Yet it is this point, which one of the parties interested affirms, to be "a question of the last importance to the safety of the British Empire in India, and of the British Constitution at home;" and therefore undertakes to resist it, with all the determination which the importance of so great a stake would naturally inspire. But, when we compare the real measure in question with the menacing character which is thus attempted to be attached to it, we at once perceive something so extravagantly hyperbolical, something so disproportionate, that it at once fixes the judgment; and forces upon it a suspicion, that there is more of policy and design, than of truth and sincerity in the assertion. That objections to the measure might arise, capable of distinct statement and exposition, is a thing conceivable; and, these being stated, it would be a subject for consideration, how far they were removable. But to assert, in a round period, that the safety of the empire in Europe and Asia is fundamentally affected in the requisition, that a ship proceeding from Liverpool or Bristol to India, might return from India to Liverpool or Bristol, instead of to the Port of London, is calculated rather to shake, than to establish, confidence in those who make the assertion. Yet this is the question which the country is now called upon to consider, as one tending to convulse the British Constitution. Surely, if the foundations of the empire in both hemispheres have nothing more to threaten them, than whether the out-port shipping shall carry their cargoes home to their respective ports, or repair to the dock-yards in the port of London, the most timid politician may dismiss his alarms and resume his confidence. When the East India Company, by conceding a regulated Export Trade, have at once demonstrated the absurdity of all the predictions which foretold, in that Trade, the overthrow of the Indian Empire; we may confidently believe, that the Import Trade will prove as little destructive, and that its danger will be altogether as chimerical as the former.
Whether the Court of Directors endeavour to fix that menacing character upon the proposed Import Trade, as a bar against any further requisition, is a question which will naturally occur to any dispassionate person, who is not immediately and personally interested in the conditions of the Charter; and he will be strongly inclined to the affirmative in that question, when he finds, that the reason which they have alleged for their resistance, is their apprehension of the increased activity which the practice of smuggling would acquire, from the free return of the out-port ships from India to their respective ports. It is not a little extraordinary, that they should so strenuously urge this argument against those persons, who, while they propose the measure, are themselves responsible for the good management and protection of the revenue; and who must therefore be supposed to feel the necessity of providing means and regulations, adapted to the measure which they propose. The Ministers of the Crown have not failed to inform the Court of Directors, that, in consequence of the communications which they have had with the Commissioners of the Customs and Excise upon the subject, they find that the Directors have greatly over-rated the danger which they profess to entertain; and they acquaint them, that new regulations will be provided to meet the new occasion; and that the out-port ships and cargoes will be subject to forfeiture upon the discovery of any illicit articles on board. Yet the Court of Directors still persist in declaring, that the hazard of _smuggling_ is _the reason_ why they will not grant to the out-ports an import trade; and this, through a fear of compromising "the safety of the British Empire in India, and the British Constitution at home."
