ICELANDIC AFFAIRS 245 



and forbade the inhabitants to negotiate for their wants 

 with any other than the monopolists at Copenhagen. 

 Until 1788 a concession, at the cost of 8000 per annum, 

 was in the hands of Copenhagen merchants ; who took 

 annual supplies to the island in exchange for fish, tallow, 

 skins, feathers, eider-down, etc. " The oppression of 

 this Company in fixing their own prices, upon all they 

 bought and on all they had to sell, was beyond what 

 had ever before been felt ; and reduced the people to the 

 inaction and torpid state at which we found them " 

 (Mem. by Banks). The Company becoming insolvent, 

 trade was opened to the subjects of Denmark generally, 

 as in old times. In the last decade of the century some 

 spirit of enterprise was reviving with the Icelanders. 

 They were becoming once more industrious and adven- 

 turous. And it appeared to those interested in the little 

 nation that, if liberty were quite restored to them, 

 the Icelanders would recover the active and intelligent 

 character of their ancestors. 



When Banks was in Iceland in 1772, he found the 

 people " universally desirous of being placed under the 

 dominion of England. The applications made to me 

 personally by natives of the best quality were continual. 

 Their project was that England should wrest from Den- 

 mark the dominion of Iceland. . . . They concluded that 

 the wealth of England could easily buy, and the poverty 

 of Denmark would willingly sell." 



Olaf Stephensen of Reikiavik was one of the natives 

 above alluded to. His son Magnus, afterward Chief 

 Justice of the island, was a boy of ten years in 1772; 

 and there was doubtless occasional communication with 

 Banks. On January 30, 1801, Sir Joseph wrote to 

 Magnus what appears to modern eyes a very startling 

 message. Whether it was prompted from the other side, 

 or begun in the dark recesses of the English Foreign 

 Office, is not clear. The purport of it was this : 



