Charles McLean Andrews - British Committees, Commissions, and Councils of Trade and Plantations, 1622-1675

JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY STUDIES
IN
Historical and Political Science
Under the Direction of the
Departments of History, Political Economy, and Political Science

Professor of History

BALTIMORE
THE JOHNS HOPKINS PRESS

PUBLISHED MONTHLY
January, February, March, 1908

Copyright 1908 by
THE JOHNS HOPKINS PRESS

In considering the subject which forms the chief topic of this paper, we are not primarily concerned with the question of settlement, intimately related though it be to the larger problem of colonial control. We are interested rather in the early history of the various commissions, councils, committees, and boards appointed at one time or another in the middle of the seventeenth century for the supervision and management of trade, domestic, foreign, and colonial, and for the general oversight of the colonies whose increase was furthered, particularly after 1650, in largest part for commercial purposes. The coupling of the terms "trade" and "foreign plantations" was due to the prevailing economic theory which viewed the colonies not so much as markets for British exports or as territories for the receipt of a surplus British populationfor Great Britain had at that time no surplus population and manufactured but few commodities for exportbut rather as sources of such raw materials as could not be produced at home, and of such tropical products as could not be obtained otherwise than from the East and West Indies. The two interests were not, however, finally consolidated in the hands of a single board until 1672, after which date they were not separated until the final abolition of the old Board of Trade in 1782. It is, therefore, to the period before 1675 that we shall chiefly direct our attention, in the hope of throwing some light upon a phase of British colonial control that has hitherto remained somewhat obscure. Familiar as are many of the facts connected with the early history of Great Britain's management of trade and the colonies, it is nevertheless true that no attempt has been made to trace in detail the various experiments undertaken by the authorities in England in the interest of trade and the plantations during the years before 1675. Many of the details are, and will always remain, unknown, nevertheless it is possible to make some additions to our knowledge of a subject which is more or less intimately related to our early colonial history.

At the beginning of colonization the control of all matters relating to trade and the plantations lay in the hands of the king and his council, forming the executive branch of the government. Parliament had not yet begun to legislate for the colonies, and in matters of trade and commerce the parliaments of James I accomplished much less than had those of Elizabeth. "In the time of James I," says Dr. Prothero, "it was more essential to assert constitutional principles and to maintain parliamentary rights than to pass new laws or to create new institutions." Thus the Privy Council became the controlling factor in all matters that concerned the colonies and it acted in the main without reference or delegation to others, since the practice of appointing advisory boards or deliberative committees, though not unknown, was at first employed only as an occasional expedient. The councils of James I were called upon to deal with a wide variety of colonial businessletters, petitions, complaints and reports from private individuals, such as merchants, captains of ships voyaging to the colonies, seamen, prisoners, and the like, from officials in England, merchant companies, church organizations, and colonial governments, notably the governor and council and assembly of Virginia. To all these communications the Council replied either by issuing orders which were always mandatory, or by sending letters which often contained information and advice as well as instructions. It dealt with the Virginia Company in London and sent letters, both before and after the dissolution of the company, to the governor and council in Virginia, and in all these letters trade played an important part. For example, the order of October 24, 1621, which forbade the colony to export tobacco and other commodities to foreign countries, declared that such a privilege as an open trade on the part of the colony was desirable "neither in policy nor for the honor of the state (that being but a colony derived from hence)," and that it could not be suffered "for that it may be a loss unto his Majesty in his customs, if not the hazarding of the trade which in future times is well hoped may be of much profit, use, and importance to the Commonalty."