[173] But this feeling was confined to a minority.

The public was, indeed, inclined rather to overrate than to underrate the benefits which might be derived by England from the Indian trade.

What was the most effectual mode of extending that trade was a question which excited general interest, and which was answered in very different ways.
A small party, consisting chiefly of merchants resident at Bristol and other provincial seaports, maintained that the best way to extend trade was to leave it free.

They urged the well known arguments which prove that monopoly is injurious to commerce; and, having fully established the general law, they asked why the commerce between England and India was to be considered as an exception to that law.

Any trader ought, they said, to be permitted to send from any port a cargo to Surat or Canton as freely as he now sent a cargo to Hamburg or Lisbon.