consisted of thirty-six members. But twelve of the number declined their
commissions, and most of those who accepted were speedily obliged to
resign them in order to save their property and persons from the fury of
the multitude. The judges newly appointed experienced much the same
treatment. All the inferior officers of the Courts of Judicature, the
clerks, the juries, and all others concerned, explicitly refused to act
under the new laws. In some places the populace shut up the avenues to
the court-houses; and upon being required to make way for the judges and
officers of the court, they declared that they knew of no court nor
establishment in the province contrary to the ancient usages and forms,
and would recognize none.
"The former Constitution being thus destroyed by the British
Legislature, and the people refusing to acknowledge that which was
substituted in its room, a dissolution of all government necessarily
ensued. The resolution to oppose the designs of Great Britain produced
occasionally some commotions; but no other consequences followed this
defect of government. Peace and good order remained everywhere
throughout the province, and the people demeaned themselves with as much
regularity as if the laws still continued in their full and formal
rigour." (Andrews' History of the War, Vol. I., pp. 145, 146.)]
CHAPTER XX.
THE GENERAL CONGRESS OR CONVENTION AT PHILADELPHIA, SEPTEMBER AND
OCTOBER, 1774.
The word Congress, in relation to the United States, is synonymous with
the word Parliament in Great Britain, signifying the Legislature of the
nation at large; but before the revolution the word Congress was used,
for the most part, as synonymous with Convention--a voluntary meeting of
delegates elected by towns or counties for certain purposes. A meeting
of delegates from the several towns of a county was called a _Congress_,
or Convention of such county; a meeting of delegates of the several
towns of a province was called a Provincial Congress, or Convention; and
a meeting of _delegates_ of the several County Conventions in the
several provinces was called a _General_ or _Continental_ Congress,
though they possessed no _legal_ power, and their resolutions and
addresses were the mere expressions of opinion or advice.
Such was the Continental Congress that assembled in Philadelphia the 5th
of September, 1774--not a legislative or executive body possessing or
assuming any legislative or executive power--a body consisting of
fifty-five delegates elected by the representatives of twelve out of the
thirteen provinces--Georgia, the youngest and smallest province, not
having elected delegates. The sittings of this body, or Congress, as it
was called, continued about eight weeks, and its proceedings were
conducted with all the forms of a Legislative Assembly, but with closed
doors, and under the pledge of secrecy, until dissolved by the authority
of the Congress itself.
Each day's proceedings was commenced with prayer by some minister. Mr.
Peyton Randolph, Speaker of the House of Burgesses of Virginia, was
elected President, and Mr. Charles Thompson, of Pennsylvania, was chosen
Secretary.
After deciding upon the mode of conducting the business, it was
resolved, after lengthened discussion, that each colony should be equal
in voting--each colony having one vote, whatever might be the number of
its delegates.
This Congress consisted of the assembled representatives of the American
colonies, and truly expressed their grievances, opinions, and feelings.
As the proceedings were with closed doors, the utterances of individuals
were not reported; but in the reported results of their deliberations
there is not an opinion or wish expressed which does not savour of
affection to the mother country and loyalty to the British Constitution.
Down to this ninth or last year of the agitation which commenced with
the passing of the Stamp Act, before bloody conflicts took place between
British soldiers and inhabitants of Massachusetts, there was not a
resolution or petition or address adopted by any Congress, or
Convention, or public meeting in the colonies, that contained a
principle or sentiment which has not been professed by the loyal
inhabitants of British America, and which is not recognized at this day
by the British Government and enjoyed by the people in all the provinces
of the Dominion of Canada.
The correctness of these remarks will appear from a summary of the
proceedings of this Continental Congress, and extracts from its
addresses, which will show that the colonies, without exception, were as
loyal to their constitutional sovereign as they were to their
constitutional rights,[344] though in royal messages and ministerial
speeches in Parliament their petitions and remonstrances were called
treason, and the authors of them were termed rebels and traitors. The
principal acts of this Congress were a Declaration of Rights; an address
to the King; an address to the people of Great Britain; a memorial to
the Americans; a letter to the people of Canada. Non-importation and
non-exportation agreements were adopted and signed by all the members;
and Committees of Vigilance were appointed.
"Then on the 26th of October, the 'fifty-five' separated and returned to
their homes, determined, as they expressed it, 'that they were
themselves to stand or fall with the liberties of America.'"[345]
Among the first important acts of this Congress was the declaration of
colonial rights, grievances, and policy. As this part of their
proceedings contains the whole case of the colonies as stated by their
own representatives, I will give it, though long, in their own words, in
a note.[346] This elaborate and ably written paper does not appear to
contain a sentiment of treason, nor anything which the members of the
Congress had not a right to express and complain of as British subjects;
while they explicitly recognized in Parliament all the authority which
could be constitutionally claimed for it, and which was requisite for
British supremacy over the colonies, or which had ever been exercised
before 1764.
On the 1st of October, the Congress, after long consideration,
unanimously resolved--
"That a loyal address to his Majesty be prepared, dutifully requesting
the Royal attention to the grievances which alarm and distress his
Majesty's faithful subjects in North America, and entreating his
Majesty's gracious interposition to remove such grievances, and thereby
to restore to Great Britain and the colonies that harmony so necessary
to the happiness of the British empire, and so ardently desired by all
America."
This address or petition, like all the papers emanating from this
Congress, was written with consummate ability.[347] In this petition to
the King, the Congress begged leave to lay their grievances before the
Throne. After a particular enumeration of these, they observed that they
wholly arose from a destructive system of colony administration adopted
since the conclusion of the last war. They assured his Majesty that they
had made such provision for defraying the charges of the administration
of justice, and the support of civil government, as had been judged
just, and suitable to their respective circumstances; and that for the
defence, protection, and security of the colonies, their militia would
be fully sufficient in time of peace; and in case of war, they were
ready and willing, when constitutionally required, to exert their most
strenuous efforts in granting supplies and raising forces. They said,
"We ask but for peace, liberty, and safety. We wish not a diminution of
the prerogative; nor do we solicit the grant of any new right in our
favour. Your royal authority over us, and our connection with Great
Britain, we shall always carefully and zealously endeavour to support
and maintain."[348] They concluded their masterly and touching address
in the following words:
"Permit us, then, most gracious Sovereign, in the name of all your
faithful people in America, with the utmost humility, to implore you,
for the honour of Almighty God, whose pure religion our enemies are
undermining; for your glory, which can be advanced only by rendering
your subjects happy and keeping them united; for the interest of your
family, depending on an adherence to the principles that enthroned it;
for the safety and welfare of your kingdom and dominions, threatened
with almost unavoidable dangers and distresses, that your Majesty, as
the loving Father of your whole people, connected by the same bonds of
law, loyalty, faith, and blood, though dwelling in various countries,
will not suffer the transcendent relation formed by these ties to be
farther violated in certain expectation of efforts that, if attained,
never can compensate for the calamities through which they must be
gained."[349]
Their address to the people of Great Britain is equally earnest and
statesmanlike. Two or three passages, as samples, must suffice. After
stating the serious condition of America, and the oppressions and
misrepresentations of their conduct, and their claim to be as free as
their fellow-subjects in Great Britain, they say:
"Are not the proprietors of the soil of Great Britain lords of their own
property? Can it be taken from them without their consent? Will they
yield it to the arbitrary disposal of any men or number of men
whatsoever? You know they will not.
"Why then are the proprietors of the soil of America less lords of their
property than you are of yours; or why should they submit it to the
disposal of your Parliament, or any other Parliament or Council in the
world, not of their election? Can the intervention of the sea that
divides us cause disparity of rights; or can any reason be given why
English subjects who live three thousand miles distant from the royal
palace should enjoy less liberty than those who are three hundred miles
distant from it? Reason looks with indignation on such distinctions, and
freemen can never perceive their propriety."
They conclude their address to their fellow-subjects in Great Britain in
the following words:
"We believe there is yet much virtue, much justice, and much public
spirit in the English nation. To that justice we now appeal. You have
been told that we are seditious, impatient of government, and desirous
of independence. Be assured that these are not facts, but calumnies.
Permit us to be as free as yourselves, and we shall ever esteem a union
with you to be our greatest glory and our greatest happiness; and we
shall ever be ready to contribute all in our power to the welfare of the
empire. We shall consider your enemies as our enemies, and your interest
as our own.
"But if you are determined that your Ministers shall wantonly sport with
the rights of mankind; if neither the voice of justice, the dictates of
law, the principles of the Constitution, nor the suggestions of humanity
can restrain your hands from shedding human blood in such an impious
cause, we must then tell you that we will never submit to be hewers of
wood and drawers of water to any Ministry or nation in the world.
"_Place us in the same situation that we were at the close of the late
war, and our former harmony will be restored._"
The address of the members of this Congress to their constituents is a
lucid exposition of the several causes which had led to the then
existing state of things, and is replete with earnest but temperate
argument to prove that their liberties must be destroyed, and the
security of their persons and property annihilated, by submission to the
pretensions of the British Ministry and Parliament. They state that the
first object of the Congress was to unite the people of America, by
demonstrating the sincerity and earnestness with which reconciliation
had been sought with Great Britain upon terms compatible with British
liberty. After expressing their confidence in the efficacy of the
passive commercial resistance which had been adopted, they conclude
their address thus:
"Your own salvation and that of your posterity now depend upon
yourselves. You have already shown that you entertain a proper sense of
the blessings you are striving to retain. Against the temporary
inconveniences you may suffer from a stoppage of trade, you will weigh
in the opposite balance the endless miseries you and your descendants
must endure from an established arbitrary power." ...
"Motives thus cogent, arising from the emergency of your unhappy
condition, must excite your utmost diligence and zeal to give all
possible strength and energy to pacific measures calculated for your
relief. But we think ourselves bound in duty to observe to you, that the
schemes agitated against the colonies have been so conducted as to
render it prudent that you should extend your views to mournful events,
and be in all respects prepared for every contingency. Above all things,
we earnestly entreat you, with devotion of spirit, penitence of heart,
and amendment of life, to humble yourselves, and implore the favour of
Almighty God; and we fervently beseech His Divine goodness to take you
into His gracious protection."
The letters addressed to the other colonies not represented in the
Congress require no special reference or remark.
After completing the business before them, this first General Congress
in America recommended that another Congress should be held in the same
place on the tenth day of the succeeding May, 1775, "unless redress of
their grievances should be previously obtained," and recommending to all
the colonies "to choose deputies as soon as possible, to be ready to
attend at that time and place, should events make their meeting
necessary."
I have presented an embodiment of the complaints, sentiments, and wishes
of the American colonies in the words of their elected representatives
in their first General Congress. I have done so for two reasons: First,
to correct as far as I can the erroneous impression of thousands of
English and Canadian readers, that during the ten years' conflict of
words, before the conflict of arms, between the British Ministry and
Parliament and Colonies, the colonists entertained opinions and views
incompatible with subordination to the mother country, and were
preparing the way for separation from it. Such an opinion is utterly
erroneous. Whatever solitary individuals may have thought or wished, the
petitions and resolutions adopted by the complaining colonists during
these ten years of agitation breathe as pure a spirit of loyalty as they
do of liberty; and in no instance did they ask for more, or as much, as
the inhabitants of the provinces of the Canadian Dominion this day
enjoy.
My second reason for thus quoting the very words of the declarations and
petitions of the colonists is to show the injustice with which they were
represented and treated by the British Ministry, Parliament, and press
in England.
