distant employments. The trade to the East
Indies, if it were altogether free, would probably
absorb the greater part of this redundant
capital. The East Indies offer a market
both for the manufactures of Europe, and for
the gold and silver, as well as for the several
other productions of America, greater and
more extensive than both Europe and America
put together.
Every derangement of the natural distribution
of stock is necessarily hurtful to the
society in which it takes place; whether it be
by repelling from a particular trade the stock
which would otherwise go to it, or by attracting
towards a particular trade that which
would not otherwise come to it. If, without
any exclusive company, the trade of Holland
to the East Indies would be greater than it
actually is, that country must suffer a considerable
loss, by part of its capital being excluded
from the employment most convenient
for that port. And, in the same manner, if,
without an exclusive company, the trade of
Sweden and Denmark to the East Indies
would be less than it actually is, or, what perhaps
is more probable, would not exist at all,
those two countries must likewise suffer a
considerable loss, by part of their capital being
drawn into an employment which must
be more or less unsuitable to their present circumstances.
Better for them, perhaps, in the
present circumstances, to buy East India
goods of other nations, even though they
should pay somewhat dearer, than to turn so
great a part of their small capital to so very
distant a trade, in which the returns are so
very slow, in which that capital can maintain
so small a quantity of productive labour at
home, where productive labour is so much
wanted, where so little is done, and where so
much is to do.
Though without an exclusive company,
therefore, a particular country should not be
able to carry on any direct trade to the East
Indies, it will not from thence follow, that
such a company ought to be established there,
but only that such a country ought not, in
these circumstances, to trade directly to the
East Indies. That such companies are not
in general necessary for carrying on the East
India trade, is sufficiently demonstrated by
the experience of the Portuguese, who enjoyed
almost the whole of it for more than a
century together, without any exclusive company.
No private merchant, it has been said,
could well have capital sufficient to maintain
factors and agents in the different ports of the
East Indies, in order to provide goods for
the ships which he might occasionally send
thither; and yet, unless he was able to do
this, the difficulty of finding a cargo might
frequently make his ships lose the season for
returning; and the expense of so long a delay
would not only eat up the whole profit of
the adventure, but frequently occasion a very
considerable loss. This argument, however,
if it proved any thing at all, would prove
that no one great branch of trade could be
carried on without an exclusive company,
which is contrary to the experience of all nations.
There is no great branch of trade, in
which the capital of any one private merchant
is sufficient for carrying on all the subordinate
branches which must be carried on, in
order to carry on the principal one. But
when a nation is ripe for any great branch of
trade, some merchants naturally turn their
capitals towards some principal, and some towards
the subordinate branches of it; and
though all the different branches of it are in
this manner carried on, yet it very seldom
happens that they are all carried on by the capital
of one private merchant. If a nation,
therefore, is ripe for the East India trade, a
certain portion of its capital will naturally
divide itself among all the different branches
of that trade. Some of its merchants will
find it for their interest to reside in the East
Indies, and to employ their capitals there in
providing goods for the ships which are to be
sent out by other merchants who reside in
Europe. The settlements which different
European nations have obtained in the East
Indies, if they were taken from the exclusive
companies to which they at present belong,
and put under the immediate protection of
the sovereign, would render this residence
both safe and easy, at least to the merchants
of the particular nations to whom those settlements
belong. If, at any particular time,
that part of the capital of any country which
of its own accord tended and inclined, if I
may say so, towards the East India trade,
was not sufficient for carrying on all those
different branches of it, it would be a proof
that, at that particular time, that country was
not ripe for that trade, and that it would do
better to buy for some time, even at a higher
price, from other European nations, the East
India goods it had occasion for, than to import
them itself directly from the East Indies.
What it might lose by the high price of those
goods, could seldom be equal to the loss which
it would sustain by the distraction of a large
portion of its capital from other employments
more necessary, or more useful, or more suitable
to its circumstances and situation, than
a direct trade to the East Indies.
Though the Europeans possess many considerable
settlements both upon the coast of
Africa and in the East Indies, they have not
yet established, in either of those countries,
such numerous and thriving colonies as those
in the islands and continent of America. Africa,
however, as well as several of the countries
comprehended under the general name
of the East Indies, is inhabited by barbarous
nations. But those nations were by no means
so weak and defenceless as the miserable and