The Hudson's Bay Company, before their misfortunes in the late war, had been much more fortunate than the Royal African Company.Their necessary expense is much smaller.The whole number of people whom they maintain in their different settlements and habitations, which they have honoured with the name of forts, is said not to exceed a hundred and twenty persons.This number, however, is sufficient to prepare beforehand the cargo of furs and other goods necessary for loading their ships, which, on account of the ice, can seldom remain above six or eight weeks in those seas.This advantage of having a cargo ready prepared could not for several years be acquired by private adventurers, and without it there seems to be no possibility of trading to Hudson's Bay.The moderate capital of the company, which, it is said, does not exceed one hundred and ten thousand pounds, may besides be sufficient to enable them to engross the whole, or almost the whole, trade and surplus produce of the miserable, though extensive country, comprehended within their charter.No private adventurers, accordingly, have ever attempted to trade to that country in competition with them.
This company, therefore, have always enjoyed an exclusive trade in fact, though they may have no right to it in law.Over and above all this, the moderate capital of this company is said to be divided among a very small number of proprietors.But a joint stock company, consisting of a small number of proprietors, with a moderate capital, approaches very nearly to the nature of a private copartnery, and may be capable of nearly the same degree of vigilance and attention.It is not to be wondered at, therefore, if, in consequence of these different advantages, the Hudson's Bay Company had, before the late war, been able to carry on their trade with a considerable degree of success.It does not seem probable, however, that their profits ever approached to what the late Mr.Dobbs imagined them.A much more sober and judicious writer, Mr.Anderson, author of The Historical and Chronological Deduction of Commerce, very justly observes that, upon examining the accounts of which Mr.Dobbs himself was given for several years together of their exports and imports, and upon ****** proper allowances for their extraordinary risk and expense, it does not appear that their profits deserve to be envied, or that they can much, if at all, exceed the ordinary profits of trade.
The South Sea Company never had any forts or garrisons to maintain, and therefore were entirely exempted from one great expense to which other joint stock companies for foreign trade are subject.But they had an immense capital divided among an immense number of proprietors.It was naturally to be expected, therefore, that folly, negligence, and profusion should prevail in the whole management of their affairs.The knavery and extravagance of their stock-jobbing projects are sufficiently known, and the explication of them would be foreign to the present subject.Their mercantile projects were not much better conducted.The first trade which they engaged in was that of supplying the Spanish West Indies with negroes, of which (in consequence of what was called the Assiento contract granted them by the Treaty of Utrecht) they had the exclusive privilege.But as it was not expected that much profit could be made by this trade, both the Portuguese and French companies, who had enjoyed it upon the same terms before them, having been ruined by it, they were allowed, as compensation, to send annually a ship of a certain burden to trade directly to the Spanish West Indies.Of the ten voyages which this annual ship was allowed to make, they are said to have gained considerably by one, that of the Royal Caroline in 1731, and to have been losers, more or less, by almost all the rest.Their ill success was imputed, by their factors and agents, to the extortion and oppression of the Spanish government; but was, perhaps, principally owing to the profusion and depredations of those very factors and agents, some of whom are said to have acquired great fortunes even in one year.In 1734, the company petitioned the king that they might be allowed to dispose of the trade and tonnage of their annual ship, on account of the little profit which they made by it, and to accept such equivalent as they could obtain from the of Spain.
In 1724, this company had undertaken the whale-fishery.Of this, indeed, they had no monopoly; but as long as they carried it on, no other British subjects appear to have engaged in it.Of the eight voyages which their ships made to Greenland, they were gainers by one, and losers by all the rest.After their eighth and last voyage, when they had sold their ships, stores, and utensils, they found that their whole loss, upon this branch, capital and interest included, amounted to upwards of two hundred and thirty-seven thousand pounds.