Daily Prices of Stocks from the 20th of November to the 20th of December 1815.

SIR,-I am not of the number of those who amuse their fancies with the notion that the affairs of nations are capable of being conducted in such a manner as to avoid the recurrence of war. I am far, there fore, from expecting of the Company's government in India that it should restrain itself from all appeals to arms.

I believe that no state, the territory of which does not comprize a whole island, can long remain without enlarging or suffering a diminution of its territories. England is an example in the British islands. So long as there remained any territory to be added to her own, so long she proceeded in the career of territorial aggrandizement. Had she not done this, Wales, Scotland, or Ireland, would have added England to itself. England is now unable to give further extension to her frontiers; and the same sea which limits her ambition, gives security to what she actually possesses. Still her political advancement is not arrested. If she cannot add to the size of her islands, she can acquire further wealth and population. Every thing that is human is unstable; it is either growing or decaying; and in one of these alternatives must be found the actual state of the counAsiatic Journ.—No. II.

all

try. I deduce from these general positions, that nothing inconsistent with them is to be expected of the Company's territory in India; that its gradual extension, from its earliest beginning to the present moment, is an inevitable process, which no human strength could have prevented; that upon the principles which are applicable in every other case, it must necessarily have happened in this, either that the territory of the Company should be enlarged, or that it should be diminished, if not wholly lost; and that the same principles are still operating, and will continue to operate: so that this territory will always be tending to an increase, or to an extinction. I do not set it down, therefore, as an abstract political crime, that the Company's government, or the King's government, in India, has arrived at accessions of territory.

If it be true, that always excepting civil wars, wars are more frequent in Asia than in Europe, this fact must plead an additional apology for British aggrandizements. It is impossible for the most peacefully disposed to persevere in tranquillity amid restless neighbours: a view to security and self-preservation is often a genuine and unimpeachable motive to agVOL. I.

P

grandizement, and even to aggres

sion.

But, Sir, with these views to regulate our judgment, to check any visionary expectations of perpetual peace, and to convince us of the hopelessness of wholly avoiding Indian wars, it is still proper that we should look with a jealousy never to be exceeded, not merely at every Indian war, but at every acquisition of Indian territory. I have said, that our territory, since it has not decreased, has increased in virtue of laws which no human power can controul. This is true only of the tendency of those laws; for it is doubtlessly often within the reach of human wisdom either to moderate or to quicken their operation. Moreover, it is by the very aggrandizement of a territory, that we may give occasion to its curtailment. The grandeur of a state, I have contended, is always advancing or receding; but it is not always visible to every eye in which direction it is moving.

.

I should be ashamed, Sir, to dwell on these general propositions and simple truisms, if I did not believe that principles and landmarks like these are often of the highest value to us, in the determination of our conduct under particular circumstances; that they are like the fixed stars and constellations, toward which the mariner does not always desire to steer, but which equally enable him to pursue his course in any other direction.

With the same impression on my mind, I am anxious that those who can in any way influence the politics of India should have even further maxims of a general kind before them. Nothing more immediately points out the importance of such a study than the consideration, that some of the radical principles upon which those politics ought to be regulated, are precisely such as are diametrically opposite to the principles which ought to govern the

The

national politics of the state. British empire in India subsists wholly for commercial purposes; it is wholly detached from our primary national interests; and a variety of other circumstances contribute to make the civil and military policy, most conducive to its prosperity, essentially different from that which is demanded for the state at home. Now, nothing is more reasonable to believe, than that habit may imperceptibly lead an Englishman to overlook the distinction.

In spite of that pacific and purely mercantile policy by which we ought, and by which, it is to be presumed, we have been governed in India, a very short period has seen us involved either in hostilities or bickerings with Nipal, Candy, China, and it is now said, the Mahratta states. It is plain, from the opinions I have advanced, that I am not the person hastily to pronounce, that in any one of the instances thus cited, our Indian governments have been in the wrong. My aim is to fix attention

on these accumulated animosities; to hold them up to rigid examination; and, above all things, to agitate the question, whether in the most successfnl issue of our Asiatic hostilities, the British interests can be really served; and especially if that success is made to consist in the acquisition of territory on the Continent of India.

Of the necessity of entering upon the war with Nipal I profess myself incompetent to offer an opinion; but I think that I can clearly discern, in the occurrence of that war, a great irremediable evil: an evil not to be compensated for by any success in its issue; an evil which, no doubt, would have been great if we had been beaten; but which, perhaps, is as great, or greater, because we have finally succeeded. It has multiplied our enemies and our vulnerable points; it has increased our territorial cares, and exposed

us to new foreign vexations; it has drawn us further from our supplies; it has laid the foundation of new wars; it has added to our temptations to aggrandizement; in a word, the exemption from this evil would have been cheaply purchased, we may believe, by many sacrifices.

Not the least of the evils of the Nipal war, and its success, is the tendency of both to bring us into near contact with the frontiers of China. It appears from some missionary statements, that our north-eastern territory has already stretched to within a fortnight's journey of the borders of that empire. In the quarrel with China which first introduced an Englishman to the north of the mountains of Nipal, a Chinese army encamped on the hills that command a prospect of the valley of the Ganges.* Now, every approximation of our territory, every advance toward the sphere of action of the Chinese government, is filled with danger in a variety of forms. The precarious existence of our trade at Canton needs no additional occasions of difficulty on the landside; and the near contact might become fatal to us in a territorial view, whether its first fruits were conquests on the Chinese part, or on our own. The continuance of an intermediate country, serving as a common barrier to the two empires, is earnestly to be wished for.

Of the disputes at Canton, now said to be happily subsided, I shall speak with as little decision as of those with Nipal. It should be observed, in the meantime, that our intercourse with China is altogether peculiar in its nature, and that our policy should be adapted accordingly. Much is said of the haughtiness of the Chinese government; but is not the manner

* See the preface to Kirkpatrick's Account of Nepaul.

in which we court its trade an act of extreme, though irreproachable humility? and is it inconsistent that our whole demeanour should have a certain correspondence with it? In the great diversity of situation, a policy which would be highly censurable, if adopted by Great Britain toward any power of Europe, may be very commendable in its intercourse with China.

But, we are told, at present, that our war with the Mahrattas is a consequence of that with Nipal. I shall not suffer myself to quote, and much less to comment on the causes of this new war, such as they are at present rumoured by the public voice; but content myself with remarking that it is in this manner one war rises out of another, and therefore the greater the necessity to avoid fanning the first flame.

The war in Ceylon has a character of its own. It was not the Company's war, and it may lead to no evil consequences. Still the principle is to be examined. We have heard a good deal of the barbarous character of the king, and all this is truly lamentable; but we are not to constitute ourselves avengers or guardians of the globe, and make the existence of wrong an universal pretext for war. A position equally ridiculous and frightful has been recently defended from the English press; namely, that a nation or a sovereign, doing that which is contrary to the law of nature, gives occasion of war to a party, otherwise no interested than as all mankind are interested in whatever is good or bad upon the earth; and that he may be treated as a common enemy, hostis humani generis.* The truth is, that every independent nation is to judge of the law of nature for itself; and that to justify war upon the simple assertion of the belligerent, that the nation or sove

*See a pamphlet on the Spanish slavetrade.