30 Industrial Experiments in Colonial America. 



Council that they had last November submitted an account of 

 the petition of Sir Matthew Dudley and others for a charter. 

 Since then it had been proposed that, instead of the stock-job- 

 bing clause, the petitioners should give personal security for 

 importing the specified quantities of masts, pitch, tar, hemp, etc. 

 This they had likewise declined, so that the Board had little 

 reason to expect any success from those proposals. 



I find no mention of the case after this date, except an allu- 

 sion to the failure of the undertaking, in a letter written from 

 New Hampshire and dated July lo, 1720, in which the writer, 

 commenting on the encouragement of husbandry and the 

 woolen manufacture in the several colonies, says that this would 

 not have happened if the scheme of Matthew Dudley and Com- 

 pany had not fallen through by obstructions at home.^ 



2. The Pennsylvania Company. 



There was only one other important attempt to form a char- 

 tered corporation to import American naval stores. This was 

 the case of Thomas Byfield and Company, merchants, who 

 were already trading with Pennsylvania, Carolina and the 

 islands, on a joint stock of £20,ock). Carolina has already been 

 mentioned as the chief pitch and tar producing colony, and 

 Byfield's design to extend the scope of the company's business 

 by doubling their stock and developing a trade in those com- 

 modities, represents an effort to do in the south what Dudley's 

 Company had hoped to do in New England. Whether Mr. 

 Byfield was aware of the history and fate of the New England 

 project and was sanguine enough to suppose that he could 

 succeed where others had failed, it is impossible to say. He 

 certainly made no attempt to obtain exclusive privileges, 

 although he insisted upon the necessity of a charter, in consid- 

 eration of the uncertainty and expense which must unavoidably 

 attend the opening up of a practically new line of trade.- There 

 were some favorable conditions which mav have led him to 



^Deputy Surveyor Armstrong to the Board, B. T. New Eng., X: 80. 

 -Memorial of Thomas Byfield, received Feb. 28, 170I, B. T. 

 Proprieties, I\I: 16. 



