•WILLIAM AND MARY.

245

day by clay. Tea, ■which, at the time when Monk brought thearmy of Scotland to London, had been handed round to be-stared at and just touched with the lips, as a great rarity fromChina, was, eight years later, a regular article of import, andwas soon consumed in such quantities that financiers began toconsider it as a fit subject for taxation. The progress which wasmaking in the art of war had created an unprecedented demandfor the ingredients of which gunpowder is compounded. It wascalculated that all Europe would hardly produce in a year salt-petre enough for the siege of one town fortified on the principlesofVauban.* But for the supplies from India, itwassaid, theEnglish government would be unable to equip a fleet withoutdigging up the cellars of London in order to collect the nitrousparticles from the walls.** Before the Restoration scarcely oneship from the Thames had ever visited the Delta of the Ganges.But, during the twenty three years which followed the Resto-ration , the value of the annual imports from that rich and po-pulous district increased from eight thousand pounds to threehundred thousand.

The gains of the body which had the exclusive possession ofthis fast growing trade were almost incredible. The capitalwhich had been actually paid up did not exceed three hundred andseventy thousand pounds; but the Company could, withoutdifficulty, borrow money at six per cent, and the borrowedmoney, thrown into the trade, produced, it was rumoured,thirty per cent. The profits were such that, in 1676, every pro-prietor received as a bonus a quantity of stock equal to thatwhich he held. On the capital, thus doubled, ■were paid, duringfive years, dividends amounting on an average to twenty percent annually. There had been a time when a hundred poundsof the stock could be purchased for sixty. Even in 1664 the

CITAP.

XVIII.

Him.

* See Davenant’s Letter to Mulgrave.

** Answer to Two Letters concerning the East India Company, 1670.