1921 IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 389 These committees appointed at general meetings l show the direction in which the development is tending. From the repeated general meetings and their committees gradually a permanent organization is being built up, its activities supple- mentary to and in no way superseding those of the merchants' society. In 1782 we get another step towards the final form of organization. In the minutes of the meeting of merchants of January of that year there is inserted the copy of a petition of the West India planters and merchants to the king ; the first signature is that of ' Nathaniel Bayly, Chairman '. Hitherto the chair at general meetings has always been taken by Mr. Long ; he is here superseded by Mr. Bayly, who was a gentleman planter. In June of the same year two more general meetings were held, and at neither of them was Mr. Long in the chair : at the earlier of the two the chairman was Richard Pennant ; and from this time there does not seem to have been a general meeting at which Mr. Beeston Long presided, and whenever Mr. Pennant is present he is in the chair. At one of these meetings of 1782, there is a reference to the standing committee of planters and merchants, appointed presumably at one of the previous meetings. During the years 1782 to 1784 this organization takes permanent shape, and we get thus the standing committee, with Mr. Pennant (created Baron Penrhyn in September 1783) as chairman. It is impossible to give the exact date at which the standing committee became a definite permanent institution, for unfor- tunately no minutes have been preserved to the West India committee for the period August 1783 to May 1785. 2 Certain manuscripts among the Chatham Papers 3 in the Public Record Office give evidence of the existence of a committee of West India planters and merchants in February and March 1784 and again in the same months of 1785. In March 1785 the names of the members of the committee are given ; Lord Penrhyn was chairman, and Mr. Beeston Long one of the members. In April there was a meeting. of 'the select committee ', but there is no means of judging its relation to the former committee. The same term is applied to two meetings in May, after the minutes commence again, and then in June there was a meeting of the standing committee, henceforth the kernel of the association. It is, as we have suggested, probable, though not certain, 1 For the sake of clarity the term general meeting has been used to indicate a meet- ing of planters and merchants. In the minutes the term is used not only for this pur- pose, but in reference to ordinary meetings of merchants only or planters only as contrasted with committee meetings. 8 See list of minute books, p. 373, n. 1. 3 Public Record Office, Chatham Papers, 352.
