such admitted and glaring evils. They have increased and been accentuated since that time. New authorities recently constituted, such as the Port of London Authority, the Water Board, the Public Trustee, the Insurance Commissioners, and the Labour Bureau, have made large additions to the Civil Service, at great cost, and have extended the sway of officialism. The less there is of central government in London, and the more local affairs are conducted in the light of day by qualified persons duly chosen by the ratepayers and responsible to them, the better will it be for the country.

Nor does the evil stop here. The multiplication of officials opens up a grave political danger. The 16,000 panel doctors are to to a large extent State officers. The office of the Public Trustee began in 1908 with a staff of five clerks. There are now 310, and it is proposed to open branch offices in large provincial towns. Projects of what passes under the convenient euphemism of 'social legislation' will assuredly increase the number of officials. A solidarity of interests exists among them. They have their own organs in the Press, and their own trade unions, imperial, departmental, and local, for the protection of their supposed rights and privileges, especially for extorting more pay, larger pensions, shorter hours and longer holidays. Irrespective of other considerations of a commercial or an economic character, the illegitimate use of the leverage of votes, whether Imperial or municipal, is a valid reason for resisting demands for the nationalisation of land and mines, of railways and of traffic generally, or for taking over water, gas, and electric undertakings, or for control by the State of the means of production and distribution, about which social sciolists discourse so fluently and dogmatically. It is appalling to contemplate the possibility of several millions of men and women receiving salaries and wages from the Exchequer or from the rates, and using electoral influence for personal benefit.

Art. 4. THE BEGINNINGS OF THE EAST INDIA COMPANY.

1. The English Factories in India: a Calendar of documents in the India Office, etc., 1618-1645. By William Foster. Nine vols. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1906-1913. 2. A Calendar of the Court Minutes, Etc., of the East India Company, 1635-1654. By Miss E. B. Sainsbury. Four vols. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1907-1914.

3. A Geographical Account of Countries round the Bay of Bengal. By Thomas Bowrey. Edited by Sir Richard Temple. London: Hakluyt Society, 1909.

4. New Account of East India and Persia. By John Fryer. Edited by W. Crooke. Two vols. London: Hakluyt Society, 1909-1912.

5. The Constitution and Finance of English, Scottish and Irish Joint-Stock Companies, to 1720. By Dr W. R. Scott. Three vols. Cambridge: University Press,

1910-1912.

6. A Pepys of Mogul India; being an abridged edition of the Storia do Mogor' of Niccolao Manucci. Translated by W. Irvine. London: Murray, 1913.

And other works.

IN a recent article we endeavoured to sketch the early and somewhat obscure progress of the East India Company towards political power, before the acquisition of Bengal had suddenly manifested the extraordinary destiny of England in the East. But the political progress of the Company can hardly be profitably studied without reference to the economic causes which created and maintained the Company; and in the following pages we propose to complete our review of early Anglo-Indian history by a brief examination of matters from an economic standpoint.

The fullest information regarding the East India Company is naturally to be found in the excellent calendars which are now being prepared by Mr William Foster and Miss Ethel Sainsbury.† Especially during the

* See Quarterly Review,' No. 437, Oct. 1913, British History before Plassey.'

† Besides these, there are of course the Public Record Office Calendars, Colonial-East Indies; and certain records published in extenso,-Stevens'

first century of the East India Company's existence, their records combine in a remarkable degree the importance of State documents with the human interest of private papers, and form a series of manuscripts that can hardly be rivalled among the official records of the modern world for importance of subject and variety of content. These India Office Calendars are fuller and more abundant in quotation than the somewhat arid abstracts of the Public Record Office; and the change is entirely for the better. The student could hardly desire a more satisfactory guide to the India Office records; and, as the series grows to completion, he will be able, with a month's reading and a few days among the manuscripts, to form surer conclusions than if he had spent laborious years in the record-room without such a guide.

The Hakluyt Society also has recently provided us with two valuable documents- The Travels of Thomas Bowrey,' edited by Sir R. Temple, and Fryer's 'New Account,' edited by Mr W. Crooke. The first is certainly the more important, for it previously existed only in manuscript, whereas the second has always been wellknown in the 17th-century folio. But, though Fryer is not new, he has long stood in need of an editor and annotator; so both works merit attention. In many ways also the two works are complementary. Save for a brief visit to Masulipatam and Fort St George, Fryer spent all his time in Western India; while Bowrey lived on the coast of Coromandel and was a frequent visitor to all the Eastern ports. Fryer was a man of learning, a doctor of medicine and a member of the Royal Society; Bowrey was an unlettered seaman, a skipper of country ships that plied into the Bay of Bengal and the Malay Archipelago. Thus differing in position, training and experience, these authors, taken together, give a tolerably complete description of the English in India in the third quarter of the 17th century.

