COLONIAL POPULATION 267 in English hands in 1660, but New York is stated to have had about 7000 Dutch inhabitants in 1664; in 1688 and 1713 the middle group contained some 42,000 and 73,000 respectively. For the southern or Plantation colonies (Maryland southwards to South Carolina) the three totals were probably 30,000, 90,000 and 157,000, most of the growth occurring in Maryland and Virginia. The figures for the southern colonies include a certain number of negroes, but slavery had not yet attained the proportions evident in the middle of the eighteenth century. The totals for all the American colonies at the three selected dates amount to 63,000, 200,000 and 350,000; and in the eighteenth century there was a great increase by which the population doubled itself roughly every twenty years. The indications are that although immigration was appreciable, the increase was mainly due to multiplication of the pioneer stocks in an environment which offered cheap land, a healthy climate and good trading facilities. The British West Indies were not thus affected. It is probable that there were no more white men in them in 1713 than in 1660, for the immigration was barely sufficient to balance the excess of deaths over births. Negroes, however, were imported in increasing numbers, and the total population (including that of Bermuda) may be estimated at 85,000, 150,000 and 200,000 in the three chosen years. Of the lastnamed figure probably three-quarters were negroes. In general it may be said that the West Indian planters remained in a dependent position from which they had little prospect of escaping; but that the American settlers, although not yet confident of ability to stand by themselves, were on the way to the multiplication of numbers that enabled them to become an independent nation in the eighteenth century. CHAPTER IX THE ACTS OF TRADE THOUGH the beginnings of a colonial policy may be discovered in England's relations with Virginia and Bermuda after 1620 and also in the legislation of the period of the Commonwealth, it was not until the capture of Jamaica in 1655 that the interests of the merchants were sufficiently enlisted to lead the Government to formulate a definite commercial and colonial programme. The new colonial territory, acquired by conquest and free from private control, opened a promising world to the capitalists of London and elsewhere, while the cessation of civil warfare and the diminution in England of religious and political animosity created a favourable milieu for the accumulation and expenditure of wealth. Merchants, traders, sea captains, and promoters were growing in influence and were ready to engage in new enterprises, so soon as England's conditions were favourable. For the moment, however, a heavy burden of debt lay upon the country, which in 1659 was "more than double the largest recorded Crown liability before 1641". In 1658 and 1659 the country was in the throes of a financial panic which rendered imminent a serious industrial crisis and demanded a change of government. To continue the Protectorate was suicidal; men wanted tranquillity and a reduction of taxation. The restoration of Charles II was due in no small measure to the incompetence of the Puritan administration on the financial side. To meet the demands of those who, for some years, had been advocating a more efficient control of trade and foreign Plantations, the King, on 4 July 1660, appointed a committee of the Privy Council to consider Plantation questions; and later in the year, acting upon the advice of Clarendon and in accord with the plans of the merchants themselves, he created two special councils, one for trade and the other for foreign Plantations. These councils-successors of the committees of trade of 1650 and 1657 and forerunners of the councils of 1668, 1672, and 1696-though destined to have short lives of but four or five years, are of the utmost importance, in that they inaugurated a system of commercial and colonial oversight that was to continue, with some intermissions, for nearly a century and a quarter. In the instructions to these various bodies, covering the years from 1660 to 1696, may be found a definition of commercial policy and a shaping of the colonial relationship that were to remain essentially unchanged during the continuation of the old British system. These select councils had a chequered career. The Council of 1 Scott, W. R., Joint Stock Companies, 1, 260. EARLY COUNCILS OF TRADE 269 Trade, in abeyance after 1665 because of the distracted condition of the kingdom, was abolished in 1668 and a new council appointed. This council in turn, after an inactive existence of four years, was abolished in 1672 and its functions were transferred to the select Council for Foreign Plantations, which had been revived, 3 August 1670, under the influence of Lord Ashley (later the Earl of Shaftesbury), and which, as the Select Council for Trade and Foreign Plantations, sat from 13 October 1672 to 22 December 1674. After the fall of Shaftesbury, this council also was abolished, owing probably in large part to the inability of the Government to meet the expense; and its duties were transferred to the committee of the Privy Council, which under a special commission of February 1675 performed, but in a more authoritative manner, essentially the same work as that of the earlier councils. This important committee, the Lords of Trade, was composed as a rule of men high in rank, office, and influence, and though it underwent frequent changes in personnel, notably after the Revolution of 1689, it sat for twenty-five years. Finally, under the pressure of influential mercantile leaders, who were dissatisfied with existing trade conditions and with the indifference and carelessness of an inexpert and amateur body such as the Lords of Trade were showing themselves to be, Parliament determined to re-establish the old system of select councils. In a vigorous resolution, which reproduced substantially the instructions of 1672, it laid down the terms under which such a council should carry on its work. But King William, always jealous of his royal rights and deeming the action of the House of Commons an encroachment on the powers of the prerogative, took the matter out of the hands of Parliament and on 15 May 1696, by warrant under the sign manual, brought into being the Lords Commissioners for Trade and Plantations, commonly known as the Board of Trade. The series of instructions issued from 1660 to 1696, considered as a whole and with regard to their development, constitute a commercial and colonial programme that determined for more than a century the policy of the executive towards trade and the colonies. Shaped by the London merchants in its earliest form and elaborated by Shaftesbury and Locke later, this programme underwent very little