Burnet has spoken with reprobation of another scheme engendered by the same spirit of enquiry and control, that of a council of trade, to be nominated by parliament, with powers for the effectual preservation of the interests of the merchants. If the members of it were intended to be immovable, or if the vacancies were to be filled by consent of parliament, this would indeed have encroached on the prerogative in a far more eminent degree than the famous India bill of 1783, because its operation would have been more extensive and more at home. And, even if they were only named in the first instance, as has been usual in parliamentary commissioners of account or enquiry, it would still be material to ask, what extent of power for the preservation of trade was to be placed in their hands. The precise nature of the scheme is not explained by Burnet. But it appears by the Journals that this council was to receive information from merchants as to the necessity of convoys, and send directions to the board of admiralty, subject to the king's control, to receive complaints and represent the same to the king, and in many other respects to exercise very important and anomalous functions. They were not however to be members of the house. But even with this restriction, it was too hazardous a departure from the general maxims of the constitution.[220] _Treaties of partition._--The general unpopularity of William's administration, and more particularly the reduction of the forces, afford an ample justification for the two treaties of partition which the tory faction, with scandalous injustice and inconsistency, turned to his reproach. No one could deny that the aggrandisement of France by both of these treaties was of serious consequence. But, according to English interests, the first object was to secure the Spanish Netherlands from becoming provinces of that power; and next to maintain the real independence of Spain and the Indies. Italy was but the last in order; and though the possession of Naples and Sicily, with the ports of Tuscany, as stipulated in the treaty of partition, would have rendered France absolute mistress of that whole country and of the Mediterranean sea, and essentially changed the balance of Europe, it was yet more tolerable than the acquisition of the whole monarchy in the name of a Bourbon prince, which the opening of the succession without previous arrangement was likely to produce. They at least who shrunk from the thought of another war, and studiously depreciated the value of continental alliances, were the last who ought to have exclaimed against a treaty which had been ratified as the sole means of giving us something like security, without the cost of fighting for it. Nothing therefore could be more unreasonable than the clamour of a tory House of Commons in 1701 (for the malcontent whigs were now so consolidated with the tories as in general to bear their name) against the partition treaties; nothing more unfair than