customs service to the colonies. In the following year seven
admiralty courts, subject to the Lords of the Admiralty, were erected in
the continental colonies to try cases arising out of the violation of
the Trade Acts, while special courts for dealing with piracy were
established in 1700. But the customs and admiralty services, although
directly responsible to the English Government, could never be fully
effective unless they were vigorously supported by the colonial
Governments. It was in order to make the enforcement of the commercial
code more effective, as well as to secure better cooeperation among the
colonial Governments for military defense, that the Board of Trade
repeatedly advised the recall of all the charters as a measure necessary
above all others. The advice of the Board was followed only in part. The
union of New England and New York was abandoned. Massachusetts received
a new charter; Connecticut and Rhode Island retained their old ones;
Penn's charter, annulled in 1692, was restored in 1694. But under the
charter granted to Massachusetts in 1691 the governor was appointed by
the Crown; New Jersey was made a royal province in 1702; and Maryland in
1691, although it was given back to the Baltimores in 1715. When the
Peace of Utrecht was signed in 1713, the system devised by the Board of
Trade for controlling the colonies thus lacked little of being
completely established. The English customs and admiralty services had
been fully extended to America; and while control of legislation was
left mainly in the hands of assemblies elected in each colony, executive
authority was entrusted to Crown officials in every colony except
Pennsylvania, where the governor was appointed by the proprietor, and
Rhode Island and Connecticut, where he was still elected by the people.

III

It is only by courtesy that these measures for confining the trade of
the empire may be called a colonial system; and it would have been well
if England, profiting by the experience of the French wars, had set
seriously about the task of fashioning a method of government adapted to
the political as well as the commercial needs of her New World
possessions. But it was not to be. With the accession of George I,
enthusiasm for plantation ventures declined; interest in the colonies,
undiminished, indeed, was more than ever concentrated upon their
commercial possibilities; and the constructive policy of the Stuarts
gave way, in the phrase of