These profits for a company which has a capital of six millions sterling, and debts to the amount of 46 millions, are certainly not very considerable. Still they appear to be exaggerated. They are the result of the average profits of four years, which appear to have been more productive than the others. Several respectable writers affirm that the stockholders of the East India company do not gain as merchants what they lose as sovereigns; and this result seems confirmed by the loans which the company has often been obliged to negotiate, in order to afford a dividend to its stockholders. What are we to think of a company which borrows in order to make dividends! Nevertheless the partisans of the East India company maintain, that even admitting the East India company to be losers, still the company is useful to England. They say that a very considerable part of its expenses in India goes to the enrichment of the civil and military officers employed by the company. I agree to this. But the greatest part of these salaries are for services performed in India. These salaries are spent there, and add nothing to the power of the British nation in Europe. They say that the British goods to which the India trade affords a market, bring profit to England. I agree to this likewise. But if the capital and the industry of the British were not applied to the supply of the East Indies, they might be applied to other objects; and what could prevent the British from trading with India, and from selling there nearly the same articles which they now do, if they were not its sovereigns. This circumstance does not enable the people of India to buy what they can not pay for, or what does not suit their habits and manners; and if offered what suits them, they would be willing enough to buy it, although they might not be the subjects of the East India company. We must not, either, make too high an estimate of the British goods which find a market in the East Indies. Every one knows that the countries of the East value specie more than the goods of of Europe. I find that in the space of six years from 1803 to 1808, the exportations of England to the East Indies amounted to a total sum of 16,306,825 pounds sterling, out of which 6,286,344 were exported in specie, which leaves for the exportations in goods, 10,020,4817., and exhibits, upon an average, for every year an exportation in goods of 1,670,0801. | The privilege of the East India company, which includes the faculty of exercising under certain conditions a political sovereignty over the countries which have been conquered at their expense, or acquired in virtue of the treaties which they have concluded, and of enjoying in certain respects, the commerce of the East Indies, this privilege, I say, has been renewed several times, and as, in proportion as nations become more enlightened, they are more sensible of the advantages which result from liberality of principles, at each renewal of the privilege, the fate of the British subjects in India has been ameliorated, and a greater freedom allowed to commerce. For the most part, what has been said of the British colonies in India, applies to the other British colonies, with this difference, however, that govern ment, which exercises the sovereignty in the latter, but is not engaged in commerce, is not compensated by commercial benefits for the losses which it ex periences as a sovereign. The old colonial system will fall universally in the course of the nineteenth century. Nations will give up the ridiculous pretensions of administering countries situate at a distance of two, three, six thousand leagues, and when these countries shall have become independent, a profitable commerce may be carried on with them. There will be saving of a multitude of military and maritime establishments, that resemble expensive props applied to support an edifice which is crumbling into ruins. Such is, at least in its principal points of view, the situation to which the events of our days have reduced Great Britain. Conceive a great land owner, prodigiously active and industrious, who from his lands and the manufactures he had established, could make every year 170 thousand francs, but who has had the misfortune of marrying a spendthrift wife who actually squanders 260 thousand; in such sort that this poor husband, notwithstanding all his genius and his intense labour, is compelled to borrow every year 90 thousand francs to face his expenses. This is the case of England. I have only suppressed four zeros. But it will be said that the money lent to the British government is lent by British subjects. Is the burthen of the debt the less oppressive on that account? In such a situation of things there are but two alternatives. The one is to continue to borrow. But the power of borrowing depends on that of paying interest; and already, notwithstanding all the resources of fiscal genius, it is not without the utmost difficulty that the British government can afford to pay the present interest of its than I do to France, and to every debt, and this interest is increas- other country. The prosperity of ing every year. The other alterone country, far from being innative is to quit, under some pre-compatible with the prosperity of tence, or other, paying the interest another, as men are too apt to beat all, to enact a bankruptcy more lieve, is, on the contrary, favouror less imperfectly disguised. But able. then there must be an end to the faculty of borrowing in order to cover the annual deficit, and the whole of the political system must give way from the moment the government has become unequal to the expense by which it is supported. There is still a third expedient, to wit, a diminution of the expenses of government; and with a view to such