THIS edifice is situated on the south side of Leadenhall Street, and comprises the principal offices of the East India Company. It was originally founded in the year 1726, but was so much altered and enlarged, about twenty years since, under the superintendence of Mr. Jupp, architect to the company, as to become an entire new building. The front, composed of stone, is very extensive, and displays a general air of grandeur and simplicity. In the centre rises a noble portico, supported by six lonic fluted columns. The frieze is sculptured with a variety of antique ornaments, and the pediment exhibits several figures emblematical of the commerce of the company, protected by his late majesty, who is represented in the act of extending a shield over them, which, by a strange mistake of the sculptor, is placed on his RIGHT arm, while he bears a sword in his LEFT hand. On the apex of the pediment is placed a statue of Britannia; to the east of which is a figure of Asia; and on the west another of Europe. The inte rior boasts of several good apartments, particularly the sale-room, which may be justly reckoned among the curiosities of the metropolis. In this house the courts of the East India Company are held, and all its official and general business transacted. Several large and commodious warehouses are distributed in different parts of the town, where teas, and other imported goods, are deposited. This company was first incorporated by a charter granted by Queen Elizabeth, on the 31st of December, 1600, when the subscription for the purpose of carrying on their trade with the East amounted to 739,7821. 10s. : and some time after, by an additional subscription of 834,8261, the stock was raised to 1,574,6081. With this capital they established a commerce, by the Red Sea, to Arabia, Persia, India, and China, and various islands in the Indian Ocean. About the beginning of the protectorate of Oliver Cromwell, however, it being imagined that laying open the trade to the East Indies would benefit the whole nation, that commerce was made general, and thus continued till the year 1657, when experience having proved that the separate trade was detrimental to the undertakers, they were, for the good of the whole, united to the company by the legislature. But in the year 1698, a new East India Company was established, which caused the dissolution of the old company after the expiration of a certain term which was allowed for the disposal of their effects. This new company immediately advanced two millions sterling to government, at eight per cent. The two companies were, however, ultimately united in the year 1702, when a new charter was granted to them, under the title of The United Company of Merchants of England trading to the East Indies." And the old company had their share of the two millions. In the sixth of Queen Anne, the united company lent the government 200,0001., making their whole loan amount to 3,200,0061. In the year 1730, the company obtained a renewal of their charter from parliament, notwithstanding the powerful opposition which was raised against it by a considerable number of merchants and others, in London, Bristol, and Liverpool, who had associated for the purpose of overthrowing the old joint-stock trade, and of establishing a new regulated company upon its ruins. In the year 1744, the East India Company agreed to advance to government one million sterling at three per cent interest, in consideration of having their exclusive privileges prolonged for fourteen years beyond the term prescribed in the act of parliament passed in 1730. By the act which legalized this agreement, the company had authority to borrow any sum, not exceeding the million which was wanted, on bonds, under their common seal, at similar interest to that which they had covenanted to receive from the state. The war which broke out between England and France in 1744, produced an extraordinary change in the company's concerns in India, and ultimately led to their present territorial aggrandisement. The history of the military contests in India, under the direction of the celebrated Lord Clive, and afterwards of Mr. Hastings, Lord Cornwallis, and other distinguished characters, to the present period, cannot fail to excite a strong interest in the mind of a general reader: but even the bare enumeration of the principal events would be too voluminous for our limits: we therefore conclude the present article by stating: 'That the late bill which passed the legislature for the government of India for the further term of twenty years, took effect on the 10th of April, 1814. This bill limits the operation of the company's exclusive charter to places lying to the north of 11 degrees of south latitude, and between 64 and 150 degrees of east longitude. To other parts within the specified limits, ships of 350 tons burden may trade, and under certain restrictions bring all the produce of the East, tea excepted. Persons desirous of going out to India for commercial purposes, must apply for a license to the court of directors; and in fourteen days from their time of application, if it be not complied with, they may apply to the board of control, who may order the court, if they think proper, to grant a license. This act also acknowledges the duty of this country, as a Christian nation, "to promote the interest of the native inhabitants of the British dominions in India, and to adopt such measures as may tend to the introduction of useful knowledge, and of religious improvement among them." Sufficient facilities, also, are afforded by law to persons desirous of going to and remaining