Page:American Historical Review, Vol. 23.djvu/32

22 The result was that the colonies, strongly predisposed to self-direction, promptly seized the opportunity to take their own way without hindrance. But the English merchants, whose commercial interests were especially imperilled by the drift, were provoked to deplore the lack of political unity and strength in the empire. They felt, and justly so, that inexperience in the intricate problems of commerce and colonies and preoccupation with domestic politics and foreign affairs made it impossible for the Privy Council to be an alert, constant, and competent colonial department. They urged as a remedy the erection of a special board of skilled personnel, to sit continuously and aloof from politics, to advise the king and council on the affairs of trade and plantations.

In 1660 the king gave heed to the desires of the merchants and for fifteen years a series of separate councils performed the greater share of the functions of examination and report. But their varying history fell far short of the hopes entertained for them. Indeed it was almost inevitable that the administration of empire should proceed with slow and halting steps in the first years of the Restoration. The greater and necessarily prior problems of founding an assured empire and of framing the essential principles upon which it was to be regulated engrossed the thought and force of expansionists and overshadowed administration. The planting of new and the conquest of foreign colonies, the incorporation of new and the strengthening of old trading companies, the passage of the acts of trade, and the attendant wars with the Dutch are the notable events which bear witness to the emergence of England as an imperial power. In addition imperial control was perplexed by the persistence of domestic political instability. The feverish but slow readjustments of internal balances, seriously shattered by the Puritan Revolt, bred political discord that weakened the force of the state. And further, the ruling class was without experience or precedent in dealing with the questions involved in the control of remote colonies. In view of the novelty of the problem it is small wonder that mistakes, experiment, and change entered into the creation of the machinery and practices of imperial control. And so it was that the select councils of trade and plantations worked