gatives of sovereignty, which were hardly ever
known before to be parted with to any subjects, and which in several
states were not wholly intrusted to the prince or head of the
commonwealth himself, were given to the East India Company. That Company
acquired these powers about the end of the reign of Charles the Second;
and they were afterwards more fully, as well as more legally, given by
Parliament after the Revolution. From this time, the East India Company
was no longer merely a mercantile company, formed for the extension of
the British commerce: it more nearly resembled a delegation of the whole
power and sovereignty of this kingdom sent into the East. From that time
the Company ought to be considered as a subordinate sovereign power:
that is, sovereign with regard to the objects which it touched;
subordinate with regard to the power from whence its great trust was
derived.

Under these successive arrangements things took a course very different
from their usual order. A new disposition took place, not dreamt of in
the theories of speculative politicians, and of which few examples in
the least resembling it have been seen in the modern world, none at all
in the ancient. In other instances, a political body that acts as a
commonwealth was first settled, and trade followed as a consequence of
the protection obtained by political power; but here the course of
affairs was reversed. The constitution of the Company began in commerce
and ended in empire. Indeed, wherever the sovereign powers of peace and
war are given, there wants but time and circumstance to make these
powers supersede every other. The affairs of commerce will fall at last
into their proper rank and situation. However primary in their original
intention, they will become secondary. The possession, therefore, and
the power of assertion of these great authorities coinciding with the
improved state of Europe, with the improved state of arts in Europe,
with the improved state of laws, and, what is much more material, the
improved state of military discipline, more and more perfected every day
with us,--universal improvement in Europe coinciding with the general
decay of Asia, (for the proud day of Asia is passed,) this improvement
coinciding with the relaxation and dissolution of the Mogul government,
with the decline of its warlike spirit, with the total disuse of the
ancient strictness of the military discipline established by Tamerlane,
the India Compan