S6(i HISTORY OF INDIA. [Book II.
A I) 1000. to be made between the Company and the management. this had been ^iulu- ally monopolized by Sir Josiah Cliild and a few wealthy individuals, who, taking undue advantage of the uidimited j)ower of purchasing stock, and of voting upfjn it, had succeeded in ousting most of the independent members of committee, and su})planting them by their own creatures. On them, therefore, the chief blame ought to rest; more especially as the general court of proprietors, even before the parliamentary inquiry commenced, had been induced, in con.sequence of the rumours which had begun to prevail, to appoint a committee "to in- spect into the affairs of the general joint stock under the management of the coui't of committees, and of the several tran.sactions that had been had tiierein, for the satisfection of the adventurers." The report of the committee thus appointed, had furnished most of the leading facts, which were afterwards more fully brought out by the parliamentary investigation. A Scotch While the Company were suffering severely in public estimation from these
East India . L J O .
Company shamcful disclosures, an alarm arose from a different quarter. Scotland and England, though their crowns were now worn by a single monarch, were still sejiarate and independent kingdoms, and there was therefore nothing to pre- vent the former from having its East India Company as well as the latter. Indeed, as early as 1617, King James had given his sanction to such a company, by granting letters-patent under the great seal of Scotland, to Sir James Cun- ningham, of Glengarnock, appointing him, his heirs and assignees, to be its governors and directors, with authority "to trade to and from the East Indies, and the countries or parts of Asia, Africa, and America, beyond the Cape of Bona Sperantia to the Straits of Magellan, and to the Levant Sea, and terri- tories under the government of the Great Turk, and to and from the countries of Greenland, and aU the countries and islands in the north, north-west, and north- east seas, and all other parts of America and Muscovy." Whatever may have been the original intention of this grant, it ultimately degenerated into a mere job for the benefit of the grantee, who sold it, and all his rights under it, for a valuable consideration. The purchasers were the London East India Company, who thus escaped the danger of a competition, which in honest and skilful hands might have proved formidable. This abortive attempt to give Scot- land a trade to the East appears to have attracted little notice ; and other interests, of a still more vital nature, so completely occupied the public mind during the persecuting reigns of the Stuarts, that the better part of a centiu-y elapsed before the subject was again mooted. The better era which commenced with the Revolution brought new desires and aspirations along with it, and a general desire was felt by pati'iotic Scotsmen to give their country as high a place in commerce as it had already attained in Hberty, religion, and ai-ms. The influence exerted with this view on the pubUc mind, was soon manifested in parliament, which, on the 14th June, 1693, passed an "Act for encouraging of Forraigne Trade," in which "our soveraigne lord and ladye, the king and
