Note 159 — Chapter IV

However great our objections to every form of monopoly, it may well be questioned whether the merchant shipping of England could at this period have made any advance against the Dutch, Spaniards, Portuguese, Venetians, and others in their commercial intercourse with the East unless some inducement had been offered to great corporations to take the first and most hazardous risks of competing with established rivals. Indeed, most persons in England at this time felt, and not without valid reasons, that it would be impossible for individual capitalists to cope successfully with the powerful maritime associations which had in a great measure absorbed the most lucrative branches of commerce throughout the world. For these reasons the East India Company had been established, and for precisely similar reasons the English Government had been induced in 1606 to grant a charter to a company formed for trading to the Levant, though in this instance each individual traded on his own account subject to general regulations framed for the guidance of the whole of the members of the association.