254 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



powers. The Casa de la Contratacion de las Indias, established soon 

 after the discovery of South America, was organized in 1503. It granted 

 licenses, equipped and despatched fleets, received merchandise for ex- 

 port and cargoes imported and contracted for their sale. It controlled 

 the trade with Barbary and the Canaries and supervised the shipping- 

 business of Cadiz and Seville. Taking cognizance of all questions 

 concerning marine trade, it was advised by two jurists. It also kept the 

 Spanish government informed of all that concerned the colonies. It 

 was a general board of colonial marine trade, and such it remained 

 even when, a few years later, its more important colonial functions 

 were absorbed by a higher department. 



Where the colony has been founded by a commercial or by a coloniz- 

 ing company, the mother country controls the colony through the 

 directors of the company; the office of the company is pro tanto the 

 Colonial Office. Yet the later colonial department, as an organ of 

 government, is not a development of these shipping, commercial or 

 colonizing boards. It is a delegation of the sovereign authority. This 

 is at first exercised directly by the sovereign as it was notably by 

 Isabella and Ferdinand. It is next delegated, like almost all functions 

 of the ruler, to his privy council, which assigns the business of col- 

 onies to a committee, which again may be set apart as an independent 

 administrative body. The Spanish Council of the Indies, the separate 

 English privy council for colonial affairs contemplated in the first Vir- 

 ginian charter, the Council of ISIine appointed by the States-General 

 of the Netherlands, the Swedish royal council, were such bodies. Their 

 powers are everywhere the same. The superintendence of the whole 

 colonial system is entrusted to them. They have supreme jurisdiction 

 over all the colonies. They appoint and may recall viceroys, governors- 

 general, governors and other local officers. They can veto laws and 

 ordinances made by colonial rulers or legislatures. They frame con- 

 stitutions for the colonies and enact laws. Through the governors 

 and other officers sent out by them, they minutely supervise and in- 

 cessantly interfere with the whole internal administration of each col- 

 ony. The tendency of this supreme council is to divorce itself ever- 

 more from the privy council and become independent, till at last it 

 is transformed into a ministerial department. Yet an amicable rela- 

 tionship (such as sometimes survives the divorce court) long remains. 

 The Colonial Committee of the privy council in England was sum- 

 moned as late as 1819, and the Judicial Committee still hears appeals 

 from colonial courts of justice. The government of the common- 

 wealth was naturally averse to the king's council, and a body of 

 special commissioners (Cromwell and Pym and Vane among them) 

 was appointed to govern the colonies. 



The Eestoration did not at once return to the old system. On the 



