25 G COMMERCE WITH paid for the commodities in India, and that charg- ed to the consumer. We are enabled to form an adequate opinion of the prodigious expensiveness of the conveyance of the productions of India at that time, by shewing the balance between the first cost of these productions, and the selling prices in Eu- rope. In the third English voyage, for example, a cargo of cloves, purchased at Amboyna for L.29i8, 15s., sold in England forL. 36,287, or at an advance of 1 130 per cent. The whole profits of the voyage, notwithstanding, amounted to no more than 234? per cent. ; so that, if the other articles of which the cargoes consisted were equally profitable, the charges must have amounted to the enormous sum of 896 per cent, on the homeward investment. Twenty years after the first establishment of the trade, pepper and cloves are described by the monopolists them- selves as still selling at 700 per cent., mace at 800, and nutmegs at 650,— advances, however, which, as will be afterwards proved, are much underrated. Notwithstanding this, the highest profit ever real- ized did not exceed 320 per cent., and the profit of the whole twelve voyages averaged but 138 per cent. The profits were soon reduced from a variety of causes, — as the trading on joint stocks, and the enhancement of charges necessarily consequent to so injudicious a system, — the fall of prices which was necessarily produced from the large importa- tions from India, in spite of all the arts used to 10
