Nothing of note in Parliament, except one slight day on the American
taxes.--Horace Walpole.
There were plenty of men in England, any time before 1763, who found
that an excellent arrangement which permitted them to hold office in the
colonies while continuing to reside in London. They were thereby enabled
to make debts, and sometimes even to pay them, without troubling much
about their duties; and one may easily think of them, over their claret,
as Mr. Trevelyan says, lamenting the cruelty of a secretary of state
who hinted that, for form's sake at least, they had best show themselves
once in a while in America. They might have replied with Junius: "It was
not Virginia that wanted a governor, but a court favorite that wanted a
salary." Certainly Virginia could do with a minimum of royal officials;
but most court favorites wanted salaries, for without salaries unendowed
gentlemen could not conveniently live in London.
One of these gentlemen, in the year 1763, was Mr. Grosvenor Bedford.
He was not, to be sure, a court favorite, but a man, now well along in
years, who had long ago been appointed to be Collector of the Customs
at the port of Philadelphia. The appointment had been made by the great
minister, Robert Walpole, for whom Mr. Bedford had unquestionably
done some service or other, and of whose son, Horace Walpole, the
letter-writer, he had continued from that day to be a kind of dependent
or protégé, being precisely the sort of unobtrusive factotum which that
fastidious eccentric needed to manage his mundane affairs. But now,
after this long time, when the King's business was placed in the hands
of George Grenville, who entertained the odd notion that a Collector of
the Customs should reside at the port of entry where the customs were
collected rather than in London where he drew his salary, it was being
noised about, and was presently reported at Strawberry Hill, that Mr.
Bedford, along with many other estimable gentlemen, was forthwith to be
turned out of his office.
To Horace Walpole it was a point of more than academic importance to
know whether gentlemen were to be unceremoniously turned out of their
offices. As far back as 1738, while still a lad, he had himself been
appointed to be Usher of the Exchequer; and as soon as he came of age,
he says, "I took possession of two other little patent places in
the Exchequer, called Comptroller of the Pipe, and Clerk of the
Estreats"--all these places having been procured for him through the
generosity of his father. The duties of these offices, one may suppose,
were not arduous, for it seems that they were competently administered
by Mr. Grosvenor Bedford, in addition to his duties as Collector of the
Customs at the port of Philadelphia; so well administered, indeed, that
Horace Walpole's income from them, which in 1740 was perhaps not more
than £1500 a year, nearly doubled in the course of a generation. And
this income, together with another thousand which he had annually from
the Collector's place in the Custom House, added to the interest of
£20,000 which he had inherited, enabled him to live very well, with
immense leisure for writing odd books, and letters full of extremely
interesting comment on the levity and low aims of his contemporaries.
And so Horace Walpole, good patron that he was and competent
letter-writer, very naturally, hearing that Mr. Bedford was to lose an
office to which in the course of years he had become much accustomed,
sat down and wrote a letter to Mr. George Grenville in behalf of his
friend and servant. "Though I am sensible I have no pretensions for
asking you a favour, ... yet I flatter myself I shall not be thought
quite impertinent in interceding for a person, who I can answer has
neither been to blame nor any way deserved punishment, and therefore I
think you, Sir, will be ready to save him from prejudice. The person
I mean is my deputy, Mr. Grosvenor Bedford, who, above five and twenty
years ago, was appointed Collector of the Customs in Philadelphia by my
father. I hear he is threatened to be turned out. If the least fault can
be laid to his charge, I do not desire to have him protected. If there
cannot, I am too well persuaded, Sir, of your justice not to be sure you
will be pleased to protect him."
George Grenville, a dry, precise man of great knowledge and industry,
almost always right in little matters and very patient of the
misapprehensions of less exact people, wrote in reply a letter which
many would think entirely adequate to the matter in hand:
I have never heard [he began] of any complaint against Mr. Grosvenor
Bedford, or of any desire to turn him out; but by the office which you
tell me he holds in North America, I believe I know the state of the
case, which I will inform you of, that you may be enabled to judge of
it yourself. Heavy complaints were last year made in Parliament of the
state of our revenues in North America which amount to between £1,000
and £2,000 a year, the collecting of which costs upon the establishment
of the Customs in Great Britain between £7,000 and £8,000 a year. This,
it was urged, arose from the making all these offices sinecures in
England. When I came to the Treasury ¹ I directed the Commissioners of
the Customs to be written to, that they might inform us how the revenue
might be improved, and to what causes they attributed the present
diminished state of it.... The principal cause which they assigned
was the absence of the officers who lived in England by leave of the
Treasury, which they proposed should be recalled. This we complied with,
and ordered them all to their duty, and the Commissioners of the Customs
to present others in the room of such as should not obey. I take it for
granted that this is Mr. Bedford's case. If it is, it will be attended
with difficulty to make an exception, as they are every one of them
applying to be excepted out of the orders.... If it is not so, or if
Mr. Bedford can suggest to me any proper means of obviating it without
overturning the whole regulation, he will do me a sensible pleasure.
