uld not be continued longer than
is necessary for the purpose of reasonably recompensing the adventurers.
A successful company, even when it has lost monopoly or privileges, has,
by its command of capital and general resources, established so strong a
position that private individuals or new companies can rarely compete
with it successfully. That this is so is clearly shown in the case of
the Hudson's Bay Company as at present constituted. In colonizing new
lands these companies often act successfully. They have proved more
potent than the direct action of governments. This may be seen in
Africa, where France and England have of late acquired vast areas, but
have developed them with very different results, acting from the
opposite principles of private and state promotion of colonization.
Apart from national characteristics, the individual has far more to gain
under the British system of private enterprise. A strong point in favour
of some of the British companies has been that their undertakings have
been practically extensions of existing British colonies rather than
entirely isolated ventures. But a chartered company can never be
anything but a transition stage of colonization; sooner or later the
state must take the lead. A company may act beneficially so long as a
country is undeveloped, but as soon as it becomes even semi-civilized
its conflicts with private interests become so frequent and serious that
its authority has to make way for that of the central government.

The companies which have been formed in France during recent years do
not yet afford material for profitable study, for they have been subject
to so much vexatious interference from home owing to lack of a fixed
system of control sanctioned by government, that they have not been
able, like the British, to develop along their own lines.

See also BORNEO; NIGERIA; BRIT. EAST AFRICA; RHODESIA; &c. The
following works deal with the subject of chartered companies
generally: Bonnassieux, _Les Grandes Compagnies de commerce_ (Paris,
1892); Chailly-Bert, _Les Compagnies de colonisation sous l'ancien
regime_ (Paris, 1898); Cawston and Keane, _The Early Chartered
Companies_ (London, 1896); W. Cunningham, _A History of British
Industry and Commerce_ (Cambridge, 1890, 1892); Egerton, _A Short
History of British Colonial Policy_ (London, 1897); J. Scott Keltie,
_The Partition of Africa_ (London, 1895); Leroy-Beaulieu, _De la
colonisation che