§ Mr. Houston presented a Petition from the Merchants House of the city of Glasgow, setting forth,
§ "That the Petitioners have, in common with other classes of his Majesty's subjects, been prevented from trading to the countries to the eastward of the Cape of Good Hope, in consequence of charters of monopoly granted to the East India Company; and that the Petitioners humbly beg leave to represent, that they are, by such charters, not only individually excluded from a most beneficial commerce, but they are deprived of privileges which they are proud to prize as their birth-right, and which, as no temptation could induce them willingly to relinquish, no payment is sufficient to purchase; and that, besides the manifest injury which such charters have produced on the efforts of individuals, they have necessarily had a similar effect on the national resources, which, under a free trade, must have become greatly more considerable than while the commerce is restricted and confined; the Petitioners, being convinced that such important truths cannot fail to produce conviction of the impolicy of any monopoly of the trade to India and China, look to the expiration of the present East India Charter with the confident hope of seeing a period put to any exclusive trade to those countries, and a wide field thus laid open to the capital, skill, and industry of British merchants and manufacturers; in this confident hope and expectation the Petitioners humbly pray, that no monopoly be granted of the commerce and navigation to the countries eastward of the Cape of Good Hope, but that the trade may be free and open, in the same manner as other branches of commerce, not only to the port of London, but to 196 all the other ports of Great Britain and Ireland."
§ Ordered to lie upon the table.