¹ On the resignation of Lord Bute in April, 1763, Grenville formed a
ministry, himself taking the two offices of First Lord of the Treasury
and Chancellor of the Exchequer.
There is no evidence to show that Mr. Bedford was able to do Mr.
Grenville this "sensible pleasure." The incident, apparently closed, was
one of many indications that a new policy for dealing with America was
about to be inaugurated; and although Grenville had been made minister
for reasons that were remote enough from any question of efficiency
in government, no better man could have been chosen for applying to
colonial administration the principles of good business management. His
connection with the Treasury, as well as the natural bent of his mind,
had made him "confessedly the ablest man of business in the House of
Commons." The Governors of the Bank of England, very efficient men
certainly, held it a great point in the minister's favor that they
"could never do business with any man with the same ease they had done
it with him." Undoubtedly the first axiom of business is that one's
accounts should be kept straight, one's books nicely balanced;
the second, that one's assets should exceed one's liabilities. Mr.
Grenville, accordingly, "had studied the revenues with professional
assiduity, and something of professional ideas seemed to mingle in all
his regulations concerning them." He "felt the weight of debt, amounting
at this time to one hundred and fifty-eight millions, which oppressed
his country, and he looked to the amelioration of the revenue as the
only mode of relieving it."
It is true there were some untouched sources of revenue still available
in England. As sinecures went in that day, Mr. Grosvenor Bedford's was
not of the best; and on any consideration of the matter from the point
of view of revenue only, Grenville might well have turned his attention
to a different class of officials; for example, to the Master of the
Rolls in Ireland, Mr. Rigby, who was also Paymaster of the Forces, and
to whose credit there stood at the Bank of England, as Mr. Trevelyan
assures us, a million pounds of the public money, the interest of which
was paid to him "or to his creditors." This was a much better thing than
Grosvenor Bedford had with his paltry collectorship at Philadelphia;
and the interest on a million pounds, more or less, had it been diverted
from Mr. Rigby's pocket to the public treasury, would perhaps have
equaled the entire increase in the revenue to be expected from even
the most efficient administration of the customs in all the ports of
America. In addition, it should perhaps be said that Mr. Rigby, although
excelled by none, was by no means the only man in high place with a good
degree of talent for exploiting the common chest.
The reform of such practices, very likely, was work for a statesman
rather than for a man of business. A good man of business, called upon
to manage the King's affairs, was likely to find many obstacles in the
way of depriving the Paymaster of the Forces of his customary sources
of income, and Mr. Grenville, at least, never attempted anything so
hazardous. Scurrilous pamphleteers, in fact, had made it a charge
against the minister that he had increased rather than diminished the
evil of sinecures--"It had been written in pamphlets that £400,000 a
year was dealt out in pensions"; from which charge the able Chancellor,
on the occasion of opening his first budget in the House of Commons, the
9th of March, 1764, defended himself by denying that the sums were "so
great as alleged." It was scarcely an adequate defense; but the truth
is that Grenville was sure to be less distressed by a bad custom, no
law forbidding, than by a law, good or bad, not strictly enforced,
particularly if the law was intended to bring in a revenue.
Instinctively, therefore, the minister turned to America, where it was
a notorious fact that there were revenue laws that had not been enforced
these many years. Mr. Grenville, we may suppose, since it was charged
against him in a famous epigram, read the American dispatches with
considerable care, so that it is quite possible he may have chanced
to see and to shake his head over the sworn statement of Mr. Sampson
Toovey, a statement which throws much light upon colonial liberties and
the practices of English officials in those days:
I, Sampson Toovey [so the statement runs], Clerk to James Cockle, Esq.,
Collector of His Majesty's Customs for the Port of Salem, do declare on
oath, that ever since I have been in the office, it hath been customary
for said Cockle to receive of the masters of vessels entering from
Lisbon, casks of wine, boxes of fruit, etc., which was a gratuity for
suffering their vessels to be entered with salt or ballast only, and
passing over unnoticed such cargoes of wine, fruit, etc., which are
prohibited to be imported into His Majesty's plantations. Part of which
wine, fruit, etc., the said James Cockle used to share with Governor
Bernard. And I further declare that I used to be the negotiator of
this business, and receive the wine, fruit, etc., and dispose of them
agreeable to Mr. Cockle's orders. Witness my hand. Sampson Toovey.
The curious historian would like much to know, in case Mr. Grenville did
see the declaration of Sampson Toovey, whether he saw also a letter
in which Governor Bernard gave it as his opinion that if the colonial
governments were to be refashioned it should be on a new plan, since
"there is no system in North America fit to be made a module of."
