We can herein prescribe in no wise to your Great Mightinesses, nor be of use any longer than is agreeable to this State. But this we must, in virtue of our office, lay in all submission, before your Great Mightinesses, that the Company, so far as the interest of its stockholders is concerned, can without great loss, be easily brought to this negotiation, by money or goods for its contracts, such as the case deserves. That the Stockholders also would easily forget their losses, if the State might, by that means, be much benefitted but that the Company would thereby, in ;

time, come to ruin, and be unable to do the State any further service.

HOLLAND DOCUMENTS: IL 65 For unless the war with the King of Spain continue, and liberal subsidies be received from the State, it can derive scarcely any benefit from the Company, even if any essential injury done tiie enemy; for, it will be of no consequence to this State, whether the Company, by negotiation, retain its possessions in Brazil, or restore Ihem to the King for a sum of money. We willingly acknowledge that this Company was, in the beginning, designed principally for the augmentation of trade and navigation, without which the great multitude of seafaring people, with which God has blessed this country, could not be employed, nor the several trades kept in continual action and prosperity. Also, that those who, in that operation, pretended to have been most clear sighted, were of the opinion that the countries of the West Indies were not so thickly settled and planted by our enemies, but that trade could be established with divers people and Nations ; colonies carried emoluments derived therefrom over, plantations of divers profitable products promoted, and similar to what our enemies have now for many years drawn from their's to the manifest strengthening of the King's finances and in case of delay or ill success, it was expected to ;