TRADING MONOPOLIES 329
brought into the house of commons and passed with only forty
dissentients that all merchants should have full liberty to trade
with all countries.1 The committee appointed to consider this
bill made a most interesting report, in the course of which they
asserted that, although there might be five or six thousand
persons free of the several trading companies,, the real control
of the mass of the trade of the realm was in the hands of two
hundred persons at the most. They further alleged that mono-
polies in restraint of trade were against the laws of the land,
contrary to the example of other nations, and a hindrance to the
more equal distribution of wealth, which tended to be accumu-
lated in London to such a degree that the customs collected
there came to £110,000 a year, and at the outports to only
£17,000. The bill was dropped after a conference with the
lords, but at the next session a measure with more limited
purpose was placed on the statute book—namely, to throw
open the trade with Spain, Portugal, and France to all subjects.2
Inasmuch as trading companies were exempted from the
Statute of Monopolies, passed in 1624, ft would seem as if there
was a change of heart. After all, some sound arguments could
be adduced to support the exclusive rights of trading companies.
When dealing with areas where the government was unstable
or hard to deal with (such as Russia, Africa, India, or Turkey),
a company was in a much stronger position than an individual
would have been to enforce the observance of any agreements
made. Often capital expenditure was necessary to bribe minis-
ters or to erect warehouses, and the maintenance of consuls was
a permanent expense. So long as the English government was
not in a position to foster foreign trade, it seemed necessary
to delegate power to a company. Perhaps a fair conclusion
would be that monopolistic trading companies were a necessary
stage in the development of some sections of foreign trade, but
that their privileges were often too extensive and maintained
long after the circumstances justifying their creation had passed
away.
Probably trading monopolies in themselves would have been
much less objectionable but for the financial needs of the Crown,
The worst example of an attempt to increase the royal income
was that in connexion with the cloth trade, which has already
1 Commons' Journals, i. 183, 218, 253.
* 3 Jac. I, c. 6, Statutes of the Realm, iv. 1083.