Value of Imports and Exports of New Hampshire, from 1791 to 1839.. Vessels built at Portsmouth, New Hampshire, in each year, from 1829 to 1839. Comparative Arrivals, Exports, and Stocks of Cotton and Tobacco at New Orleans, 354 355 356 from October to February, 1841....... 388 Bill Circulation in Great Britain and Ireland. 388 388 Beet Root Sugar Trade of France.. 391 Bankruptcies in Paris in 1840..... 392 Growth, Export, and Consumption of Coffee for the last eight years.. 493 Prices of all descriptions of Cotton Wool at Liverpool during the last week of each 484 Commerce of the State of New York in 1840... 484 Commercial Resources of Ohio..... 485 Flour Inspections in Baltimore, for the last forty-two years.. Consumption of British Goods in Italy-Commerce of Egypt.. 576 Commerce of Quebec for 1839 and 1840.... 577 Tariff Regulations of the State of Yucatan, adopted by the Congress.. Tariff of Charges adopted by the Mobile Chamber of Commerce.. Tariff of the Republic of Texas...... Rates of Toll on the New York Canals.. 561 564 564 565 Passages of the Steam Ship British Queen and President in 1840.. 486 Number and description of Vessels which passed the light boat on Bartletts Reef... 487 Rates of Pilotage for the Port of Baltimore.............................. 568 568 Census of each County of the State of New York in 1830 and 1840... Census of each Town and County of Massachusetts in 1840..... Census of each Town and County of Connecticut in 1830 and 1840. Census of each Town and County of New Hampshire in 1830 and 1840.. Population and Productions of each County of Indiana in 1840... Circulation of the Bank of England in February of each year, from 1760 to 1841.... 282 Amount of Capital, date of Charter, and expiration of all the Incorporated Bank- Statistics of the Boston Banks.. 480 STATISTICS, ETC., OF INSURANCE. Statistics of Insurance in Massachusetts, for 1840... 489 Dividends of the Atlantic Marine Insurance Company, New York, from 1830 to 471 Economical Fire Insurance at Philadelphia......... Table of the rates of Insurance of $100 on a single life... Operations of the United States Mint in 1840............... Coinage at the Mint of the United States at Philadelphia in the year 1840.. Deposits of Gold for Coinage at the Mint of the United States, Philadelphia, 1840... 384 Annual amounts of deposits of Gold for coinage at the Mint of the United States 471 MERCANTILE LIBRARY ASSOCIATIONS. Syllabus of the Lectures before the New York Mercantile Library Association for 103 Twentieth Annual ineeting of the New York Mercantile Library Association.... Our Fourth Volume-A Few Words to the Public..... Note the Article on the Cotton Trade...... Note to the Article on Imprisonment for Debt.. 182 295 295 295 296 296 392 104 392 488 584 HUNT'S MERCHANTS' MAGAZINE. JANUARY, 1841. ART. I.-EAST INDIA, AND THE OPIUM TRADE. In the course of a few months, the fate of the British expedition against China will be decided. We think that a slight examination will be sufficient to induce every man whose feelings are not warped by national prejudice, to conclude that, however artfully the pleadings may be constructed, and however adroitly extraneous interests may be interwoven, the question at issue is, whether China shall be allowed the right of admitting into her ports the articles which she requires for home consumption, and of rejecting such as she may think injurious. In what way are the British possessions in India likely to be affected by the operations of the Chinese expedition? In what way is the attitude which the British government has lately assumed towards the Celestial court, induced by the relations which exist between the Indian colonies and the mother country? There can be very little doubt that, on the one hand, a discomfiture before Canton would materially shake the British establishment on the Carnatic, while the defeat of a Chinese army, and the humiliation of the imperial authority, would be the consummation of a system which would erect over the Asiatic continent the paramount authority of the English queen. But we believe that the connection which exists between the commercial relations of the East India Company, and the position which Great Britain has assumed towards the Chinese government, is far less distinctly understood. We think that it can be shown, that through the immense salaries and the inveterate absenteeism of the depend. ents of the East India Company, upwards of £6,000,000 sterling are annually transported from India to Great Britain; that the balance is still further depressed by the unequal operation of revenue laws which were framed for the exclusive protection of home manufactures, and through which the exportations of Indian productions have annually decreased, till now they are unable to meet the liabilities under which the country is placed through the exhaustion of its colonial establishment; that, also, the English government, in order to place in the hands of the debtor colonies sufficient assets to enable them to pay the demands against them, has encouraged to an immense extent the production of opium, under the hopes that it may elsewhere find a successful market; and that, finally, as a last resort, it has sent out a fleet against China, in order to open her ports to a drug which it would demoralize her inhabitants to receive, but whose free importation is necessary to preserve the equilibrium of the colonial trade of Great Britain. India has only one method by which she can pay the demands of the mother country against her. The looms of the Deccan have ceased; the muslins which at one time princes would have spent treasures to purchase, are outbid by English manufactures; and opium is the sole production which India can export, without interfering with the commercial interests of the East India Company. But in what way can opium be made useful to the English merchant? It would meet but little patronage in his own country, and on what other can he successfully palm it? We believe that it was as far back as the close of the last century, that it was suggested by a member of the East India board of control, in his examination before parliament, that through the medium of opium, which the Chinese were even then observed to consume with avidity, the exchanges against China could be reduced, and an article of exportation procured, which might easily balance the great importation of tea which must necessarily exist. We have seen how successfully the hint has been acted on. There is a whole province in the north of British India which is purple with poppy fields, and in 1836 alone, (the returns of which year are the latest which we have at hand,) the number of chests which entered Canton was 27,111, whose value is estimated to be equal, at least, to $17,904,248. The Chinese government protested and legislated; Commissioner Lin was forced over the heads of degraded mandarins, to enforce the revenue laws at the scene of action; but Commissioner Lin has found his vigilance entirely unsuccessful, and a British fleet are now seconding the demand of British merchants, that the drug by whose means they are to maintain the balance of their trade, should be allowed to poison the air which is breathed by his Celestial majesty's subjects. It is our object at present to examine the character of the British government in India, to review the means by which it obtained the ascendancy over the country which it sways, and to consider the probable operation of the relations to which we have just alluded. To those who have considered the history of our own colonial dependence, the features of the East Indian vice royalty must, after a little acquaintance, lose the foreign coloring that at first hangs over them. Great Britain founded her empire in India, it is true, by direct inoculation, while here the seed was cast upon the naked ground; but in both cases a system of culture was adopted which could rear the plant till its fruit was ready for the harvest. But in India, the complicated machinery of a commercial establishment, has been involved with the civil government. The court of directors, who may be said to represent the commercial interests of the company, consists of twenty-four members, who are chosen as the direct representatives of the proprietors themselves, and bear to them the same relation as exists between the directors of a bank and its stockholders. They have the right of proposing to the board of control, which is the representative in fact of the civil government, all such measures as they may think necessary for the welfare of their Asiatic subjects, and which, without their consent thus previously announced, would want the solemnity of laws. They are invested also with the exclusive supervision of the trade between the countries. Such is at least the theory of the powers which |