With such important immunities, and the credit which ought to have been procurable by a company with P8,000,000 paid-up capital, its operations might have been relatively vast. However, its balance sheet, closed to October 31, 1790 (five-and-a-half years after it started), shows the total nominal assets to be only P10,700,194, largely in unrecoverable advances to tillers. The working account is not set out. Although it was never, in itself, a flourishing concern, it brought immense benefit to the Philippines (at the expense of its shareholders) by opening the way for the Colony's future commercial prosperity. This advantage operated in two ways. (1) It gave great impulse to agriculture, which thenceforth began to make important strides. By large sums of money, distributed in anticipation of the 4 per cent, on nett profit, and expended in the rural districts, it imparted life, vigour and development to those germs of husbandry--such as the cultivation of sugar-cane, tobacco, cotton, indigo, pepper, etc.--which, for a long time had been, and to a certain extent are still, the staple dependence of many provinces. (2) It opened the road to final extinction of all those vexatious prohibitions of trade with the Eastern ports and the Peninsula which had checked the energy of the Manila merchants. It was the precursor of free trade--the stepping-stone to commercial liberty in these regions. The causes of its decline are not difficult to trace. Established as it was on a semi-official basis, all kinds of intrigues were resorted to--all manner of favouritism was besought--to secure appointments, more or less lucrative, in the _Great Company_. Influential incapacity prevailed over knowledge and ability, and the men intrusted with the direction of the company's operations proved themselves inexperienced and quite unfit to cope with unshackled competition from the outer world. Their very exclusiveness was an irresistible temptation to contrabandists. Manila private merchants, viewing with displeasure monopoly in any form, lost no opportunity of putting obstacles in the way of the company. Again, the willing concurrence of native labourers in an enterprise of magnitude was as impossible to secure then as it is now. The native had a high time at the expense of the company, revelling in the enjoyment of cash advances, for which some gave little, others nothing. Success could only have been achieved by forced labour, and this right was not included in the charter.