It was hoped by the Congress that their address to the people of England
would have a happy influence in favour of the colonies upon the public
mind, and tell favourably on the English elections, which took place the
latter part of the year 1774; but the elections were suddenly ordered
before the proceedings of the Congress could be published in England.
The elections, of course, resulted adversely to the colonies; and the
new Parliament was more subservient to the Ministry against the colonies
than the preceding Parliament.[350]
This new Parliament met the 30th day of November, when the King was
advised to inform them, among other things, "that a most daring spirit
of resistance and disobedience to the laws unhappily prevailed in the
province of Massachusetts, and had broken forth in fresh violences of a
very criminal nature; that these proceedings had been countenanced and
encouraged in his other colonies; that unwarrantable attempts had been
made to obstruct the commerce of his kingdom by unlawful combinations;
and that he had taken such measures and given such orders as he judged
most proper and effectual for carrying into execution the laws which
were passed in the last session of the late Parliament relative to the
province of Massachusetts."[351]
Answers were adopted in both Houses of Parliament re-echoing the
sentiments of the Royal Speech, but not without vehement debates. There
was a considerable minority in both Lords and Commons that sympathised
with the colonies, and condemned the Ministerial policy and the Acts of
the previous Parliament complained of. In the Commons, the Minister was
reminded of the great effects he had predicted from the American acts.
"They were to humble that whole continent without further trouble; and
the punishment of Boston was to strike so universal a panic in all the
colonies that it would be totally abandoned, and instead of obtaining
relief, a dread of the same fate would awe the other provinces to a most
respectful submission."[352] But the address, re-echoing the Royal
Speech for coercion, was adopted by a majority of two to one.
In the Lords a similar address was passed by a large majority; but the
Lords Richmond, Portland, Rockingham, Stamford, Torrington, Ponsonby,
Wycombe, and Camden entered upon the journals a protest against it,
which concluded in the following memorable words:
"Whatever may be the mischievous designs or the inconsiderate temerity,
we wish to be known as persons who have disapproved of measures so
injurious in their past effects and future tendency, and who are not in
haste, without inquiry or information, to commit ourselves in
declarations which may precipitate our country into all the calamities
of civil war."[353]
Before the adjournment of the new Parliament for the Christmas holidays,
the papers containing the proceedings of the Continental Congress at
Philadelphia reached England. The first impression made by them is said
to have been in favour of America. The Ministry seemed staggered, and
their opposers triumphed in the fulfilment of their own predictions as
to the effects of Ministerial acts and policy in America. The Earl of
Dartmouth, Secretary of State for the Colonies, after a day's perusal of
these papers, said that the petition of the Congress to the King (of
which extracts have been given above) was a decent and proper one. He
cheerfully undertook to present it to the King; and reported afterwards
that his Majesty was pleased to receive it very graciously, and would
lay it before his two Houses of Parliament. From these favourable
circumstances, the friends of conciliation anticipated that the petition
of the Colonial Congress would be made the basis of a change of measures
and policy in regard to the colonies. But these hopes were of short
duration.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 344: The royal historian, Andrews, states:
"The delegates were enjoined, by the instructions they had received from
their constituents, solemnly to acknowledge the sovereignty of Great
Britain over them, and their willingness to pay her the fullest
obedience, as far _as_ the constitution authorized her to demand it;
they were to disclaim all notions of separating from her; and to declare
it was with the deepest regret they beheld a suspension of that
confidence and affection which had so long, and so happily for both,
subsisted between Great Britain and her colonies.
"But they were no less carefully directed at the same time to assert the
rights transmitted to them by their ancestors. These rights they would
never surrender, and would maintain them at all perils. They were
entitled to all the privileges of British subjects, and would not yield
to the unjust pretensions of Parliament, which, in the present treatment
of the colonies, had violated the principles of the constitution and
given them just occasion to be dissatisfied and to rise in opposition.
Parliament might depend this opposition would never cease until those
Acts were wholly repealed that had been the radical cause of the present
disturbances." (Andrews' History of the War with America, Spain and
Holland, from 1775 to 1783, pp. 156, 157.)]
[Footnote 345: Elliott's New England History, Vol. II., Chap. xvi., p.
289.
"Washington and Lee believed the non-importation and exportation
agreements would open the eyes of England; but Patrick Henry agreed with
John and Samuel Adams in believing that _force_ must decide it, and,
like them, was ready to meet any emergency."--_Ib._
"The New York Legislature at once repudiated the doings of the Congress;
but elsewhere it met with a hearty response."--_Ib._, p. 290.]
[Footnote 346: "Whereas, since the close of the last war, the British
Parliament, claiming a power, of right, to bind the people of America by
statutes in all cases whatsoever, hath in some Acts expressly imposed
taxes on them; and in others, under various pretences, but in fact for
the purpose of raising a revenue, hath imposed rates and duties payable
in these colonies, established a Board of Commissioners with
unconstitutional powers, and extended the jurisdiction of Courts of
Admiralty, not only for collecting the said duties, but for the trial of
causes merely arising within the body of a county:
"And whereas, in consequence of other statutes, judges, who before held
only estates at will in their offices, have been made dependent on the
Crown alone for their salaries, and standing armies kept in times of
peace:
"And whereas it has lately been resolved in Parliament, that by force of
a statute made in the thirty-fifth year of the reign of King Henry
VIII., colonists may be transported to England and tried there upon
accusations for treasons, and misprisions and concealments of treasons
committed in the colonies, and by a late statute such trials have been
directed in cases therein mentioned:
"And whereas, in the last session of Parliament, three statutes were
made--one entitled, 'An Act to discontinue, in such manner and for such
time as are therein mentioned, the landing and discharging, lading or
shipping of goods, wares, and merchandise, at the town, and within the
harbour of Boston, in the province of Massachusetts Bay, in North
America;' another entitled, 'An Act for the better regulating the
Government of the Province of Massachusetts Bay, in New England;' and
another Act entitled, 'An Act for the impartial administration of
justice, in the cases of persons questioned for any act done by them in
the execution of the law, or for the suppression of riots and tumults,
in the province of the Massachusetts Bay, in New England;' and another
statute was then made, 'for making more effectual provision for the
government of the province of Quebec,' etc.--all which statutes are
impolitic, unjust, and cruel, as well as unconstitutional, and most
dangerous and destructive of American rights:
"And whereas assemblies have been frequently dissolved, contrary to the
rights of the people, when they attempted to deliberate on grievances;
and their dutiful, humble, loyal, and reasonable petitions to the Crown
for redress have been repeatedly treated with contempt by his Majesty's
Ministers of State; the good people of the several colonies of New
Hampshire, Massachusetts Bay, Rhode Island and Providence Plantations,
Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, New Castle, Kent and
Sussex on Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, and South
Carolina, justly alarmed at the arbitrary proceedings of Parliament and
Administration, have severally elected, constituted, and appointed
deputies to meet and sit in General Congress, in the city of
Philadelphia, in order to obtain such establishment as that their
religion, laws, and liberties may not be subverted; whereupon the
deputies so appointed being now assembled, in a full and free
representation of these colonies, taking into their most serious
consideration the best means of attaining the ends aforesaid, do in the
first place, as Englishmen, what their ancestors in like cases have
usually done, for asserting and vindicating their rights and liberties,
DECLARE, that the inhabitants of the English colonies in North America,
by the immutable laws of nature, the principles of the English
Constitution, and the several charters or compacts, have the following
rights:
"Resolved, N. C. D. 1st, That they are entitled to life, liberty, and
property; and they have never ceded to any sovereign power whatever a
right to dispose of either without their consent.
"Resolved, N. C. D. 2nd, That our ancestors, who first settled these
colonies, were, at the time of their emigration from the mother country,
entitled to all the rights, liberties, and immunities of free and
natural-born subjects within the realm of England.
"Resolved, N. C. D. 3rd, That by such emigration they by no means
forfeited, surrendered, or lost any of those rights, but that they were,
and their descendants now are, entitled to the exercise and enjoyment of
all such of them as their local and other circumstances enabled them to
exercise and enjoy.
"Resolved, 4th, That the foundation of English liberty and of all free
government is a right in their people to participate in their
Legislative Council; and as the English colonists are not represented,
and from their local and other circumstances cannot properly be
represented in the British Parliament, they are entitled to a free and
exclusive power of legislation in their several Provincial Legislatures,
where their right of representation can alone be preserved, in all cases
of taxation and internal polity, subject only to the negative of their
Sovereign, in such manner as has been heretofore used and accustomed.
But from the necessity of the case, and a regard to the mutual interest
of both countries, we cheerfully consent to the operation of such Acts
of the British Parliament as are _bona fide_ restrained to the
regulation of our external commerce, for the purpose of securing the
commercial advantages of the whole empire to the mother country, and the
commercial benefits of its respective members; excluding every idea of
taxation, internal or external, for raising a revenue on the subjects in
America without their consent.
"Resolved, N. C. D. 5th, That the respective colonies are entitled to
the common law of England, and more especially to the great and
inestimable privilege of being tried by their peers of the vicinage,
according to the course of that law.
"Resolved, 6th, That they are entitled to the benefit of such of the
English statutes as existed at the time of their colonization; and which
they have, by experience, respectively found to be applicable to their
several local and other circumstances.
"Resolved, N. C. D. 7th, That these his Majesty's colonies are likewise
entitled to all the immunities and privileges granted and confirmed to
them by Royal Charters, or secured by their several codes of Provincial
laws.
"Resolved, N. C. D. 8th, That they have a right peaceably to assemble,
consider of their grievances, and petition the King; and that all
prosecutions, prohibitory proclamations, and commitments for the same,
are illegal.
"Resolved, N. C. D. 9th, That the keeping a standing army in these
colonies, in times of peace, without the consent of the Legislature of
the colony in which such army is kept, is against law.
"Resolved, N. C. D. 10th, It is indispensably necessary to good
government, and rendered essential by the English constitution, that the
constituent branches of the Legislature be independent of each other;
that, therefore, the exercise of legislative power in several colonies,
by a Council appointed, during pleasure, by the Crown, is
unconstitutional, dangerous, and destructive to the freedom of American
legislation.
"All and each of which the aforesaid deputies, in behalf of themselves
and their constituents, do claim, demand, and insist on, as their
indubitable rights and liberties; which cannot be legally taken from
them, altered or abridged by any power whatever, without their own
consent, by their representatives in their several Provincial
Legislatures.
"In the course of our inquiry, we find many infringements and violations
of the foregoing rights, which, from an ardent desire that harmony and
mutual intercourse of affection and interest may be restored, we pass
over for the present, and proceed to state such Acts and measures as
have been adopted since the last war, which demonstrate a system formed
to enslave America.
"Resolved, N. C. D., That the following Acts of Parliament are
infringements and violations of the rights of the colonies; and that the
repeal of them is essentially necessary, in order to restore harmony
between Great Britain and the American colonies, viz.:
"The several Acts of 4 Geo. III. chaps. 15 and 34--5 Geo. III. chap.
25--6 Geo. III. chap. 52--7 Geo. III. chap. 41 and chap. 46--8 Geo. III.
chap. 22, which imposed duties for the purpose of raising a revenue in
America, extend the power of the Admiralty Courts beyond their ancient
limits; deprive the American subject of trial by jury; authorize the
judge's certificate to indemnify the prosecutor from damages that he
might otherwise be liable to; requiring oppressive security from a
claimant of ships and goods seized, before he shall be allowed to defend
his property, and are subversive of American rights.
