TO CORRESPONDENTS. The following Articles, prepared for our present Number, are, among others, unavoidably postponed till our next. Excursion in Switzerland-Relief for the Distresses of Ireland-John Bull in America-Correspondence of the Hardwicke Family-Parable of Persecution-Hazlitt's Journey through France and Italy-Licensers of the Press-State of Fort WilliamNewspaper Proprietors at Bombay-Army Commissariat in Bengal-Sensations occasioned by Fires in France-State of Society in India-Duties of Military Interpreters, &c. &c. An Announcement having appeared in the last Number of the Asiatic Journal, under the attractive title, Disgraceful Attempt to Purloin Intelligence from this Journal,” all that we think it necessary to say on the subject, is, that the facts there mentioned were quite as new to the Editor of this Work as they were to the Editor of the Asiatic Journal; that the intelligence there alluded to, was neither wanted for the Oriental Herald, nor would its use have been sanctioned by the Editor if so sought and obtained : in short, that the Editor of the Oriental Herald had no more knowledge of, or share in this matter, than the Man in the Moon. The party accused by name has himself, we learn, addressed the Editor of the Asiatic Journal on the subject: and to them must be left the adjustment of the dispute. AU that we need add to this Notice, and that chiefly for the information of persons in India, to whom it might not otherwise be known, is, that an Editor of a Periodical Publication in England has no more to do with the conduct of the Printers, at whose office it is executed, than an Artist has to do with the conduct of the person who engraves his pictures. At Messrs. Bensley's and Mills's office, where the Oriental Herald was originally printed, twenty other periodicals at least were executed. At Messrs. Cheese, Gordon, and Co.'s, where it is now printed, as many others may be undertaken. We have no property in the Office-no capital in the Firm-and no further connexion than that which is occasioned by a contract to pay a certain sum for a certain quantity of work done in a given time. We neither attend the office nor see any of the partners for months together, and know no more of their transactions than of any other printers in London. But if the Editor of the Asiatic Journal really imagines that it could ever be necessary for us to have recourse to his sources of information to fill our pages, he must know much less of our Publication than we had imagined. If he could see for himself the different degrees of eagerness with which the two Works are sought after, whether in England or in India, as soon as they appear, he might be convinced that, in the opinion of the reading world, there is nothing so peculiarly attractive in his pages to excite even a suspicion in any mind but his own, that they were worth cutting open to copy any thing from. 2 M THE ORIENTAL HERALD. No. 34.-OCTOBER 1826.-VOL. 11. CONSIDERATIONS ON THE RELATIVE DUTIES AND INTERESTS In a former article on this subject, contained in the Number for August last, we endeavoured to point out what were the duties of Mother Countries towards their Colonies. In the present, we shall endeavour to show what are the interests of the Colonies themselves, as well as what is the course of conduct towards the Mother Country which is most likely to secure the attention of the parent to its dependency, and consequently to promote the welfare of its inhabitants. Without going again over the ground we have before explored, we shall merely revert to the fact, that Colonies are in general either planted by discoverers, and brought, after a long series of years, from unpeopled wildernesses to highly cultivated countries filled with the descendants of those discoverers; or settled by emigrants, who carry with them the attachment natural to man for the country of his birth; or wrested, by fraud or force, from the aboriginal inhabitants, either by trading intriguers, or more open invaders who come with arms in their hands in professed search after conquest and spoil. In the first of these cases, it is the chief duty of the Colonists to see the natural resources of their newly-discovered country developed with the greatest rapidity and the fewest restraints. In the second, it will be their principal care to provide against an undue interference in the details of their self-government by the power from which they have separated themselves. In the third, it will be their constant duty to resist, as much as possible, the continual encroachment which all conquerors endeavour to make on the rights and privileges of those whom they have subdued. The earliest and most important pursuit of the first class would be the cultivation of agriculture and commerce; of the second, fortification, and the union of all classes for self-defence; of the third, a perpetual and never-ceasing endeavour so to combine the physical and moral energies of their countrymen, and so to increase their intelligence and patriotism, as to compel, by their union, those who Oriental Herald, Vol. 11. B 1 had overrun their country to respect their rights, and rule them with equity, from the continual apprehension that if they did not pay this just price of dominion, they would lose their possessions entirely thus extorting from their fears what their affections could never be expected to yield. The whole of South America, while Colonies of Spain, was in the first condition; and New South Wales and the Cape may be considered in the same state, as dependencies of England. The United States of America originally were, and the South American Republics, and perhaps Canada and the West Indies, now are, in the second state, having more to apprehend from legislative and armed interference from the Mother Countries than from any other danger. And India seems especially in the last condition,that of a captive and a slave, whose chief aim it should be to persuade or compel its masters to make its fetters as little galling as possible, from the fear of otherwise losing entirely all the benefits of its possession. Let us pursue a little farther the inquiry and comparison, as applied to the countries named: The discoveries and settlements of the Spaniards and Portuguese in the immense continent of South America, from Mexico to Patagonia, opened to the world more splendid visions of future wealth and greatness than had been yet presented by any event whatever. These possessions contained within themselves the seeds of every production, and the materials of every power by which nations are enriched, or the events of human life are influenced and directed. Exhaustless mines of gold, silver, and precious stones, sufficient to furnish the whole world with all that could be required of each for use or ornament; rich savannahs, a teeming soil, and the most genial climate for all agricultural productions; extensive forests, majestic rivers, capacious ports, and an endless diversity of inland country for production, intersected by the largest rivers for conveyance, fringed by the most admirably-adapted