THE COMPANY'S DEFENCE 171 to England a store of Indian products of which only a portion was consumed at home, while the greater part was re-exported to other countries, at a large profit to the realm. Of £208,000 worth of pepper imported in 1627, no less than £180,000 worth was re-exported abroad. It urged that while the Crown thus secured an increase to its customs, the people were enabled to buy spices at much lower rates; although in some articles the Dutch interference had again doubled the prices. That the gentry gained by the increased expor- tation of wool and woolen stuffs, " which doth im- prove the landlords' rents.' ' That the Company was in fact become a defence of the commonwealth, " to counterpoise the Hollanders' swelling greatness by trade, and to keep them from being absolute Lords of the Seas." It had also deprived Spain of the " incred- ible advantage of adding the traffique of the East Indies to the treasure of the West." That if the Eng- lish trade with the Indies should fail, then other English commerce would fail with it, and pass into the hands of the Dutch. The Company thus grounded its first appeal to Par- liament on a broadly national basis. But the charge of draining the country of its bullion was more difficult to meet. In 1621, Mun had exposed the exaggerated character of this complaint, and shown that during the previous twenty years the Company shipped only half a million sterling, not in English coinage but in Span- ish reals, while licensed to export three-quarters of a million. In 1628, in the Remonstrance to the Commons,