"Also 12 Geo. III. chap. 24, intituled 'An Act for the better securing
his Majesty's dockyards, magazines, ships, ammunition, and stores,'
which declares a new offence in America, and deprives the American
subject of a constitutional trial by a jury of the vicinage, by
authorizing the trial of any person charged with the committing of any
offence described in the said Act, out of the realm, to be indicted and
tried for the same in any shire or county within the realm.
"Also the three Acts passed in the last session of Parliament, for
stopping the port and blocking up the harbour of Boston, for altering
the Charter and Government of Massachusetts Bay, and that which is
intituled 'An Act for the better administration of justice,' etc.
"Also, the Act passed in the same session for establishing the Roman
Catholic religion in the province of Quebec, abolishing the equitable
system of English laws, and erecting a tyranny there, to the great
danger (from so total a dissimilarity of religion, law, and government)
of the neighbouring British colonies, by the assistance of whose blood
and treasure the said country was conquered from France.
"Also, the Act passed in the same session for the better providing
suitable quarters for officers and soldiers in his Majesty's service in
North America.
"Also, that the keeping a standing army in several of these colonies, in
time of peace, without the consent of the Legislature of that colony in
which such army is kept, is against law.
"To these grievous Acts and measures, Americans cannot submit; but in
hopes their fellow-subjects in Great Britain will, on a revision of
them, restore us to that state in which both countries found happiness
and prosperity, we have for the present only resolved to pursue the
following peaceable measures: 1. To enter into a non-importation,
non-consumption, and non-exportation agreement or association; 2. To
prepare an address to the people of Great Britain, and a memorial to the
inhabitants of British America; and 3. To prepare a loyal address to his
Majesty, agreeable to resolutions already entered into." (Marshall's
American Colonial History. Appendix IX., pp. 481-485.)]
[Footnote 347: See the Earl of Chatham's remarks on page 423.]
[Footnote 348: Ramsay's Colonial History, Vol. I., p. 418.]
[Footnote 349: "The Committee which brought in this admirably well-drawn
and truly conciliatory address were Mr. Lee, Mr. John Adams, Mr.
Johnston, Mr. Henry, Mr. Rutledge, and Mr. Dickenson. The original
composition has been generally attributed to Mr. Dickenson." (Marshall's
American Colonial History, Chap. xiv., p. 419, in a note.)]
[Footnote 350: "Some time before the proceedings of Congress reached
England, it was justly apprehended that the non-importation agreement
would be one of the measures they would adopt. The Ministry,
apprehending that this event, by distressing the trading and
manufacturing towns, might influence votes against the Court in the
election of a new Parliament, which was, of course, to come on in the
succeeding year, suddenly dissolved the Parliament and immediately
ordered a new one to be chosen. It was their design to have the whole
business of elections over before the inconveniences of non-importation
could be felt. The nation was thus surprised into an election. Without
knowing that the late American acts had driven the colonies into a firm
combination to support and make common cause with the people of
Massachusetts, a new Parliament was returned, which met thirty-four days
after the proceedings of Congress were first published in Philadelphia,
and before they were known in Great Britain. This, for the most part,
consisted either of the former members, or of those who held similar
sentiments." (Ramsay's Colonial History, Vol. I., Chap. vi., p. 424.)]
[Footnote 351: Ramsay's Colonial History, Vol. I., Chap. vi., pp. 424,
425.]
[Footnote 352: _Ib._, p. 425.]
[Footnote 353: _Ib._, p. 425.]
CHAPTER XXI.
THE RE-ASSEMBLING OF PARLIAMENT--LETTERS FROM COLONIAL GOVERNORS,
REVENUE AND MILITARY OFFICERS, AGAINST THE COLONISTS OPPOSED TO THE
MINISTERIAL POLICY--THE MINISTRY, SUPPORTED BY PARLIAMENT, DETERMINE
UPON CONTINUING AND STRENGTHENING THE COERCIVE POLICY AGAINST THE
COLONIES.
On the re-assembling of Parliament in January, 1775, a number of papers
were produced from governors, and revenue and military officers in
America, which contained various statements adverse to the proceedings
and members of the Congress, and the opposition to the coercive Acts of
Parliament.
Ministers and their supporters were pleased with these papers, which
abetted their policy, lauded and caressed their authors, and decided to
concede nothing, and continue and strengthen the policy of coercion.
On the 20th of January, the first day of the re-assembling of the Lords,
Lord Dartmouth laid the papers received from America before the House.
The Earl of Chatham, after an absence of two years, appeared again in
the House with restored health, and with all his former energy and
eloquence. He moved:
"That a humble address be presented to his Majesty, most humbly to
advise and beseech him that, in order to open the way toward a happy
settlement of the dangerous troubles in America, by beginning to allay
ferments and soften animosities there, and above all for preventing, in
the meantime, any sudden catastrophe at Boston, now suffering under
daily irritation of an army before their eyes, posted in their town, it
may graciously please his Majesty that immediate orders may be
despatched to General Gage for removing his Majesty's forces from the
town of Boston as soon as the rigours of the season and other
circumstances indispensable to the safety and accommodation of said
troops may render the same practicable."
Lord Chatham advocated his motion in a very pathetic speech, and was
supported by speeches by the Marquis of Rockingham, Lords Shelburne and
Camden, and petitions from merchants and manufacturers throughout the
kingdom, and most prominently by those of London and Bristol. But the
motion was negatived by a majority of 63 to 13.
In the course of his speech Lord Chatham said:
"Resistance to your acts was as necessary as it was just; and your
imperious doctrine of the omnipotence of Parliament and the necessity of
submission will be found equally impotent to convince or to enslave.
"The means of enforcing the thraldom are as weak in practice as they are
unjust in principle. General Gage and the troops under his command are
penned up, pining in inglorious inactivity. You may call them an army of
safety and of guard, but they are in truth an army of impotence; and to
make the folly equal to the disgrace, they are an army of irritation.
"But this tameness, however contemptible, cannot be censured; for the
first drop of blood shed in civil and unnatural war will make a wound
that years, perhaps ages, may not heal.... The indiscriminate hand of
vengeance has lumped together innocent and guilty; with all the
formalities of hostility, has blocked up the town of Boston, and reduced
to beggary and famine thirty thousand inhabitants....
"When your lordships look at the papers transmitted to us from
America--when you consider their decency, firmness, and wisdom, you
cannot but respect their cause, and wish to make it your own. For
myself, I must avow that in all my reading--and I have read Thucydides,
and have studied the master-states of the world--for solidity of reason,
force of sagacity, and wisdom of conclusion under a complication of
difficult circumstances, no nation or body of men can stand in
preference to the General Congress of Philadelphia. The histories of
Greece and Rome give us nothing equal to it, and all attempts to impose
servitude upon such a mighty continental nation must be vain. We shall
be forced ultimately to retract; let us retract while we can, not when
we must. These violent Acts must be repealed; you will repeal them; I
pledge myself for it, I stake my reputation upon it, that you will in
the end repeal them. Avoid, then, this humiliating necessity. With a
dignity becoming your exalted station, make the first advance towards
concord, peace, and happiness; for that is your true dignity. Concession
comes with better grace from superior power, and establishes solid
confidence on the foundations of affection and gratitude. Be the first
to spare; throw down the weapons in your hand.
"Every motive of justice and policy, of dignity and of prudence, urges
you to allay the ferment in America by a removal of your troops from
Boston, by a repeal of your Acts of Parliament, and by demonstrating
amiable dispositions towards your colonies.... If the Ministers
persevere in thus misadvising and misleading the King, I will not say
that the King is betrayed, but I will pronounce that the kingdom is
undone; I will not say that they can alienate the affections of his
subjects from his Crown, but I will affirm that, the American jewel out
of it, they will make the Crown not worth his wearing."[354]
The Earl of Suffolk, with whining vehemence, assured the House that, in
spite of Lord Chatham's prophecy, the Government was resolved to repeal
not one of the Acts, but to use all possible means to bring the
Americans to obedience; and after declaiming violently against their
conduct, boasted as "having been one of the first to advise coercive
measures."
Ex-Lord Chancellor Camden excelled every other speaker, except Lord
Chatham, in the discussion; he declared in the course of his speech:
"This I will say, not only as a statesman, politician, and philosopher,
but as a common lawyer: My lords, you have no right to tax America; the
natural rights of man, and the immutable laws of nature, are all with
that people. King, Lords, and Commons are fine-sounding names, but King,
Lords, and Commons may become tyrants as well as others. It is as lawful
to resist the tyranny of many as of one. Somebody once asked the great
Selden in what book you might find the law for resisting tyranny. 'It
has always been the custom of England,' answered Selden, 'and the custom
of England is the law of the land.'"
After several other speeches and much recrimination, and a
characteristic reply from Lord Chatham, his motion was rejected by a
majority of sixty-eight to eighteen; but the Duke of Cumberland, the
King's own brother, was one of the minority. The King triumphed in what
he called "the very handsome majority," and said he was sure "nothing
could be more calculated to bring the Americans to submission." The
King's prediction of "submission" was followed by more united and
energetic resistance in the colonies.
But Lord Chatham, persevering in his efforts of conciliation,
notwithstanding the large majority against him, brought in, the 1st of
February, a Bill entitled "A Provisional Act for Settling the Troubles
in America, and for Asserting the Supreme Legislative Authority and
Superintending Power of Great Britain over the Colonies." The Bill,
however, was not allowed to be read the first time, or even to lie on
the table, but was rejected by a majority of sixty-four to thirty-two--a
contempt of the colonists and a discourtesy to the noble mover of the
Bill without example in the House of Lords.
In the meantime, petitions were presented to the Commons from various
towns in England, Scotland, and Ireland, by manufacturers and merchants
connected with the colonial trade. On the 23rd of January, Alderman
Hayley presented a petition from the merchants of the City of London
trading to America, stating at great length the nature and extent of the
trade, direct and indirect, between Great Britain and America, and the
immense injury to it by the recent Acts of Parliament, and praying for
relief; but this petition was conveyed to the "Committee of Oblivion,"
as were petitions from the merchants of Glasgow, Liverpool, Norwich and
other towns, on American affairs. These petitions, together with their
advocates in both Houses of Parliament, showed that the oppressive
policy and abuse of the Americans were the acts of the Ministry of the
day, and not properly of the English people.
On the 26th of January, Sir George Saville offered to present a petition
from Dr. Franklin, Mr. Bollan, and Mr. Lee, stating that they had been
authorized by the American Continental Congress to present a petition
from the Congress to the King, which his Majesty had referred to that
House, and that they were able to throw great light upon the subject;
they therefore prayed to be heard at the bar in support of the petition.
