The East India Company and its Empire.
On the first of June next, the once powerful East India Company will pass out of existence, and its name and place will be known only in history. At that date, a balance of $30,000,000 of the capital stock, on which the payment of a dividend of ten per cent was guaranteed by the English Government, will be paid off, either by actual cash payments or by the stock-holder's converting, as it is expected they will, their claims into consols at the market price of the day. The company will then be formally dissolved. The career of the English East India Company forms one of the most extraordinary and romantic episodes in all history. Formed originally as a mere trading company, without any thought of conquest, its first acquisition of land in the vast country over which it was destined to hold sway was acquired by the purchase of a small trading post at one of the harbors of that country. It increased in wealth and ultimately in power, and gradually became involved in the political quarrels of the petty Indian potentates of the day, until within a period scarcely longer than the ordinary life of man it acquired supreme control of over a hundred million persons, and had in its service an army of scores of thousands of soldiers. A few dozen London merchants, in their capacity as members of the East India Company, held absolute sway over a larger population than was governed by the sovereign of Great Britain. It was an empire within an empire, with powers too vast to be allowed to remain long in possession of a private and partially irresponsible corporation. How and in what way the political power of the company was gradually transferred to the Government of Great Britain, and a limit placed upon its trading privileges, would exceed the usual limits of a newspaper article to describe. For some years past, this great corporation has been a mere cipher, and, a few months hence, a body which conquered and ruled over a population five times larger than that of the United States will pass away forever. The area of the British Empire in India has been considerably increased since the abrogation of the political domination of the East India Company. It now consists91of a total of 950,919 square miles. This is only a little more than one-third the area of the United States. But British India is much more densely populated than the United States, and numbers a total of not less than 100,000,000 souls, against our 40,000,000. British India, then, with a territory one-third less than the United States, has five times the population. Probably not less than 40,000,000 persons are indirectly subject to the British rule through tributary native rulers.—N. Y. Bulletin.