form one body, to be called the United Company of Merchants of England trading to the East Indies. This final and complete union, accordingly, took place in the year 1708. After this the Company's charter was three times renewed, and its exclusive trading privileges continued to it, within the present period; first, in 1712 till the year 1736; secondly, in 1730 till the year 1769; and lastly, in 1744 till the year 1783.
A few other branches of our colonial and foreign trade, during the reign of William, require only a slight notice. The plantations, as they were called, or settlements on the continent of America, went on steadily increasing in population and wealth; and by the end of the century the trade with these rising dependencies and the adjacent West India islands is said to have given employment to no less than five hundred sail of ships. Of these doubtless a considerable number were engaged in bringing negroes from the opposite coast of Africa—a trade which had originally been in the exclusive possession of the African Company, but which now, after having been for a considerable time practically open, was in 1698 made so legally by an act of parliament permitting all the king's subjects, whether of England or of America, to trade to Africa on payment of a certain per centage to the Company on all goods exported or imported—negroes, however, being exempted even from this tax. The change thus made was "at that time," remarks Anderson, "in every one's judgment much to the benefit of the nation, more especially with relation to the commerce to our sugar colonies; for it was confessed by all that the separate traders had considerably reduced the price of negroes to our negro colonies, and consequently had so far the better enabled them to undersell our rivals." In the Newfoundland fishery the French had for some time before the Revolution been encroaching more and more upon the exclusive rights claimed by the English; the first specific complaint in King William's declaration of war against France in 1689 was, that, whereas not long since the French had been accustomed to take licences from the English governor of Newfoundland for fishing