After a violent debate the petition was rejected by a majority of 218 to
68.[355]
Lord North on the 2nd of February, moved that the House resolve itself
into Committee on an address to his Majesty, thanking him for having
communicated to the House the several papers relating to the present
state of the British colonies, and from which "we find that a part of
his Majesty's subjects in the province of Massachusetts Bay have
proceeded so far as to resist the authority of the Supreme Legislature;
that a _rebellion_ at this time actually exists within the said
province; and we see, with the utmost concern, that they have been
countenanced and encouraged by unlawful combinations and engagements
entered into by his Majesty's subjects in several other colonies, to the
injury and oppression of many of their innocent fellow-subjects resident
within the kingdom of Great Britain and the rest of his Majesty's
dominions. This conduct on their part appears to us the more inexcusable
when we consider with how much temper his Majesty and the two Houses of
Parliament have acted in support of the laws and constitution of Great
Britain; to declare that we can never so far desert the trust reposed in
us as to relinquish any part of the sovereign authority over all his
Majesty's dominions which by law is invested in his Majesty and the two
Houses of Parliament, and that the conduct of many persons, in several
of the colonies, during the late disturbances, is alone sufficient to
convince us how necessary this power is for the protection of the lives
and fortunes of all his Majesty's subjects; that we ever have been and
always shall be ready to pay attention and regard to any real grievances
of any of his Majesty's subjects, which shall, in a dutiful and
constitutional manner, be laid before us; and whenever any of the
colonies shall make proper application to us, we shall be ready to
afford them every just and reasonable indulgence; but that, at the same
time, we consider it our indispensable duty humbly to beseech his
Majesty to take the most effectual measures to enforce due obedience to
the laws and authority of the Supreme Legislature; and that we beg
leave, in the most solemn manner, to assure his Majesty that it is our
fixed resolution, at the hazard of our lives and properties, to stand by
his Majesty against all rebellious attempts, in the maintenance of the
just rights of his Majesty and the two Houses of Parliament."[356]
I have given Lord North's proposed address to the King at length, in
order that the reader may understand fully the policy of the Government
at that eventful moment, and the statements on which that policy was
founded.
In relation to this address several things may be observed: 1. There is
not the slightest recognition in it that the American colonists have any
constitutional rights whatever; they are claimed as the absolute
property of King and Parliament, irrespective of local Charters or
Legislatures. 2. It is alleged that Parliament always had been and would
be "ready to pay attention to any _real_ grievances of any of his
Majesty's subjects which shall, _in a dutiful and constitutional
manner_, be laid before us," when "we shall be ready to afford them
every just and reasonable _indulgence_." Yet every one of the hundreds
of petitions which had been sent from the colonies to England for the
previous ten years, complaining of grievances, was rejected, under one
pretext or another, as not having been adopted or transmitted in "a
dutiful and constitutional manner." If a Legislative Assembly proceeded
to prepare a petition of grievances to the King, the King's Governor
immediately dissolved the Assembly; and when its members afterwards met
in their private capacity and embodied their complaints, their
proceedings were pronounced unlawful and seditious. When township,
county, and provincial conventions met and expressed their complaints
and grievances in resolutions and petitions, their proceedings were
denounced by the Royal representatives as unlawful and rebellious; and
when elected representatives from all the provinces (but Georgia)
assembled in Philadelphia to express the complaints and wishes of all
the provinces, their meeting was declared unlawful, and their petition
to the King a collection of fictitious statements and rebellious
sentiments, though more loyal sentiments to the King, and more full
recognition of his constitutional prerogatives were never expressed in
any document presented to his Majesty. When that petition of the
Continental congregation was presented to the Earl of Dartmouth, the
head of the Colonial Department, he said it was a decent and proper
document, and he would have pleasure in laying it before the King, who
referred it to the House of Commons; yet Lord North himself and a
majority of his colleagues, backed by a majority of the House of
Commons, rejected that petition, refused to consider its statements and
prayers, but instead thereof proposed an address which declared one of
the colonies in a state of rebellion, abetted by many in other colonies,
advised military force against the colonies, and assured the King that
they would stand by his Majesty "at the hazard of their lives and
properties, against all rebellious attempts" to maintain the assumed
rights of his Majesty and the two Houses of Parliament over the
colonies. Yet not one of them ever afterwards risked a hair of his head
in the war which they advised to maintain such rights. 3. It was also as
insulting and provoking to the colonists as it was unjust, impolitic,
and untrue, to assert that a rebellion "existed in one province of
America, and was encouraged by many persons in other colonies;" when not
an act of rebellion existed in any colony, but dissatisfaction, meetings
to express sentiments and adopt petitions founded upon their declining
and agreeing not to buy or drink tea, or buy or wear clothes of English
manufacture, until English justice should be done to them--all which
they had a right as British subjects to do, and for doing which those
were responsible who compelled them to such self-denying acts in the
maintenance of constitutional rights which are now recognised as such,
at this day, throughout all the colonies of the British empire.
It is not surprising that Lord North's motion and statements were
severely canvassed in the House of Commons. Mr. Dunning, in reply to
Lord North, "insisted that America was not in rebellion, and that every
appearance of riot, disorder, tumult, and sedition the noble lord had so
carefully recounted arose not from disobedience, treason, or rebellion,
but was created by the conduct of those whose views were to establish
despotism." The Attorney-General (Thurlow) argued strongly against Mr.
Dunning's position that the Americans were not in rebellion, and
affirmed the contrary. General Grant said "he had served in America,
knew the Americans well, and was certain they would not fight; they
would never dare to fight an English army; they did not possess any of
the qualifications necessary to make good soldiers; and that a very
slight force would be more than sufficient for their complete reduction.
He repeated many of their commonplace expressions, ridiculed their
enthusiasm in religion, and drew a disagreeable picture of their manners
and ways of living."
Mr. Fox entered fully into the question; pointed out the injustice, the
inexpediency, the folly of the motion; prophesied defeat on one side of
the water, and ruin and punishment on the other. He said, among other
things, "The reason why the colonies objected to taxes by Parliament for
revenue was, that such revenue, in the hands of Government, took out of
the hands of the people that were to be governed that control which
every Englishman thinks he ought to have over the Government to which
his rights and interests are entrusted." He moved an amendment to omit
all the motion but the three first lines, and to substitute: "But
deploring that the information which they (the papers) had afforded
served only to convince the House that the measures taken by his
Majesty's servants tended rather to widen than to heal the unhappy
differences which had so long subsisted between Great Britain and
America, and praying a speedy alteration of the same."
A long debate ensued; after which the House divided on Mr. Fox's
amendment, which was lost by a majority of 304 to 105. Lord North's
motion was then adopted by a majority of 296 to 106.
Thus was war _virtually_ proclaimed by the British Ministry of the day
and the Parliament (not by the people) of Great Britain against the
colonies.
On the 6th of February the report of Lord North's address was made to
the House, when Lord John Cavendish moved to recommit the proposed
address agreed to in the Committee. He strongly recommended the
reconsideration of a measure which he deemed fraught with much mischief.
He commented on the proposed address; thought it improper to assert that
rebellion exists; mentioned the insecurity created by the Act changing
the Government of Massachusetts Bay; said the inhabitants knew not for a
moment under what Government they lived.
A long discussion ensued. On the side of absolute prerogative, and of
subduing the colonies to it by military force, spoke Mr. Grenville,
Captain Harvey, Sir William Mayne, Mr. Stanley, Mr. Adam, Mr. Scott, the
Solicitor-General (Wedderburn, who grossly insulted Dr. Franklin before
the Privy Council), Mr. Mackworth, and Mr. Sawbridge. For the
recommitting the address, and in favour of a conciliatory policy towards
the colonies, spoke, besides Lord John Cavendish, the mover, Mr. Lumley,
the Lord Mayor of London, Rt. Hon. T. Townshend, Mr. Jolyffe, Lord
Truham, Governor Johnstone, Mr. Burke, and Colonel Barré.
A conference was held between the Lords and Commons, and the address was
made the joint address of both Houses of Parliament and presented to the
King the 9th of February; to which the King replied as follows:
"My Lords and Gentlemen,--I thank you for this very dutiful address, and
for the affectionate and solemn assurances you give me of your support
in maintaining the just rights of my crown and of the two Houses of
Parliament; and you may depend on my taking the most speedy and
effectual measures for enforcing due obedience to the laws and authority
of the Supreme Legislature. When any of my colonies shall make a proper
and dutiful application, I shall be ready to concur with you in
affording them every just and reasonable indulgence; and it is my ardent
wish that this disposition on our part may have a happy effect on the
temper and conduct of my subjects in America."
The "disposition" of "indulgence," shown by Parliament was simply the
enforcement of its declaratory Act of absolute power to bind the
colonies in all cases whatsoever, and "the proper and dutiful
application of any colony" was simply a renunciation of all they had
claimed as their constitutional rights--a penitent prayer of forgiveness
for having avowed and maintained those rights, and of submitting all
their rights and interests to the absolute and merciful consideration of
the King and his Parliament, and that in the presence of the
parliamentary enactments and royal institutions of the previous ten
years. During those years, the Parliament, with royal consent, had
passed acts to tax the colonies without representation, ignoring their
own representative Legislatures; had imposed duties on goods imported to
be enforced by Courts which deprived the colonists of the privilege of
trial by jury; had made by Act of Parliament, without trial, the city of
Boston not only responsible for tea destroyed by seventeen individuals,
but blocked up its port not only until the money was paid, but until the
city authorities should give guarantee satisfactory to the King that the
tea and other revenue Acts should be enforced--a proceeding
unprecedented and unparalleled in the annals of British history. Even in
more arbitrary times, when the cities of London, Glasgow, and Edinburgh
were made responsible for property lawlessly destroyed within their
limit, it was only until after trial in each case, in which those
cities had an opportunity of defence, and in neither case was the trade
of the city prohibited and destroyed. But the British Ministry and
Parliament proceeded still further by superseding the most essential
provisions of the Charter of the Province of Massachusetts, and changing
its whole constitution of government--a high-handed act of arbitrary
government which had not been attempted by either Charles the First or
Charles the Second in regard to the same colony; for when charges were
brought, in 1632, against the Massachusetts authorities, for having
violated the Charter, Charles the First appointed a commission, gave the
accused a trial, which resulted in their acquittal and promised support
by the King; and when they were accused again in 1634, the King did not
forthwith cancel their Charter, but issued a second commission, which,
however, never reported, in consequence of the commencement of the civil
war in England, which resulted in the death of the King. Then, in the
restoration, when charges were preferred, by parties without as well as
within the province, against the Government of Massachusetts, King
Charles the Second appointed a commission to examine into the
complaints, and at length tested their acts by trial in the highest
courts of law, and by whose decision their first Charter was cancelled
for repeated and even habitual violations of it. But without a trial, or
even commission of inquiry, the King and Parliament changed the
constitution of the province as well as extinguished the trade of its
metropolis.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 354: When the words of Lord Chatham were reported to the King,
his Majesty was "stung to the heart," and was greatly enraged,
denouncing Lord Chatham as an "abandoned politician," "the trumpet of
sedition," and classified him with Temple and Grenville as "void of
gratitude." The King repelled and hated every statesman who advised him
to conciliate the colonists by recognising them as having the rights of
British subjects. He was the prompter of the most violent measures
against them, and seemed to think that their only rights and duties were
to obey whatever he might command and the Parliament declare.]
[Footnote 355: Dr. Franklin had been Postmaster-General for America.
When he assumed the office the expenditure exceeded the receipts by
£3,000 a year; under his administration the receipts gradually increased
so as to become a source of revenue. The day after his advocacy of the
American petitions before the Privy Council, he was dismissed from
office. Referring to the manner in which American petitions and their
agents were treated by the British Government, Dr. Franklin expressed
himself as follows, in a letter to the Hon. Thomas Cushing, Speaker of
the House of Representatives of Massachusetts:
"When I see that all petitions and complaints of grievances are so
odious to Government that even the mere pipe which conveys them becomes
obnoxious, I am at a loss to know how peace and union is to be
maintained or restored between the different parts of the empire.
Grievances cannot be redressed unless they are known; and they cannot be
known but through complaints and petitions. If these are deemed
affronts, and the messengers punished as offenders, who will henceforth
send petitions? and who will deliver them? It has been thought a
dangerous thing in any State to stop up the vent of griefs. Wise
governments have therefore generally received petitions with some
indulgence even when but slightly founded. Those who think themselves
injured by their rulers are sometimes, by a mild and prudent answer,
convinced of their error. But where complaining is a crime, hope becomes
despair." (Collections of Massachusetts Historical Society.)
