In this view, and it is a just one, nothing but absolute necessity, and the sure consequence of losing the trade altogether, could justify the interference of Government beyond the limits already assigned, if even these could justify it. But this necessity is happily entirely out of the question at present: the Company anxiously desire to go on with their trade: a forbearance of duties due, is all they ask, to the extent of, I think, a million. If it was three times as much, Government would be mad, if they hesitated in the alternative betwixt indulging them in their demand, and taking their concerns into their own hands. The affairs of the Company have been embarrassed before; they have borrowed large sums from Government, which they have honestly repaid. Their surplus in peaceable times is very large; and if tranquility is any way durable in India, and the administration of the Company's affairs is continued in the hands of that powerful genius of resource, Mr. Hastings, I make no doubt they will extricate themselves with honour, and do justice to every creditor they have. I am at least sure, that this is giving the only chance of making them beneficial to this country; and it is what the Company is highly entitled to. I have often wondered upon what principle of policy one of our two great commercial companies should be the _enfant galé_, the spoilt child of every administration whilst the other was treated like the step-son of the state, with every mark of jealousy and unkindness. The merits of the East-India Company towards the nation are great and notorious. Whilst every other country has been taxing their subjects, in order to support their East-India trade, the English East-India Company has been the support, to a good extent directly, and in a very great and eminent degree indirectly, of the British finances; and in the late war the Company maintained alone, in their dominions and enterprises, the superiority which usually attended the British arms in every quarter of the globe; and at last, in the acquisitions made by the Company's arms, the material indispensable sacrifices to procure a necessary peace were found. Indeed, their expences in the reduction of Pondicherry, and the value of it, and of the other restitutions made to the French by the definitive treaty of peace, seem to me a very onerous and most just debt on Britain, and why they are not stated as such by the Company, I cannot see any shadow of a reason.