Page:The English Historical Review Volume 36.djvu/216

 profit on the 'privilege' would depend on the taste and judgement of the adventurer; a richly jewelled and enamelled watch, or an ingenious flint-and-steel apparatus, might attract buyers in Canton; a tastefully painted fan, a dainty ivory carving, a splendid embroidered robe might find in London buyers willing to give pounds for taels cost—a profit of 200 per cent. Given good judgement, it may safely be estimated as probable that a venture of £100 might realize £200 in Canton, and those £200 invested there might in turn realize £400 in London—a profit of only 100 per cent. on each transaction.

From the year 1731 the court added a fourth form of reward—additional to the others—in the shape of commission on the prime cost of the return investment; this was regularly 5 per cent. of the cost of the cargoes of all the ships entrusted to the council's care, and was divided between its members in fixed proportions. From the season 1734 this was increased to 5 per cent. of the price realized at the Company's sales in London—practically doubling its amount. The other three forms were still retained, but later on, between 1750 and 1760 (some of the records are missing), they were suppressed except for some small privilege in the way of private trade. The amount of the 'salary' of supercargoes at this period cannot be ascertained; but writers, instead of the £10 of the seventeenth century, were now paid £100 per annum.

For one China voyage the supercargoes gave three years to the Company's service; in that time their table was provided for them during twenty months; fourteen to fifteen months were spent on the voyage out and home; sixteen months were a rest period in England, and during six months they were subjected to a constant strain of trying work and intense anxiety. As reward for this, Mr. Naish and Mr. Pitt, mentioned above, may be assumed to have received the following sums:

These supercargoes, thus provided for, formed the training school from which were taken the select committee at Canton, 1780–1834, who were the finest representatives that England could have desired of her mercantile community; and to the select committee succeeded the merchant princes of China of the nineteenth century. VOL. XXXVI.—NO. CXLII.