sed. To limit the amount of stock which might stand in a single name
would, he said, be most unreasonable. Surely a proprietor whose whole
fortune was staked on the success of the Indian trade was far more
likely to exert all his faculties vigorously for the promotion of that
trade than a proprietor who had risked only what it would be no great
disaster to lose. The demand that saltpetre should be furnished to the
Crown for a fixed sum Child met by those arguments, familiar to our
generation, which prove that prices should be left to settle themselves.
To the demand that the Company should bind itself to export annually two
hundred thousand pounds' worth of English manufactures he very properly
replied that the Company would most gladly export two millions' worth
if the market required such a supply, and that, if the market were
overstocked, it would be mere folly to send good cloth half round the
world to be eaten by white ants. It was never, he declared with much
spirit, found politic to put trade into straitlaced bodices, which,
instead of making it grow upright and thrive, must either kill it or
force it awry.

The Commons, irritated by Child's obstinacy, presented an address
requesting the King to dissolve the Old Company, and to grant a charter
to a new Company on such terms as to His Majesty's wisdom might seem
fit. [182] It is plainly implied in the terms of this address that
the Commons thought the King constitutionally competent to grant an
exclusive privilege of trading to the East Indies.

The King replied that the subject was most important, that he would
consider it maturely, and that he would, at a future time, give the
House a more precise answer. [183] In Parliament nothing more was said
on the subject during that session; but out of Parliament the war was
fiercer than ever; and the belligerents were by no means scrupulous
about the means which they employed. The chief weapons of the New
Company were libels; the chief weapons of the Old Company were bribes.

In the same week in which the bill for the regulation of the Indian
trade was suffered to drop, another bill which had produced great
excitement and had called forth an almost unprecedented display of
parliamentary ability, underwent the same fate.

During the eight years which preceded the Revolution, the Whigs had
complained bitterly, and not more bitterly than justly, of the hard
measure dealt out to persons accused of political offences. Was