Page:History of the Indian Archipelago Vol 3.djvu/296

 280 COMMERCE WITH this country to Bengal, and also to China, which is a voyage that does not take more time ; about L. 9 to Bombay, and probably about L. 8 to Bata- via, or any other port to the western extremity of the Indian Archipelago. The voyage to the more eastern portions of it, should a free trade be open- ed with them, will probably be as expensive as that to Bengal or to China. It will be instructive to compare these results of the free trade with the system on which the East India Companies have conducted their commerce. In the earlier and more successful periods of their trade, they employed ships of small size like other merchants, but in the progress of the monopoly system, they increased the size of their shipping, and thus added to their expence and risk. The ordinary sizes of our East Indiamen are 800 and 1200 tons, a class of shipping which cannot, in the nature of things, be built proportionably as strong as smaller vessels, and to which the greater number of the Indian rivers are inaccessi- ble, from the depth of water they draw. Wlienever exclusive privileges are conferred up- on a trade, and the wholesome correctives of indi- vidual interest and intelligence are removed from its direction, the abuse of constructing such huge and unmanageable vessels seems almost inevitably to creep in, perhaps from pure ostentation, a pas- sion to which the private merchant can aiFord to