chequer, Montague, the private traders offered 2,000,000l. at eight per cent., for an incorporation conferring upon them the exclusive privilege of the trade; and their proposal was accepted. An act was accordingly passed in July of that year, empowering the king to incorporate the new company; and on the 5th of September following his majesty signed a charter investing the subscribers of the two millions, under the name of The English Company trading to the East Indies, with the exclusive possession of the commerce of that part of the world for ever, subject only to the right of the Old Company to continue their trade for three years longer. Meanwhile, however, the Old Company had, through its treasurer, subscribed no less than 315,000l. of the loan of two millions, and had thus become by far the largest shareholder in the new and rival association. Hence a confusion and conflict of claims and interests such as a legislative arrangement has seldom produced. There were now trading all at the same time, first, the Old Company, expressly authorised to go on as usual for three years longer, and even after the expiration of that term left in possession of all its forts and factories in India, and of whatever privileges it had acquired there from the native authorities; secondly, the New Company, without any Indian possessions whatever, and with the rival body, which aimed at its destruction, permanently, as it were, seated upon its shoulders, and invested with almost a controlling power over its operations; thirdly, a few of the subscribers to the late loan, who had declined joining the New Company, but who in terms of the original contract with the government were nevertheless entitled, so long as the two millions remained unrepaid, to trade each for himself; and fourthly, all such separate traders as had cleared out from England previous to the 1st of July, 1698, the right of all such to carry on the trade till they should think fit to return to England having also been provided for by a clause in the act which created the New Company. It is said that no fewer than sixty ships in all were now engaged in the trade, which seems to have been reduced to a state in which all the inconveniences of a free trade and of a mo-
