sooner had the allotment of land to the companies taken place than they
were called upon to raise a further sum of L5,000,(131) and at the end of
another twelve months a further sum of L7,500, making in all a sum total
of L52,500 which they had subscribed towards the plantation.(132) It was
not until 1623 that the profits of the plantation began to exceed the
costs and the Irish Society was in a position to pay a dividend.(133)

(M53) (M54)

In years gone by, when some of the companies sold their Irish estate,
there was no question as to their power of alienation or their absolute
right to the proceeds of the sale, but of late years a cry has been raised
that the companies held their estates in a fiduciary capacity, and that
they could not legally alienate their Irish property without accounting
for the proceeds of the sale as public trustees. It had got abroad that
those companies who had not already parted with their Irish estates--as the
Haberdashers had done as far back as the year 1675, and the Merchant
Taylors, the Goldsmiths and the Vintners, between the years 1728 and
1737--were meditating a sale. In response to the cry thus raised a select
Parliamentary Committee was appointed to enquire "as to the Terms of the
Charters or other Instruments by which their Estates in Ireland were
granted to the Irish Society and to the London companies, and as to the
Trusts and Obligations (if any) attaching to the Ownership of such
Estates." Any trust or obligation in connection with the tenure of these
estates would naturally be comprised within the four corners of the
charters and instruments mentioned in the order of reference just cited,
but these the committee practically ignored, on the ground that the task
of pronouncing with decisive authority upon their legal construction could
only be performed by a judicial tribunal.(134) We have it, however, on the
authority of so sound a lawyer as the late Sir George Jessel, that the
companies are ordinary owners of their Irish estates in fee simple,
subject only to the reservations expressly contained in the conveyance to
them.(135)

CHAPTER XX.

(M55)

Contemporaneously with the plantation of Ulster, another and more distant
enterprise of somewhat similar character was being carried out in America;
and to this, as to every great public undertaking, the citizens of London
must need be called to lend their assistance. A company formed in 1606,
and composed, in pa