population, a population returning an annual revenue of 20,000,000 l. sterling, and that notwithstanding all the wars in which the empire has been engaged its debt at this moment amounts only to 40,000,000 l., being no more than the amount of two years revenue.  I do not say that such a debt is desirable; but at the same time I contend that it is a delusion on the people of this country to tell them that that is a body unfit for government, and unfit for trade, which has administered the affairs of India with so much success for so many years, and which is at length to be put down,—­for I can use no other term,—­upon the ground that it is an institution calculated for the purposes neither of government nor trade.

My Lords, there is a great difference between the East India Company governing India, and carrying on their trade with China as a joint-stock company, and carrying on the same trade as monopolists.  It was my opinion, and the opinion of those who acted with me, that we ought, in the first instance, at all events, to have endeavoured to have prevailed upon them to continue trading with China as a joint-stock company.  If at this moment, they had chosen to have continued to trade as a joint stock company, I would have allowed them; I would have adopted measures for the purpose of inducing them to do so, and to carry on the government of India.  It is perfectly true, my Lords, that the people of this country were, and are, desirous of participating in the trade to China; but I am not aware that they ever expressed a desire to see the company deprived of any branch of that trade.  But then, my Lords, the noble Lord asks, “how would you secure to them their dividends?” Why, my Lords, their dividends, supposing the trade had turned out so ill as the noble Lord expects it would have done, would have been secured to them, as they must be at present, by saving all unnecessary expense in India—­those dividends would have been secured to them, as they still will be, and as under all circumstances they must be, by bringing down the whole expences of the Government of the country.  But we had another resource—­we might have relieved the East India Company, trading to China no longer as a monopolist, but as a joint stock company, from a part of the burden of the provisions of the Commutation Act.  I cannot help thinking, if that course had been adopted—­or even supposing, according to the calculations of my noble Friend behind me, we had been obliged to abandon that course, by desiring the East India Company to withdraw from trading with China—­that they still would have been in possession of their capital, which might have been disposed of for their advantage, and they might have been continued in the Government of India.  I entreat your Lordships to observe, that such an arrangement would have been attended with this advantage, that they would not have had to draw their dividends from India.  One of the greatest inconveniences attending this arrangement is, in my opinion, the increased sum which must be annually brought home by remittance to this country from India, to such an amount that the inconvenience is very great, so great, that I very much doubt whether the process can be carried on; and it must be most prejudicial to the commerce of the country.