The stockholders will be discouraged; the shares will fall in value; many will sell out; as some have already done, and daily continue to do; even of those who, up to this time, have conferred lustre on this Company. We earnestly trust that neither their High Mightinesses, nor iiis Serene Grace, will suffer this, nor unnecessarily surrender so great an advantage to the enemy; but, rather, that they will adopt a laudable and firm resolution to maintain the Company in their Charter, and aid them in prosecuting the war; and that your Great Mightinesses will, herein, set them an example of zeal equal to what you formerly exhibited. For, as we have lately at some length submitted to their High Mightinesses, affairs in Brazil are so shaped that by sending a some what stronger force and an experienced chief thither (as we now propose to do, if properly encouraged) that place will not only be secured to this State, but rendered so profitable that its expenses will disappear, and it will produce great trade and prosperity to this country. Your Great Mightinesses can determine that the subsidies we have hereunto demanded are not so great as to embarrass this State; some provinces make no difficulty about them; but where those subsidies appear to be a little heavier than present circumstances can well justify, the profit to be reaped therefrom is also so great, and the security which this State will obtain thereby, so evident, that there ought not to be a moment's hesitation about it. Foreign princes, whose good successes were both to be desired and feared, were voted these past years heavier subsidies; these were not grudged to those from whom this State hath heretofore derived but little advantage, all for the purpose of creating a diversion, and weakening the enemy; with what excuse then will men be able to cover their neglect or disregard of a Company, which, out of its own private means, hath wrought such good for the commonwealth, and which nestles here under your Great Mightinesses' wings, and cannot be dreaded except by its enemies ?