Page:American Historical Review, Vol. 23.djvu/46

36 to 1685. This was due to a condition of domestic and foreign peace which permitted that small number deeply interested in the progress of imperial measures to act with the vigor and unity of an independent department.

The reversal of these conditioning factors in the decade after 1685 threw into bold relief the potential faults of conciliar organization and control. When James II. violated the deepest traditions and instincts of the people he involved the council in a storm of disorder that destroyed the progress toward imperial coherence. The average of fifty sessions a year for the plantation committee under Charles II. fell to the mean number of twenty under James, and in the shadows of impending revolt the committee almost ceased to gather. The Revolution was imperial in sweep, overturning royal absolutism at home and inciting to successful revolt against narrow executive rule in New England, New York, and Maryland. The committee of the whole council under William III. faced not only the immediate and delicate tasks of restoring injured political balances at home, but of preparing instruments of government for the many colonies as a result of the changes. In addition and in the midst of temporary confusion, peace abroad was shattered by the impact of a wide conflict with France for supremacy in Europe and in the colonial world. The committee was burdened with the heavy cares of protecting a rich and varied commerce along many ocean highways and of numerous colonies stretching from Newfoundland to the Leeward Islands. The problems of imperial defense, of a breadth and import without precedent, were assumed under the heavy odds of a singular state of unpreparedness in the sinews of war, organization, and experience. The central administrative system was a cumbersome structure, the result of a multiple division of functions, fraught with overlapping authority and consequent friction, extremely unfitted to grapple with the realities of a world war.

In this situation the Lords of Trade were forced to act as a single, integrating, and energizing force. But the plantation committee met neither with a frequency nor a regularity sufficient to