(Yet the Government of Massachusetts, under the first Charter,
pronounced petitions a crime, and punished as criminals those who
petitioned against the governmental acts which denied them the right of
worship or elective franchise because they were non-Congregationalists.)]
[Footnote 356: Parliamentary Register for 1775, p. 134.]
CHAPTER XXII.
1775 CONTINUED--PARLIAMENT PROCEEDS TO PASS AN ACT TO PUNISH ALL THE NEW
ENGLAND COLONIES FOR SYMPATHISING WITH MASSACHUSETTS, BY RESTRICTING
THEIR TRADE TO ENGLAND AND DEPRIVING THEM OF THE NEWFOUNDLAND FISHERIES.
The British Ministry and both Houses of Parliament do not seem to have
been satisfied with having charged Massachusetts and its abettors with
rebellion, and determined to punish the recusant province and its
metropolis accordingly, but they proceeded, during the same session,
even to punish the other New England provinces for alleged sympathy with
the town of Boston and the province of Massachusetts. The very day after
the two Houses of Parliament had presented their joint address to the
King, declaring the existence of "rebellion" in the province of
Massachusetts, abetted by many persons in the other provinces, Lord
North introduced a Bill into the Commons to restrain the trade and
commerce of the provinces of New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Rhode Island,
and Connecticut, to Great Britain and Ireland and the British Islands in
the West Indies, and to prohibit those provinces from carrying on any
fishery on the banks of Newfoundland. Lord North assigned as the reason
for this Bill that the three other New England colonies "had aided and
abetted their offending neighbours, and were so near them that the
intentions of Parliament would be frustrated unless they were in like
manner comprehended in the proposed restraints." The Bill encountered
much opposition in both Houses, but was passed by large majorities.
Shortly after passing this Bill to restrain the trade of the New England
colonies and to prohibit them the fisheries of Newfoundland, as well as
from trading with foreign countries, intelligence reached England that
the middle and southern colonies were countenancing and encouraging the
opposition of their New England brethren, and a second Bill was brought
into Parliament and passed for imposing similar restraints on the
colonies of East and West Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia,
South Carolina, and the counties on the Delaware. It is singular to note
in this Bill the omission of New York, Delaware, and North Carolina. It
was probably thought that the omission of these colonies would cause
dissension among the colonies; but the three exempted provinces declined
the distinction, and submitted to the restraints imposed upon the other
colonies.
Much was expected by Lord North and his colleagues from the General
Assembly of New York, which had not endorsed the proceedings of the
first Continental Congress, held in Philadelphia the previous September
and October; but at the very time that the British Parliament was
passing the Act which exempted New York from the disabilities and
punishments inflicted on its neighbouring colonies, north and south, the
Legislative Assembly of New York was preparing a petition and
remonstrance to the British Parliament on the grievances of all the
colonies, not omitting the province of Massachusetts. This petition and
remonstrance of the General Assembly of New York was substantially a
United Empire document, and expressed the sentiments of all classes in
the colonies, except the Royal governors and some office-holders, as
late as May, 1775. The following extracts from this elaborate and
ably-written address will indicate its general character. The whole
document is given in the Parliamentary Register, Vol. I., pp. 473-478,
and is entitled "The Representation and Remonstrance of the General
Assembly of the Colony of New York, to the Honourable the Knights,
Citizens, and Burgesses of Great Britain, in Parliament assembled." It
commences as follows:
"Impressed with the warmest sentiments of loyalty and affection to our
most gracious Sovereign, and zealously attached to his person, family,
and government, we, his Majesty's faithful subjects, the representatives
of the ancient and loyal colony of New York, behold with the deepest
concern the unhappy disputes subsisting between the mother country and
her colonies. Convinced that the grandeur and strength of the British
empire, the protection and opulence of his Majesty's American dominions,
and the happiness and welfare of both, depend essentially on a
restoration of harmony and affection between them, we feel the most
ardent desire to promote a cordial reconciliation with the parent state,
which can be rendered permanent and solid only by ascertaining the line
of parliamentary authority and American freedom on just, equitable, and
constitutional grounds. To effect these salutary purposes, and to
represent the grievances under which we labour, by the innovations which
have been made in the constitutional mode of government since the close
of the last war, we shall proceed with that firmness which becomes the
descendants of Englishmen and a people accustomed to the blessings of
liberty, and at the same time with the deference and respect which is
due to your august Assembly to show--
"That from the year 1683 till the above-mentioned period the colony has
enjoyed a Legislature consisting of three distinct branches--a Governor,
Council, and General Assembly; under which political frame the
representatives of the people have uniformly exercised the right of
their civil government and the administration of justice in the colony.
"It is therefore with inexpressible grief that we have of late years
seen measures adopted by the British Parliament subversive of that
Constitution under which the people of this colony have always enjoyed
the same rights and privileges so highly and deservedly prized by their
fellow-subjects in Great Britain--a Constitution in its infancy modelled
after that of the parent state, in its growth more nearly assimilated to
it, and tacitly implied and undeniably recognised in the requisitions
made by the Crown, with the consent and approbation of Parliament.
"An exemption from internal taxation, and the exclusive right of
providing for the support of our own civil government and the
administration of justice in this colony, we esteem our undoubted and
inalienable rights as Englishmen; but while we claim these essential
rights, it is with equal pleasure and truth we can declare, that we ever
have been and ever will be ready to bear our full proportion of aids to
the Crown for the public service, and to make provision for the
necessary purposes, in as ample and adequate a manner as the
circumstances of the colony will admit. Actuated by these sentiments,
while we address ourselves to a British House of Commons, which has ever
been so sensible of the rights of the people, and so tenacious of
preserving them from violation, can it be a matter of surprise that we
should feel the most distressing apprehensions from the Act of the
British Parliament declaring their right to bind the colonies in all
cases whatsoever?--a principle which has been actually exercised by the
statutes made for the sole and express purpose of raising a revenue in
America, especially for the support of Government, and other usual and
ordinary services of the colonies.
"The trial by a jury of the vicinage, in causes civil and criminal
arising within the colony, we consider as essential to the security of
our lives and liberties, and one of the main pillars of the
Constitution, and therefore view with horror the construction of the
statute of the 35th of Henry the Eighth, as held up by the joint address
of both Houses of Parliament in 1769, advising his Majesty to send for
persons guilty of treasons and misprisions of treasons in the colony of
Massachusetts Bay, in order to be tried in England; and we are equally
alarmed at the late Act empowering his Majesty to send persons guilty of
offences in one colony to be tried in another, or within the realm of
England....
"We must also complain of the Act of the 7th of George the Third,
chapter 59th, requiring the Legislature of this colony to make provision
for the expense of supplying troops quartered amongst us, with the
necessaries prescribed by that law; and holding up by another Act a
suspension of our legislative powers till we should have complied, as it
would have included all the effects of a tax, and implied a distrust of
our readiness to contribute to the public service.
"Nor in claiming these essential rights do we entertain the most distant
desire of independence of the parent kingdom. We acknowledge the
Parliament of Great Britain necessarily entitled to a supreme direction
and government over the whole empire, for a wise, powerful, and lasting
preservation of the great bond of union and safety among all the
branches; their authority to regulate the trade of the colonies, so as
to make it subservient to the interest of the mother country, and to
prevent its being injurious to the other parts of his Majesty's
dominions....
"Interested as we must consider ourselves in whatever may affect our
sister colonies, we cannot help feeling for the distresses of our
brethren in the Massachusetts Bay, from the operation of the several
Acts of Parliament passed relative to that province, and of earnestly
remonstrating in their behalf. At the same time, we also must express
our disapprobation of the violent measures that have been pursued in
some of the colonies, which can only tend to increase our misfortunes
and to prevent our obtaining redress.
"We claim but a restoration of those rights which we enjoyed by general
consent before the close of the last war; we desire no more than a
continuation of that ancient government to which we are entitled by the
principles of the British Constitution, and by which alone can be
secured to us the rights of Englishmen. Attached by every tie of
interest and regard to the British nation, and accustomed to behold with
reverence and respect its excellent form of government, we harbour not
an idea of diminishing the power and grandeur of the mother country, or
lessening the lustre and dignity of Parliament. Our object is the
happiness which we are convinced can only arise from the union of both
countries. To render this union permanent and solid, we esteem it the
undoubted right of the colonies to participate in that Constitution
whose direct aim is the liberty of the subject; fully trusting that your
honourable House will listen with attention to our complaints, and
redress our grievances by adopting such measures as shall be found most
conducive to the general welfare of the whole empire, and most likely to
restore union and harmony amongst all its different branches.
"By order of the General Assembly,
"JOHN CRUGER, _Speaker_.
"Assembly Chamber, City of New York, the 25th day of
March, 1775."
This representation and remonstrance having been presented to the House
of Commons, Mr. Burke moved, the 15th of May, that it be brought up. He
said "he had in his hand a paper of importance from the General Assembly
of the Province of New York--a province which yielded to no part of his
Majesty's dominions in its zeal for the prosperity and unity of the
empire, and which had ever contributed as much as any, in its
proportion, to the defence and wealth of the whole." "They never had
before them so fair an opportunity of putting an end to the unhappy
disputes with the colonies as at present, and he conjured them in the
most earnest manner not to let it escape, as possibly the like might
never return. He thought this application from America so very desirable
to the House, that he could have made no sort of doubt of their entering
heartily into his ideas, if Lord North, some days before, in opening the
budget, had not gone out of his way to make a panegyric on the last
Parliament, and in particular to commend as acts of lenity and mercy
those very laws which the Remonstrance considers as intolerable
grievances."
"Lord North spoke greatly in favour of New York, and said he would
gladly do everything in his power to show his regard to the good
behaviour of that colony; but the honour of Parliament required that no
paper should be presented to that House which tended to call in question
the unlimited rights of Parliament."
"Mr. Fox said the right of Parliament to tax America was not simply
denied in the Remonstrance, but was coupled with the exercise of it. The
exercise was the thing complained of, not the right itself. When the
Declaratory Act was passed, asserting the right in the fullest extent,
there were no tumults in America, no opposition to Government in any
part of that country; but when the right came to be exercised in the
manner we have seen, the whole country was alarmed, and there was an
unanimous determination to oppose it. The right simply is not regarded;
it is the exercise of it that is the object of opposition. It is this
exercise that has irritated and made almost desperate several of the
colonies. But the noble lord (Lord North) chooses to be consistent, and
is determined to make them all alike. The only province that was
moderate, and in which England had some friends, he now treats with
contempt. What will be the consequence when the people of this moderate
province are informed of this treatment? That representation which the
cool and candid of this moderate province had framed with deliberation
and caution is rejected--is not suffered to be presented--is not even to
be read by the clerk. When they hear this they will be inflamed, and
hereafter be as distinguished by their violence as they have hitherto
been by their moderation. It is the only method they can take to regain
the esteem and confidence of their brethren in the other colonies who
have been offended at their moderation. Those who refused to send
deputies to the Congress (at Philadelphia), and trusted to Parliament,
will appear ridiculous in the eyes of all America. It will be proved
that those who distrusted and defied Parliament had made a right
judgment, and those who relied upon its moderation and clemency had been
mistaken and duped; and the consequence of this must be, that every
friend the Ministers have in America must either abandon them, or lose
all credit and means of serving them in future."
