The first plea that was insisted on, was, that the Company was bankrupt; but this argument defeats itself. If they are bankrupt, the law has provided a due course of proceeding: Ministers, or the Deputies of Ministers, are not the proper assignees to the bankrupt's estate: the trade is, moreover, by the civil death of the Company, open to every adventurer. But this pretext of bankruptcy is but a flimsy disguise easily seen through: Ministers are not so eager to obtain the administration of the affairs of a bankrupt: the virtuous majority in the House of Commons, increased without any visible cause, or known success, or advantage of any kind, real or pretended, obtained to the public from the cares of the late administration;--increased, I say, from a small doubtful few in the disapprobation of the peace, to a steady, triumphant majority of one hundred and fourteen in the business of the East-India Company; gives no note or appearance of a present bankruptcy in the Company's affairs; but to those that do not know the incorruptible integrity and disinterestedness of the British legislative bodies, gives an ugly hint and surmise of what is likely to happen in future. Of bankruptcy I need say no more; it confutes itself. The next plea is humanity, and a wish to restore in India a better and a juster system of government, less rapacious, and less oppressive to the natives. This is certainly a fair and generous object; but how do the means correspond with the end, or, what solid proof have we that excesses do exist, or, at least, have been carried to the singular and unnatural extent each parliamentary declaimer is pleased to assign to them? Having forced the Company to bear a share in all the foolish wars Britain involved herself in, money must be found. The smooth swindling methods of funding, without giving the creditors adequate securities for either principal or interest, are not practicable in Cina. Self-preservation enforced the necessity of violence, more obnoxious in the beginning, but, perhaps, in the end, less ruinous than the soft, sly deceits of Europe. Those violent measures, palliated by the necessity of self-preservation, excepted, what remains but an _ex parte_ charge, in Reports to the House of Commons, curious and voluminous indeed, but without confrontation of the accused, or any other necessary preliminary to condemnation, sought by private equity, or required by public justice? We have only an inform mass of matter, where disappointment, vanity, and malevolence, are too often prompted by management and design to accuse, and every accusation is held forth as compleat evidence of guilt. Indeed, some accounts scattered through the vast abyss of eastern manners and customs, make by much the most useful and entertaining part of this exceedingly tedious farrago; though in this part it falls far short in beauty of style and composition, and probably does not much exceed in veracity, the Arabian Night's Entertainments.--But grant that