diminution, Great Britain must desist from embroiling Asia, America, and Europe. But this is the course least likely to be adopted. I believe that I have neither disguised nor exaggerated the difficulties in which Great Britain is involved, for I feel myself free from all prejudice. I wish well to the British nation, not less so It is my design to record some curious facts, and great experiments in political economy, because these experiments occur but seldom, and cost immensely dear. They may, perhaps, suggest some useful reflections to well informed and well disposed men. Events merely succeed each other in the opinion of the common run of men. In the opinion of a reflecting mind, events are concatenated, and dependent upon each other. At times, the thinking man may perceive some of the links which connect the present with the future. He then knows of futurity, as much as it is given to men to know, since fortune-tellers, and judicial astrology, have gone out of fashion. THE STATE OF THE United Kingdoms of Great Britain and Ireland, AT THE PEACE OF PARIS, NOVEMBER 20, 1815. BY GEORGE CHALMERS, F. R. S. S. A. AFTER SO violent a convulsion in Europe, with its natural effects, a war of two and twenty years' continuance, it is a very reasonable wish, to inquire what has been its real consequences to Great Britain and Ireland, in the genuine sources of their energies, and their wealth. I-Of the People. In every inquiry of this kind, the people are the chief object: whether they have increased, or diminished, throughout so long a struggle, is a question of great importance. During the war of 1756, it was disputed, between Brakenridge and Foster, whether the people had increased, or diminished, and what was their amount? but without any decision. During the colonial war, Doctor Price revived the same question; but he was more successfully op posed; he insisted, that there could not be more than 5,000,000 of inhabitants in England and Wales: his opponents showed, from very sufficient documents, that there were, in England and Wales, upwards of 8,447,000 souls. These contrarieties of opinion were at length settled by the parliamentary enumeration of 1801, which, in opposition to the doctrine of Dr. Price, found in England and Wales 9,340,000 souls: but did the population con tinue to increase during the subsequent war? Yes; as the people had continued to multiply during the wars of 1756 and 1776, so did they multiply during the war of 1803; for the parliamentary enumeration of 1811, found, in England and Wales, 10,150,615. The state of the inhabitants of Scotland, at successive periods, gives the same result: in 1801 the enumeration found 1,618,303 souls in that country; the enumeration of 1811 found 1,805,000. The same observation equally applies to Ireland: the population of Ireland, when the Union was formed, in 1800, was supposed to be 4,000,000; by the late imperfect enumeration, in 1814, it appeared that Ireland contained near 6,000,000 of people. It is a fact, then, that the people of the United Kingdoms of Great Britain and Ireland have increased, during the late long wars, to 17,208,918 souls, and continue to increase and multiply. II.-Of the domestic enterprizes of the People of the United Kingdoms. The best evidence of those enterprizes, together with their extent, and of their increase, is the Journals of Parliament. From this record, we know how many Acts of Parliament have passed, session after session, for making local improvements of every kind, during These enumerations evince clearly three points: the first, that the energy and enterprize of the people continued to increase, without interruption, during those long periods of warfare; secondly, that the people, making those local improvements, turned their energies upon the improvement of their several districts; and thirdly, that the undertakers of those vast enterprizes found the means, and money, to carry them into effect, in their own industry, their reproductions, and consequent wealth. Ireland, in the mean time, has had her full share of those domestic improvements. ture | thirty years; and, consequently, is much more valuable, as a collection of farms. A Board of Agriculwas meantime established, for ascertaining the state of husbandry in every district; for energizing the husbandmen; for instructing all those who are connected with lands: their reports evince a very improving agriculture every where, within the king dom; and a very active spirit of improvement, upon better principles, appears to have gone forth in all parts of our country: hence, by a necessary progress, the body of the people, either as land-owners, or occupiers, became more skilful, more enterprizing, and more opulent; of consequence there was more land cultivated, with more knowledge, and more capital: so that from more culti vation, more skill and more capital, thus employed in agriculture, there were more of the products of land brought, every season, to market, from an improved husbandry, at home. But, since the demands of war have ceased, the prices of those products have fallen: this is a natural consequence; as price is always settled by the vibrations of supply and demand; the supply being greater, and the demand less, the prices must ne cessarily be less. Outcries have arisen in the country, as if our whole agriculture were ruined. Those outcries merely arise from the mutual complaints of landlord and tenant; of those landlords and tenants, who entered into improvi dent contracts during the war: there is neither outcry, nor complaint, in those districts where the landlords did not raise their rents, during the war, when it was idly supposed that rents would rise, without limitation. It does not, however, belong to my inquiry, to enter with |