272 APPENDIX I the Company and the independent mercantile commu- nity at large; a war ended only by the great Parlia- mentary amalgamation after the Revolution. That set- tlement lasted down to the 19th century, when even its broad basis was found too narrow for the expansive forces of British commerce, and the Act of 1813 threw open the India 'trade to the nation. The records of the East India Company form a concentrated history of the English hatred of monopoly; of the Company's efforts to maintain exclusive privileges by from time to time widening its doors, as long as the country believed exclusive privileges necessary for the India trade; and of their abolition as soon as the country thought them no longer required. Meanwhile the Parliamentary settlement of 1650, in subjecting the trade to further regulation by the Commons, provided for such difficulties as arose under the Commonwealth. The Council of State recognized the claims of the outside merchants by a cautious yet liberal issue of licenses for private trade to India. Cromwell's name begins to appear in connection with these grants, not only to individuals, but also to the Merchant Adventurers, and it seemed to onlookers both at home and abroad that the Company was doomed. Nine months after it had taken up its rigid attitude against private trading by its own members in 1654, the Amsterdam burghers received " advice that the Lord Protector will dissolve the East India Company at London, and declare the navigation and commerce to the Indies to be free and open." The mere rumour