change during the whole period of its enforcement. Its fundamental purposes were the supervision and regulation of domestic and foreign trade, the encouragement of home manufactures, and the advancement of fishing and shipping. The control of the Plantations constituted an integral but subservient part of this programme. Viewed as a source of such raw materials and tropical products as England needed, the Plantations became a matter of commercial rather than colonial concern, and the various councils were enjoined to discover, then and always, how best these colonies could be made useful and beneficial to the mother country. To this end the councils were directed to inform themselves of the condition of the colonies, their administration, complaints, and needs; to provide newly appointed governors with instructions; to enquire into the course of justice; to ascertain what laws were passed and to scrutinise their "constitutionality". Furthermore, they had to determine how best to advance the welfare, defence, and security of the Plantations; to inform themselves regarding the inhabitants-planters, servants, and slaves, and to aid in their increase and proper distribution; to promote the moral and spiritual status of servants, slaves, and Indians; to prevent crimping and spiriting, and to devise means for improving and increasing colonial commodities. Also they were to regulate colonial trade in such a way as to render each colony serviceable to the others and all serviceable to England; to watch over the execution of whatever Acts Parliament passed for the benefit of commerce; to procure maps, charts, and descriptions of routes and channels; to enquire into rates and duties, the systems of other countries, and their methods of managing their colonies; to ascertain what colonial staples were deserving of encouragement, what trades there were that were likely to be injurious to England, and, if any such should be found, to make every effort to turn colonial activities into the proper channels. But the councils were invested with no executive functions, and had no power to dispose of any public money. Their duties were inquisitorial and advisory; throughout their entire history they made no attempt to formulate or recommend any fundamental principles of colonial policy, other than those laid down in their instructions, and at no time did they show any serious interest in adapting their ideas regarding colonial administration to the changing conditions of colonial life. Herein lay the weakness of the old British system. While Charles II and his successors were appointing councils and drafting instructions, Parliament was determining the rules that were to govern the trade and navigation of the kingdom. The principles underlying these rules were not new, for in one form or another, chiefly by executive order, they had been in application since the beginning of settlement; but they were new as a subject for effective parliamentary legislation, because the Commonwealth Navigation Act of 1651 had ceased to have validity after the restoration of the monarchy. Those who now felt the necessity of supplanting the Order in Council by an Act of Parliament had a threefold object in view. Because of the futility of the Act of 1651, which had failed to wrest the carrying trade from the Dutch, they wished, first of all, to restate more emphatically than before the essential features of that Act, and thereby to ensure the promotion of English shipping and seamanship and to secure for England complete control of her own carrying trade. In the second place, they wished to utilise the colonies as a source of such commodities as England needed for her own consumption and so to rectify, if possible, an unfavourable balance of trade with certain THE NAVIGATION ACT OF 1660 271 parts of Europe and the East. In the third place, they wished to protect British mercantile interests and to increase the customs revenues by making England the staple through which all manufactured goods that were taken to the Plantations would have to pass. These objects were attained in two important measures, one passed by the Convention Parliament in 1660 and the other by the Cavalier Parliament in 1663. Certain supplemental measures of 1662, 1671, and 1673 added explanations and filled in gaps, but in no way altered the main features. Behind these Acts were merchants and promoters without official position, such as Martin Noell, James Drax, Maurice Thompson, and Thomas Povey; office holders, such as Joseph Williamson, Richard Nicolls, John Werden, Robert Southwell, and George Downing, perhaps the most persistent and influential of them all, and statesmen of the first rank and members of the royal family, such as Clarendon, Arlington, Berkeley, Anthony Ashley Cooper, Prince Rupert, and the Duke of York. Clarendon, who had great weight with the King, was constantly urging upon him the importance of shipping, the fisheries, and the Plantations as a means of increasing the revenues, and calling to his attention the "infinite importance of the improvement of trade". Royalists and Parliamentarians alike upheld the principles upon which the Navigation Acts were founded and party lines had little place in the support of these measures. According to the Act of 1660, the first seventeen clauses of which were but a confirmation and elaboration of the Act of 1651, no goods or commodities were to be carried to or from the Plantations except in ships owned by people of England, Ireland, Wales or Berwick-onTweed, or were built in and belonged to the Plantations. Of these ships the masters and three-fourths of the sailors must be "English". "English" was defined in 1662 as meaning "only his Majesty's subjects of England, Ireland, and the Plantations", thus excluding the inhabitants of the Channel Islands, the Isle of Man, and apparently Scotland. In the case of the first two an exception was made as regards their shipping, which was construed as "English built",1 and by common law interpretation, at that time deemed more binding than a dictum of Parliament, Scotsmen were accounted Englishmen within the meaning of the Act, on the ground that since 1603 they had been “His Majesty's subjects", because born within the King's allegiance. Jews born abroad were excluded,2 as were all aliens and foreigners unless they had been naturalised or made full denizens. The requirement that three-fourths of the sailors be "English" was more precise than the "for the most part" of the Act of 1651, and by just so much the more was it impossible of enforcement, particularly as the further rule was laid down that the proportion be maintained for the whole voyage. Later the practice became common of filling 1 Act of 1662, § vii; House of Lords MSS, N.S. 11, 484 (Hist. MSS. Commiss.). 2 Cf. Cal. St. Pap. Col. 1661-8, no. 140. |