The Board of Trade at Work

Abstract

To the student of colonial history few English institutions offer more of interest than the one which, in name at least, presided over the destinies of the English establishments in North America, the Board of Trade and Plantations. The full story of its activities remains to be written, but in the course of investigations to that end many details of its inner life, scarcely less important and often much more interesting than the record of its public acts, have come to light. It seems not without value to bring these together to form picture of the Board as living, working body. For it is particularly trtue of the old British administrative councils that their internal history is -often hardly inferior to their external career in importance. This is peculiarly true of the Board of Trade. It is proposed in the following study to describe as well as may be, what in an individual would be called, its private life. They had , says Roger North in his Exantet, writing of Restoration Council of Trade, a formal Board with Green Cloth and Standishes, Clerks good store, tall Porter and Staff and fitting Attendance below and huge Luminary at the Door. And in Winter time when the Board met, as was two or three times Week or oftener, all the Rooms were lighted, coaches at the Door and great passing in and out as if Council of State in good Earnest had been sitting. Though these words were applied to an earlier establishment they are full of suggestions of the later and greater Board. Beginninig its career in the spring of i 6 withotut precedent or traditions beyond such as were derived from these earlier bodies, the new Board of Trade had neither meeting-place nor employees, material assets nor order of procedure. By the second quarter of the eighteenth century it had become fixed and elaborate institution, with the outward look of a Council of State in good earnest, so that Niorth's half-humorous description no doubt well fitted the later board to which he was accustomed. To trace some of the steps by which its complex organization was evolved, and to give glimpse of its inner life, its character and membership, is the purpose of this paper. One of the first requisites for new establishment like this was meeting-place. In the royal commission issued in May, i96, the persons therein named were directed to meet together at some con-