When we add to this economic maladjustment, according to the current theory, the unique position of the New England colonies as chartered or practically independent governments, it is obvious how anomalous their relations were to the imperial scheme. From the standpoint of contemporary opinion, it was not unnatural that they should be regarded by many as “the unfortunate results of misdirected efforts.” Nor was it merely that they failed to fit in with the rest of the Empire. As they grew in population, and in their avowed independence of all external control of any sort, many an Englishman must have felt the fear expressed by one of the ablest economic writers of the latter part of the Empire's first century. Of all the American plantations, D'Avenant wrote in 1698, New England “is the most proper for building ships and breeding seamen, and their soil affords plenty of cattle; besides which, they have good fisheries, so that, if we should go to cultivate among them the art of navigation, and teach them to have a naval force, they may set up for themselves, and make the greatest part of our West-Indian Trade precarious,” as well as absorbing the colonial carrying trade and merchandizing.[729] It has, indeed, been conjectured that Cromwell's attempt, in 1665, to induce a large number of the New Englanders to emigrate to the newly conquered island of Jamaica derived directly from the failure of their colonies to fit into the mercantile empire,[730] although, to the present writer, other economic and military motives seem quite as likely.[731] Footnote 729: C. D'Avenant, “On the Plantation Trade, 1698,” in his _Discourses on the Public Revenue, etc._ (London, 1771), vol. II, p. 9; _Cal. State Pap., Col., 1574-1660_, p. 430. Footnote 730: _New Haven Colonial Records_, vol. I, p. 180; G. L. Beer, “Cromwell's Policy in its Economic Aspects,” _Political Science Quarterly_, vol. XVI, p. 611. Footnote 731: The main idea seems to have been the peopling of the island with English—"from Nevis, St. Christopher's, New England, or any of the other plantations in America." _Cal. State Pap., Col., 1574-1660_, pp. 450, 453. _Cf._ also F. Strong, “The Causes of Cromwell's West Indian Expedition,” _American Historical Review_, vol. IV, pp. 229 _ff._; I. S., _A brief and perfect Journal of the late proceedings and success_, etc. (London, 1655), pp. 2 _ff._; _The Clarke Papers_ (Camden Society, 1899), pp. 203 _ff._