THE WEALTH OF NATIONS.

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never be a motive of sufficient weight to force a continual andcareful attention to a busiuess, to which he has no other in-terest to attend. The committee are accused of having sentout bricks aud stones from England for the reparation of CapeCoast. Castle on the coast of Guinea , a business for whichparliament had several times granted an extraordinary sumof money. These bricks and stones too, which had thus beensent upon so long a voyage, were said to have been of so bada epadity, that it was necessary to rebuild from the foundationthe walls which had been repaired with them. The forts andgarrisons which lie north of Cape Rouge are not only main-tained at the expense of the state, but are under the immediategovernment of the executive power; and why those which liesouth of that Cape, and which too are, in part at least, main-tained at the expense of the state, should be under a differentgovernment, it seems not very easy even to imagine a goodreason. The protection of the Mediterranean trade was theoriginal purpose or pretence of the garrisons of Gibraltar andMinorca , and the maintenance and government of those gar-risons have always been, very properly, committed, not to theTurkey Company, but to the executive power. In the extentof its dominion consists, in a great measure, the pride anddignity of that power; and it is not very likely to fail in at-tention to what is necessary for the defence of that dominion.The garrisons at Gibraltar and Minorca , accordingly, havenever been neglected : though Minorca has been twice taken,and is now probably lost for ever, that disaster was nevereven imputed to any neglect in the executive power. I wouldnot, however, be understood to insinuate that either of thoseexpensive garrisons was ever, even in the smallest degree,necessary for the purpose for which they were originally dis-membered from the Spanish monarchy. That dismembermentperhaps, never served any other real purpose than to alienatefrom England her natural ally the King of Spain , and to unitethe two principal branches of the house of Bourbon in a muchstricter and more permanent alliance than the ties of bloodcould ever have united them.

Joint stock companies, established either by royal charteror by act of parliament, differ in several respects, not onlyfrom regulated companies, but from private copartneries.

First, in a private copartnery, no partner, without the con-sent of the company, can transfer his share to another person,or introduce a new member into the company. Each member,