It was only to be expected that the merchants, having no share in the Company's profits, should be, to a man, in favour of throwing open the trade of Hudson's Bay. Tomlinson, for example, gave it out as his opinion that if the charter were revoked more ships would be sent and more Indians brought down to trade. "This is confirmed," said he, "by the experience of the Guinea trade, which, when confined to a company, employed not above ten ships, and now employs one hundred and fifty." He moreover asserted that "the case of the Guinea trade was exactly similar, where the ships are near one another, and each endeavours to get the trade; and the more ships lie there the higher the prices of negroes." [Sidenote: The Company's profits.] The Company was obliged, in the course of this enquiry, to divulge a number of facts relating to its trade, which had until then remained secret. Parliament was informed that the trade between London and Hudson's Bay was carried on in 1748, and for some years previous, by means of four ships; that the cost of the exports was in that year £5,012 12s. 3d.; that the value of the sales of furs and other imports amounted to £30,160 5s. 11d. As for the "charge attending the carrying on of the Hudson's Bay trade, and maintaining their factories," it was, in 1748, £17,352 4s. 10d. Thus a trade which involved only £5,000 a year in exports brought back a return of £30,000. Even when the outlay for working and maintenance of forts and establishments was considered, there was, in dull times, a profit of forty per cent on actual paid-up capital. With regard to French competition, many of the witnesses were most emphatic. Robson, for instance, "thought that the beavers which are brought down to the Company are refused by the French from their being a heavy commodity; for the natives who come to trade with the Company dispose of their small, valuable furs to the French, and bring down their heavy goods to the Company in summer when the rivers are open, which they sell, and supply the French with European goods purchased from the Company." "The French," said Richard White, another witness, "intercept the Indians coming down with their trade," he having seen them with guns and clothing of French manufacture; and further an Indian had told him that there was a French settlement up Moose River, something to the southward of the west, at the distance, as the witness apprehended, of about fifty miles. "The French deal in light furs, and take all of that sort they can get, and the Indians bring the heavy to us. Sometimes the Indians bring down martens' skins, but that is when they don't meet with the French; but never knew any Indians who had met the French bring down light furs. The French settlement on Moose River is at Abbitibi Lake. The trade," concluded the witness, "might be further extended by sending up Europeans to winter amongst the natives, which, though the Company have not lately attempted, the French actually do."