great and almost surprising increase of the commerce, woollen manufacture, mercantile shipping, and foreign colonies of France.[1] We have noticed in the last Chapter, the English Council or Board of the same kind established by Charles II. in 1668, which, however, was kept up only for about five or six years. From the time when it was allowed to drop matters relating to commerce and the colonics had been usually referred to committees of the privy council specially appointed to consider each new subject as it arose; but in 1696 King William issued a commission appointing a permanent Board of Trade, to consist (in addition to the great officers of state, whose attendance was expected to be only occasional) of a first lord and seven other commissioners, each having a salary of 100l. Among the first commissioners were the celebrated John Locke, and Pollexfen, the writer on commerce. They were styled "Commissioners for promoting the Trade of this Kingdom, and for inspecting and improving the Plantations in America and elsewhere;" and their instructions more particularly directed them to examine into and take accounts of the general trade of England, and of our foreign commerce in all its departments—"to consider by what means profitable manufactures, already settled, may be further improved, and how other new and profitable manufactures may be introduced"—"to consider of proper methods for setting on work and employing the poor, and making them useful to the public"—and, in regard to the plantations, or colonies, to superintend not only their commerce but their government in all respects.[2] From this last class of duties the Board of Trade must have been relieved, we presume, on the institution of the office of Secretary of State for the Colonies, or the American department, in 1768; but its other functions were understood to remain nearly the same as at its first establishment down to its abolition in
- ↑ Chron. of Com. ii. 646.
- ↑ See abstract of the original Commission in Macpherson's Annals of Commerce, ii. 680.[deeplink needed]