Secretary Grenville, whether or not he ever saw this letter from
Governor Bernard, was familiar with the ideas which inspired it.
Most crown officials in America, and the governors above all, finding
themselves little more than executive agents of the colonial assemblies,
had long clamored for the remodeling of colonial governments: the
charters, they said, should be recalled; the functions of the assemblies
should be limited and more precisely defined; judges should be appointed
at the pleasure of the King; and judges and governors alike should be
paid out of a permanent civil list in England drawn from revenue raised
in America. In urging these changes, crown officials in America were
powerfully supported by men of influence in England; by Halifax since
the day, some fifteen years before, when he was appointed to the office
of Colonial Secretary; by the brilliant Charles Townshend who, in
the year 1763, as first Lord of the Treasury in Bute's ministry, had
formulated a bill which would have been highly pleasing to Governor
Bernard had it been passed into law. And now similar schemes were being
urged upon Grenville by his own colleagues, notably by the Earl of
Halifax, who is said to have become, in a formal interview with the
first minister, extremely heated and eager in the matter.
But all to no purpose. Mr. Grenville was well content with the form of
the colonial governments, being probably of Pope's opinion that "the
system that is best administered is best." In Grenville's opinion, the
Massachusetts government was good enough, and all the trouble arose from
the inattention of royal officials to their manifest duties and from
the pleasant custom of depositing at Governor Bernard's back door sundry
pipes of wine with the compliments of Mr. Cockle. Most men in England
agreed that such pleasant customs had been tolerated long enough.
To their suppression the first minister accordingly gave his best
attention; and while Mr. Rigby continued to enjoy great perquisites in
England, many obscure customs officials, such as Grosvenor Bedford,
were ordered to their posts to prevent small peculations in America. To
assist them, or their successors, in this business, ships of war were
stationed conveniently for the intercepting of smugglers, general writs
were authorized to facilitate the search for goods illegally entered,
and the governors, His Excellency Governor Bernard among the number,
were newly instructed to give their best efforts to the enforcement of
the trade acts.
All this was but an incident, to be sure, in the minister's general
scheme for "ameliorating the revenue." It was not until the 9th of
March, 1764, that Grenville, "not disguising how much he was hurt
by abuse," opened his first budget, "fully, for brevity was not his
failing," and still with great "art and ability." Although ministers
were to be congratulated, he thought, "on the revenue being managed with
more frugality than in the late reign," the House scarcely need be
told that the war had greatly increased the debt, an increase not to
be placed at a lower figure than some seventy odd millions; and so, on
account of this great increase in the debt, and in spite of gratifying
advances in the customs duties and the salutary cutting off of the
German subsidies, taxes were now, the House would easily understand,
necessarily much higher than formerly--"our taxes," he said, "exceeded
by three millions what they were in 1754." Much money, doubtless, could
still be raised on the land tax, if the House was at all disposed to put
on another half shilling in the pound. Ministers could take it quite for
granted, however, that country squires, sitting on the benches, would
not be disposed to increase the land tax, but would much prefer some
skillful manipulation of the colonial customs, provided only there was
some one who understood that art well enough to explain to the House
where such duties were meant to fall and how much they might reasonably
be expected to bring in. And there, in fact, was Mr. Grenville
explaining it all with "art and ability," for which task, indeed, there
could be none superior to his Majesty's Chancellor of the Exchequer, who
had so long "studied the revenue with professional assiduity."
The items of the budget, rather dull reading now and none too
illuminating, fell pleasantly upon the ears of country squires
sitting there on the benches; and the particular taxes no doubt seemed
reasonably clear to them, even if they had no perfect understanding of
the laws of incidence, inasmuch as sundry of the new duties apparently
fell upon the distant Americans, who were known to be rich and were
generally thought, on no less an authority than Jasper Mauduit, agent of
the Province of Massachusetts Bay, to be easily able and not unwilling
to pay considerable sums towards ameliorating the revenue. It was odd,
perhaps, that Americans should be willing to pay; but that was no great
matter, if they were able, since no one could deny their obligation. And
so country squires, and London merchants too, listened comfortably to
the reading of the budget so well designed to relieve the one of taxes
and swell the profits flowing into the coffers of the other.
"That a duty of £2 19s. 9d. per cwt. avoirdupois, be laid upon all
foreign coffee, imported from any place (except Great Britain) into
the British colonies and plantations in America. That a duty of 6d. per
pound weight be laid upon all foreign indico, imported into the said
colonies and plantations. That a duty of £7 per ton be laid upon all
wine of the growth of the Madeiras, or of any other island or place,
lawfully imported from the respective place of the growth of such wine,
into the said colonies and plantations. That a duty of 10s. per ton be
laid upon all Portugal, Spanish, or other wine (except French wine),
imported from Great Britain into the said colonies and plantations. That
a duty of 2s. per pound weight be laid upon all wrought silks, Bengals,
and stuffs mixed with silk or herba; of the manufacture of Persia,
China, or East India, imported from Great Britain into the said colonies
and plantations. That a duty of 2s. 6d. per piece be laid upon all
callicoes...."
