cupidity and the envious animosity of the whole capital. Wealth and
luxury were then rapidly increasing. The taste for the spices, the
tissues and the jewels of the East became stronger day by day. Tea,
which, at the time when Monk brought the army of Scotland to London, had
been handed round to be stared at and just touched with the lips, as a
great rarity from China, was, eight years later, a regular article of
import, and was soon consumed in such quantities that financiers began
to consider it as a fit subject for taxation. The progress which was
making in the art of war had created an unprecedented demand for the
ingredients of which gunpowder is compounded. It was calculated that all
Europe would hardly produce in a year saltpetre enough for the siege
of one town fortified on the principles of Vauban. [157] But for the
supplies from India, it was said, the English government would be unable
to equip a fleet without digging up the cellars of London in order
to collect the nitrous particles from the walls. [158] Before the
Restoration scarcely one ship from the Thames had ever visited the Delta
of the Ganges. But, during the twenty-three years which followed the
Restoration, the value of the annual imports from that rich and populous
district increased from eight thousand pounds to three hundred thousand.

The gains of the body which had the exclusive possession of this
fast growing trade were almost incredible. The capital which had been
actually paid up did not exceed three hundred and seventy thousand
pounds; but the Company could, without difficulty, borrow money at six
per cent., and the borrowed money, thrown into the trade, produced,
it was rumoured, thirty per cent. The profits were such that, in 1676,
every proprietor received as a bonus a quantity of stock equal to that
which he held. On the capital, thus doubled, were paid, during five
years, dividends amounting on an average to twenty per cent. annually.
There had been a time when a hundred pounds of the stock could be
purchased for sixty. Even in 1664 the price in the market was only
seventy. But in 1677 the price had risen to two hundred and forty-five;
in 1681 it was three hundred; it subsequently rose to three hundred and
sixty; and it is said that some sales were effected at five hundred.
[159]

The enormous gains of the Indian trade might perhaps have excited little
murmuring if they had been distributed among numerous proprietors.
But while the v