Page:History of India Vol 8.djvu/47

Rh Council, the nobility, judges, and gentry, and was furnished with an assured stock of £1,600,000. When, in 1617, the English East India Company raised its second Joint Stock, the sum of £1,620,040 was at once subscribed in London; and the records of 1622 state that goods bought in India for £356,288 had produced £1,914,600 in England. Here were two great commercial associations with power and resources quite equal to those of the minor states at that period.

But while the state of Holland was, so to speak, incorporate in its Company, the English adopted from the beginning, and preserved up to the end of the eighteenth century, a system under which the state held a position not unlike that of partner en commandite, taking no risks, acknowledging very slight responsibility, interfering occasionally to demand a share of profits or to lay a heavy fine upon charter renewals, and assisting the Company only when such a course accorded with the general political interests of the nation. Armed with a valuable monopoly, and left to their own devices, the English Company relied not so much upon state aid as upon their own wealth and energy; they underwent some perilous vicissitudes and performed some remarkable exploits.

The extent to which unofficial war was practised, from the sixteenth to the eighteenth century, by the roving nations of Europe, is perhaps hardly appreciated in this age of international law and ubiquitous diplomacy. If English merchants in India or the Persian Gulf had been obliged to refer home for remedy of