s and factories. This expedient did not answer the
purposes for which it had been contrived. The separate traders,
instead of receiving any benefit from the protection of the company,
industriously avoided their castles, as the receptacles of tyranny and
oppression. The company, whether from misconduct or knavery of their
directors, contracted such a load of debts as their stock was unable to
discharge. They seemed to neglect the traffic, and allowed their castles
to decay. In a word, their credit being exhausted, and their creditors
growing clamorous, they presented a petition to the house of commons,
disclosing their distresses, and imploring such assistance as should
enable them not only to pay their debts, but also to maintain the forts
in a defensible condition. This petition, recommended to the house in a
message from his majesty, was corroborated by another in behalf of the
company's creditors. Divers merchants of London, interested in the trade
of Africa and the British plantations in America, petitioned the house,
that as the African trade was of the utmost importance to the nation,
and could not be supported without forts and settlements, some effectual
means should be speedily taken for protecting and extending this
valuable branch of commerce. A fourth was offered by the merchants of
Liverpool, representing that the security and protection of the trade
to Africa must always principally depend upon his majesty's ships of
war being properly stationed on that coast, and seasonably relieved, and
that such forts and settlements as might be judged necessary for marks
of sovereignty and possession, would prove a nuisance and a burden to
the trade, should they remain in the hands of any joint-stock company,
whose private interest always had been, and ever would be, found
incompatible with the interest of the separate and open trader. They
therefore prayed, that the said forts might either be taken into
his majesty's immediate possession, and supported by the public, or
committed to the merchants trading on that coast, in such a manner as
the house should judge expedient, without vesting in them any other
advantage or right to the commerce, but what should be common to all his
majesty's subjects. This remonstrance was succeeded by another to the
same effect, from the master, wardens, assistants, and commonalty of the
society of merchant adventurers within the city of Bristol. All these
petitions were referred to a comm