ign manufactures, and that with the smallest
extent of traffic and navigation that can be contrived. Hence, if
the East India Company can gain more by importing Japan cloths, India
quilts, carpets, and chintzes, than by raw silk; or, if the Company,
by creating an artificial scarcity of nutmegs, mace, cloves, cinnamon,
and other spices, can raise their price so as to gain as much profit
by the sale of 100 tons, as it would otherwise gain by the sale of
1000 tons, we are not to expect that it will import raw silks, or be
at the expence of transporting 1000 tons of spice; though the former
would assist and encourage our manufactures at home, and the latter
would increase our navigation.

This chain of reasoning is so plain, and so evidently agrees with the
interests of all nations, as well as with those of Holland, that it
is impossible for any unprejudiced person not to discern that all
exclusive companies destroy, instead of promoting, the commerce of
the countries in which they are established. The same great statesman
already quoted observes, "That the more any country extends its
foreign conquests, the more of its stock must necessarily be spent,
for the preservation and defence of these conquests: And consequently,
by how much the greater are its dominions, so much the less is that
company able to prosecute the trade, for the promotion of which it was
erected."[6]--_Harris._

[Footnote 6: The remarks of Harris on this voyage are extended to a
far greater length than have been here adopted, and are many of them
loose and uninteresting; but some of those here inserted have a strong
reference to a most important subject now under consideration of the
legislature; and the notices respecting the Dutch West India Companies
are curious in themselves, as well as upon a subject very little known
in this country.

The subject of this voyage round the world is principally exhausted
in the _seven_ first sections; all those subsequent being chiefly a
detail of the Indian settlements of the Dutch East India Company, as
it was in the year 1722, almost a century ago. These certainly might
have been omitted on the present occasion, without injury to the
present article, as a _circumnavigation_: But, as conveying a
considerable mass of information, respecting the _Dutch possessions in
India_, now all belonging to Britain, and respecting which hardly any
thing has been published in the English language, it has been deemed
indispen