"Governor _Johnstone_ observed that when Mr. Wilkes had formerly
presented a petition full of matter which the House did not think to
enter into, they did not prevent the petition being brought up, but
separated the matter which they thought improper from that which they
thought ought to be heard. The House might make use of the same
selection here. Ministers have long declared they wished for a dutiful
application from one of the colonies, and now it is come they treat it
with scorn and indignity. Mr. Cornwall had said it came only from
twenty-six individuals. These twenty-six are the whole Assembly. When
the question to adopt the measures recommended by the Congress was
negatived by a majority of one only in this Assembly of twenty-six
individuals, the Ministers were in high spirits, and these individuals
were then represented as all America."
Lord North's amendment to reject the petition was adopted by a majority
of 186 to 67.[357]
"After having been foiled in the House of Commons," says the royal
historian, "it now remained to be decided whether that colony's
representations would meet with a more gracious reception in the House
of Lords. But here the difficulty was still greater than in the other
House. The dignity of the peerage was said to be insulted by the
appellation under which it had been presumed to usher those
representations into that Assembly. They were styled a Memorial; such a
title was only allowable in transactions between princes and states
independent of each other, but was insufferable on the part of subjects.
The answer was that the lowest officer in the service had a right to
present a memorial, even to his Majesty, should he think himself
aggrieved; with much more reason might a respectable body present one to
the House of Lords. But, exclusive of the general reason that entitled
so important a colony to lay such a paper before them, the particular
reason of its fidelity, in spite of so many examples of defection, was
alone a motive which ought to supersede all forms, and engage their most
serious attention to what it had to propose.
"After sundry arguments of the same nature, the question was determined
against hearing the Memorial by forty-five peers to twenty-five.
"When the rejection of these applications was announced to the public, a
great part of the nation expressed the highest discontent. They now
looked forward with dejection and sorrow at the prospect of mutual
destruction that lay before them, and utterly gave up all other
expectations."[358]
It might be supposed that such a rejection of the petition of the most
loyal colony in America would end the presentation of petitions on the
part of the colonies to the King and Parliament, and decide them at once
either to submit to the extinction of their constitutional rights as
British subjects, or defend them by force. But though they had, both
separately and unitedly, declared from the beginning that they would
defend their rights at all hazards, they persisted in exhausting every
possible means to persuade the King and Parliament to desist from such a
system of oppression, and to restore to them those rights which they
enjoyed for more than a century--down to the close of the French war in
1763.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 357: Parliamentary Register, Vol. I., pp. 467-473.]
[Footnote 358: Dr. Andrews' History of the War with America, Spain, and
Holland, Vol. I., pp. 275, 276.
"The Ministerial objections were that it was incompatible with the
dignity of the House to suffer any paper to be presented that questioned
its supreme authority. Particular notice was taken at the same time that
the title of Petition did not accompany this paper; it was called a
Representation and Remonstrance, which was not the usual nor the proper
manner of application to Parliament. This singularity alone was
sufficient to put a negative on its presentation.
"To this it was replied, that the times were so dangerous and critical
that words and forms were no longer deserving of attention. The question
was whether they thought the colony of New York was worthy of a hearing?
No colony had behaved with so much temperateness and discretion.
Notwithstanding the tempestuousness of the times, and the general wreck
of British authority, it had yet preserved a steady obedience to
Government. While every other colony was bidding defiance to Britain,
this alone submissively applied to her for redress of grievances. Was it
consistent with policy, after losing the good-will of all the other
colonies, to drive this, through a needless and punctilious severity,
into their confederacy against this country? Could we expect, after such
a treatment, that this colony could withstand the arguments that would
be drawn from our superciliousness to induce it to relinquish a conduct
which was so ill requited?"--_Ib._, p. 274.]
CHAPTER XXIII.
1775 CONTINUED--THE SECOND CONTINENTAL CONGRESS IN AMERICA.
Six months after the General Assembly of New York adopted its Memorial,
and four months after its rejection by both Houses of Parliament, the
second Continental Congress met, in the month of September, at
Philadelphia.
This Assembly consisted of fifty-five members, chosen by twelve
colonies. The little colony of Georgia did not elect delegates, but
promised to concur with the sister colonies in the effort to maintain
their rights to the British Constitution. Many of the members of this
Assembly were men of fortune and learning, and represented not only the
general sentiments of the colonies, but their wealth and
respectability.[359] "The object, as stated in the credentials of the
delegates, and especially in those of the two most powerful colonies of
Massachusetts and Virginia, was to obtain the redress of grievances, and
to restore harmony between Great Britain and America, which, it was
said, was desired by all good men. It was the conviction that this might
be done through a Bill of Rights, in which the limits of the powers of
the colonies and the mother country might be defined."[360]
Some three weeks after the assembling of Congress, before the end of
September, a petition to the King was reported, considered, and adopted.
This petition was addressed to the King, in behalf of the colonists,
beseeching the interposition of the Royal authority and influence to
procure them relief from their afflicting fears and jealousies, excited
by the measures pursued by his Ministers, and submitting to his
Majesty's consideration whether it may not be expedient for him to be
pleased to direct some mode by which the united applications of his
faithful colonists to the Throne may be improved into a happy and
permanent reconciliation; and that in the meantime measures be taken for
preventing the further destruction of the lives of his Majesty's
subjects,[361] and that such statutes as more immediately distress any
of his Majesty's colonies be repealed. "Attached to your Majesty's
person, family, and government," concludes this address of the Congress,
"with all the devotion that principle and affection can inspire,
connected with Great Britain by the strongest ties that can unite
societies, and deploring every event that tends in any degree to weaken
them, we solemnly assure your Majesty that we not only most ardently
desire that the former harmony between her and these colonies may be
restored, but that a concord may be established between them upon so
firm a basis as to perpetuate its blessings, uninterrupted by any future
dissensions, to succeeding generations in both countries." This petition
was read in Parliament the 7th of December, 1775, at the request of Mr.
Hartley, with several other petitions for pacification; but they were
all rejected by the House of Commons.[362] The answer of the King to
the respectful and loyal constitutional petition of Congress was to
proclaim the petitioners "rebels," and all that supported them "abettors
of treason."[363]
The first day of November brought to the Continental Congress this
proclamation, together with the intelligence that the British army and
navy were to be largely increased, and that German mercenary soldiers
from Hanover and Hesse had been hired, as it was found impossible to
obtain soldiers in England to fight against their fellow-subjects in
America.[365] On the same day the intelligence was received from General
Washington, in Massachusetts, of the burning of Falmouth (now
Portland).[366] The simultaneous intelligence of the treatment of the
second petition of Congress, the Royal proclamation, the increase of the
army and navy, the employment of seventeen thousand Hanoverians and
Hessian mercenaries to subdue America, and the burning of Falmouth,
produced a great sensation in Congress and throughout the colonies.
Some of the New England members of the Congress, especially John and
Samuel Adams, had long given up the idea of reconciliation with England,
and had desired independence. This feeling was, however, cherished by
very few members of the Congress; but the startling intelligence caused
many members to abandon all hope of reconciliation with the mother
country, and to regard independence as the only means of preserving
their liberties. Yet a large majority of the Congress still refused to
entertain the proposition of independence, and awaited instructions from
their constituents as to what they should do in these novel and painful
circumstances. In the meantime the Congress adopted energetic measures
for the defence of the colonies, and the effectiveness of their union
and government. In answer to applications from South Carolina and New
Hampshire for advice on account of the practical suspension of their
local Government, Congress "recommended" each province "to call a full
and free representation of the people, and that the representatives, if
they think it necessary, establish such a form of government as in their
judgment will best promote the happiness of the people, and most
effectually secure peace and good-will in the province _during the
continuance of the present dispute between Great Britain and the
colonies_". The province of Massachusetts had refused to acknowledge any
other local Government than that which had been established by the Royal
Charter of William and Mary, and which had never been cancelled by any
legal proceedings; and they continued to elect their representatives,
and the representatives met and appointed the Council, and acted under
it, as far as possible, irrespective of General Gage and the officers of
his appointment.
The colonies were a unit as to their determination to defend by force
and at all hazards their constitutional rights and liberties as British
subjects; but they were yet far from being a unit as to renunciation of
all connection with England and the declaration of independence. The
Legislature of Pennsylvania was in session when the news of the
rejection of the second petition of Congress and the King's proclamation
arrived, and when fresh instructions were asked from constituents of the
members of Congress; and even under these circumstances, Mr. Dickenson,
"The Immortal Farmer," whose masterly letters had done so much to
enlighten the public mind of both England and America on the rights of
the colonies and the unconstitutional acts of the British Administration
and Parliament, repelled the idea of separation from England. The
Legislature of Pennsylvania continued to require all its members to
subscribe the old legal qualification which included the promise of
allegiance to George the Third; "so that Franklin," says Bancroft,
"though elected for Philadelphia, through the Irish and Presbyterians,
would never take his seat. Dickenson had been returned for the county by
an almost unanimous vote." The Legislature, on the 4th of November,
elected nine delegates to the Continental Congress. Of these, one was
too ill to serve; of the rest, "Franklin stood alone as the unhesitating
champion of independence; _the majority remained to the last its
opponents_. On the 9th, Dickenson reported and carried the following
instructions to the Pennsylvania delegates: 'We direct that you exert
your utmost endeavours to agree upon and recommend such measures as you
shall judge to afford the best prospect of obtaining redress of American
grievances, and restoring that union and harmony between Great Britain
and the colonies so essential to the welfare and happiness of both
countries. Though the oppressive measures of the British Parliament and
Administration have compelled us to resist their violence by force of
arms, yet we strictly enjoin you, that you, in behalf of this colony,
dissent from and utterly reject any propositions, should such be made,
that may cause or lead to a separation from our mother country, or a
change of the form of this government.' The influence of the measure was
wide. Delaware was naturally swayed by the example of its more powerful
neighbour; the party of the proprietary of Maryland took courage; in a
few weeks the Assembly of New Jersey, in like manner, held back the
delegates of that province by an equally stringent declaration."[367]
After stating that the Legislature of Pennsylvania, before its
adjournment, adopted rules for the volunteer battalions, and
appropriated eighty thousand pounds in provincial paper money to defray
the expenses of military preparation, Mr. Bancroft adds, that "extreme
discontent led the more determined to expose through the press the
trimming of the Assembly; and Franklin encouraged Thomas Paine, an
emigrant from England of the previous year, who was master of a
singularly lucid and attractive style, to write an appeal to the people
of America in favour of independence."[368] "Yet the men of that day had
been born and educated as subjects of a king; to them the House of
Hanover was a symbol of religious toleration, the British Constitution
another word for the security of liberty and property under a
representative government. They were not yet enemies of monarchy; they
had as yet turned away from considering whether well-organized civil
institutions could not be framed for wide territories without a king;
and in the very moment of resistance they longed to escape the necessity
of a revolution. Zubly, a delegate from Georgia, a Swiss by birth,
declared in his place 'a republic to be little better than a government
of devils;' shuddered at the idea of separation from Britain as fraught
with greater evils than had yet been suffered."[369]
The exact time when the minds of the leading men in the Colonies, and
the colonists, began to undergo a transition from the defence of their
constitutional liberties as British subjects to their security by
declaring independence of Great Britain, seems to have been the receipt
of the intelligence of the scornful rejection of the second petition of
Congress, and of the King's proclamation, putting the advocates of
colonial rights out of the protection of the law, by declaring them
rebels, and requiring all public officers, civil and military, to
apprehend them with a view to their punishment as such. Some individuals
of eminence in the colonies had previously despaired of reconciliation
with England, and had regarded Independency as the only hope of
preserving their liberties, but these were the exceptions: the leaders
and colonists generally still hoped for reconciliation with England by
having their liberties restored, as they were recognized and enjoyed at
the close of the French war in 1763. They had regarded the King as their
Father and Friend, and laid all the blame upon his Ministers and
Parliament, against whose acts they appealed to the King for the
protection of their rights and liberties. But it gradually transpired,
from year to year, that the King himself was the real prompter of these
oppressive acts and measures, and though long discredited,[370] yet when
the King ostentatiously announced himself as the champion of the
Parliament and its acts, his determination to enforce by the whole power
of the realm, the absolute submission of the colonies; and when all this
intelligence, so often repeated and doubted, was confirmed by the issue
of the Royal proclamation, which it was known and admitted that the King
himself had urged and hastened, the most sanguine advocates and friends
of reconciliation were astounded and began to despair; and the idea of
independence was now boldly advocated by the press.
