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distress by withholding from them what was their rightful due.-Mr Tierney also, though he delivered no opinion respecting the monopoly, spoke in favour of the petition, or rather exposed the injustice of those who opposed it. "The Company," he said, was a great commercial body labouring under distress, not brought upon them by vice or mismanagement, but by the state of the world; and they merely required that relief which Government would give to other commercial men under similar difficulties. He hoped their affairs might undergo a complete investigation."-The petition was referred to the Committee.-About a fortnight afterwards, Mr May 6. Creevey moved, in consequence, for certain papers, to elucidate the real state of the affairs of the Company. "The petition," he said, " contained a manifest deception. It stated the deficiency for the year at 2,400,000 l., whereas it was 3,000,000l. It stated also, that, after paying all their debts, the Company would have a surplus of 8,000,000 7.; while the foreign account was not taken into the calculation, and, when this was included, there would be a deficit of 12,000,000l. He said this as a member of the Committee, and from a document laid before it. He moved, therefore, that this document should be laid before the House, and for an account of all the loans made by the Company in India." Mr Creevey commented with some force upon the unfitness of appointing persons to be members of the Committee who received pensions from the Company, or were otherwise so connected with it, that they could not be regarded as impartial judges between it and the public;-there were, for instance, two Directors in the num

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ber, and Mr Dundas, whose father had been the author of the existing system. These arguments were supported by Dr Lawrence, Lord Folkeston, and Mr W. Smith;-the motion was opposed on the reasonable ground, that all the necessary documents would soon be laid before parliament, with the Committee's report; and, as the sense of the House appeared to be against it, it was withdrawn.

A

Shortly afterwards, the Committee presented their first report. It admitted a claim upon the public for something more than a million and half, leaving the demand for nearly a million more undecided upon; and it confirmed the statement of the petition, that the assets in England were ample security for any assistance to that extent which parliament might think proper to grant. frequent adjustment of accounts between the public and the Company was recommended as necessary, and its necessity exemplified by the dif ficulties which delay had occasioned to the present investigation. It concluded by saying, that the Committee were proceeding in their inquiry; that they were impressed with the necessity of carrying into effect reductions to a very considerable amount in the Civil and Military Establishments of India: and that this important subject had engaged the serious attention of the Court of Directors, and of their governments abroad.

In consequence of this report, Mr Creevey mo- June 2. ved for a copy of an exposition of the affairs of the Company which had been called for by the Committee, and given in accordingly by the Directors. "The first thing," he said," which the Committee had done, was to require this

general statement, which gave a view gloomy enough of the Company's situation. They then advised the petition; but in the petition the Directors forgot their distresses; they put off their Indian debt in a parenthesis, and made out a surplus at home of eight millions. Yet the petition, and not the exposition, had been adopted as the ground of the report! Delusive, therefore, as the Indian Budgets had been, they were nothing to the delusion of this report. He moved for the exposition, though he could well conceive that many of the members of the Committee would not much relish the idea of its being made public. The friends of Lord Melville and of Marquis Wellesley would not desire to produce a paper in which the Directors ascribed their distress to the Board of Controul, constituted in 1784, and to the Mahratta war.". The motion was objected to, because it was said the exposition would appear with the second report, and it was not put to the vote.-After the report was printed, Mr R. Dundas moved, that a million and half should be paid to the East India Company, on account of expences incurred by them in the public service. Lord Folkeston opposed it, upon the ground that the report was altogether unsatisfactory. He was not supported, and the resolution was agreed to.

A measure for the relief of the West India merchants met with a very different resistance. Feb. 24. -A Committee was appointed, upon the motion of Mr Perceval, to enquire how far it might be expedient to confine the distilleries to the use of sugar and molasses, and what other means could be devised for the assistance of

the planters. Their first report related wholly to the distillation, and recommended the proposed restriction both for England and Scotland; not for Ireland, because the peculiar situation of that country, the great prevalence of illegal distillation, the love of whisky, and the relaxed conduct and corrupt behaviour to which, it was said, the revenue officers have been unfortunately too much addicted, would render any such restriction fruitless. A suspension of all intercourse in spirits between the two islands, during the continuance of the restriction, was the best security that could be devised. In order to render the sugar spirit as cheap to the consumer as that which it was intended to supplant, a reduction in the duty on the wash was advised. But because, in the event of a superabundant harvest, the restriction might be found very hurtful to the agricultural interests of the country, the Committee recommended, in the strongest manner, that any bill brought in in consequence of their report, should con- . tain a clause granting a power to the King in Council to do away the suspension, and allow the distillers to carry on their trade in the accustomed manner.

