C O M 



Company, privilege!? companies". It is, he says/ a bad sign In the 

 outset, that special encouragement should be required 

 for the purpose of giving a particular direction to a por- 

 tion of the national capital. After all that has been 

 said of the profit attendant on a direct intercourse with 

 such countries as India and China, does it appear, he 

 asks, that the nations who buy tea and piece goods at 

 Second hand, pay much more for them than the origi- 

 nal importers ? On making a strict analysis, it will be 

 found that the chief profits of a privileged company 

 are extracted from the pockets of their own country- 

 men. Whatever sum is paid by a consumer beyond the 

 rate at which a free traffic would supply the article, is so 

 much money lost to the public. Moreover, no concerns 

 are more liable to suffer by the langour attendant on the 

 proceedings of a board composed of men acting for 

 others, than the remote and complicated affairs of In- 

 dia. A director of the French East India Company 

 asked M. La Bourdonnaye, " how it had happened that 

 he had managed his own affairs so much better than 

 those of the Company ?" — " The reason," said the other, 

 " is plain ; my own affairs are managed according to the 

 judgment formed on the spot, while, in regard to pub- 

 ic concerns, I was obliged to follow orders from a dis- 

 tance." 



In investigating the motives which have so frequent- 

 ly induced governments to lend themselves to the views 

 of persons projecting exclusive companies, we recog- 

 nise the influence of two prominent reasons ; first, a 

 prospect of gain is held forth without discovering at 

 whose expence ; and, in the next place, these flatter- 

 ing profits may be reduced in the most plausible way 

 to numerical calculation, while the consequent loss, 

 being indirect, obscure, and general, wholly escapes 

 observation. The general result of the facts and rea- 

 soning brought forward in this article may be expres- 

 sed as follows : Exclusive privileges, if they ever were 

 advisable, become less and less necessary as society ad- 

 vances. On the other hand, the exemption from unli- 

 mited responsibility, and the unrestrained permission 

 to bring to sale a share in the property of a company, 

 the two principal features in the constitution of a joint 

 stock association, become more and more applicable as 

 improvements take place. Both alterations are in cor- 

 respondence with that admirable system which an inti- 



31 



COM 



£ 



mate knowledge of political economy opens to theminil 

 of the attentive observer. Exclusive privileges are at 

 variance with that liberty which constitutes the basis 

 of trade; while the exemptions which we have speci- 

 fied are merely examples of the extension of the prin- 

 ciple. It has been thought expedient to make every 

 partner in a private mercantile house responsible to the 

 creditors of the concern to the last shilling of his pro- 

 perty ; a precaution rendered necessary by the unac- 

 quaintance of the public with the amount of property 

 invested in the concern. But in the case of a public 

 body, the capital is matter of notoriety, and the re- 

 sponsibility of the individual partners admits of limi- 

 tation, without injury to the creditors of the com- 

 pany. («) 



COMPASS. See Magnetism. 



COMPASSES. See Drawing Instruments. 



COMPENSATION Balance. See Timekeeper. 



COMPLEMENT, in music, is applied to such in- 

 tervals as, with some other given one, make up the 

 octave, or eighth ; thus, if a major third be given, as 

 C E, its complement is the minor sixth E c ; if a minor 

 third CE [?, its complement is the major sixth E tic, &c; 

 and it may be proper here to note, that a major interval 

 is always the complement of a minor one, and vice versa; 

 and that these intervals are always expressed by tire 

 same letters, but in reversed order, as above. It may 

 be proper further to remark, that if any interval be a 

 concord, its complement is the same also; and if a dis- 

 cord, its complement is a discord also : and, that if 

 any interval be tempered flat or sharp, its complement 

 has just a similar temperament sharp or flat, or the re- 

 verse of the former; thus, V — \c, has 4th -f- \c for 

 its complement, in the mean tone system ; V — 2 has 

 4th -|- 2, and III -f 7 2 has 6th — 7 2, for their com- 

 plements, in Farey's Equal Temperament, (g) 



COMPONENT Primes, in music, is applied to the 

 integers 2, 3, and 5, which enter into the composition 

 of the ratio of any interval ; thus, of the major commej, 



whose ratio is |-°, the component primes are ■' or, 



the 4th power of two multiplied by 5 for a numerator 

 or least of the terms, and the 4th power of 3 for a de- 

 nominator, or largest of the terms. (?) 



Company 



II ,' . 

 Com p'e- 



COMPLEXION 



(jriBBow has remarked, that the extraordinary pheno- 

 menon of the great and extreme variety in the human 

 Complexion, as in some instances it appeared to proceed 

 from the influence of climate, and in other instances 

 to resist it for a long series of years, which has roused 

 and exercised the speculation of modern philosophers 

 and theologians, was passed over, almost unnoticed, and 

 certainly uninvestigated, by the ancients. Their atten- 

 tion was indeed called to the general and striking fact, 

 that under the burning climates of the globe, the hu- 

 man complexion was of the darkest hue : the fable of 

 Phaeton, invented or embellished by the poets, con- 

 tained in it such an easy and satisfactory solution of 

 this circumstance, that in its more sober and philoso- 

 phical interpretation, it was adopted and acquiesced in 

 by the natural historians of antiquity ; but neither their 

 opportunities of information enabled them, nor, had 

 they possessed these, would their mode of philosophis- 



ing have led them to detect, and speculate on the ex- 

 ceptions to the general fact, that the blackness of the 

 human complexion increased or diminished according 

 as the country approached or receded from the equator. 

 Even the blackness of the Ethiopian, (for this name 

 they seem to have given to all the nations who had this 

 complexion, whether they had inhabited Africa or Asia), 

 though it excited the wonder and astonishment of the 

 ancients, did not induce them to enter very fully or 

 minutely into the investigation of its cause. Hippo- 

 crates, Aristotle, and Pliny, merely touch upon it ra- 

 ther individually, than with any settled purpose of treat- 

 ing it in a full and satisfactory manner. Pliny, indeed, 

 from the information winch the Romans, by their con- 

 quests in Gaul and Germany, had gained respecting 

 those nations, was enabled to illustrate and to strength- 

 en the hypothesis which was contained in the fable of 

 Phaeton, and, coinciding with it, in ascribing tltc 



Opinions 

 of the an- 

 cients. 



