at present subsist in Great Britain, are, the ancient merchant adventurers company, now commonly called the Hamburg Company, the Russia Company, the Eastland Company, the Turkey Company, and the African Company.
The terms of admission into the Hamburg Company are now said to be quite easy; and the directors either have it not in their power to subject the trade to any burdensome restraint or regulations, or at least, have not of late exercised that power. It has not always been so. About the middle of the last century, the fine for admission was fifty, and at one time one hundred pounds, and the conduct of the company was said to be extremely oppressive. In 1643, in 1645 and in 1661, the clothiers and free traders of the West of England complained of them to Parliament, as of monopolists who confined the trade and oppressed the manufactures of the country. Though those complaints produced no act of Parliament, they had probably intimidated the company so far as to oblige them to reform their conduct. Since that time, at least, there have been no complaints against them. By the 10th and 11th of William III., chap. 6, the fine for admission into the Russian Company was reduced to five pounds; and by the 25th of Charles II., chap. 7, that for admission into the Eastland Company, to forty shillings, while, at the same time, Sweden, Denmark, and Norway, all the countries on the north side of the Baltic, were exempted from their exclusive charter. The conduct of those companies had probably given occasion to those two acts of Parliament. Before that time, Sir Josiah Child had represented both these and the Hamburg Company as extremely oppressive, and imputed to their bad management the low state of the trade, which we at that
