place hunters; for the governor, except in Massachusetts, appointed his councilors and everywhere filled lucrative posts—administrative, judicial, and military. Some of these places opened the way for peculation in obtaining and confirming grants; the land office in Virginia was a sink of corruption. Others were merely clerical positions attractive to the less ambitious dependents in the governor's official family. Many were sinecures for, following the fashion in England, royal governors created offices with salaries and no duties, to smooth the path for friends in need. In South Carolina and Maryland the sale of political jobs was notorious; in New Jersey an industrious governor, after taking care of many applicants, solicited from the Crown a place for "my son Billy"; and everywhere the disposal of patronage was viewed as a branch of colonial trade. Such practices were by no means deemed reprehensible at the time; they were true to the course of use and wont in contemporary England, where party servants were openly rewarded with honors, places, and titles at the public expense.
While devoting personal attention to the luxuries of office, the more efficient of the royal governors labored hard at devising administrative policies of benefit to the ruling classes of England whose economic interests were at stake in colonial management. Sir Francis Bernard, who saw long service in Massachusetts, was one of the proconsuls given to such mental exercises.
With respect to economics, he evolved a plan that was simplicity itself. "The two great objects of Great Britain in regard to the American trade," he said, "must be to oblige her American subjects to take from Great Britain only, all the manufactures and European goods which she can supply them with: 2. To regulate the foreign trade of the Americans so that the profits thereof may finally center in Great Britain, or be applied to the improvement of her empire. Whenever these two purposes militate against each other, that which is most advantageous to
