THE EAST INDIA QUESTION — MR. BUCKINGHAM'S LECTURES. MR. BUCKINGHAM has returned
to town, where he means to repeat his lectures on Egypt and Southern Asia, and on the monopoly of the East India Company. In his tour, as was to be anticipated, he has made numerous converts, and organized a formidable opposition to a corporation which in its day has been more powerful than any other that the world has witnessed. To free trade to China and in India, which Mr. BUCKINGHAM so earnestly advocates, we are decidedly friendly ; but we are not called on alter to vouch for all the facts, or to approve of all the arguments he may make use of in endeavouring to esta- blish his principles. It is enough for us that his object is desirable and attainable. One point the warmest stickler for the Companymust allow: since the great question of the renewal of the Charter must be gone into in a year or two, it is fit that the nation should come to the dis- cussion with every possible facility for a sound judgment on its merits. The lectures of Mr. BUCKINGHAM tend to bestow such facilities, not only by the information they afford, but by the information they elicit. Mr. BUCKINGHAM has the merit of having set the people of England a thinking on this important subject ; and the result, we have no doubt, will be its settlement on a basis more rational and more to the advan- tage both of India and Britain, than the it tereourse of the two coun- tries has yet: rested on.
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