In 1773, Dr. Franklin said to the Earl of Chatham, "I never heard from
any person the least expression of a wish for separation." In October,
1774, Washington wrote, "I am well satisfied that no such thing as
independence is desired by any thinking man in America; on the contrary,
that it is the ardent wish of the warmest advocates for liberty that
peace and tranquillity, on constitutional grounds, may be restored, and
the horrors of civil discord prevented." Jefferson stated, "Before the
19th of April, 1775 (the day of General Gage's attack on Concord, and
the Lexington affair), I never heard a whisper of a disposition to
separate from Great Britain." And thirty-seven days before that wanton
aggression of General Gage,[371] John Adams, in Boston, published:
"That there are any who pant after independence is the greatest slander
on the Province." Sparks, in a note entitled "American Independence," in
the second volume of the Writings of Washington, remarks: "It is not
easy to determine at what precise date the idea of independence was
first entertained by the principal persons in America." Samuel Adams,
after the events of the 19th of April, 1775, was prepared to advocate
it. Members of the Provincial Congress of New Hampshire were of the same
opinion. President Dwight, of Yale College (Travels in New England and
New York, Vol. I., p. 159), says: "In the month of July, 1775, I urged
in conversation with several gentlemen of great respectability, firm
Whigs, and my intimate friends, the importance and even necessity of a
declaration of independence on the part of the colonies, but found them
disposed to give me and my arguments a hostile and contemptuous, instead
of a cordial reception. These gentlemen may be considered as the
representatives of the great body of thinking men of this country." In
the note of Sparks are embodied the recollections of Madison, Jay, and
others, and the contemporary statements of Franklin and Penn. They are
in harmony with the statements and quotations in the text, and sustain
the judgment of Dr. Ramsay (History of South Carolina, Vol. I., p. 164),
who says: "Till the rejection of the second petition of Congress, the
reconciliation with the mother country was the unanimous wish of the
Americans generally."[372]
When Washington heard of the affair of Concord and Lexington, April 19,
1775, he wrote, in his own quiet residence at Mount Vernon, "Unhappy is
it to reflect that a brother's sword should be sheathed in a brother's
breast, and that the once happy and peaceful plains of America are to be
either drenched with blood or inhabited by slaves. Sad alternative! But,
can a virtuous man hesitate in his choice?" Mr. Bancroft says: "The
reply to Bunker Hill from England reached Washington before the end of
September (1775); and the manifest determination of the Ministers to
push the war by sea and land, with the utmost vigour, removed from his
mind every doubt of the necessity of independence. Such also was the
conclusion of Greene; and the army was impatient when any of the
chaplains prayed for the King."[373]
It was thus that King George the Third, by his own acts, lost the
confidence and affection of his loyal subjects in America, and hastened
a catastrophe of which he had been repeatedly and faithfully warned, and
which none deprecated more generally and earnestly than the leaders and
inhabitants of the American colonies; but who determined, and openly
declared their determination in every petition to the King and
Parliament for ten years, that, if necessary, at all hazards, they would
maintain and defend their constitutional rights as Englishmen.
Now, at the close of the year 1775, and before entering upon the
eventful year of 1776, when the American colonies adopted the
Declaration of Independence, let us recapitulate the events which thus
brought the mother country and her colonial offspring face to face in
armed hostility.
1. No loyalty and affection could be more cordial than that of the
American colonies to England at the conquest of Canada from the French,
and the peace of Paris between Great Britain and France in 1763. Even
the ancient and traditional disaffection of Massachusetts to England had
dissolved into feelings of gratitude and respect and avowed loyalty.
Indeed, loyalty and attachment to England, and pride in the British
Constitution, was the universal feeling of the American colonies at the
close of the war which secured North America to England, and for the
triumphant termination of which the American colonies had raised and
equipped no less than twenty-five thousand men, without whose services
the war could not have been accomplished.
2. The first five years of the war with France in America had been
disastrous to Great Britain and the colonies, under a corrupt English
Administration and incompetent generals; but after the accession of the
Earl of Chatham to the Premiership the tide of war in America turned in
favour of Great Britain by the appointment of able generals--Amherst and
Wolfe--and Admiral Boscawen and others, and by adopting constitutional
methods to develop the resources of the colonies for the war; and in two
years the French power was crushed and ceased to exist in America. When
the Crown, through its Prime Minister, made requisition to the Colonial
Legislatures for money and men, as was the usage in England, the
Colonial Legislatures responded by granting large sums of money, and
sending into the field more than twenty thousand soldiers, who, by their
skill, courage, and knowledge of the country, and its modes of travel
and warfare, constituted the pioneers, skirmishers, and often the
strongest arm of the British army, and largely contributed in every
instance to its most splendid victories. Their loyalty, bravery, and
patriotism extracted grateful acknowledgments in both Houses of
Parliament, and even from the Throne; while the colonies as cordially
acknowledged the essential and successful assistance of the mother
country. At no period of colonial history was there so deep-felt,
enthusiastic loyalty to the British Constitution and British connection
as at the close of the war between France and England in 1763. But in
the meantime George the Third, after his accession to the throne in
1760, determined not only to _reign over_ but to _rule_ his kingdom,
both at home and abroad. He ignored party government or control in
Parliament; he resolved to be his own Prime Minister--in other words, to
be despotic; he dismissed the able and patriotic statesmen who had wiped
off the disgrace inflicted on British arms and prestige during the five
years of the French and Indian war in the American colonies, and had
given America to England, and called men one after another to succeed
them, who, though in some instances they were men of ability, and in one
or two instances were men of amiable and Christian character, were upon
the whole the most unscrupulous and corrupt statesmen that ever stood at
the head of public affairs in England, and the two Parliaments elected
under their auspices were the most venal ever known in British history.
The King regarded as a personal enemy any member of Parliament who
opposed his policy, and hated any Minister of State (and dismissed him
as soon as possible) who offered advice to, instead of receiving it
from, his Royal master and implicitly obeying it; and the Ministers whom
he selected were too subservient to the despotism and caprices of the
Royal will, at the frequent sacrifice of their own convictions and the
best interests of the empire.
For more than a hundred years the colonies had provided for and
controlled their own civil, judicial, and military administration of
government; and when the King required special appropriations of money
and raising of men during the Seven Years' War, requisitions were made
by his Ministers in his name, through the Governors, to the several
Provincial Legislatures, which responded with a liberality and
patriotism that excited surprise in England at the extent of their
resources in both money and men. But this very development of colonial
power excited jealousy and apprehensions in England, instead of sympathy
and respect; and within a twelvemonth after the treaty of Paris, in
1763, the King and his Ministers determined to discourage and crush all
military spirit and organization in the colonies, to denude the Colonial
Legislatures of all the attributes of British constitutional free
government, by the British Government not only appointing the Governors
of the colonies, but by appointing the members of one branch of the
Legislature, by appointing Judges as well as other public officers to
hold office during the pleasure of the Crown, and fixing and paying
their salaries out of moneys paid by colonists, but levied not by the
Colonial Legislatures, but by Acts of the British Parliament, contrary
to the usage of more than a century; and under the pretext of
_defending_ the colonies, but really for the purpose of ruling them;
proposing an army of 20 regiments of 500 men each, to be raised and
officered in England, from the penniless and often worse than penniless
of the scions and relatives of Ministers and members of Parliament, and
billeted upon the colonies at the estimated expense of £100,000 sterling
a year, to be paid by the colonies out of the proceeds of the Stamp and
other Acts of Parliament passed for the purpose of raising a revenue in
the colonies for the support of its civil and military government.
No government is more odious and oppressive than that which has the
mockery of the form of free government without its powers or attributes.
An individual despot may be reached, terrified, or persuaded, but a
despotic oligarchy has no restraint of individual responsibility, and is
as intangible in its individuality as it is grasping and heartless in
its acts and policy. For governors, all executive officers, judges, and
legislative councillors appointed from England, together with military
officers, 20 regiments all raised in England, the military commanders
taking precedence of the local civil authorities, all irresponsible to
the colonists, yet paid by them out of taxes imposed upon them without
their consent, is the worst and most mercenary despotism that can be
conceived. The colonists could indeed continue to elect representatives
to one branch of their Legislatures; but the Houses of Assembly thus
elected were powerless to protect the liberties or properties of their
constituents, subject to abuse and dissolution in case of their
remonstrating against unconstitutional acts of tyranny or advocating
rights.
Such was the system passionately insisted upon by King George the Third
to establish his absolute authority over his colonial subjects in
America, and such were the methods devised by his venal Ministers and
Parliament to provide places and emoluments for their sons, relatives,
and dependents, at the expense of the colonists, to say nothing of the
consequences to the virtue of colonial families from mercenary public
officers and an immoral soldiery.
The American colonies merited other treatment than that which they
received at the hands of the King and Parliament from 1763 to 1776; and
they would have been unworthy of the name of Englishmen, and of the
respect of mankind, had they yielded an iota of the constitutional
rights of British subjects, for which they so lawfully and manfully
contended. What the old colonies contended for during that eventful
period was substantially the same as that which has been demanded and
obtained during the present century by the colonies of the Canadian
Dominion, under the names of "local self-government" or "responsible
government," and which is now so fully enjoyed by them. Had Queen
Victoria reigned in England instead of George the Third, there would
have been no Declaration of Independence, no civil war in America, but
the thirteen American provinces would have remained as affectionately
united to the mother country, and as free as are the provinces of the
Canadian Dominion at this day.
George the Third seems to me to have been, before and during the
American Revolution, the worst Sovereign for the colonies that ever
occupied the throne of England; but after and since that revolution he
was the best of Sovereigns for the remaining British colonies of North
America. He learned lessons during that revolution which essentially
changed his character as the ruler of colonies, though I am not aware
that he ever formally confessed the change through which he had passed.
