DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.22140#0131
HISTORY OF CHARTERED TRADE COMPANIES. 115
truthful person, he would hardly have justified an illegal, or at
best an irregular impost, on a plea which, if wholly false, would
have easily been met by a flat denial. I have no doubt that
during the paradisiacal epoch of Clarendon, these rovers did
venture even into the English Channel. You may remember,
too, that the Sallee rover is a figure in the earlier pages of
Robinson Crusoe," and Defoe always Avrote verisimilitudes ;
indeed the greater part of his art consisted in publishing fictions
which seemed like personal experiences.
In Adam Smith's time there were two forms of chartered com-
panies—those which were called regulated, and those which went
by the name of joint stock. Of these the former were the earliest.
The regulated company is a system obviously derived from the
trading guild. In it, the trader paid a fixed fee for the license of
carrying on, at his personal risk, the business in his district, and
for the special trade, which the company undertook to protect
and to promote. Such were the Levant, Turkey, and, later on,
the Russian companies. Of these the first was an experiment
made by Elizabeth, towards the conclusion of her reign. The
great Queen strove in its grievous decadence or decay to revive
the mercantile marine of England, once so strong and famous.
Hence she conferred considerable immunities on the companies
which traded to the Mediterranean, remitting, in exchange for a
trifling annual payment, the customs on goods imported by these
projectors. In her lifetime the company was unprosperous, and
she lost the annuity as well as the customs. But the company
did better in the reign of lames, and the imports which it made
were the objects of Cecil's Book of Rates, that first attempt at dis-
cretionary taxation, which ended so disastrously in the next reign.
I presume that the fund paid for the licenses was laid out in pro-
tection accorded to the traders, or if insufficient for this, at least
for the payment of consuls at foreign ports. Some of these regu-
lated companies still existed in Adam Smith's time, who enume-
rates five of them. You will find his criticism on this practice
.and policy in the first chapter of his fifth book. From the first
these companies did not maintain forts or garrisons. They did
support an ambassador in Turkey to some extent, and, as I have
said, a few consuls. But when the new African company was
truthful person, he would hardly have justified an illegal, or at
best an irregular impost, on a plea which, if wholly false, would
have easily been met by a flat denial. I have no doubt that
during the paradisiacal epoch of Clarendon, these rovers did
venture even into the English Channel. You may remember,
too, that the Sallee rover is a figure in the earlier pages of
Robinson Crusoe," and Defoe always Avrote verisimilitudes ;
indeed the greater part of his art consisted in publishing fictions
which seemed like personal experiences.
In Adam Smith's time there were two forms of chartered com-
panies—those which were called regulated, and those which went
by the name of joint stock. Of these the former were the earliest.
The regulated company is a system obviously derived from the
trading guild. In it, the trader paid a fixed fee for the license of
carrying on, at his personal risk, the business in his district, and
for the special trade, which the company undertook to protect
and to promote. Such were the Levant, Turkey, and, later on,
the Russian companies. Of these the first was an experiment
made by Elizabeth, towards the conclusion of her reign. The
great Queen strove in its grievous decadence or decay to revive
the mercantile marine of England, once so strong and famous.
Hence she conferred considerable immunities on the companies
which traded to the Mediterranean, remitting, in exchange for a
trifling annual payment, the customs on goods imported by these
projectors. In her lifetime the company was unprosperous, and
she lost the annuity as well as the customs. But the company
did better in the reign of lames, and the imports which it made
were the objects of Cecil's Book of Rates, that first attempt at dis-
cretionary taxation, which ended so disastrously in the next reign.
I presume that the fund paid for the licenses was laid out in pro-
tection accorded to the traders, or if insufficient for this, at least
for the payment of consuls at foreign ports. Some of these regu-
lated companies still existed in Adam Smith's time, who enume-
rates five of them. You will find his criticism on this practice
.and policy in the first chapter of his fifth book. From the first
these companies did not maintain forts or garrisons. They did
support an ambassador in Turkey to some extent, and, as I have
said, a few consuls. But when the new African company was