JOINT-STOCK COMPANIES 821 
was concluded in 1842 by a treaty, under which Hong-kong A-D.1776 
was ceded to England, and trade at Shanghai, Canton, Amoy, 
Ningpo, and Foo-chow-foo was opened to British subjects; 
while the monopoly of the Hongists, as the agents for foreign 
trade, was entirely done away. 
For good or for evil, the system of relieving the Govern- 
ment of responsibility for distant trades, by conferring com- 
bined political and trading rights on an exclusive company, 
had come to an end. The East India Company had lost its hon the 
trading character, and continued as an administrative body nant of 
for political and military purposes till the outbreak of the monopoly 
Mutiny in 1857, when the governmental system of India was hw as 
reconstructed. The other great seventeenth century company 
which survived, retained its character as a trader, but had 
lost much of its political significance’. Since the conquest of 
Canada, the forts on Hudson's Bay had ceased to be the out- 
posts of English encroachment on the sphere of French 
influence. In so far as the company form has been retained 
in more recent times in connection with the development of 
Borneo or of Rhodesia? there is no real reversion to the old 
type. The company system has been adopted, not as a 
means of relieving the Government of responsibility, but as 
an administrative form through which the duty of the State, 
for the protection of English traders and of native races, can 
be most effectively exercised. 
In the same decade, in which the last vestiges of monopoly 7%e danger 
in the foreign trade of the country were being broken down, zz; es 
it became necessary to guard against the danger of a new id, “2Jo" 
monopoly arising in connection with internal communications, Sommuns- 
In countries where railways had been built by the State, 
the difficulty of protecting the public welfare from private 
interests did not arise; but in England, the development of 
the new system of transport was left to associated enterprise, 
and was effected by joint-stock companies. The legislature had 
anticipated that the roads laid down by the railway companies 
would be available for private persons to run their own 
engines and waggons, subject to the payment of tolls. It 
1 See above, Pp. 279 n. 4. 
t Nicholson. Political Economy, 11. 254.