of servants, called writers, are confined to copying letters and bills of sale in the different offices; when they rise to the office of factors, they are made deputies, paymasters, store-keepers, &c. &c.; when senior and junior merchants, they are employed in subordinate settlements to record and execute the councils of interpreters; and when they are called to the government, all the knowledge they possess to execute the important trust is, the knowledge of the character of the different interpreters, estimated according to their abilities of drawing revenue from an exhausted and depopulated country.

Why are not the writers sent to the manufacturing towns to learn the state of the investments, to relieve the poor weaver from an oppression, which destroys industry in its source, and is the cause of all debasement in the quality, and deficiency in the quantity? Why are they not sent into the country to learn the languages, customs and tempers of the natives, to see how the collection of the revenue is formed, and to remove the baneful hand of oppression, which destroys and depopulates the farms? Why are they not appointed collectors? Is it that this knowledge might impede the interest of the superior agents, and that the mystery of making Asiatic fortunes might be exposed?

The pretext for not following the above system is, that the humanity and liberality of Europeans would not condescend to the base severity used by native agents to collect the revenue, and that there would, in consequence, be a deficiency. I hope there would; but this temporary deficiency would be like the operation of the flood-gate which diminishes the current watering the arable lands, but which swells the pool, so the industry of the laborers and farmers would acquire strength, if freed from the violent oppression of a cruel exactor, and would augment in the ratio of the justice and humanity of an honest European collector. To this also may be added, that the rapacious gains of a native collector would be sacrificed for the happiness of millions of our fellow subjects; and should a proportion of the public revenue be also sacri

ficed, I hope the country of England would not produce a wretch so infamous, as not to rejoice at the event.

The happiness of the natives placed under the immediate government of Europeans, would so conciliate them to their protectors, that their minds would attend with respect to the moral instructions that might be proffered; and the author of their animal, might with facility make them proselytes to intellectual happiness, by the light of Reason and the Religion of Nature.

The insatiable appetite of the monster ambition is most cruelly exemplified in the conquest of India. An island, almost in its physical and absolutely in its moral antipodes, forces one hundred millions of people to subject their will to ten millions, who can only take from them their property, but grant them no recompense of civil or political protection; and I think it demands no spirit of prophecy to foretell, that if some happy event does not break off this unnatural connection, the weight of this conquest will sink the island of Great Britain into an abyss both of political and moral misery.

To a person of observation, the progress of this event is already remarkable. This heterogeneous mass of power is of a dangerous magnitude to be entrusted to the executive authority, and it can be placed no where else without destroying the constitution, and suffering the legislative authority to partake of the executive.

This partition is already begun, and co-operating with the riches and interest procured from that country by individuals, has introduced a mass of luxury and corruption into the kingdom; which alone would account for the present state of party, where vice has thrown off all dissimulation, and has formed such an association of leaders, as no longer than twenty years ago would have so scandalized the moral principles of a virtuous people, that, so far from leading, they would have lost by their association the most numerous party that ever was formed.*

In some eventual ministerial arrangements of the late faction, it is said that the incongruity of their characters with magistracy was so flagrant, that they objected to themselves, and virtue forced shame from vice itself.

Who could ever have imagined, that the characters proscribed and declared incompatible to possess the rights of citizens, by a thoughtless and dissipated nation,* should be elevated to the sacred office of supreme magistrate, by a thoughtful and virtuous nation? This alone shows a progress of corruption, that nothing could have produced, but some sudden, powerful and immediate cause; and that is evidently the conquest of India. England, like a voracious glutton, becomes morbid with its insatiate appetite for power, which will induce a premature and painful dissolution.

The National Assembly of France have declared insolvents incompetent to enjoy the rights of citizens.

SOUTHERN ASIA.

COMPREHENDING

MALACCA, SIAM PEGU,

AND VARIOUS NEIGHBORING ISLANDS.

THIS arbitrary division of the globe I am induced to form from the prominent feature, which marks the minds of the inhabitants of those various countries, and though living under different climates, customs and governments, unites them in one common character. These are the passions of play and vengeance; and they produce the political phenomena of nations of rogues, assassins and

monsters.

These nations afford instances of vice, as difficult to conceive, and as wonderful as the mathematical problems of infinity. In a paroxysm of despair they draw the dagger, and indiscriminately destroy all they meet either friends or foes.

This despair is caused by their losses at play, which is exercised in cock-fighting; all that is dear to affection,

and productive of sympathy in savages-wives and children become the stake at that inhuman sport, which sinks the mind to a state of inconceivable depravity.

We know the effects of the dangerous vice of gaming in civilized countries; and all its subjects are assimilated in the moral character of these above-mentioned countries. Whoever attends the gaming tables in Europe, will see the duellist, with his dagger ready to plunge into the breast of his friend; and having not sold his family but done worse, reduced them to perish by distress and want; if he finds no relief by the death of his friend, turns at last his vengeance upon himself.

In these countries, where the greatest enemies of Nature are to be found; her doctrine should be first propagated. Their language is easy, and their conceptions lively, and as they have no bigotry, there is every reason to hope for success to missions, which might be sent to convert these most dangerous enemies to the peace and religion of Nature.

CHINA.

NOT having travelled into this country, I must form an opinion of this extensive and populous empire from the relations of historians and travellers. This, however, is as little satisfactory to myself, as it may be uninstructive to the public; but as there are no means to penetrate into this country, all entrance being refused to strangers, I must, in order to complete my moral account of the world, substitute probability for the certainty with which I have treated of those countries I have myself travelled into; and as a very peculiar habit of intimate observation of the human mind has enabled me to give a just calcule of the actions which I have seen, I flatter myself, that I shall present a probable, though conjectured estimate of actions seen through the medium of the narration of others.

This country communicates with European nations by their commerce alone, and has often sacrificed the great advantages it holds over those nations who trade with it, to a sanctimonious observance of its own laws. An instance of this has occurred in the late interruption of the Russian commerce, and another in the execution of an English sailor, in Canton, for the accidental homicide of a Chinese; to save whom, all the European traders united their threats and promises, but to no effect. Their obstinacy proved, that they would have sacrificed their trade, if the alarmed avarice of the Europeans had not delivered up the victim.

This conduct of the sovereign administration will appear a problem difficult to solve, if we take a view of the subordinate administration of justice and policy, which is corrupt and selfish in the extreme; but if we consider the frequent insurrections in China, and that the study of the government is to subject, and not benefit the individual. All acts of publicity are directed by the form of