Page:Craik History of British Commerce Vol 2.djvu/21

Rh which still subsists, and is popularly known under the name of the Levant or Turkey Company. By means of this company, the plan of which was that every member should trade on his own account, but according to regulations settled by the general court, considerable quantities of English woollen manufactures, and, at a later date, of watches, jewellery, and other descriptions of merchandise, were exported to Constantinople and the adjacent parts of the East, the supply of which with European commodities used formerly to be entirely in the hands of the Venetians. It is said that the ordinary returns of the Levant Company were at first three to one upon the investments. The year after the incorporation of the Levant Company, an English minister was, for the first time, appointed to reside in the dominions of the Grand Seignior, and authority was given to him to nominate consuls for the superintendence of the trade and the good government of the English merchants in the several ports. For some time the Turkish trade seems to have been one of the most flourishing branches of our foreign commerce. In a treatise published in 1621, it is asserted that, of all Europe, England then drove the most profitable trade to Turkey, by reason of the vast quantities of broad cloth, tin, &c., which were exported thither. The profitableness of the English trade with Turkey, however, in this writer's notion, lay mainly in the circumstance that our exports were sufficient to pay for our imports,—the latter consisting chiefly of "three hundred great bales of Persian silk yearly,"—"whereas," he adds, "a balance in money is paid by the other nations trading thither. Marseilles sends yearly to Aleppo and Alexandria at least 500,000l., and little or no wares. Venice sends about 400,000l. yearly in money, and a great value in wares besides. The Low Countries send about 50,000l., and but little wares; and Messina 25,000l. in ready money. Besides great quantities of gold and dollars from Germany, Poland, Hungary, &c. And all these nations take of the Turks, in return, great quantities of camblets, grograras, raw silk, cotton wool and yarn, galls,