French East India Company

“ The chief changes were those tending to safeguard our West India planters and merchants against the secret importation of the products of the French or Spanish colonies into this country on Irish ships. He maintained the monopoly of the East India Company in all the seas and lands between the Cape of Good Hope and the Straits of Magellan, but allowed the Company’s ships to export goods from Ireland to the East Indies. Further, he proposed that the Navigation Laws, whether present or future, and the enactments261 respecting colonial commerce, should be equally binding on both kingdoms. ”

“ Of the great chartered associations which in earlier times used to monopolize the commerce to different foreign regions, the East India Company is the only one which demands any particular notice in the present period. While the others, as trade outgrew the need of such shelter and propping, were gradually losing their exclusive privileges and sinking towards decrepitude and insignificance, it was fast surmounting the impediments of various kinds, both abroad and at home, that had hitherto entangled its progress, and becoming every day more prosperous and more firmly established. ”

“ The East India Company rose from being a private venture of a few enterprising merchants to become a gigantic corporation of immense political power, with its own governors, its own cavalry, artillery and infantry, its own navy, and yet with its trade-monopoly and its unsurpassed “regular service” of merchantmen. The latter were the largest, the best built, and the most powerfully armed vessels in the world, with the exception only of some warships. ”

“ It is difficult to realise all that the East India Company stood for. It comprised under its head a large shipping line with many of the essential attributes of a ruling nation, and its merchant ships not only opened up to our traders India, but Japan and China as well. ”

“ With a simplicity, amazing only to those who are inclined to be vain of a superior wisdom—not their own but that of their wisest contemporaries—one of the chief reasons for establishing the East India Company was stated to be the necessity of providing against low prices of Oriental productions in Europe. ”

“ No nation can now turn them to any profit, but the English East India Company, more intent on multiplying the number of their enemies, and weakening themselves by spreading their inconsiderable force over new conquests, than creating additional profit by engaging in new articles of commerce. A settlement upon the river Frat, which never yet has belonged to any one but wandering Arabs, would open them a market both for coarse and fine goods from the southern frontiers of Morocco, to Congo and Angola, and set the commerce of pearls and tortoise shell on foot again. ”

“ For over two centuries the East India Company enjoyed a monopoly of trade, and in their eagerness for gain its members swallowed many an affront to their own and their country's dignity, for their relations to the Chinese Government resembled those of humble suppliants to the "Son of Heaven." ”

“ The East India Company thus not only built its own ships at its own dockyard, victualled them from its own stores, but conducted its own hydrography department. It was therefore positively unique in its monopolies and self-dependence. England has never had any corporation like it: and it is pretty certain it never will. ”

“ This capture was of great advantage to the English in several respects; because, besides the money they took, they learnt two important things; first, that those large hulks were not invincible; secondly, that the East India trade was very valuable: And this put them on the first thoughts of establishing an East India Company. ”