needs of distant communities or else were little disposed to be bothered with the tedious reports on colonial conditions.[1] Above all it was felt that their ignorance of the unrelated life of the colonies rendered them unfit to pass judgment on American affairs.[2] Indeed it was this situation that led the colonies to appoint their own agents, at first temporary and in time permanent, to act as vehicles of sound information and advice on matters involving the interests or the privileges of the particular colony.[3] Belief and action were justified. The members of the plantation committee, not only occupied with the many problems and aspects of colonies and commerce, but as privy councillors engrossed in immediate local and foreign issues, and as Englishmen largely ignorant of the genius of colonial existence, were perforce dependent upon the Board of Customs and Blathwayt as skilled, reliable, and informed servants. Blathwayt's influence at home and in the colonies was always an important factor. Colonies without London agents besought him to present their petitions to the king and occasionally employed and paid him to attend to special matters.[4] Colonial governors wrote to him in letters of a semi-public nature, seeking his advice in their perplexities, his favor to procure and hasten needed orders, or his support on behalf of their official conduct.[5]
The nature of conciliar organization calls for a brief discussion, that the course of imperial control after 1685 may be understood. As noted above, the unwieldy size of the council and the pressure of added business destroyed its efficiency as a collective body and called the committee system into use. In practice, before 1675, responsibility was secured by creating committees of limited number and select personnel and by appointing the ablest and most dependable councillors to two or more divisions. The result was
- ↑ "I know ministers and statesmen so hate impertinence and tedious letters, that I durst not address this to our Lords or Mr. Secretary. You can best garble it and lay … the needful before them", so wrote Governor Lynch of Jamaica to Blathwayt in 1683. Cal. St. P., Col., 1681–1685, pp. 395–396.
- ↑ Lynch, and Vaughan his successor, declared to the home government that it was not qualified to pass proper judgment on the concerns of remote and strange provinces. Ibid., 1669–1674, § 1130; 1675–1676, §§ 801, 802.
- ↑ Dongan, governor of New York, in 1688 wrote in complaint of the little attention paid to the defenseless state of the colony, saying, "it is the misfortune of this Government that it cannot keep a solicitor at Court like other Colonies". Ibid., 1685–1688, § 1638, p. 499.
- ↑ Ibid., 1685–1688, § 369; 1689–1692, §§ 2199, 2200, 2202, 2204; 1693–1696, §§ 1833, 1863, 2091.
- ↑ Ibid., 1677–1680, §§ 565, 603; 1681–1685, § 1348; 16S5-1688, §§315, 1340; 1693–1696, §§84, 500; Goodrick, Edward Randolph (Prince Soc. Pubs.), VI. 16, 146, 161, 162, passim. See Kimball, Public Life of Joseph Dudley, pp. 57–59.
