ning of this movement to a once well-known merchant and
philanthropist of Liverpool, the late Mr. William Rathbone, whom some of
us can still remember having known in our earlier years. Miss Martineau
had probably good reasons for making such a statement, and, at all
events, nothing is more likely than that such a movement began in
Liverpool, and began with such a man. In London the directors and
supporters of the East India Company were too powerful to give much
chance to a hostile movement begun in the metropolis, and it needed the
energy, the commercial independence, and the advanced opinions of the
northern cities to give it an effective start.

{232}

When the time came for the renewal of the Company's charter, the
Government had made up their mind that the renewal should be conditional
on the abolition of the commercial monopoly, and that the trade between
the dominions of King William and the Eastern populations should be
thrown open to all the King's subjects. The measure passed through both
Houses of Parliament with but little opposition. Mr. Molesworth is
perfectly right in his remarks as to the different sort of reception
which would have been given to such a measure if the charter had come up
for renewal before the Act of Reform had abolished the nomination
boroughs and the various other sham constituencies. But it is a striking
proof of the hold which the representative principle and the doctrines of
free-trade were already beginning to have on public opinion that the
monopoly of the East India Company should not have been able to make a
harder fight for its existence. The wonder which a modern reader will be
likely to feel as he studies the subject now is, not that the monopoly
should have been abolished with so little trouble, but that rational men
should have admitted so long the possibility of any justification for its
existence.

The renewal of the Charter of the Bank of England gave an opportunity,
during the same session, for an alteration in the conditions under which
the Bank maintains its legalized position and its relations with the
State, and for a further reorganization of those conditions, which was in
itself a distinct advance in the commercial arrangements of the Empire.
Other modifications have taken place from time to time since those days,
and it is enough to say here that the alterations made by the first
reformed Parliament, at the impulse of Lord Grey and his colleagues, were