The successful voyages of Drake and others excited the merchants of England to seek establishments in India: but the enterprise of individuals was deemed unequal to so expensive and hazardous an undertaking; and a company was formed, to open and pursue a channel of commerce, from which such great gains were anticipated. This company and the nation were stimulated to greater efforts by the Dutch, having at this period (the close of the sixteenth century) sent several ships round the Cape of Good Hope. The English now began to settle in different parts of India. The first factory was established at Surat, in 1612, and continued to have the control over all the petty settlements on the western side of the peninsula, till the cession of Bombay, made in 1668 by the King to the Company, when that town, from its fine harbour, and central situation for commerce, soon rose to be the superior settlement in that part of India; while Madras obtained the same rank on the coast of Coromandel, and for some period counted Calcutta[3] as one of its subordinates. The latter at the period when Clive's career in India commenced, had become independent, and, like the settlements of Madras and Bombay, was under the government of a president and select committee; but it was still, in its establishment and means of defence, inferior to either of the other presidencies. In the year 1698, another East India Company was formed, and received an exclusive right of trade in consideration of a loan to government; but the charter of the old Company was a few months afterwards confirmed, and the trade to the East Indies was divided between the two Companies. The jarring interests of these bodies, who obtained advantages over each other according to the favour of corrupt and changing administrations in England, had brought such distress on both, that, in 1702, their prayer to unite was attended to; a new charter was granted, and from that period they have been denominated "The United East India Company." By this charter, they were permitted to employ civil servants, to raise troops, and to make war and peace in India. Their policy, however, had been to avoid (as being ruinous to their commercial pursuits) all grounds of offence to native states; and they had not even made those fortifications which were necessary to defend their property from spoliation. The conduct which they thus pursued had been strongly recommended[4] to them by Sir Thomas Roe when ambassador at the court of the Emperor of Delhi, and a modern historian[5] of India observes, that "if Sir Thomas Roe had lived to the present day, he might have urged the trade with China as a proof, by experiment, of the proposition he advanced." But assuredly no cases ever existed more opposite than those of China and India. Though the government of the former, by a rigid system of exclusion, keeps European settlers dependent upon its own power, it secures them against all enemies.