While scholars are thus liberally endowing us with new knowledge, it is exceedingly gratifying to note signs

'Dawn of British Trade to the East Indies' (Stevens, 1886); Birdwood & Foster's First Letter Book of the East India Company' (Quaritch, 1893); and the Letters received by the East India Company from its Servants in the East,' 6 volumes (Sampson Low, 1896-1902).

of a renewed interest in the history of India among the general public. For example, that most important work, Manucci's 'Storia do Mogor,' has achieved the honour of a popular edition. It is familiar to every student for the vivacity and charm with which it gives us a first-hand account of the strange world into which our predecessors wandered. Miss M. L. Irvine has now prepared a condensed edition in one volume, from which all the excrescences of the original have been pruned away, while all the more important passages have been preserved. The Pepys of Mogul India,' as she calls her author, has gained more than he has lost by the compression of his four volumes into one.*

6

Lastly we come to the great work of Dr Scott. No student of economic history in general or of Anglo-Indian history in particular can afford to neglect this remarkable study of the joint-stock company. Dr Scott's conclusions are very different from those of Adam Smith; and he shows ample reason for traversing the statements of the Wealth of Nations.' For a period of over a century and a half before the South Sea catastrophe, the joint-stock system had done conspicuously good work for the country, as well as proving an advantageous method of private investment. The Muscovy Company had imported on a large scale the masts and cordage without which Elizabeth's fleets could not have put to sea. The 'Society of Mines Royal' worked copper which another 'society' converted into brass and bronze for ordnance. The buccaneering expeditions, including Drake's voyage round the world, were financed by joint-stock adventurers. Virginia and Massachusetts, the Bermudas and Hudson's Bay, were planted by joint-stock companies; while the African trade was at different periods opened up and developed by no less than six, one after the other. Dr Scott has dug deep into old records and forgotten pamphlets; he has recovered an astonishing number of facts, and has woven them together with great lucidity. But for our present purpose he has another remarkable

* The present writer has recently discovered a volume of the Mayor's Court records at Madras, which shows that Manucci was still alive in 1719, whereas it has been supposed that he died in 1717. In 1719, Manucci was, characteristically, suing a Mahomedan for his winnings at backgammon and for medicine supplied.

virtue. It has often happened that the East India Company has been studied in isolation, as though it had been a unique phenomenon-a process which necessarily produced misunderstandings. But Dr Scott shows us that Company surrounded by similar organisations that were endowed with similar privileges for the performance of similar functions; so that it assumes its true position as a natural and inevitable product of its age.

The East India trade, then, was conducted by a company with privileges similar to those enjoyed by the Muscovy or Virginia Company. If those who disobeyed the ordinances of the East India Company were liable to fines and imprisonment, so also were those who broke the rules of the Levant Company; and the Czar promised the Muscovy Company the use of his prisons and instruments of torture. Interloping vessels might be seized on the Guinea Coast as well as in the Indian seas. Powers of life and death were exercised not only by companies' servants at Bantam and Surat, but also by companies' servants at Jamestown and the Bermudas. If we look abroad, we see the same system at work, though in a more complete and logical form. The Dutch East India Company explicitly enjoyed legislative powers; its monopoly was more rigorously enforced than that of any English company; and the Governor-General with his Council at Batavia formed a supreme court of justice from which no appeal lay to any tribunal in the United Provinces. These extensive powers were bestowed, not by despotism in quest of affluence, but by the republican government of the States-General; not amidst an obscurantist or reactionary people, but amidst the great champions of liberty who in religious matters practised a toleration to be found nowhere else in Europe.

It was universally believed that remote foreign trade and colonial adventure could only be conducted by means of a privileged company empowered to coerce the refractory into obedience and to maintain permanent relations with sovereigns with whom the national power could not come into effective contact. And in fact there was no alternative. For various reasons, personal, political, and economic, national finances were too embarrassed throughout the 17th century for the State to undertake