It is therefore quite reconcilable that he should be regarded by the old
American colonies, now the United States, as a tyrant, while his name is
revered and loved by the colonists of the Canadian Dominion as the
Father of his people.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 359: "Each of the three divisions by which the colonies were
usually designated--the New England, the Middle, and the Southern
Colonies--had on the floor of Congress men of a positive character. _New
England_ presented in John Sullivan, vigour; in Roger Sherman, sterling
sense and integrity; in Thomas Cushing, commercial knowledge; in John
Adams (afterwards President of the United States), large capacity for
public affairs; in Samuel Adams (no relation to John Adams), a great
character with influence and power to organize. The _Middle_ Colonies
presented in Philip Livingston, the merchant prince of enterprise and
liberality; in John Jay, rare public virtue, juridical learning, and
classic taste; in William Livingston, progressive ideas tempered by
conservatism; in John Dickenson, "The Immortal Farmer," erudition and
literary ability; in Cæsar Rodney and Thomas McKean, working power; in
James Duane, timid Whigism, halting, but keeping true to the cause; in
Joseph Galloway, downright Toryism, seeking control, and at length going
to the enemy. The _Southern_ Colonies presented in Thomas Johnson, the
grasp of a statesman; in Samuel Chase, activity and boldness; in the
Rutledges, wealth and accomplishment; in Christopher Gadsden, the
genuine American; and in the Virginia delegation--an illustrious
group--in Richard Bland, wisdom; in Edmund Pendleton, practical talent;
in Peyton Randolph, experience in legislation; in Richard Henry Lee,
statesmanship in union with high culture; in Patrick Henry, genius and
eloquence; in Washington, justice and patriotism. 'If,' said Patrick
Henry, 'you speak of solid information and sound judgment, Washington
unquestionably is the greatest man of them all.' Those others who might
be named were chosen on account of their fitness for the duties which
the cause required. Many had independent fortunes. They constituted a
noble representation of the ability, culture, political intelligence,
and wisdom of twelve of the colonies." (Frothingham's Rise of the
Republic of the Twelve States, pp. 360, 361.)]
[Footnote 360: _Ib._, pp. 363, 364.
After preliminary proceedings, Congress decided to appoint a Committee
to state the rights of the colonies, the instances in which those rights
had been violated, and the most proper means to obtain their
restoration; and another Committee to examine and report upon the
statutes affecting the trade and manufactures of the colonies. On the
same day, Samuel Adams, in answer to the objection to opening the
session with prayer, grounded on the diversity of religious sentiment
among the members, said he could hear prayer from any man of piety and
virtue, who was a friend of the country, and moved that Mr. Duché, an
Episcopalian, might be desired to read prayers for the Congress the
following morning. The motion prevailed. "The Congress sat with closed
doors. Nothing transpired of their proceedings except their organization
and the rule of voting (each province having an equal vote). The members
bound themselves to keep their doings secret until a majority should
direct their publication."--_Ib._, pp. 364, 365.]
[Footnote 361: The battles of Lexington and Bunker's Hill had occurred
some months before the adoption of this petition.]
[Footnote 362: Holmes' Annals, Vol. II., p. 232.
Richard Penn, late Governor of Pennsylvania, was chosen by Congress to
go to Great Britain, with directions to deliver their petition to the
King himself, and to endeavour, by his personal influence, to procure
its favourable reception; but Mr. Penn, though from the city whose
Congress had twice assembled, a man distinguished in the colony for
moderation and loyalty, and the appointed agent of the Congress, was not
asked a question, even when he presented the American petition to the
Secretary of State for the Colonial Department, and the King refused to
see him.--_Ib._, pp. 231, 232.
"Two days after the delivery of a copy of the petition of Congress, the
King sent out a proclamation for _suppressing rebellion and sedition_.
It set forth that many of his subjects in the colonies had proceeded to
open and avowed rebellion by arraying themselves to withstand the
execution of the law, and traitorously levying war against him. 'There
is reason,' so ran its words, 'to apprehend that such rebellion hath
been much promoted and encouraged by the traitorous correspondence,
counsels, and comfort of divers wicked and desperate persons within our
realm.' Not only all the officers, civil and military, but all the
subjects of the realm were therefore called upon to disclose all
traitorous conspiracies, and to transmit to one of the Secretaries of
State 'full information of all persons who should be found carrying on
correspondence with, or in any manner or degree aiding or abetting the
persons now in open arms and rebellion against the Government within any
of the colonies in North America, in order to bring to condign
punishment the authors, perpetrators, and abettors of such traitorous
designs.'
"The proclamation, aimed at Chatham, Camden, Barré, and their friends,
and the boldest of the Rockingham party, even more than against the
Americans, was read, but not with the customary ceremonies, at the Royal
Exchange, where it was received with a general hiss."
"The irrevocable publication having been made, Penn and Arthur Lee were
'permitted' on the 1st of September to present the original of the
American petition to Lord Dartmouth, who promised to deliver it to the
King; but on their pressing for an answer, 'they were informed that as
it was not received on the throne, no answer would be given.' Lee
expressed sorrow at the refusal, which would occasion so much bloodshed;
and the deluded Secretary answered: 'If I thought it would be the cause
of shedding one drop of blood, I should never have concurred in it."
(Bancroft's History of the United States, Vol. VIII., Chap, xlix., pp.
132, 133.)
Yet "on the 23rd of August Lord Dartmouth wrote to General Howe, who
(Aug. 2, 1775) superseded General Gage as the Commander of the British
army, that there was 'no room left for any other consideration but that
of proceeding against the twelve associated colonies in all respects
with the utmost rigour, as the open and avowed enemies of the State.'"
(Frothingham's Rise of the American Republic, p. 446.)]
[Footnote 363: "In the meantime (beginning of October) Richard Penn
hastened to England with the second petition. The King was now
continually occupied with American affairs. He directed that General
Gage should be ordered 'instantly to come' over, on account of the
battle of Bunker Hill; thought Admiral Graves ought to be recalled from
Boston 'for doing nothing,' and completed the arrangements for the
employment of Hanoverians in America. Impatient at the delay of the
Cabinet in acting upon the proclamation agreed upon, he put this in
train by ordering one to be framed and submitted, August 18th, to Lord
North, and fixed the day for its promulgation. He was confirmed in his
extreme views by General Haldimand, fresh from America, who reported
that 'nothing but force could bring the colonies to reason,' and that it
would be dangerous to give ear to any proposition they might submit. The
King was convinced that it would be better 'totally to abandon the
colonies' than 'to admit a single shadow' of their doctrines [364]. Five
days after penning these words, he issued (August 23rd) a proclamation
for suppressing rebellion and sedition." (The purpose of this fatal
proclamation is given in the sub-note.)
This proclamation, unlike Lord North's plan, ignored the colonies as
political unities. It is levelled against individuals in rebellion, and
all within the realm who should aid them. (Frothingham's Rise of the
American Republic, pp. 444-446. Donne's Correspondence of Geo. III.)]
[Footnote 364: A private letter by Captain Collins, lately arrived from
London, says that "on the 19th of August General Haldimand was closeted
with his Majesty two hours, giving him a state of the American colonies;
and that in the course of the conversation his Majesty expressed his
resolution in these memorable words: 'I am unalterably determined, at
every hazard, and at the risk of every consequence, to compel the
colonies to absolute submission.'"]
[Footnote 365: "In the autumn of this year (1775), General Gage repaired
to England, and the command of the British army devolved on Sir William
Howe. The offer of this command had been first made to General
Oglethorpe, his senior officer, who agreed to accept the appointment on
the condition that the Ministry would authorize him to assure the
colonies that justice should be done to them. This veteran and patriotic
General declared at the same time that he knew the people of America
well; that they never would be subdued by arms, but that their obedience
would be ever secured by doing them justice." (Holmes' Annals, Vol. II.,
p. 235.)
"The Earl of Effingham, who in his youth had been prompted by military
genius to enter the army, and had lately served as a volunteer in the
war between Russia and Turkey, finding that his regiment was intended
for America, renounced the profession which he loved, as the only means
of escaping the obligation of fighting against the cause of freedom.
This resignation gave offence to the Court, and was a severe rebuke to
the officers who did not share his scruple; but at London the Common
Hall, in June, thanked him publicly as 'a true Englishman;' and the
guild of merchants in Dublin addressed him in the strongest terms of
approbation." (Bancroft's History of the United States, Vol. VII., Chap,
xxxiii. pp. 343, 344.)]
[Footnote 366: "In compliance with a resolve of the Provincial Congress
to prevent Tories from conveying out their effects, the inhabitants of
Falmouth, in the north-eastern part of Massachusetts, had obstructed the
loading of a mast ship. The destruction of the town was determined on as
a vindictive punishment. Captain Mowat, detached for that purpose with
armed vessels by Admiral Graves, arrived off the place on the evening of
the 17th of October. He gave notice to the inhabitants that he would
give them two hours 'to remove the human species,' at the end of which
time a red pendant would be hoisted at the maintop-gallant mast-head;
and that on the least resistance, he should be freed from all humanity
dictated by his orders or his inclination. Upon being inquired of by
three gentlemen who went on board his ship for that purpose respecting
the reason of this extraordinary summons, he replied that he had orders
to set on fire all the seaport towns from Boston to Halifax, and that he
supposed New York was already in ashes. He could dispense with his
orders, he said, on no terms but the compliance of the inhabitants to
deliver up their arms and ammunition, and their sending on board a
supply of provisions, four carriage guns, and the same number of the
principal persons in the town as hostages; that they should engage not
to unite with their country in any opposition to Britain; and he assured
them that on a refusal of these conditions he would lay their town in
ashes within three hours. Unprepared for the attack, the inhabitants by
entreaty obtained the suspension of an answer until morning, and
employed this interval in removing their families and effects.
Considering opposition as unavailing, they made no resistance. The next
day, Captain Mowat commenced a furious cannonade and bombardment; and a
great number of people standing on the heights were spectators of the
conflagration, which reduced many of them to penury and despair; 139
dwelling-houses and 278 stores were burnt. Other seaports were
threatened with conflagration, but escaped; Newport, on Rhode Island,
was compelled to stipulate for a weekly supply, to avert it." (Holmes'
Annals, Vol. II., pp. 219, 220.)
Mr. Bancroft's account of this transaction is as follows: "In the
previous May, Mowat, a naval officer, had been held prisoner for a few
hours at Falmouth, now Portland; and we have seen Linzee, in a sloop of
war, driven with loss from Gloucester. It was one of the last acts of
Gage to plan with the Admiral how to wreak vengeance on the inhabitants
of both those ports. The design against Gloucester was never carried
out; but Mowat, in a ship of sixteen guns, attended by three other
vessels, went up the harbour of Portland, and after a short parley, at
half-past nine on the morning of the 16th of October, he began to fire
upon the town. In five minutes several houses were in a blaze; parties
of marines had landed, to spread the conflagration by hand. All
sea-going vessels were burned except two, which were carried away. The
cannonade was kept up till after dark. St. Paul's Church, the public
buildings, and about one hundred and thirty dwelling-houses,
three-fourths of the whole, were burned down; those that remained
standing were shattered by balls and shells. By the English account the
destruction was still greater. At the opening of a severe winter, the
inhabitants were turned adrift in poverty and misery. The wrath of
Washington was justly kindled as he heard of these 'savage cruelties,'
this new 'exertion of despotic barbarity.'" (History of the United
States, Vol. VIII., Chap. xlvii., p. 113.)]
[Footnote 367: Bancroft's History United States, Vol. VIII., Chap.
xlix., pp. 138, 139.]
[Footnote 368: In this appeal of Paine's, _monarchy_ was for the first
time attacked in America, except by the rulers of the Massachusetts
colony, under the first Charter. Some of Paine's words were, that "In
the early ages of the world, mankind were equals in the order of
creation; the heathen introduced the government of kings, which the will
of the Almighty, as declared by Gideon and the prophet Samuel, expressly
disapproved. To the evil of monarchy we have added that of hereditary
succession; and as the first is a lessening of ourselves, so the second
might put posterity under the government of a rogue or a fool. Nature
disapproves it, otherwise she would not so frequently turn it into
ridicule. England since the Conquest hath known some few good monarchs,
but groaned beneath a much larger number of bad ones." "In short,
monarchy and succession have laid not England only, but the world, in
blood and ashes." (Bancroft's History of the United States, Vol. VIII.,
Chap. xlix., pp. 236, 237.)]