in India, for the purpose of accomplishing those benevolent designs, provided the authority of the local governments respecting the intercourse of Europeans with the interior of the country be preserved. SPANISH CRUELTY. IT may be safely affirmed that the whole story of mankind affords no scene of prolonged barbarity equal to 66 that of the cruelties exercised on the innocent Américans, except it be those practised towards the equally unoffending Africans. All the murders and desolations of the most pitiless despots that ever pleased themselves with the pangs and convulsions of their fellow-creatures, fall short of the bloody enormities committed by the Spaniards in the conquest of the new-world (a conquest effected by the murder of ten millions of the speciés, on a low estimate); and by the other nations of Europe engaged in the slave-trade. But although the accounts which are handed down to us of this dreadful carnage, and human misery, are authenticated beyond dispute, the mind, shrinking from the contemplation, wishes to resist conviction, and to relieve itself by incredulity. Even Robertson, the palliator of the early operations of the Spanish colonists (which he softens down into the tender expression reprehensible") admits that in the short interval of fifteen years subsequent to the discovery of Haiti (or Hispaniola), its native population was reduced from a million to sixty thousand. Oviedo, the apologist of Cortez, of Pizarro, and of others their fellows and successors, confeses that in 1535, only 43 years posterior to the same event, and when he himself was on the spot, there were not left alive in that island above five hundred of the original natives. Bartholomeo de las Casas, in the edition of his writings published at Antwerp, 1579, gives the following narration:“I once beheld four or five principal Indians roasted alive at a slow fire; and as the miserable victims poured forth dreadful screams, which disturbed the commanding officer in his slumbers, he sent word that they should be strangled; but the officer on guard (I know his name, and I know his relatives in Seville), would not suffer it ; but causing their mouths to be gagged, that their cries might not be heard, he stirred up the fire with his own hands, and roasted them deliberately till they all expired. I saw it myself" Although the Spaniards are without rivals for their 66 unhappy preeminence in this species of crime in the aggregate, yet strict justice forbids us to conceal that the system of negro slavery in the West Indies has produced some very accomplished tormentors among our own nation, and presents some historical anecdotes that furnlsh evidence of proceedings not very dissimilar in detail to the conduct we have just been reprobating. Bryan Edwards, an English colonist of Jamaica, and our most authentic historian of the West Indies, by way of exemplifying the courage, and elevation of soul which characterize the Koromantin negroes from the Gold-coast of Guinea [stigmatised by him as ferocity and stubbornness"] thus describes the treatment of certain of the most active ringleaders of a negro revolt which happened in Jamaica no longer ago than the year 1760:-"Of three Koromantins who were proved to have been concerned in the murders committed at Ballard's valley, one was condemned to be burnt, and the other two to be hung up alive in irons, and left to perish in that situation. The wretch that was burnt made to sit on the ground, and his body being chained to an iron stake, the fire was applied unto his feet. He uttered not a groan, and saw his legs reduced to ashes with the utmost firmness and composure; after which one of his arms by some means getting loose, he snatched a brand from the fire that was consuming him, and` flung it in the face of the executioner. The two that were hung up alive were indulged, at their request, with a hearty meal immediately before they were suspended on the gibbet, which was erected on the parade of the town of Kingston From that time until they expired, they never uttered the least complaint except only of cold in the night, but diverted themselves all day long in discourse with their countrymen, who were permitted, very improperly [in the opinion of this historian to surround the gibbet. On the seventh day a notion prevailed among the spectators, that one of them wished to cominunicate an important secret to was his master, my near relation; who being in St. Mary's parish, the commanding officer sent for me. I endeavoured to let him know that I was present, but I could not understand what he said in return. I remember that both he and his fellow sufferer laughed immoderately at something that occurred-I know not what. The next morning [the eighth] one of them silently expired; as did the other on the ninth day." After this, by no means solitary, parallel to the scene described by Las Casas, we perhaps ought to moderate somewhat of that self-opinionated warmth, with which we English are wont to condemn the use or abuse of power in the colonial policy of foreign nations. FORCE OF IMAGINATION. (FROM AN OLD author.) A GENTLEMAN of the name of Marsh happened to be riding out, when a horse in the staggers came behind, and taking hold of him by the breeches, lifted him out of the saddle, gave him a shake, and laid him on the ground, without bite, bruise, scratch, or any sort of harm. He related the circumstance, and, in a day or two, seemed to think no more about it. Three weeks after, the gentleman who owned the horse came to see Mr. Marsh, and told him the horse which dismounted him was dead of the staggers. Being at dinner