stock provided by the Company. In the year 1674 the Company ventured in its stock to the Indies the sum of £110,000 in goods and £320,000 in silver, a total of £430,000, bringing home an investment valued on arrival in England at £860,000; in that same year, by the same ships, the supercargoes and the captains and officers of the ships took from England as private ventures the sum of £45,000 in goods and £90,000 in silver, a total of £135,000, nearly one-third of the Company's public venture.[1] A practice such as is indicated by these figures was, obviously, one which might easily lead to abuse, and would certainly cut into the profits of the Company; but the objections to it were more manifest in connexion with the private trade of the captain and officers of the ships, than with that of the supercargoes. On many occasions the supercargoes had cause to complain that the captains engrossed profitable trade which ought to have gone to the Company, the most usual ground of complaint being that, by underhand means, they had induced the Chinese merchants to insist on paying them in commodities (such as silk, tea, &c.) instead of gold, which by regulation ought to have formed their investment; and, in 1715, the court of directors complained that, in the previous year, the captains and officers of their ships had brought to England no less than 20,000 pounds of tea, to the serious detriment of their own trade in tea, which at that time did not much exceed that amount.[2]
Generally all the Company's servants were prohibited from trading in the main staples which constituted the principal part of its own trade; in China, silk was, of course, always prohibited; and in 1686 the court directed that: 'as the Chyna Trade was becoming more promising, Teas and Spices were, in future, to form Part of the Company's Imports, and not to be articles of Private Trade.'[3] During its whole history the tendency of the Company was to restrict the private trade, as far as possible, to silver, coral, and amber outwards, and to gold and musk from China to India, and diamonds from India to England, as return investments, since they took up little tonnage.
The Company was, however, always chary of imposing any restraint on the activities of its supercargoes, and in that same year, 1686, the court wrote complaining of the conduct of the Madras presidency,[4]
in abusing the order for the purchase on the Company's account of Chyna Goods brought in Private Trade thither. When the Court gave the order, they did not conceive that their Servants would be buyers and sellers both.
- ↑ R. Wissett, Compendium of East Indian Affairs (London, 1801).
- ↑ Court to Council for China (ship Susanna), December 1715.
- ↑ Court to Madras Presidency, October 1686.
- ↑ Ibid.
