The Joint-Stock Company—Transferable Shares and Limited Liability—Insurance

The original trading corporations ¹ were mainly concerned with trade to foreign lands. Their members were established and recognised merchants. Money was at once the inspiration and the means. Before Columbus sailed Westwards the Portuguese had tried the Southern route, thrusting themselves further and further towards the south of the Dark Continent under the leadership of Henry the Navigator. With his usual swift insight into the real nature of the power behind the Throne, Professor Pollard remarks that we should now call him Henry the 164Company Promoter. ¹ The company promoter was wanted in England as well as in Portugal. As soon as trade was transformed from the pelagic to the oceanic type, as soon as mercantile prows furrowed the Atlantic rather than the Mediterranean, the great opportunity for England had arrived. Money, though as yet comparatively unorganised, began to transform Christendom from a system of independent city States into an aggregate of closely related organic communities, the nations of the modern world. But the work was too extensive for the individual capitalist. The joint-stock method became more essentia. with every advance in the progress of national enterprisel 165Ultimately, the fact was specifically recognised and employed as an argument for royal favour. When the East India merchants asked (in 1599) for the privilege of perpetual succession, they argued that the trade of the Indies was so remote as to be incapable of proper management without a “joint and united stock.”