under the heavy handicaps of frequent change, domestic difficulties, and political caprice that broke the force and continuity of their labors.[1]
On December 21, 1674, the king abolished the Council for Trade and Plantations, and on February 9, 1675, appointed a committee of the Privy Council to take up the threads of business "left loose and at large" for seven weeks.[2] Various reasons have been assigned for the change. The dismissal of Shaftesbury from power in the summer of 1673 may account for the fall of the board of which he was sponsor and leader. On account of the depletion of the royal exchequer Danby, the new lord treasurer, began a policy of retrenchment. It may be that the saving of £5400 by substituting unpaid privy councillors for a salaried board was attractive. These reasons are largely conjectural and, whatever their immediate force, they do not account in full for the abolition of a select board. By 1675 the disjointed nature of the imperial structure was realized and the conviction arose that successful management was more urgent than any further extension of the boundaries of empire. It was recognized that the essential defect was the absence of vigorous, responsible, and continuous central administration. The failure of select councils suggested as a remedy that the control of imperial relations should be given outright into the hands of a committee of the immediate royal councillors.[3]
Merchants who were interested in the empire might well have questioned whether a council committee would be sufficiently free and skilled to give to commerce and colonies that measure of attentive and intelligent treatment which their growing importance and complexity deserved. The change was experimental; results alone could determine whether it was a wise measure. In fact the council committee, known as the Lords of Trade and Plantations, assumed its duties in 1675 with a high sense of loyalty and a display of energy that ended a period of drift and opened a decade of unified and forceful conduct in imperial control. The conditions were favorable to imperial centralization. The dominance of Charles II. over the forces of opposition created a brief period of
- ↑ The history of these boards has been fully and ably discussed by Andrews, Brit. Comm., pp. 61–111.
- ↑ A. P. C., Col., vol. I., § 1021; Cal. St. P., Col., 1669–1674, § 1412; 1675–1676, §§ 460–464, 648, 649; Lords of Trade Journals (8 vols., transcribed from the originals in the London Public Record Office for the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, cited as L. T. J.), I. 1–2, 8–9.
- ↑ Andrews, Brit. Comm., pp. 111–114; Beer, Old Col. System, pt. I., vol. I., pp. 250–255.
