Attempts to Form Chartered Companies. 39 



They always expressed a cordial sympathy with the policy of 

 encouraging the importation of colonial stores, other things 

 being equal; but they refused, as a board, to make any sacri- 

 fice of their business interests. This attitude the Navy main- 

 tained consistently throughout the period when the encourage- 

 ment of colonial products took the form of bounty acts.^ When 

 the government became convinced that the resources of the 

 plantations, if properly taken in hand, were really sufficient to 

 supply the demand, they determined that the experiment was 

 worth trying; but after they had finally committed themselves 

 to the policy of encouraging the importation of stores from 

 America, the doubt remained as to the best, i. c, the cheapest, 

 methods of attaining that end. 



It must be borne in mind that the attempts of Dudley and By- 

 field to obtain charters were coincident with the struggle of the 

 great Merchant Companies to retain their privileges. The 

 Board of Trade and Plantations was organized at the time 

 (1696) when Parliament was beginning to be suspicious of the 

 dealings of these monopolists, and to question whether the com- 

 mercial interests of the nation might not be better subserved 

 if joint-stock companies were abolished and trade thrown 

 open to all competitors.- The great monopolies had been sanc- 

 tioned, originally, as the most proper mediums for regulating 

 trade; but public opinion underwent a marked change toward 

 th€ end of the seventeenth century, and so many charges of 

 mismanagement and corruption were laid at the doors of the 

 Merchant Companies, that Parliament interfered and began to 

 assert that if trade were to be regulated at all. Parliament was 

 the proper regulator. "A well ordered trade," says Dr. Cun- 

 ningham, " meant an exclusive and confined trade ; open 

 trade with all its faults meant expanding trade ; and Par- 

 liament, as representing the English public, decided in favor of 

 expanding rather than exclusive trade."^ The struggle of the 



iCf. p. 66. 



^Cunningham, "Growth of English Industry and Commerce," 

 Vol. II, p. 118 and passim. 

 ^Cunningham, p. 282. 



