Page:History of the Indian Archipelago Vol 3.djvu/277

 EUROPEAN NATIONS. 26 1 rapid progression, an article of great consumptioa in this country ; and it would, I imagine, be as unfair to ascribe the prosperity of the East India Company's commerce to this circumstance, as to take the extent of the monopoly of salt in Old France, or the king's monopoly of tobacco in Spain and the Americas, or their own monopoly of salt in Bengal, as just criteria of the pro^ sperity of those countries. In the first period there was not a ton of tea consumed in all Ens:- land. In the second the tonnage occupied by it would not exceed 160 tons. In the third period it would rise to near a thousand. In the fourth pe- riod it would amount to above ^000 ; in the fifth period to about 500 ; and in the sixth pe- riod to 15,149. This last being deducted from the increase at the close of the last century, would leave the amount only 11,151 tons, or give an increase, in one hundred and twenty years, of only 7561 tons, after the Company had acquired an immensity of territorial possessions, with a population of sixty millions of inhabitants, from having hardly a foot of land. If we take this last circumstance especially into consideration, and make the necessary allowance, at the same time, for the prodigious increase of Europe during this period in wealth and populous- ness, no doubt can exist that the comparative ex- tent of the Indian trade is greatly less than it was. What freedom of commerce is capable of effect-