rom every county in England. Charters were obtained
from the Crown, conferring estates, and sometimes whole islands, on men of
ancient families. Slaves were cheap, and sugar cultivation brought in
great wealth; the whole machinery of English life was reproduced in the
tropics--counties, parishes; sheriffs, rectories, tithes, an established
church, etc. The same causes that sent the Cavaliers to Virginia, sent a
smaller migration to the West Indies. At the Restoration, the men who had
conquered Jamaica for Cromwell were unwilling to return to England.
Monmouth's rebellion and the expulsion of the Stuarts produced a fresh
influx. But, whether Cavaliers or Roundheads or Jacobites, they came from
the landholding class in England. The evidence may still be read in old
West Indian graveyards, where the crumbling monuments show the carefully
engraved armorial bearings, and the inscriptions record the families and
homes in England from which those whom they commemorate had sprung.

In the East Indies nothing of the kind was possible. The acquisition of
land for agriculture was out of the question. Trade was the only opening,
and that was monopolized by the Company. Except as a servant of the
Company, an Englishman had no legal status in the East. The chief profits
went to the shareholders in London. If at the end of twenty-five years or
so a Company's servant could return to England with a few thousands made
by private trade, he was a fortunate man. Private traders and a few of the
governors were alone able to make fortunes. The shaking of the pagoda tree
did not begin till after Plassey. The result was that the men who went to
India were of a totally different class from those who went to America and
the West Indies; they were young men from small trading families in London,
Greenwich, and Deptford, or from seaport towns like Bristol and Plymouth.
Among them were some restless and adventurous spirits who found life in
England too tame or too burdensome. For such men India was long regarded
as a useful outlet. "If you cannot devise expedients to send contributions,
or procure credit, all is lost, and I must go to the Indies," wrote
William the Third, in bitter humour, at a desperate crisis in his affairs.
Fryer tells us (1698) how the Company had entertained Bluecoat boys as
apprentices for seven years, after which time they were to be made writers,
if able to furnish the required security. The salaries they received from
the Com