594 TIIE NATURE AND CAUSES OF

tal sufficient to maintain factors and agents in the differentports of the East Indies, in order to provide goods for the shipswhich he might occasionally send thither; and yet, unlesshe was able to do this, the difficulty of finding a cargo mightfrequently make his ships lose the season for returning, andthe expense of so long a delay would not only eat up thewhole profit of the adventure, but frequently occasion a veryconsiderable loss. This argument, however, if it proved anything at all, would prove that no one great branch of tradecould be carried on without an exclusive company, whichis contrary to the experience of all nations. There is nogreat branch of trade in which the capital of any one privatemerchant is sufficient for carrying on all the subordinatebranches which must be carried on, in order to carry on theprincipal one. But when a nation is ripe for any greatbranch of trade, some merchants naturally turn their capitalstowards the principal, and some towards the subordinatebranches of it; and though all the different branches of itare in this manner carried on, yet it very seldom happensthat they are all carried on, by the capital of one private mer-chant. If a nation, therefore, is ripe for the East India trade,a certain portion of its capital will naturally divide itselfamong all the different branches of that trade. Some of itsmerchants will find it for their interest to reside in the EastIndies, and to employ their capitals there in providing goodsfor the ships which are to be sent out by other merchants whoreside in Europe . The settlements which different Europeannations have obtained in the East Indies, if they were takenfrom the exclusive companies to which they at present belong,and put under the immediate protection of the sovereign,would render this residence both safe and easy, at least to themerchants of the particular nations to whom those settle-ments belong. If at any particular time that part of the ca-pital of any countrywhich of its own accord tended and in-clined, if 1 may say so, towards the East India trade, wasnot sufficient for carrying on all those different branches ofit, it would be a proof that, at that particular time, that coun-try was not ripe for that trade, and that it would do better tobuy for some time, even at a higher price, from other Euro-pean nations, the East India goods it had occasion for, thanto import them itself directly from the East Indies. What itmight lose by the high price of those goods could seldom beequal to the loss which it would sustain by the distraction of