coast for commerce with the rest of the world: thus embracing all the advantages that the imagination of man could paint, or the heart of man desire. Directed by even ordinary wisdom, such possessions would have given to the people who inhabited them the utmost degree of abundance and happiness of which any country is capable, and to the nations who held them as dependencies, the most complete sway over all other states and kingdoms of the earth. To effect this, however, the greatest encouragement should have been given to agricultural improvement; the arts of Europe should have been introduced and encouraged in the dependent country; free scope and exercise should have been granted to the intellect of the natives, as well as of the settlers from home, so that mutual and reciprocal information and instruction might have flowed from active mental intercourse; and the commerce of the world should have been open to them, so that they might vend their own productions to the rea diest purchaser, and procure their own supplies from the countries which could furnish them at the least cost. If it be said that Mother Countries only settle and retain Colonies for some pecuniary advantage which they hope to derive from the exclusive monopoly of receiving the colonial productions at a lower rate, or compelling them to take their home-manufactures at higher rate than is paid for each by other nations; even then, the encouragement and freedom given would benefit the Mother Coun→ try more than any exclusive monopoly of either the foreign or the home supply and supposing pecuniary gain to be the only object, though there are many other powerful considerations which often equal, and sometimes surpass this in importance, even this would be more readily obtained by permitting the Colony to grow rich from the full development of its resources in an unfettered commerce, thus enabling it to pay a tribute for protection, which, being rich, would be lightly felt by all, but which, when exacted by monopolies from nations already poor, are felt as intolerable burthens. What was the course pursued with respect to South America? The Spaniards, ignorantly conceiving that all wealth consisted in gold and silver, at however great expense of labour and materials they might be raised from the bowels of the earth, first applied all their power to the production of these metals, to the neglect of agriculture, which, if pursued in those colonies, might have made them the source of supply for raw materials to all the world; and to the neglect of manufactures, which, if pursued at home, might have made Spain equal in wealth and power to the most favoured country under heaven. Next to the folly of directing exclusive attention to the creation of what is only the sign instead of the substance of wealth, was the preposterous notion that keeping all the gold and silver thus raised, within the Spanish dominions, was the way to make themselves rich: and that preventing other nations from interchanging the products of their industry, for this gold and silver, was the way to keep them poor! Both these causes were, however, so insufficient to produce the desired effect, that instead of the national resourses being increased, they diminished with every succeeding year, and compelled the mother country to resort to a worse expedient than even the two preceding, namely, attempting a monopoly of particular branches of trade by prohibiting all but the King from buying or selling the royally privileged articles, and laying such disproportionately heavy duties on every other branch of trade, as to amount to an actual suspension of all commerce except through contraband channels. The King was the only man in his dominions who could legally trade in the colonial produce of tobacco and snuff; yet notwithstanding the immoderate use of these two articles by every individual in his dominions above the age of ten, and the extensive consumption thus given to an article of regal traffic, in a country where all trading is looked down upon by the aristrocracy of the land with more contempt than in any other country of Europe-all would not do. Notwithstanding the enormous duties imposed on the manufactures of every nation that attempted to supply the colonies of Spain with goods-amounting to one-third of the whole cargo imported, or 333 per cent. on the value, which was exacted from every ship casting anchor in a colonial port, and whether the cargo were offered for sale or notindependently of enormous port charges and other exactions-the revenue continually declined; and the whole country was transformed into one vast multitude of smugglers and revenue officers, cruizers by sea and banditti by land, by whom alternate seizures and rescues of contraband goods, from store-houses guarded by the King's own troops, were constantly occurring, in defiance of authority, and in the open day. The extent to which this existed, and the manner in which all classes of society were engaged in carrying it on, must have been seen to be conceived. We will mention only two particular features of it which fell under our own personal notice, and to which we can therefore speak with accuracy and confidence. During the frequent intercourse of the King's packets from Falmouth with Corunna, Lisbon, Cadiz, and Oporto, though it is the especial and exclusive duty of these ships to carry only letters and passengers, and although trading or conveying cargo of any description is strictly prohibited by the Post Office authorities under the severest penalties, yet not a vessel of this description ever left England without being literally laden with British manufactures for the known purpose of being smuggled into the ports of Spain and Portugal; and the object, as well as the mode in which it was pursued, was as well known to all the revenue officers of the kingdom as to the smugglers under his Britannic Majesty's flag themselves. The system of misgovernment in Spain had however so entirely corrupted all classes, that from the lowest to the highest individual in the country no one was above the temptation of a bribe; and the King's officers being thus purchased, were the most frequent and most powerful abettors of the illicit trade, which it was the only purpose of their appointment to put down. On the arrival of the British packet at any of the ports named, as at Lisbon for instance, she was met outside the bar of entrance to the harbour by an armed revenue cruizer, sent down on purpose to escort the packet up, and prevent her smuggling on shore contraband goods. It constantly happened, however, that a large Spanish or Portuguese merchant ship bound to La Plata or the Brazils was found waiting for the packet outside the harbour: and there, not merely in sight, but actually under the protection of the revenue cruizer, half the cargo of the packet would be taken out and carried on board the large trader, who either paid for the goods wholly in dollars, or partly in coin, and partly in contraband colonial produce retained on board the ship from her former voyage, and thus smuggled into the |