rights under the English flag from Sallee on the Moroccan coast to the Cape
of Good Hope.[4] For two decades this company prospered greatly, selling
some two thousand slaves a year in Jamaica alone, and paying large cash
dividends on its £100,000 capital and then a stock dividend of 300
per cent. But now came reverses through European war and through the
competition of English and Yankee private traders who shipped slaves
legitimately from Madagascar and illicitly from Guinea. Now came also a
clamor from the colonies, where the company was never popular, and from
England also where oppression and abuses were charged against it by
would-be free traders. After a parliamentary investigation an act of 1697
restricted the monopoly by empowering separate traders to traffic in Guinea
upon paying to the company for the maintenance of its forts ten per cent,
on the value of the cargoes they carried thither and a percentage on
certain minor exports carried thence.

[Footnote 4: The financial career of the company is described by W.R.
Scott, "The Constitution and Finances of the Royal African Company of
England till 1720," in the _American Historical Review_, VIII. 241-259.]

The company soon fell upon still more evil times, and met them by evil
practices. To increase its capital it offered new stock for sale at
reduced prices and borrowed money for dividends in order to encourage
subscriptions. The separate traders meanwhile were winning nearly all its
trade. In 1709-1710, for example, forty-four of their vessels made voyages
as compared with but three ships of the company, and Royal African stock
sold as low as 2-1/8 on the £100. A reorganization in 1712 however added
largely to the company's funds, and the treaty of Utrecht brought it new
prosperity. In 1730 at length Parliament relieved the separate traders
of all dues, substituting a public grant of £10,000 a year toward the
maintenance of the company's forts. For twenty years more the company,