panies. Queen. We need not follow the unhappy experiences of Raleigh's first colonists. The fault of their failure was not in any way due to his neglect. Doubtless he was under the illusions of his day. He looked too much for gold as the product of the country, and he did not perhaps take care to secure the best kind of settlers. Nevertheless, if his great words have been fulfilled in a sense wider than he could have dreamed of, "I shall yet live to see it an Inglishe nation,"1 it was largely to the impulse that his personality gave to the movement that this result has been due. Over twenty years, however, were to pass by between Raleigh's first expedition and the permanent settlement of the English in Virginia. Several voyages were undertaken during the first years of the seventeenth century; but the real history of the Colony begins with the formation of the Virginia Company in the year 1606. Chartered Upon the first appearance upon our scene of the Chartered Com- Company, an instrument which has played so great a part in the history of the Colonial policy of the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries, a few words must be given to the general question. Whatever be the arguments in favour of colonisation by companies at the present time, in the seventeenth century such companies were an absolute necessity. It has been said 2 that their " encouragement springs from the timidity or caution of Governments, companies rush in where the messenger of Governments fears to tread." But in early times companies rush in where the messenger of Government cannot tread. Its continual pretensions to power must not blind us to the weakness of the medieval state; the constant → repetition of legislation on the same subjects is the most convincing testimony of the impotence of such legislation. When we reflect upon the fate which has attended Factory Acts, where, as in certain states of America, they have not been enforced by paid inspectors, we discover the weak point in the Tudor and Stuart systems. In the absence of credit, in the scarcity of revenue, and in the corruption which caused the 1 Letter to Cecil, Aug. 21, 1602, in Life, Vol. II. p. 252, by E. Edwards. little to become quickly the less, it was out of the power of the State to carry through great undertakings such as the development of new Colonies. In theory, it is true, the mediæval state was profoundly socialistic-if to identify the state and society be to be socialistic-but in history it developed out of anarchy, and its poverty made its claims brutum fulmen. If, then, the expansion of England was to take place, it must have been either through individuals, or through bodies of individuals, such as Chartered Companies. Now, the moral of the fable of the bundle of sticks was at a very early date laid to heart. The special feature, I suppose, of medieval history had been the part played by corporations; but the Trading Company is merely the application of old weapons to new needs. Especially in so risky and at. best slow a work as the development of plantations, it was obviously necessary that no one person should risk his all, but that, by many risking something, the needful capital should be obtained. In the dawn of English colonization we seem to see glimpses of an idea that particular English localities should have their own Colonies. Sentimentally, the idea was a good one, and left its marks in names such as New Plymouth; but the rush of the new tendencies poured in wider channels, and the economic unity of England was becoming too real to admit of colonization on such particularist lines. Just as the "regulated" companies resembled in principle the Town Trade Corporations, and were, as Adam Smith pointed out, "a sort of enlarged monopolies of the same kind," so the Joint Stock Company marked a fresh stage in economic development. As compared either with the "regulated" company or the private co-partnership, its advantages were manifest. In a "regulated" company the directors had no particular interest in the prosperity of the general trade of the company. Indeed, the decay of the general trade might often contribute to the advantage of their own private trade; whereas the directors of a joint stock company have no interests other than those of the common undertaking. Again, the directors of the "regu 1 Wealth of Nations, Book V. chap. i. A lated" company had the management of no common capital with which to work. The casual revenue of such undertakings arose from the admission fees and from the co-operative duties imposed upon the trade of the company. In this state of things it would have been obviously impossible to undertake the work of development. But while the convenience of the joint stock company over the regulated is thus apparent, it possesses two great advantages over a private co-partnership. On the one hand, shares can be transferred without obtaining the leave of the other members of the company, while, on the other hand, liability is limited to the extent of the holding. Viewed in this light, the Chartered Company appears to have played an indispensable part in the development of the British Empire, quite apart from the question how far its employment can be defended at the present day, a question which will occupy us at the close of this volume. CHAPTER II Virginia. AN exhaustive account of the reasons which induced the Colonization of colonization of Virginia is given in the first chapter of Mr Bruce's Economic History of Virginia in the Seventeenth Century. The persistency with which the same reasons are put forward in the various pamphlets and letters of the time attest the strength of the forces at work. The first and the strongest motive at work was the thirst for gold. The treasures obtained by Spain had dazzled the popular imagination, and every man seemed to hold El Dorado within his grasp. A second motive and one coupled by Lane,1 with the discovery of a gold mine, as the sole possible means of making the country in request in England, as a desirable place for settlement, was the discovery of the North-west passage. An imperfect knowledge of geography led to the notion that there was little distance between Virginia and the Western sea. Could this hope have been realised, it is obvious of what importance Virginia would have been in the days before the thorough opening out of the Cape of Good Hope route to the Indies. The other main motives were of a less chimerical character. It was expected that Virginia would supply a large number of articles which the English people could at that time only buy from foreign nations; tar, pitch, rosin, flax, cordage, masts, yards, timber, and other naval stores, besides glass and soap ashes might be furnished from a British Colony instead of from Russia and Poland. All kinds of difficulties, natural and artificial, stood in the way of the Baltic trade, but Virginia promised to furnish the products both of Northern and Southern Europe. 1 Hakluyt's Voyages, Vol. III. 2 Nova Britannia' in Force's Historical Tracts, Vol. I. "What commodities soever," wrote Lane, "Spaine, France, Italy, or these partes doe yeeld unto us in wines of all sorts, in oyles, in flax, in rosens, in pitch, frankinsense, coorans, sugers, and such like, these partes doe abound with the growth of them all." Nor was the benefit of being furnished from a Colony only that it ensured more certain and fairer treatment; according to the received opinions of the day it was a further benefit that the precious metals would not by this means be parted with to foreign nations. Moreover, the growers of these commodities would themselves become customers for English manufactures, and the coarse cloth which was the main English manufacture would find a sure market among the colonists and even the natives of Virginia. But if this commerce were to develop, it would be also of great benefit to English shipping. The raison d'être of the subsequent Navigation Acts was recognised in the original foundation of Virginia. Little need be said of the stock argument always brought forward that Colonies would afford an outlet for the surplus population of the Mother country. More important was the claim that Virginia would raise a bulwark in America against the Spanish power. It would put1 "a byt into the anchent enymye's mouth." But, if all these claims were to be made good, there was need of time. Smith, at least, recognised the truth of Bacon's words, "that a plantation is like the planting of woods, for you must make a count to lose almost twenty years profit and expect your recompense in the end." With justice then did the author of a paper entitled 2 "Reasons for raising a Fund for the Support of a Colony at Virginia" say—that it was more to the honour of a State to have a great enterprise carried through by public concert than by private monopoly. Various arguments were given why a settlement depending on a public fund was preferable to one of a private character. "Private purses are cowlde compforters to adventurers and have been founde fatall to all enterprises hitherto undertaken by the English by reason of delaies and jeloces and unwilling 1 Dale to Winwood, June 1616, Genesis of United States, by A. Brown, Vol. II. 2 Printed in Brown's Genesis of the United States, Vol. I. |