This was clearly brought out by an unknown author, who, probably toward the end of 1605, wrote the paper known as “Reasons for raising a fund.”[95] The writer strongly advocated the raising of a “publique stocke” for “the peopling and discovering of such contries as maye be fownde most convenient for the supplie of those defects which the Realme of England most requireth.” It is likely that this paper, which was intended for Parliament, had considerable influence in the granting of the Virginia charter, and it is, therefore, interesting to note that, at the very beginning of successful colonization, one of the leading points in future English colonial policy was thus touched upon. It is often lost to sight that practically the sole value of her colonies to England all through the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries was the value of their trade, and the most important part of that trade, during nearly all of the period, was in supplying her with such materials as she lacked at home. In this respect, her West Indian colonies became more important than her continental ones, though an exaggerated emphasis has been laid upon the contemporary importance of the latter, in part because they chanced to revolt, whereas the island colonies did not. Footnote 95: For discussion as to authorship and date, _vide_ Brown, _Genesis_, pp. 36-42, where the document is printed in full. As one of the reasons for raising a public fund to assist in colonizing, our unknown author went on to say that “private purces are cowld compfortes to adventurers,” and pointed to the “marvelous matters in traficque and navigacon” which the Hollanders had accomplished, in few years, by a “maine backe or stocke.” Whether the paper was written in order to obtain the Virginia charter, it is impossible to say; but apparently it was, and, in any case, that charter was issued on the 10th of April, 1606. The great revolution in foreign trade, which had been going on for the past two centuries, was now complete, and the period of chartered companies, foreshadowed by the formation, in the latter part of the sixteenth century, of the few already noted, was well under way.[96] With the addition of the East India Company, chartered in 1600, the existing English companies covered practically all known parts of the world except America; and during the next generation about the only companies organized were for the new world—North and South Virginia in 1606, Guiana, 1609, Newfoundland, 1610, Northwest Passage, 1612, Bermuda, 1615, New England, 1620, and Massachusetts, 1629. Footnote 96: _Cf._ P. Bonnassieux, _Les grandes Compagnies de Commerce_ (Paris, 1892), pp. 510 _ff._