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.
It was under the direction of their own proprietary, uncontrouled by parliament, that the Company rose to an unexampled height of wealth and prosperity: since the interference of parliament, their affairs have declined. Possibly now the patronage is so valuable and extensive, their constitution may be defective, by the too immediate dependence of the directors on the proprietors, who, by their brigues and cabals, overawe, and often make abortive the best intentions of the directors. But matters of charter and property are of so difficult and delicate a nature, that it is hard to say, whether any attempt to remedy this might not do more harm than good.
It is related, that Monsieur Colbert, Lewis the Fourteenth's very able minister of commerce and finance, and to whose memory France stands much indebted, called an assembly of the most eminent men in the French king's dominions in the commercial line, to whom he proposed the consideration, if any, and what advantages might accrue to commerce by the interference of Government. The unanimous answer of the assembly was, _Laisser le faire_, let it alone.