No measure during the whole sessions occasioned so violent an opposition. It was argued, that the distilleries, by causing more corn to be raised than was necessary for food, enabled us, in time of dearth, to take this superabundance for food, and thus had the effect of national granaries. Those newspapers that were more especially hostile to the Ministry, caught at the occasion, and denominated the proposed measure, an experiment to sterilize the country for one year, an act to interrupt the rou

tine of crops;-a bill to create a scarcity of corn by discouraging the growth thereof. An outcry was raised by the philosophising agriculturists;—the landed interest took the alarm, and county meetings were called to petition against the restriction. This outcry was not less preposterous than selfish. It had been proved, that the annual importation of corn into Great Britain amounted to 770,000 quarters, the greater part of which supply was now cut off, nor was there any prospect of the former markets being opened to us. The annual consumption in the distilleries was 470,000; -by the restriction, this quantity, amounting to more than half the deficiency, was brought into use as food, while at the same time a material relief was afforded to the West India merchants by consuming their produce, for which they had at present no demand. No person contributed so much as Cobbett to set the public opinion right upon this subject; his coarse but vigorous talents were on this occasion usefully employed in exposing the folly, the sophistry, and gross self-contradictions with which the landed interest would have prevented all relief to the planters, without deriving any advantage to themselves, and to the plain, palpable, demonstrable, and demonstrated injury of the country. So strong was the opposition in parliament, (for many members seeing it so strong, seem to have joined it merely upon party views,) that on the question for going into a Committee, there was only a majority of fourteen. It was resisted pertinaciously step by step, but finally the bill passed.

May 19.

Three other reports were presented by the Committee in the

course of the session, all tending to the relief of the planter. In the second they recommended, either that the importation and use of foreign spirits should be prohibited during the war, or that the duties on them should be greatly increased. The manner in which the trade for them is carried on is by neutral vessels, with particular licences from the Privy-Council. They go out in ballast, (for any articles of British manufacture, or colonial produce, would render them liable to confis cation,) and they bring back foreign spirits, wines, and fruit, but no article useful to the British manufacturer. It is therefore both the policy and practice of the French government to connive at this traffic, and protect it. Any means of checking it would increase the consumption of rum. The Committee had thought of equalizing the duties upon rum and British spirits, but upon inquiry it appeared that this would materially injure, if not altogether ruin, our home distilleries.Such was the substance of the second report. The third related to the trade between America and the West India colonies, a trade which was made ruinous to the planter by the restrictions which fettered them. Rum and molasses are the only articles of their own growth which they are permitted to barter with the Americans; these therefore they exchange to great disadvantage when the American [merchant will take them, but in general he insists upon specie or bills of exchange. At least two-thirds of the supplies imported from America are thus paid for;-with the money thus obtained he goes to the enemy's colonies, purchases colonial produce there with the advantages that money

gives him; and then, under his neutral flag, supplies the continent of Europe with the growth of the enemy's islands. The Committee, therefore, earnestly recommended that the colonists might be permitted to barter sugar and coffee; and that stronger measures should be taken to interrupt the intercourse between the enemy's colonies and the United States.In the fourth report, it was proposed to reduce the prohibitory duties on the importation of refined sugar, which was eight guineas per hundred, and render it only equivalent to that upon raw sugar. By these means the loss from drainage upon the voyage would be saved, amounting nearly to one-eighth of the whole; the freight would be proportionately reduced, and the planter would gain from every hundred weight of sugar which he refined, materials for the distillation of nearly three gallons of rum. Admitting that this measure should injure the refining trade in England, to the amount of one half the capital, which was as it were incommutably employed in it, the compensation would not be

equal to the sum annually lost to individuals and the nation by the present system, in consequence of this oppressive and impolitic prohibition. A plan had been proposed for fattening cattle with sugar,if it should be found successful, it would then be necessary to inquire whether a drawback could be allowed on all that was so employed;-this, however, was only hinted at, because no conclusive experiments had yet been made. The Committee were clearly of opinion, that, if a practicable commutation of any part of the duty could be devised, it must afford relief to the planter, either by diminishing his charges to that amount, if the market-price continued the same, or by increasing the number of consumers, if it fell. In this view they recommended a regulation of the duty to be governed by the average price. They did not think it necessary to advise a reduction of the duty on coffee, inasmuch as a bill for that purpose was in its progress through the House.-This act was passed in the course of the session.

Cold-Bath-Fields Prison.

THE remaining proceedings of parliament may be classed under three heads,-1. the Alteration of Existing Laws; 2. the Reform of Existing Abuses; and 3. Projects of General Utility.

A bill was brought into the Upper House, by Earl Moira, March 11. for amending the law of Debtor and Creditor. He explained its object as relating to arrest on mesne process, and imprisonment in execution, in both which the intention was to shorten the duration of imprisonment; in the former, by compelling the plaintiff, where the writ was issued in one term and returnable in the next, to declare in the term of the return, and proceed to trial in the succeeding term; and, in the latter, by releasing the debtors at certain specified times, at the quarter-sessions, on assigning over their property in possession and reversion, and also rendering their future property liable, according to the principle of the cessio bonorum introduced into the Roman law by Cæsar, and adopted by Justinian. A similar law had long pre

vailed in Holland and in Denmark, where experience had proved its ef ficacy.-Lord Ellenborough said, in reply, that the creditor was more frequently an object of compassion than the debtor-that arrest was, generally speaking, the best means of producing payment or composi tion of the debt, and did produce that effect in five cases out of six:

that the bill was drawn up with great ignorance of the law, and was wholly inadequate to its object: and he condemned any attempt to innovate upon a long established law.This was ably answered by Lord Holland. "If the objection to innovation were to hold good," he said,

no change whatever, either in law or practice, ought to take place; and in fact their Lordships, and the other House, ought not to meet for the purposes of legislation. It was needless to specify the evils of the present system, they were so many, so apparent, and so notorious. Why were those frequent acts of insolveney passed, if the legislature were not aware that there was something peculiarly offensive in continued impri