well-formed plan. Whether he would ever have risen to a higher level of
statesmanship in these respects we cannot say, but he never found time
to give proper attention to the suggestions of the merchants or to the
demands of trade and commerce.

That he took a great interest in the industrial and commercial
development of England is evident from one of his earliest efforts to
provide for its proper control. Even while the fleet was on its way
to the West Indies, the Council of State instructed Desborough and
the Admiralty Committee, January 29, 1655, to consider "of some fit
merchants to be a trade committee." There is some reason to think
that this instruction was in response to a paper drawn up by certain
merchants of London in 1654, entitled, "An Essaie or Overture for the
regulating the Affairs of his Highness in the West Indies," drafted
after the expedition had sailed and with the confident expectation of
conquest in mind.[27] If the original suggestion did not come from the
merchants, we may not doubt that in the promotion of the plan they
exercised considerable influence. In 1655, Martin Noell and Thomas Povey
sent a petition to the Protector regarding trade, and suggested that
there be appointed "some able persons to consider what more may be done
in order to those affairs and a general satisfaction for the fixing the
whole trade of England." They wished that a competent number of persons,
of good reputation, prudent and well skilled in their professions and
qualifications should be "selected and set apart" for the "care of his
Highness Affairs in the West Indies." The number was to be not less than
seven, and these not to be "of the same but of a mixt qualification,"
constituting a select council subordinate only to the Protector and the
Council. After careful attention to the fitness of a large number of
prominent individuals, a committee of twenty was named on July 12, 1655.
If the "Overture" was responsible for the decision to name a select
council, its influence went no further, for except that merchants were
placed as members, there is no likeness between the plan as finally
worked out and that formulated by the merchants. Indeed, Povey himself
later expressed his dissatisfaction in saying that "that committee which
[we] so earnestly prest should be settled will not tend in any degree
to what we proposed, the constitution of it being not proportionable
to what was desired."[28] The committee of twenty wa