This almost complete absence of any steady policy or consistent control over the component parts of the imperial structure not only was unacceptable to the merchants at home, but would probably have been destructive of the Empire had it continued without change. Certain measures of far-reaching importance, however, had already been enacted under Cromwell; and the Restoration, which strengthened the government and united the people, enabled England to undertake a more comprehensive scheme for imperial organization, although in New England, owing to the incorrigible tendencies of the Stuarts, it blundered into criminal folly. At first, two councils were created, one for Trade, and the other for Plantations, their instructions largely following drafts prepared by the London merchants Povey and Noell, who had for some years been actively engaged in the study of colonial questions, and the formulation of a colonial policy.[746] However these instructions might strike colonists who refused to acknowledge any right of control whatever by the mother-country, they could not but appear wise and just to the statesmen and citizens at home. The councillors were ordered, in the first place, to make a complete survey—by means of correspondence with the colonial governors—of the laws and institutions, population and means of defense of each colony. They were to study “means for the rendering those dominions usefull to England, and England helpful to them, and for the bringing the several Colonies and Plantations, within themselves, into a more certain civill and uniforme waie of government and for the better ordering and distributing of publique justice among them.” They were, further, to maintain a correspondence with the local authorities in the several colonies, so that they might have constant knowledge of “their complaints, their wants, their abundance,” and their shipping, the latter for revision of the Navigation Laws. Finally, they were to study the methods employed by other states in their colonial government, and to call experts to their assistance in any particular when needed.[747] The Council was made up of able men, almost all of them authorities on colonial questions, and in close touch with the colonies, while the business, in the first instance, was frequently entrusted to experts.[748] Of the work of the Council, Professor Andrews writes, that “there was not an important phase of colonial life and government, not a colonial claim or dispute, that was not considered carefully, thoroughly, and in the main, impartially.”[749] In fact, an unbiased study of the actions taken by the Privy Council and its committees during nearly the whole of the seventeenth century leads one to agree with the editor of the Acts, that, as a governing body, it was “anxious to help, willing to take advice, free from preconception.”[750] Footnote 746: Andrews, _British Committees_, pp. 38, 56, 67 _ff._ Footnote 747: