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242 THE FJKST ENGLISH EAST INDIA COMPANY Freeman, and therefore to a vote, varied at different periods. In 1619 it was 100. In a certain sense, therefore, the company was iden- tical with the subscribers to the first voyage, and it had a capital of 68,373 subscribed for the voyage. But as soon as it expended that capital on the first voyage, from which no return could be expected for several years, it ceased as a company to have any capital of its own for further voyages. Its business was, there- fore, to plan voyages, to obtain the royal sanction for each voyage, and to recommend each voyage for sub- scription to its members, to receive the subscriptions as a separate fund applicable to the particular voyage, to buy ships and goods for the voyage, and finally to divide the profits among the individual group of sub- scribers who had found the capital for the separate voyage. Putting all this in very modern terms, the company was, as I have said, a syndicate with a concession for the Indian trade during fifteen years, and it worked its concession by forming minor groups, theoretically among its own members, to find the capital for each separate voyage the management of all the voyages remaining in the hands of the parent syndicate, and the liability of the minor groups being limited to the separate voyage to which they individually subscribed. Their liability might, however, be extended to a forced contribution to a further venture, if fresh capital could not be raised from a new group of subscribers. To any one accustomed to work a limited liability