nd
the funds or maintained the magnitude of such enterprises. It was only
this necessity which induced statesmen like Colbert to countenance them,
and Montesquieu took the same view (_Esprit des lois_, t. xx. c. 10).
John de Witt's view was that such companies were not useful for
colonization properly so called, because they want quick returns to pay
their dividends. So, even in France and Holland, opinion was by no means
settled as to their utility. In England historic protests were made
against such monopolies, but the chartered companies were less exclusive
in England than in either France or Holland, the governors of provinces
almost always allowing strangers to trade on receiving some pecuniary
inducement. French commercial companies were more privileged, exclusive
and artificial than those in Holland and England. Those of Holland may
be said to have been national enterprises. French companies rested more
than did their rivals on false principles; they were more fettered by
the royal power, and had less initiative of their own, and therefore had
less chance of surviving. As an example of the kind of rules which
prevented the growth of the French companies, it may be pointed out that
no Protestants were allowed to take part in them. State subventions,
rather than commerce or colonization, were often their object; but that
has been a characteristic of French colonial enterprise at all times.

Such companies, however, under the old commercial system could hardly
have come into existence without exclusive privileges. Their existence
might have been prolonged had the whole people in time been allowed the
chance of participating in them.

To sum up the causes of failure of the old chartered companies, they are
to be attributed to (1) bad administration; (2) want of capital and
credit; (3) bad economic organization; (4) distribution of dividends
made prematurely or fictitiously. But those survived the longest which
extended the most widely their privileges to outsiders. According to
contemporary protests, they had a most injurious effect on the commerce
of the countries where they had their rise. They were monopolies, and
therefore, of course, obnoxious; and it is undoubted that the colonies
they founded only became prosperous when they had escaped from their
yoke.

On the other hand, it must not be forgotten that they contributed in no
small degree to the commercial progress of their own states. They gave
colonies to