when this information was given him, he laid down his knife and fork, and said, "Then he died mad, and I shall die mad too." From that time he fancied himself mad, although he had not the slightest symptom of madness. If he happened to yawn, he would immediately cry out,That is the way the horse died, and I am mad, although my friends will not believe it."" He would take nothing that was prescribed for him, saying they would answer no purpose, for nothing could do him good." Thus he continued for the space of four months, and then died. He was opened, but had none of those inward marks discoverable in persons who se their lives in consequence of being bitten by any mad animal; nor, when living, was he troubled with the hydrophobia, or dread of any liquid; but saw, and swallowed it without any concern; so that the judicious are agreed, it was fancy, not madness, that occasioned his death. A young man troubled with melancholy, had a strong imagination that he was dead. and not only abstained from meat and drink, but importuned his parents that he might be carried to his grave, and buried before he was quite putrified. By the council of physicians he was wrapped in a winding-sheet, laid upon a bier, and so carried upon men's shoulders towards the church: but upon the way, two or three pleasant fellows (appointed for that purpose) meeting the hearse, demanded aloud of them who followed it, whose body it was that was there coffined, and carried to burial? They said it was a young man's, and told them his name. 66 The Surely (replied one of them), the world is well rid of him, for he was a man of a very bad and vicious life, and his friends have cause to rejoice that he hath rather ended his days thus, than at the gallows." young man hearing this, and vexed to be thus injured, roused himself upon the bier, and told them that they were wicked men to do him that wrong, which he had never deserved; that if he was alive, he would teach them to speak better of the dead. But they proceeding to depreciate him, and to give him much more disgraceful and reproachful language, he, not able longer to endure it, leaped from the hearse, and fell upon their ears with such rage and fury, that he ceased not buffeting with them till he was quite wearied. And by this violent agitation the humours of his body altered; he awakened, as out of a sleep or trance, and being brought home, and comforted with wholesome diet, he within a few days recovered his former health, strength, and understanding. ✦ THE DEVIL OUTWITTED. TRADITION states that the mills of Luttrel's Town, near Dublin, were erected in one night by the Devil, for which, and other services, the person after whom they were called, made an assignment of himself, at a certain period, to his illustrious master. Several years rolled on in the acquirement of riches, and consequent estimation; for in the same degree that worth in indigence is shunned, from an idea that poverty is infectious, the multitude pay their devotions to the affluent. At length, the long-dreaded morn arrived without the claimant: with the approach of night, Mr. Luttrel began to believe what he ardently desired, that his quondam friend had forgotten him; but Lucifer, who, though sometimes tardy, is said to be always sure, and in every instance to require his own-at length entered the room where Luttrel was reading. 'Hey!' said the devil, with infinite surprise on seeing the Bible before him, What have you to do with that?'-Curiosity,' replied the other, 'induced me to look into a book, of which I had heard so much: I did not expect you so soon, and having a few lines to add to a work, calculated materially to serve our cause (a system of levelling or general equality), I hope you will allow me a quarter of an hour to finish it,' Lucifer objected on the score of inutility; he said it would be premature-that, strongly impressed with the recollection of recent calamity, the minds of men were not then to be incited to mischief An interval of peace, with its attendant benefits, continued the old gentleman, obliterates the sense of misfortune: at a period when all others, than those who, like locusts, feed on the industrious, and who exist but to destroy; who sicken to witness comforts to which their dispositions render them obnoxious; when all other than the indolent, the envious, or the abandoned, possess as much happiness as falls to the lot of mortality-I will put the planinto hands that will make the most of it-But you should not forget, that I resemble numerous divines, who never practise what they preach, and that though I may stimulate others to waste their time, I never lose my own-we must away. It was to no purpose he was told, he should not refuse a small favour to a person that had rendered him so many great ones; that had devoted a long life to his service, and who, even then, only required a few minutes for the purpose of still further promoting it. The old gentleman remained inflexible; upon which Mr. Luttrel, pointing to a scrap of candle on a save-all, said, 'I beg you will give me till that snuff of candle is burned out.' The devil could not with any grace refuse he reluctantly consentedwhen Luttrel, with the quickness of thought, clapped the candle into the bible, and closing it, said, Mr. Devil! you may go to hell this time without me; I know you have not power to touch this book, and I'll be d—d if I, or I believe any one belonging to me, will open it The devil attempted to expostulate, and talked of honour; but was laughed at for supposing, that the person, whom he addressed, could be actuated by such a vulgar sentiment. |