An Egyptian's Description of Paris........................ Hindu Metaphysics, No. I.-Dialogue between a Brahmin and an Euro- Shipping Lists, London Markets, &c. &c........ List of the East-India Directors, 1833............ Debates at the East-India House on the Renewal of the Company's THE ASIATIC JOURNAL. MAY-AUGUST, THE EAST-INDIA QUESTION. THE government-project, for the adjustment of this most important question, comes before the British nation under the following extraordinary circumstances. First, It is directly hostile to the evidence which has been accumulated, during two or three years past, by several Parliamentary Committees, variously composed, appointed under administrations of opposite political principles, to collect facts expressly for the guidance of legislation on this subject. Secondly, The project is proposed and elaborately defended by a minister of the Crown, who has placed upon record* opinions, formed deliberately and with unusually good opportunities of information, which are utterly repugnant to the project he now brings forward. The latter circumstance, although it be a curious incident, will not probably be regarded as detracting from the merits of the project, because public men, instead of considering, as heretofore, a dogged and pertinacious retention of opinions, once expressed, as a point of honour and a test of principle, now rather claim applause for renouncing opinions; and it is undoubtedly absurdly unjust to preclude any man, whether minister or not, from the benefit of becoming wiser as he grows older. But every man, who honestly changes his opinion, ought to be able and willing to assign his reasons for so doing; every public man is bound to do it, in order that the nation may judge of their validity; and it is because we perceive so astonishing a preponderance in the reasons of Mr. C. Grant, when merely a member of the House of Commons, in 1813, and those of his two colleagues in office (Mr. Robert Grant and Mr. H. Ellis), over the opinions of the Right Hon. C. Grant, when President of the Board of Control in 1833, that we notice his recantation as an "extraordinary circumstance." We propose to examine seriatim the reasons assigned by Mr. Grant, in The speech of Mr. Grant, on the 31st May 1813, in Hansard's Parl. Deb, Vol. xxvi. p. 438, was evidently carefully revised by the speaker. Asial.Jour.N.S.VOL.11.No.41. B |