, except by a concentration of the private
strength and wealth, of the mercantile community. The Government had
enough on its hands in disputing, inch by inch, at so prodigious an
expenditure of blood and treasure, the meagre territory with which nature
had endowed the little commonwealth. Private organisation, self-help;
union of individual purses and individual brains, were to conquer an
empire at the antipodes if it were to be won at all. By so doing, the
wealth of the nation and its power to maintain the great conflict with
the spirit of the past might be indefinitely increased, and the resources
of Spanish despotism proportionally diminished. It was not to be expected
of Jacob Heemskerk, Wolfert Hermann, or Joris van Spilberg, indomitable
skippers though they were, that each, acting on his own responsibility or
on that of his supercargo, would succeed every day in conquering a whole
Spanish fleet and dividing a million or two of prize-money among a few
dozen sailors. Better things even than this might be done by wholesome
and practical concentration on a more extended scale.

So the States-General granted a patent or charter to one great company
with what, for the time, was an enormous paid-up capital, in order that
the India trade might be made secure and the Spaniards steadily
confronted in what they had considered their most impregnable
possessions. All former trading companies were invited to merge
themselves in the Universal East India Company, which, for twenty-one
years, should alone have the right to trade to the east of the Cape of
Good Hope and to sail through the Straits of Magellan.

The charter had been signed on 20th March, 1602, and was mainly to the
following effect.

The company was to pay twenty-five thousand florins to the States-General
for its privilege. The whole capital was to be six million six hundred
thousand florins. The chamber of Amsterdam was to have one half of the
whole interest, the chamber of Zeeland one fourth; the chambers of the
Meuse, namely, Delft, Rotterdam, and the north quarter; that is to say,
Hoorn and Enkhuizen, each a sixteenth. All the chambers were to be
governed by the directors then serving, who however were to be allowed to
die out, down to the number of twenty for Amsterdam, twelve for Zeeland,
and seven for each of the other chambers. To fill a vacancy occurring
among the directors, the remaining members of the board were to nominate
three candidates, from whom