Page:A Comprehensive History of India Vol 1.djvu/310

 27(i

HISTORY OF INDIA.

[Book II.

A.D. 1654

Conipou- sation awarded to the Company.

Its insignifi- cantamoiuit.

In tliu treaty drawn up on this occasion the claims of the Company were not forgotten. By the twenty-seventli article, it was agreed: — "That the Lords the States-general of the United Provinces shall take care that jas- tice be done upon those who were partakers or accomplices in the massacre of the English at Amboyna, as the republic of England is pleased to term that fact; provided any of them be living." By the thirtieth aiticle, four com mi.s- sioners were to be named on both sides to meet at London, and "to examine and distinguish all those losses and injurys, in the year 1611 and after to the 18th of May, 1652, according to the English style, as well in the East Indies as in Greenland, Muscovy, Brazil, or wherever else either party complains of having received them from the other; and the particulars of all those injuiys and damages shall be exhibited to the said commissioners so nominated before the aforesaid 18th of May, with this restriction, that no new ones shall be admitted after that day." Should the commissioners not come to an agreement within three months, the wliole case was to be submitted "to the judgment and arbitration of the Swiss Cantons," who were authorized for that puii^ose to delegate commissioners, whose decision, given within six months, should " bind both parties, and be well and truly performed." At the first meeting of the commissioners, held on the 30th of August, 1654, the English Company .stated their damages at £2,695,999, 15s. Strange to say, the Dutch contrived to exceed this amount, and stated theirs at £2,919,861, 3s. 6d. Both statements were supported by a series of accounts ; but the commissioners .soon became satisfied that little dependence was to be placed upon them, and within the three months pronomiced an award, of which the principal findings were that the island of Polaroon should be restored to the English, and that the Dutch Company should pay to the London Company the sum of £85,000, and to the heirs or executors of the sufferers at Ambovna the sum of £3615.

It seems to be admitted that the award was fairly made ; and therefore, when the comparatively paltry amount of the compensation is considered, it is difficult to account for the loud outcry which the Company had continued without interruption from the first years of their existence to make again.st the Dutch, as the main authors of all the calamities which befell them. Sm'ely less clamour might have siifficed, when the object merely was to obtain redi^ess for losses which, spread over the course of nearly half a centmy, had only reached the aggregate amount of £85,000. When the sum was paid, many questions arose as to the mode in which it was to be apportioned among the proprietors of the different stocks by which the voyages of the Company had been fitted out. A protracted and ruinous litigation might have ensued, had not Cromwell alarmed all the claimants, and united them as in a common danger, by proposing that in the meantime the money should remain ^ath him as a loan. The Company pleaded the general state of their affaii's, and the deores.sed circumstances of many of the indi^^.dual claimants, as reasons