got a new act exempting them from all duties upon the oil, &c., imported by them during the currency of their charter; but some years before that term expired they had expended their second capital also, on which they resolved to abandon the speculation. In these circumstances the trade was in 1702 thrown open by parliament, the act declaring that it had been wholly neglected by the Company and lost to the nation.[1] But no further attempt appears to have been made by any English adventurer in this field of enterprise for many years. In 1699 the trade with Russia, now becoming every day of greater importance in the new position to which that country was raised by the reforms of Peter the Great, was also practically thrown open by an act entitling any person to admission into the Russian Company on payment of an entrance fee of 5l. The Turkey Company appears to have been at this date in the possession of an active and prosperous commerce. The French Council of Commerce, in a memorial drawn up in the year 1701, admit that the English then carried on the Levant trade (which was in the hands of this company) with much more advantage than the French, chiefly in consequence of our woollen cloths being both superior in quality and lower in price. "The English," adds the Memorial, "also carry to the Levant lead, pewter, copperas, and logwood, which are goods they are masters of; together with a great deal of pepper; and, that they may not drain their country of its gold and silver, they also take in dry fish of their own catching, sugar of their own colonies, and other goods of their own produce, which they sell on the coasts of Portugal, Spain, and Italy, for pieces of eight, which they carry to the Levant to make up a stock sufficient for purchasing their homeward cargoes."[2]
The French Council of Commerce was established by Louis XIV. in the year 1700. From its erection Anderson, writing about the middle of the last century, when it still subsisted, thinks there is good reason to date "the
- ↑ 1 Anne, c. 12.
- ↑ Quoted by Anderson in Chron. of Com. iii. 7[deeplink needed]
