A review of the debate at the India House,--with the Directors, either silently withholding what they were enabled to impart in justification of the Government, or by the rhetoric of some of them tending to blow wider the flames of discord,--would almost authorize a suspicion, that the Directors were not displeased at the fever which their silence nourished. It is therefore earnestly to be hoped, for the honour of the East India Company, and more especially for the interest of the Proprietors, that some Director, or other individual, may, at the next General Court, strive to efface the memory of the last; who may call upon the Deputation, to render to the Ministers of the Crown whatever justice is due to them, for their conduct in the late discussions; and who may recommend a revision of the statement, in which they represent to those Ministers, that the terms on which Government have offered to the Company a Charter, are such as may "_leave their dividend unprovided for_," and "_create a necessity for their going to Parliament_!" For, unless they have brought themselves to a state to suppose, that Ministers and the Public have lost all intelligence, they must know, that both Ministers and the Public are well aware, that they are actually under _a necessity of going to Parliament_ for aid, as soon as Parliament shall be assembled; and that, at the present moment, _their dividend_ may, in strictness, be considered as _unprovided for_.
The writers, who have recently undertaken to defend and justify the opposition of the Court of Directors to any extension of the Import Trade from India to the out-ports of the kingdom, have laid a peculiar stress upon an opinion conveyed in that part of Mr. Dundas's Letter of the 2d of April 1800, in which that Minister was considering "the _agents_ to be employed at home; to manage the private trade of individuals from India, and to take care of their interests in the cargoes of the returning ships." He states his opinion, that "there is no use of any interference by the Company; that the great interest to be attended to on _the part of the Company_, is, that no goods come from India that are not deposited in the Company's warehouses; and that the goods, so imported, be exposed at the Company's sales, agreeably to the rules prescribed for that purpose."