318 LAISSEZ FAIRE 
existence through the aid of considerable subsidies granted 
by Government!; the Pacific Steam Navigation Company 
had even greater difficulty in developing the trade which 
was necessary to render their enterprise profitable. It was 
only gradually that the conditions, in which the competition 
of steamers, whether under company or private management, 
with sailing-vessels could be successfully carried on, came to 
be better understood. 
These new shipping companies had no pretensions to 
exclusive rights, and were in this way entirely unlike the 
great trading companies of the seventeenth century. The 
regulated companies had for the most part been thrown open 
about the time of the Revolution, and during the eighteenth 
century they seem to have gradually lost their practical 
importance, but the two great joint-stock companies were 
Die, retained. The conditions, which had rendered company 
Fd Co. trading with Hudson Bay desirable, still prevailed; but the 
© India very success of the East India Company, in the exercise of its 
political and military powers, removed the excuse for con- 
binuing its exclusive trade. The fact that a stable Government 
had been established, rendered it possible for any Englishman 
to trade with India, without causing difficulties with the 
was thrown native potentates. In 1813 the trade to India was thrown 
Ei" open to all British subjects?; but the Company still retained 
a monopoly of the trade with China, and controlled the supply 
of tea. This had become an article of common consumption 
in England during the eighteenth century, and the Company 
appeared to reap a large profit from the terms on which they 
supplied it. The controversy, which arose on this subject, was a 
curious echo of the seventeenth century debates on well-ordered 
trade, though the point in question was the dearness of an 
import? and not the diminution of the vent for English cloth 
A.D. 1776 
—1850. 
i Lindsay, History of Merchant Shipping, Iv. 295. 
* The Company continued to transmit a certain quantity of goods to this 
country, as that was the most convenient form in which to make their remittances, 
but they practically ceased to take any part in the export trade from this country. 
Vill, History (Wilson), ix. 382. 
5 There is & certain analogy with the fourteenth century disputes about the 
vintners and the high price of wine. Vol. 1. p. 318. 
4 On the complaints which were urged against the Merchant Adventurers for 
their stint see above, p. 231 n. 4.