losses of ships and cargoes by capture and destruction because of the inadequacy of the navy and the incompetency of administration.[1] Oversea trade fell off to the advantage of foreign merchants because of the want of convoy protection.[2] Merchants risked their vessels and goods without protection rather than to wait upon deficient and delayed convoys, only to increase the chances of capture.[3] The losses of 1695–1696 were especially severe and dissatisfaction reached a white heat.[4] The merchants, stung to anger by their own losses as well as by the injuries done to the vital interests of a mercantile nation, were convinced that these evils were the fruits of unskilled and defective administration.
Various remedies were proposed. One looked to strengthening the plantation committee, which directed the convoy service in conjunction with the admiralty and customs boards.[5] The Earl of Mulgrave in 1694 urged the king to revert to a "select number for all Committees, instead of all the Councell, as it now is; because everybody's business is nobody's, whereas the other way such will be charged with it who are capable of attending and understanding it". He proposed specifically a plantation committee of select and knowing personnel, in which regular attendance should be required and regular meetings should be held "two mornings in a week on fixed dayes, and not according to the leasure or humour of a President of the Councell".[6] Merited as were these criticisms and proposals, they did not conform to the wishes of the merchants. Now, as before under like conditions in the time of Cromwell, they expressed a brusque impatience with the lack of skill, efficiency, and despatch in the care of transmarine interests. They moved for a reversion to a special board of experts. The creation of a "Council of Trade" was "the Common Theam of Men of all Understandings, on which so much is said and writ", declared Sir Francis Brewster in 1695 in support of the idea. The Bristol merchants earnestly hoped that the "Places be not fill'd up with Courtiers, who know nothing of the Business". John Evelyn voiced the general desire that the proposed board be composed of "sober, industrious, dexterous men, and of consummate experience in rebus agendis".[7]
- ↑ Burnet, Hist. Own Time, pp. 555, 570, 592–593, 599, 616–617.
- ↑ L. T. J., VI. 347; VII. 14, 118, 120–121.
- ↑ House of Lords MSS., n. s. (1695–1697), II. viii.
- ↑ Ibid., II. vii–xii, 64–117.
- ↑ L. T. J., VI. 329–336, 340–350; VII., passim; A.P.C., Col., vol. II., §§ 369, 379, 385, passim.
- ↑ Turner, Am. Hist. Rev., XVIII. 759, note.
- ↑ Brewster, Essays on Trade (London, 1695), pp. 37–40; Gary, Essay on State of England in Relation to Trade (Bristol, 1695), pp. 139–141; Evelyn,
