West India Company

“ Freedoms and Exemptions for the patroons, masters or private persons who will plant any colonies in, and send cattle to New Netherland, drawn up for the benefit of the General West India Company in New Netherland and for the profit of the patroons, masters and private persons. ”

“ Although the scheme to form a West India company was first broached in 1592 by William Usselinx, an exiled Antwerp merchant, it was many years before it could be carried out. The longing for a share in the riches of the New World conduced in the mean time to the establishment of the “Greenland Company” about 1596, and the pretended search by its ships for a northwest passage led to a supposed first discovery of the Hudson River, if we may rely upon an unsupported statement made by officers of the West India Company in an appeal for assistance to the Assembly of the Nineteen in 1644. ”

“ In the meantime, we have had the happiness to make a trial of short duration, it is true, but very strong in proportion to its continuance, in our Colony of St Eustatia, of the importance of the commerce, though not direct, with North America. The registers of the West India Company may furnish proofs of it very convincing to your High Mightinesses. In fact, their productions are infinitely beneficial to our markets ”

“ 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. ”

“ Those who wish to send goods to India are therefore highly indebted to the Company; and as to the imports I will ask the public only one simple question: Have East India commodities risen in price, notwithstanding the heavy duties and increased expences of ship-building, and every article relating thereto, so much as West India produce? ”

“ There can be no doubt that the Company had been managing their affairs with too little regard to economy. Their ships were fitted up with too much expense for the passengers. They were paying £40 a ton as against £25 paid by other traders. The East India Company’s ships carried much larger crews than other ships. The former used to have one man to every ten or twelve tons, though the ships engaged in the West Indian trade carried one man to every twenty-five tons. ”

“ III. That any great change must be attended with great danger, consequently we must not follow theory too readily, but pay great respect to practice and experience.
IV. That the public at large have no reason to complain of the India Company, as the articles brought by it [9] have not increased in price in proportion either to rums or sugars from the West Indies, where there is no monopoly.
V. That the merchants of Liverpool, Hull, &c. and the manufacturers in their endeavours to share the trade with London, are seeking what would be injurious to them. ”

“ It would be very unbecoming in me to suppose for a moment, that the East-India Company would hesitate to allow those privileges to their fellow-subjects which are permitted to foreigners in a trade, that is so much out of the line of their own commerce, and therefore cannot be injurious to it. ”

“ The merits of the East-India Company towards the nation are great and notorious. Whilst every other country has been taxing their subjects, in order to support their East-India trade, the English East-India Company has been the support, to a good extent directly, and in a very great and eminent degree indirectly, of the British finances ”

“ One of our largest trading companies also was fast growing, and was destined to lay the foundation of the grandest colonial territory which the world ever saw. Most of the companies which had previously existed were now gone down, or were broken up by the increasing aversion of the nation to monopolies; but the East India Company were every day acquiring fresh life and power. ”

“ Surely, if the foundations of the empire in both hemispheres have nothing more to threaten them, than whether the out-port shipping shall carry their cargoes home to their respective ports, or repair to the dock-yards in the port of London, the most timid politician may dismiss his alarms and resume his confidence. When the East India Company, by conceding a regulated Export Trade, have at once demonstrated the absurdity of all the predictions which foretold, in that Trade, the overthrow of the Indian Empire ”

“ Having thus seen, that the natives of India are in no respect averse to engage in commercial dealings with strangers, and that no prejudices exist among them of a nature to prevent them from using our manufactures; we cannot but be forcibly struck with the reflection, that no systematic plan has ever been adopted by the East India Company, to attract the attention of the Hindoos to the various articles of our home manufacture, or to stimulate their speculation in the traffic of them. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ To-morrow, before the shops and the counting-houses of our great metropolis shall have received their accustomed inmates, the greatest corporate body the world has ever seen will have shrivelled into an association of receivers of dividends. The great house in Leadenhall Street will stand as it has stood for long years, and well-nigh the same business will be done by well-nigh the same persons; but the government of the East India Company will have passed into a tradition. ”

“ Already we have seen something of the way in which the burden of India came to be borne—the British East India Company, which was purely a trading concern, being forced to take military measures, for the defence of its trading stations and for the maintenance of good order, at one time against the French who were aiming at the establishment of an empire and at another against the native rulers, or rather the mis-rulers, of the Indian States. ”

“ Only wealthy joint-stock companies could equip armed merchantmen, build forts and factories, and sustain by arms the settlements which they had made. To allow intruders, after such outlay was incurred, might be chivalrous, but was not, according to the ideas of the time, at all business-like. But in the end, settlements of this kind for mere business purposes are never successful. The Dutch East India Company became like the English company, an empire, with conquests, with revenues derived from taxes, with the mechanism of government, with rulers and subjects. ”

“ The spirit of enterprise was as busy [5] amongst the British as in after years. One factor urged the Company to send ships up the river Indus and open up a trade with Central Asia; whilst another tried to persuade the Great Mogul to lay down leaden pipes from the river Jumna to the city of Ajmere, a distance of more than two hundred miles, in order to convey drinking-water to the imperial palace in the heart of Rajputana.
Factory life.
In those early days no British ladies were allowed to reside in India. ”

“ That if any manufacturer or merchant can find out an article that will sell in India, the company so far from preventing his doing so, afford him facilities not otherwise attainable. No mistake can in fact be greater than to say, with the uninformed and misled public, that the East India Company is a monopoly, and injures trade by preventing our merchants and manufacturers from having a scope for their capital and industry. ”

“ Great Britain has possessions in the West-Indies; but they are of the most insignificant importance when compared with the trade of the many islands and countries near them, which she does not possess, and with the Central American, Californian, Mexican, Peruvian, Chilian, New-Granadian, Venezuelan, and Spanish markets, which she controls and uses. So with India and the Mauritius. It is a matter of sore satisfaction that she is compelled to govern them as a means of reaching their rich trade, which, however rich, is far less important than that of China for which she so strives. ”

“ The East India Company, after fighting and conquering in India for two centuries, have found themselves, at the dissolution of their charter, nearly fifty millions in debt; while their trade with China, a country in which they did not possess a foot of land, had become the richest commerce in the world! ”

“ X. The patroons and colonists shall be privileged to send all their people and effects thither, in ships belonging to the Company, provided they take the oath and pay the Company for bringing over the people according to the first article, and for freight of the goods five per cent cash of the cost of the goods here; without including herein, however, cattle and agricultural implements, which the Company is to carry over free, if there is room in its ships, provided that the patroons, at their own expense, fit up places for the cattle and furnish everything necessary for their support. ”

“ For many years he excluded the Missionary of the Cross from his domains in the East, lest that good man should, by teaching the people, disturb the revenue of the Honourable East India Company. As the domains of this great company extended and its powers multiplied, the English nation gradually came to realize their own responsibility as a people to the land ”

“ We know that the West-Indians are always indebted to our merchants, and that the value of every shilling of West India produce is English property. So that our import from them, and not our export, ought always to be considered as their true value; and this corrective ought to be applied to all general balances of our trade, which are formed on the ordinary principles. ”