The list no doubt was a long one; and quite right, too, thought country
squires, all of whom, to a man, were willing to pay no more land tax.
Other men besides country squires were interested in Mr. Grenville's
budget, notably the West Indian sugar planters, virtually and actually
represented in the House of Commons and voting there this day. Many of
them were rich men no doubt; but sugar planting, they would assure you
in confidence, was not what it had been; and if they were well off after
a fashion, they might have been much better off but for the shameless
frauds which for thirty years had made a dead letter of the Molasses Act
of 1733. It was notorious that the merchants of the northern and middle
colonies, regarding neither the Acts of Trade nor the dictates of
nature, had every year carried their provisions and fish to the foreign
islands, receiving in exchange molasses, cochineal, "medical druggs,"
and "gold and silver in bullion and coin." With molasses the thrifty New
Englanders made great quantities of inferior rum, the common drink of
that day, regarded as essential to the health of sailors engaged in
fishing off the Grand Banks, and by far the cheapest and most effective
instrument for procuring negroes in Africa or for inducing the western
Indians to surrender their valuable furs for some trumpery of colored
cloth or spangled bracelet. All this thriving traffic did not benefit
British planters, who had molasses of their own and a superior quality
of rum which they were not unwilling to sell.
Such traffic, since it did not benefit them, British planters were
disposed to think must be bad for England. They were therefore willing
to support Mr. Grenville's budget, which proposed that the importation
of foreign rum into any British colony be prohibited in future; and
which further proposed that the Act of 6 George II, c. 13, be continued,
with modifications to make it effective, the modifications of chief
importance being the additional duty of twenty-two shillings per
hundredweight upon all sugar and the reduction by one half of the
prohibitive duty of sixpence on all foreign molasses imported into the
British plantations. It was a matter of minor importance doubtless, but
one to which they had no objections since the minister made a point of
it, that the produce of all the duties which should be raised by virtue
of the said act, made in the sixth year of His late Majesty's reign, "be
paid into the receipt of His Majesty's Exchequer, and there reserved,
to be from time to time disposed of by Parliament, towards defraying the
necessary expences of defending, protecting, and securing the British
colonies and plantations in America."
With singularly little debate, honorable and right honorable members
were ready to vote this new Sugar Act, having the minister's word for
it that it would be enforced, the revenue thereby much improved, and a
sudden stop put to the long-established illicit traffic with the
foreign islands, a traffic so beneficial to the northern colonies, so
prejudicial to the Empire and the pockets of planters. Thus it was that
Mr. Grenville came opportunely to the aid of the Spanish authorities,
who for many years had employed their guarda costas in a vain effort to
suppress this very traffic, conceiving it, oddly enough, to be injurious
to Spain and highly advantageous to Britain.
It may be that the Spanish authorities regarded the West Indian trade
as a commercial system rather than as a means of revenue. This aspect of
the matter, the commercial effects of his measures, Mr. Grenville at all
events managed not to take sufficiently into account, which was rather
odd, seeing that he professed to hold the commercial system embodied in
the Navigation and Trade Acts in such high esteem, as a kind of
"English Palladium." No one could have wished less than Grenville to lay
sacrilegious hands on this Palladium, have less intended to throw sand
into the nicely adjusted bearings of the Empire's smoothly working
commercial system. If he managed nevertheless to do something of this
sort, it was doubtless by virtue of being such a "good man of business,"
by virtue of viewing the art of government too narrowly as a question of
revenue only. For the moment, preoccupied as they were with the quest of
revenue, the new measures seemed to Mr. Grenville and to the squires
and planters who voted them well adapted to raising a moderate sum, part
only of some £350,000, for the just and laudable purpose of "defraying
the necessary expences of defending, protecting, and securing the
British colonies and plantations in America."
The problem of colonial defense, so closely connected with the question
of revenue, was none of Grenville's making but was a legacy of the war
and of that Peace of Paris which had added an immense territory to the
Empire. When the diplomats of England and France at last discovered, in
some mysterious manner, that it had "pleased the Most High to diffuse
the spirit of union and concord among the Princes," the world was
informed that, as the price of "a Christian, universal, and perpetual
peace," France would cede to England what had remained to her of Nova
Scotia, Canada, and all the possessions of France on the left bank of
the Mississippi except the City of New Orleans and the island on which
it stands; that she would cede also the islands of Grenada and the
Grenadines, the islands of St. Vincent, Dominica, and Tobago, and the
River Senegal with all of its forts and factories; and that she would
for the future be content, so far as her activities in India were
concerned, with the five factories which she possessed there at the
beginning of the year 1749.
