Dutch, besides about 3600l. to the heirs of certain of the sufferers of Amboyna,—an award for which the English Company was probably as much indebted to the humbled condition of the United Provinces at the moment as to the clear justice of the case. For some years longer, however, the company's trade could hardly be said to exist. Any private adventurer who chose to fit out a ship for India was connived at by the government in violating their privileges, so that the company, as a body, carried on what little trade they did merely for the sake of preventing their charter from being abrogated on the pretext that they made no use of it, and in the hope of better times. It is said, too, that in the scramble for the Indian trade which now ensued,—at once inundating India with the manufactures of England and England with the produce of India,—the interlopers in general made as scanty profits as the company, so that at last most of them joined in urging upon the government the re-establishment of the old exclusive system. Their so acting, however, is not decisive as to the absolute failure of the experiment of a free-trade that had thus been tried, inasmuch as their proposition was avowedly made with the view of becoming themselves members of the company when it should be set up again with a new stock and a new charter. Still it is probable that commercial enterprise was not yet sufficiently advanced in England to have enabled the country to carry on the Indian trade successfully by the mere efforts of individuals against the powerful rivalry of the Dutch and Portuguese monopolies. At last, in October, 1657, a new charter was granted to the company for seven years, after they had actually, in despair of obtaining the protection of the government, put up bills in the Royal Exchange in the preceding January, offering their property and their privileges, such as they were, for sale. On this a new stock of about 370,000l. was raised, which immediately placed the affairs of the company in a flourishing condition, and enabled it to carry on the trade with a spirit and success which continued without interruption or abatement till the Restoration. A short paragraph from the annalist of our Indian
