Page:History of the Indian Archipelago Vol 3.djvu/278

 262 COMMERCE WITH ing is sufficiently shewn in the example of the great commerce conducted by the Americans, and if farther illustration be requisite, our own free trade affords it. Shackled as it is, there has been yearly employed in it, since its commencement, a- bout sixty-one thousand tons of shipping. The whole trade of our East India Company, before it was interfered with by the former, was about forty thousand tons. The free trade is, therefore, half as extensive again as this. There ought to be de- ducted from the Company's trade, however, twenty thousand tons employed in the trade to China, and then the result will be, that the free trade, in less than four years, has grown to three times the extent of what the East India Company's at- tained in two hundred and twenty years. Having rendered this ample account of the er- rors of our former policy, it is incumbent on me to offer a few suggestions respecting that which ought in future to guide us in our intercourse with the people of the Indian islands. Their condition in social improvement has been pointed out, — the com- modiousness of their commercial position has been shewn, — and the rich variety of their native produc- tions described. The commerce of these islands is not only of importance in itself, but as the high- way to the greatest nations of Asia passes inevit- ably through them, and as they are connected with these by the strongest of all ties among nations,