The average Briton, as well as honorable and right honorable members of
the House, had known that England possessed colonies and had understood
that colonies, as a matter of course, existed to supply him with sugar
and rice, indigo and tobacco, and in return to buy at a good price
whatever he might himself wish to sell. Beyond all this he had given
slight attention to the matter of colonies until the great Pitt had
somewhat stirred his slow imagination with talk of empire and destiny.
It was doubtless a liberalizing as well as a sobering revelation to
be told that he was the "heir apparent of the Romans," with the
responsibilities that are implied in having a high mission in the
world. Now that his attention was called to the matter, it seemed to the
average Briton that in meeting the obligation of this high mission and
in dealing with this far-flung empire, a policy of efficiency such as
that advocated by Mr. Grenville might well replace a policy of salutary
neglect; and if the national debt had doubled during the war, as he was
authoritatively assured, why indeed should not the Americans, grown rich
under the fostering care of England and lately freed from the menace of
France by the force of British arms, be expected to observe the Trade
Acts and to contribute their fair share to the defense of that new world
of which they were the chief beneficiaries?
If Americans were quite ready in their easy-going way to take chances in
the matter of defense, hoping that things would turn out for the best
in the future as they had in the past, British statesmen and right
honorable members of the House, viewing the question broadly and without
provincial illusions, understood that a policy of preparedness was the
only salvation; a policy of muddling through would no longer suffice
as it had done in the good old days before country squires and London
merchants realized that their country was a world power. In those days,
when the shrewd Robert Walpole refused to meddle with schemes for taxing
America, the accepted theory of defense was a simple one. If Britain
policed the sea and kept the Bourbons in their place, it was thought
that the colonies might be left to manage the Indians; fur traders,
whose lure the red man could not resist, and settlers occupying the
lands beyond the mountains, so it was said, would do the business. In
1749, five hundred thousand acres of land had been granted to the Ohio
Company "in the King's interest" and "to cultivate a friendship with
the nations of Indians inhabiting those parts"; and as late as 1754 the
Board of Trade was still encouraging the rapid settling of the West,
"inasmuch as nothing can more effectively tend to defeat the dangerous
designs of the French."
On the eve of the last French war it may well have seemed to the Board
of Trade that this policy was being attended with gratifying results.
In the year 1749, La Galissonière, the acting Governor of Canada,
commissioned Céloron de Blainville to take possession of the Ohio
Valley, which he did in form, descending the river to the Maumee, and so
to Lake Erie and home again, having at convenient points proclaimed
the sovereignty of Louis XV over that country, and having laid down,
as evidence of the accomplished fact, certain lead plates bearing
awe-inspiring inscriptions, some of which have been discovered and
are preserved to this day. It was none the less a dangerous junket.
Everywhere Blainville found the Indians of hostile mind; everywhere, in
every village almost, he found English traders plying their traffic and
"cultivating a friendship with the Indians"; so that upon his return
in 1750, in spite of the lead plates so securely buried, he must needs
write in his journal: "All I can say is that the nations of those
countries are ill disposed towards the French and devoted to the
English."
During the first years of the war all this devotion was nevertheless
seen to be of little worth. Like Providence, the Indians were sure to
side with the big battalions. For want of a few effective garrisons at
the beginning, the English found themselves deserted by their quondam
allies, and although they recovered this facile allegiance as soon as
the French garrisons were taken, it was evident enough in the late years
of the war that fear alone inspired the red man's loyalty. The Indian
apparently did not realize at this early date that his was an inferior
race destined to be supplanted. Of a primitive and uncultivated
intelligence, it was not possible for him to foresee the beneficent
designs of the Ohio Company or to observe with friendly curiosity the
surveyors who came to draw imaginary lines through the virgin forest.
And therefore, even in an age when the natural rights of man were being
loudly proclaimed, the "Nations of Indians inhabiting those parts" were
only too ready to believe what the Virginia traders told them of
the Pennsylvanians, what the Pennsylvania traders told them of the
Virginians--that the fair words of the English were but a kind of mask
to conceal the greed of men who had no other desire than to deprive the
red man of his beloved hunting grounds.
Thus it was that the industrious men with pedantic minds who day by day
read the dispatches that accumulated in the office of the Board of Trade
became aware, during the years from 1758 to 1761, that the old policy
of defense was not altogether adequate. "The granting of lands hitherto
unsettled," so the Board reported in 1761, "appears to be a measure of
the most dangerous tendency." In December of the same year all governors
were accordingly forbidden "to pass grants ... or encourage settlements
upon any lands within the said colonies which may interfere with the
Indians bordering upon them."
