Attempts to Form Chartered Companies. 25 



The renewed petition was referred to the Board of Trade, 

 who wrote to Mr. Wharton, the company's agent, requiring 

 that a draft of such a charter as the petitioners desired be laid 

 before them.^ Mr. Wharton compHed at once, and submitted a 

 draft similar to those previously drawn up, but omitting certain 

 provisions, which the Board required to be added before they 

 would consider the charter. They insisted that the joint-stock 

 should not exceed £20,000; that other persons or corporations 

 be not excluded from trading; that adequate provision be 

 made against stock-jobbing; and that specifications of the 

 amounts to be sent home be stated.- Mr. Wharton sent a me- 

 morial to the Board, in which he remarked that the undertaking 

 being to serve the kingdom, the petitioners had hoped that their 

 Lordships would rather have encouraged them by the addition 

 of privileges, than discouraged them by exacting obligations to 

 perform particular matters within limited times and by restrain- 

 ing them from the general right of trade in disposing of their 

 property as their necessities might require. But they agreed 

 to certain specifications, viz., to prevent the mischief of stock- 

 jobbing frauds by inserting a clause to the effect that all sales 

 be entered in the company's book within six days after the con- 

 tract was made, the seller and the buyer to take oath before the 

 Governor, Deputy Governor or any two assistants when the 

 contract had been made; and that all other contracts be null and 

 void.^ 



The undertakers, as a body, also memorialized the Board of 

 Trade.* They expressed their surprise that a design, admitted 

 to be of public benefit to the nation and to the plantations, 

 should meet with so much discouragement as the alterations 

 and amendments made by their Lordships involved, which so 

 effectually cramped and baffled the undertaking. They were 



^Letter from Board to Mr. Wharton, agent of the Dudley company, 

 B. T. New Eng., L: 16. 



^Communications from Mr. Wharton to Board, B. T. New Eng., 

 L: 17, 18. 



^Mr. "Wharton to the Board of Trade, B. T. New Eng., L: 19. 



^Memorial from the petitioners, B. T, New Eng., L: 22. 



