352 Tradesman and Merchant — Commercial Population 



commerce in any new field were generally made by the merchant him- 

 self or a supercargo. A good instance is related by Bourne describing 

 the use of supercargoes by the earhest Glasgow tobacco merchants in 

 1707. In this case the company of merchants sending him appointed 

 the captain of the vessel as supercargo. In later voyages one of the 

 partner merchants acted in this capacity.^ The supercargo was paid 

 by salary or commission, usually the latter. The East India Com- 

 pany paid its supercargoes 5 per cent for managing their effects.- 

 The merchant principal made out an invoice of the goods in the cargo 

 sent; it contained a particularized "account of the whole prime cost 

 and charges attending such merchandizes, for the government of 

 his . . . supercargo, in the sale thereof."^ The invoice gave 

 assurance to the supercargo that he was disposing of the goods so as 

 to leave a reasonable profit for his principal on the money invested. 

 Oftentimes the merchant would add 10 per cent or 15 per cent to 

 the amount of the bill and obtain thus a greater profit if the super- 

 cargo made sale at the higher figure.'* 



A peculiar instance of Lhe use of the supercargo, and, at the same 

 time, of the combination of the functions of the supercargo and factor, 

 occurred in the practice of the South Sea Company in their Assiento 

 "annual Permission Ship." Spain, in the first quarter of the eight- 

 eenth century, began to enforce more rigidly her monopoly of trade 

 ^\•ith her West India colonies. The "English Merchants perceiving 

 that they could not with any safety trade directly to the Spanish West 

 Indies, settled Correspondents at Cadiz, and Employed Spanish 

 Factors, to whom they consigned great quantities of our Manufac- 

 tures, which Factors went in the galleons and sold the said Manu- 

 factures, and brought back the returns in their own names, which 

 upon their return to Old Spain, they found means to remit privately 

 to their principals in England."^ By the treaty of Utrecht the 

 English South Sea Company had permission to send an annual ship to 

 Porto Bello and other West India ports. The supercargo method 

 was begun in 1721, at the instance of Sub-Governor Sir John Eyles, 

 by this Company; in that year their annual Permission Ship was 

 laden with a cargo of £250,000 worth of foods and four supercargoes 

 were dispatched to manage the Company's sales.^ Two classes of 



^ Bourne, Eng. Mer., 392-3. 



- Lockyer, 17. 



^ Postlethwayt, Diet., s. v. Factor. 



* Ibid., s. V. Invoice. 



^ Allen, Essay on Methods, 17. 



^ "An Inquiry into the Misconduct," 7-8. 