The policy thus initiated found final expression in the famous
Proclamation of 1763, in the early months of Grenville's ministry. By
the terms of the Proclamation no further grants were to be made within
lands "which, not having been ceded to, or purchased by us, are reserved
to the said Indians"--that is to say, "all the lands lying to the
westward of the sources of the rivers which fall into the sea from
the west or the northwest." All persons who had "either willfully or
inadvertently seated themselves" on the reserved lands were required
"forthwith to remove themselves"; and for the future no man was to
presume to trade with the Indians without first giving bond to observe
such regulations as "we shall at any time think fit to ... direct for
the benefit of the said trade." All these provisions were designed "to
the end that the Indians may be convinced of our justice and determined
resolution to remove all reasonable cause of discontent." By royal act
the territory west of the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, from Florida
to 50° north latitude, was thus closed to settlement "for the present"
and "reserved to the Indians."
Having thus taken measures to protect the Indians against the colonists,
the mother country was quite ready to protect the colonists against the
Indians. Rash Americans were apt to say the danger was over now that the
French were "expelled from Canada." This statement was childish
enough in view of the late Pontiac uprising which was with such
great difficulty suppressed--if indeed one could say that it was
suppressed--by a general as efficient even as Amherst, with seasoned
British troops at his command. The red man, even if he submitted
outwardly, harbored in his vengeful heart the rankling memory of many
griefs, real or imaginary; and he was still easily swayed by his ancient
but now humiliated French friends, who had been "expelled from Canada"
only indeed in a political sense but were still very much there as
promoters of trouble. What folly, therefore, to talk of withdrawing
the troops from America! No sane man but could see that, under the
circumstances, such a move was quite out of the question.
It would materially change the circumstances, undoubtedly, if Americans
could ever be induced to undertake, in any systematic and adequate
manner, to provide for their own defense in their own way. In that case
the mother country would be only too glad to withdraw her troops, of
which indeed she had none too many. But it was well known what the
colonists could be relied upon to do, or rather what they could be
relied upon not to do, in the way of coöperative effort. Ministers had
not forgotten that on the eve of the last war, at the very climax of the
danger, the colonial assemblies had rejected a Plan of Union prepared
by Benjamin Franklin, the one man, if any man there was, to bring the
colonies together. They had rejected the plan as involving too great
concentration of authority, and they were unwilling to barter the
veriest jot or tittle of their much prized provincial liberty for any
amount of protection. And if they rejected this plan--a very mild and
harmless plan, ministers were bound to think--it was not likely they
could be induced, in time of peace, to adopt any plan that might be
thought adequate in England. Such a plan, for example, was that prepared
by the Board of Trade, by which commissioners appointed by the governors
were empowered to determine the military establishment and to apportion
the expense of maintaining it among the several colonies on the basis
of wealth and population. Assemblies which for years past had
systematically deprived governors of all discretionary power to expend
money raised by the assemblies themselves would surely never surrender
to governors the power of determining how much assemblies should raise
for governors to expend.
Doubtless it might be said with truth that the colonies had voluntarily
contributed more than their fair share in the last war; but it was also
true that Pitt, and Pitt alone, could get them to do this. The King
could not always count on there being in England a great genius like
Pitt, and besides he did not always find it convenient, for reasons
which could be given, to employ a great genius like Pitt. A system
of defense had to be designed for normal times and normal men; and in
normal times with normal men at the helm, ministers were agreed,
the American attitude towards defense was very cleverly described by
Franklin: "Everyone cries, a Union is absolutely necessary, but when
it comes to the manner and form of the Union, their weak noddles are
perfectly distracted."
Noddles of ministers, however, were in no way distracted but saw clearly
that, if Americans could not agree on any plan of defense, there was no
alternative but "an interposition of the authority of Parliament." Such
interposition, recommended by the Board of Trade and already proposed
by Charles Townshend in the last ministry, was now taken in hand by
Grenville. The troops were to remain in America; the Mutiny Act, which
required soldiers in barracks to be furnished with provisions and
utensils by local authorities, and which as a matter of course went
where the army went, was supplemented by the Quartering Act, which
made further provision for the billeting and supplying of the troops
in America. And for raising some part of the general maintenance fund
ministers could think of no tax more equitable, or easier to be levied
and collected, than a stamp tax. Some such tax, stamp tax or poll tax,
had often been recommended by colonial governors, as a means of bringing
the colonies "to a sense of their duty to the King, to awaken them to
take care of their lives and their fortunes." A crown officer in North
Carolina, Mr. M'Culloh, was good enough to assure Mr. Charles Jenkinson,
one of the Secretaries of the Treasury, backing up his assertion
with sundry statistical exhibits, that a stamp tax on the continental
colonies would easily yield £60,000, and twice that sum if extended to
the West Indies. As early as September 23, 1763, Mr. Jenkinson, acting
on an authorization of the Treasury Board, accordingly wrote to the
Commissioners of Stamped Duties, directing them "to prepare, for their
Lordships' consideration, a draft of an act for imposing proper stamp
duties on His Majesty's subjects in America and the West Indies."
