the public revenue, exceeded twelve millions; and the necessary corollary, arising out of these propositions, being an annual surplus or sinking fund to the amount (if at all proportional) of at least fifteen hundred thousand pounds, as a provision for great civil emergencies or future wars, without which no system of finance can be either respectable or assuredly permanent; and it following of necessary consequence from these premises, that the proper peace revenue, from something more than twelve millions, which is its present amount, ought to be raised to eighteen millions yearly:--these matters, I say, being as I have represented them, I firmly believed the public affairs of this country were tolerably embarrassed, and weakly imagined Ministers might find full employment in extricating them, without courting, and eagerly, through right and through wrong, aspiring and grasping at the management of affairs fully in as great a state of confusion as our own. But I find I greatly under-rated the cravings of the appetite of our late rulers, who seem to have had stomach for all difficulties, however remote from