Mr. Grenville, who was not in any case the man to do things in a hurry,
nevertheless proceeded very leisurely in the matter. He knew very well
that Pitt had refused to "burn his fingers" with any stamp tax; and some
men, such as his friend and secretary, Mr. Jackson, for example, and
the Earl of Hillsborough, advised him to abandon the project altogether,
while others urged delay at least, in order that Americans might have an
opportunity to present their objections, if they had any. It was decided
therefore to postpone the matter for a year; and in presenting the
budget on March 9, 1764, the first minister merely gave notice that "it
maybe proper to charge certain stamp duties in the said colonies and
plantations." Of all the plans for taxing America, he said, this one
seemed to him the best; yet he was not wedded to it, and would willingly
adopt any other preferred by the colonists, if they could suggest
any other of equal efficacy. Meanwhile, he wished only to call upon
honorable members of the House to say now, if any were so minded, that
Parliament had not the right to impose any tax, external or internal,
upon the colonies; to which solemn question, asked in full house, there
was not one negative, nor any reply except Alderman Beckford saying: "As
we are stout, I hope we shall be merciful."
It soon appeared that Americans did have objections to a stamp tax.
Whether it were equitable or not, they would rather it should not be
laid, really preferring not to be dished up in any sauce whatever,
however fine. The tax might, as ministers said, be easily collected, or
its collection might perhaps be attended with certain difficulties;
in either case it would remain, for reasons which they were ready to
advance, a most objectionable tax. Certain colonial agents then in
England accordingly sought an interview with the first minister in order
to convince him, if possible, of this fact. Grenville was very likely
more than ready to grant them an interview, relying upon the strength of
his position, on his "tenderness for the subjects in America," and
upon his well-known powers of persuasion, to bring them to his way
of thinking. To get from the colonial agents a kind of assent to his
measure would be to win a point of no slight strategic value, there
being at least a modicum of truth in the notion that just government
springs from the consent of the governed.
I have proposed the resolution [the minister explained to the agents]
from a real regard and tenderness for the subjects in the colonies. It
is highly reasonable they should contribute something towards the charge
of protecting themselves, and in aid of the great expense Great Britain
has put herself to on their account. No tax appears to me so easy and
equitable as a stamp duty. It will fall only upon property, will be
collected by the fewest officers, and will be equally spread over
America and the West Indies.... It does not require any number of
officers vested with extraordinary powers of entering houses, or extend
a sort of influence which I never wished to increase. The colonists
now have it in their power, by agreeing to this tax, to establish a
precedent for their being consulted before any tax is imposed upon them
by Parliament; for their approbation of it being signified to Parliament
next year ... will afford a forcible argument for the like proceeding
in all such cases. If they think of any other mode of taxation more
convenient to them, and make any proposition of equal efficacy with the
stamp duty, I will give it all due consideration.
The agents appear at least to have been silenced by this speech, which
was, one must admit, so fatherly and so very reasonable in tone; and
doubtless Grenville thought them convinced, too, since he always so
perfectly convinced himself. At all events, he found it possible, for
this or for some other reason, to put the whole matter out of his mind
until the next year. The patriotic American historian, well instructed
in the importance of the Stamp Act, has at first a difficulty in
understanding how it could occupy, among the things that interested
English statesmen at this time, a strictly subordinate place; and
he wonders greatly, as he runs with eager interest through the
correspondence of Grenville for the year 1764, to find it barely
mentioned there. Whether the King received him less coldly today than
the day before yesterday was apparently more on the minister's mind than
any possibility that the Stamp Act might be received rather warmly in
the colonies. The contemporaries of Grenville, even Pitt himself, have
almost as little to say about the coming great event; all of which
compels the historian, reviewing the matter judiciously, to reflect
sadly that Englishmen of that day were not as fully aware of the
importance of the measure before it was passed as good patriots have
since become.
There is much to confirm this notion in the circumstances attending the
passage of the bill through Parliament in the winter of 1765. Grenville
was perhaps further reassured, in spite of persistent rumors of much
high talk in America, by the results of a second interview which he had
with the colonial agents just before introducing the measure into
the House of Commons. "I take no pleasure," he again explained in his
reasonable way, "in bringing upon myself their resentments; it is my
duty to manage the revenue. I have really been made to believe that,
considering the whole circumstances of the mother country and the
colonies, the latter can and ought to pay something to the common cause.
I know of no better way than that now pursuing to lay such a tax. If you
can tell of a better, I will adopt it."
Franklin, who was present with the others on this occasion, ventured
to suggest that the "usual constitutional way" of obtaining colonial
support, through the King's requisition, would be better. "Can you
agree," asked Grenville, "on the proportions each colony should raise?"
No, they could not agree, as Franklin was bound to admit, knowing the
fact better than most men. And if no adequate answer was forthcoming
from Franklin, a man so ready in expedients and so practiced in the
subtleties of dialectic, it is no great wonder that Grenville thought
the agents now fully convinced by his reasoning, which after all was
only an impersonal formulation of the inexorable logic of the situation.
Proceeding thus leisurely, having taken so much pains to elicit
reasonable objection and none being forthcoming, Grenville, quite
sure of his ground, brought in from the Ways and Means Committee, in
February, 1765, the fifty-five resolutions which required that stamped
paper, printed by the government and sold by officers appointed for that
purpose, be used for nearly all legal documents, for all customs papers,
for appointments to all offices carrying a salary of £20 except military
and judicial offices, for all grants of privilege and franchises made
by the colonial assemblies, for licenses to retail liquors, for
all pamphlets, advertisements, handbills, newspapers, almanacs, and
calendars, and for the sale of packages containing playing cards and
dice. The expediency of the act was now explained to the House, as it
had been explained to the agents. That the act was legal, which few
people in fact denied, Grenville, doing everything thoroughly and with
system, proceeded to demonstrate also. The colonies claim, he said, "the
privilege of all British subjects of being taxed only with their own
consent." Well, for his part, he hoped they might always enjoy that
privilege. "May this sacred pledge of liberty," cried the minister with
unwonted eloquence, "be preserved inviolate to the utmost verge of our
dominions and to the latest pages of our history." But Americans were
clearly wrong in supposing the Stamp Act would deprive them of the
rights of Englishmen, for, upon any ground on which it could be said
that Englishmen were represented, it could be maintained, and he was
free to assert, that Americans were represented, in Parliament, which
was the common council of the whole Empire.
The measure was well received. Mr. Jackson supposed that Parliament
had a right to tax America, but he much doubted the expediency of the
present act. If it was necessary, as ministers claimed, to tax the
colonies, the latter should be permitted to elect some part of the
Parliament, "otherwise the liberties of America, I do not say will be
lost, but will be in danger." The one notable event of this "slight day"
was occasioned by a remark of Charles Townshend, who asked with
some asperity whether "these American children, planted by our care,
nourished up by our indulgence to a degree of strength and opulence,
and protected by our arms," would now be so unfilial as to "grudge to
contribute their mite to relieve us from the heavy burden under which we
lie?" Upon which Colonel Isaac Barré sprang to his feet and delivered
an impassioned, unpremeditated reply which stirred the dull House for
perhaps three minutes:
They planted by your care! No; your oppression planted them in America.
They fled from your tyranny to a then uncultivated, inhospitable
country, where they exposed themselves to almost all the hardships to
which human nature is liable.... They nourished up by your indulgence!
They grew by your neglect of them. As soon as you began to care about
them, that care was exercised in sending persons to rule them in one
department and another, who were, perhaps, the deputies of deputies
to some members of this house, sent to spy out their liberties, to
misrepresent their actions, and to prey upon them; men whose behaviour
on many occasions has caused the blood of these sons of liberty to
recoil within them.... They protected by your arms! They have nobly
taken up arms in your defense; have exerted a valor amidst their
constant and laborious industry, for the defense of a country whose
frontier was drenched in blood, while its interior parts yielded all its
little savings to your emolument.
A very warm speech, and a capital hit, too, thought the honorable
members of the House, as they settled comfortably back again to endure
the routine of a dull day. Towards midnight, after seven hours of
languid debate, an adjournment was carried, as everyone foresaw it would
be, by a great majority--205 to 49 in support of the ministry. On the
13th of February the Stamp Act bill was introduced and read for the
first time, without debate. It passed the House on the 27th; on the
8th of March it was approved by the Lords without protest, amendment,
debate, or division; and two weeks later, the King being then
temporarily out of his mind, the bill received the royal assent by
commission.
At a later day, when the fatal effects of the Act were but too apparent,
it was made a charge against the ministers that they had persisted in
passing the measure in the face of strong opposition. But it was not so.
"As to the fact of a strenuous opposition to the Stamp Act," said Burke,
in his famous speech on American taxation, "I sat as a stranger in your
gallery when it was under consideration. Far from anything inflammatory,
I never heard a more languid debate in this house.... In fact, the
affair passed with so very, very little noise, that in town they
scarcely knew the nature of what you were doing." So far as men
concerned themselves with the doings of Parliament, the colonial
measures of Grenville were greatly applauded; and that not alone by
men who were ignorant of America. Thomas Pownall, once Governor of
Massachusetts, well acquainted with the colonies and no bad friend
of their liberties, published in April, 1764, a pamphlet on the
Administration of the Colonies which he dedicated to George Grenville,
"the great minister," who he desired might live to see the "power,
prosperity, and honor that must be given to his country, by so great
and important an event as the interweaving the administration of the
colonies into the British administration."