British subjects, by removing to America, cultivating a wilderness,
extending the domain, and increasing the wealth, commerce, and power
of the mother country, at the hazard of their lives and fortunes, ought
not, and in fact do not thereby lose their native rights.--Benjamin
Franklin.
It was the misfortune of Grenville that this "interweaving," as Pownall
described it, should have been undertaken at a most inopportune time,
when the very conditions which made Englishmen conscious of the burden
of empire were giving to Americans a new and highly stimulating sense
of power and independence. The marvelous growth of the colonies in
population and wealth, much commented upon by all observers and asserted
by ministers as one principal reason why Americans should pay taxes,
was indeed well worth some consideration. A million and a half of people
spread over the Atlantic seaboard might be thought no great number; but
it was a new thing in the world, well worth noting--which had in fact
been carefully noted by Benjamin Franklin in a pamphlet on The Increase
of Mankind, Peopling of Countries, etc.--that within three-quarters of
a century the population of the continental colonies had doubled every
twenty-five years, whereas the population of Old England during a
hundred years past had not doubled once and now stood at only some six
and a half millions. If this should go on--and, considering the immense
stretches of free land beyond the mountains, no one could suppose that
the present rate of increase would soon fall off--it was not unlikely
that in another century the center of empire, following the course of
the sun, would come to rest in the New World. With these facts in mind,
one might indeed say that a people with so much vitality and expansive
power was abundantly able to pay taxes; but perhaps it was also a fair
inference, if any one was disposed to press the matter, that, unless it
was so minded, such a people was already, or assuredly soon would be,
equally able not to pay them.
People in new countries, being called provincial, being often told in
effect that having made their bed they may lie in it, easily maintain
their self-respect if they are able to say that the bed is indeed a very
comfortable one. If, therefore, Americans had been given to boasting,
their growing wealth was not, any more than their increasing numbers, a
thing to be passed over in silence. In every colony the "starving time,"
even if it had ever existed, was now no more than an ancient tradition.
"Every man of industry has it in his power to live well," according to
William Smith of New York, "and many are the instances of persons who
came here distressed in their poverty who now enjoy easy and plentiful
fortunes." If Americans were not always aware that they were rich men
individually, they were at all events well instructed, by old-world
visitors who came to observe them with a certain air of condescension,
that collectively at least their material prosperity was a thing to be
envied even by more advanced and more civilized peoples. Therefore any
man called upon to pay a penny tax and finding his pocket bare might
take a decent pride in the fact, which none need doubt since foreigners
like Peter Kalm found it so, that "the English colonies in this part of
the world have increased so much in ... their riches, that they almost
vie with old England."
That the colonies might possibly "vie with old England," was a notion
which good Americans could contemplate with much equanimity; and even if
the Swedish traveler, according to a habit of travelers, had stretched
the facts a point or two, it was still abundantly clear that the
continental colonies were thought to be, even by Englishmen themselves,
of far greater importance to the mother country than they had formerly
been. Very old men could remember the time when English statesmen and
economists, viewing colonies as providentially designed to promote the
increase of trade, had regarded the northern colonies as little better
than heavy incumbrances on the Empire, and their commerce scarcely worth
the cost of protection. It was no longer so; it could no longer be said
that two-thirds of colonial commerce was with the tobacco and sugar
plantations, or that Jamaica took off more English exports than the
middle and northern colonies combined; but it could be said, and was now
being loudly proclaimed--when it was a point of debate whether to keep
Canada or Guadeloupe--that the northern colonies had already outstripped
the islands as consumers of English commodities.
Of this fact Americans themselves were well aware. The question whether
it was for the interest of England to keep Canada or Guadeloupe, which
was much discussed in 1760, called forth the notable pamphlet from
Franklin, entitled The Interest of Great Britain Considered, in which
he arranged in convenient form for the benefit of Englishmen certain
statistics of trade. From these statistics it appeared that, whereas
in 1748 English exports to the northern colonies and to the West Indies
stood at some £830,000 and £730,000 respectively, ten years later the
exports to the West Indies were still no more than £877,571 while those
to the northern colonies had advanced to nearly two millions. Nor was
it likely that this rate of increase would fall off in the future. "The
trade to our northern colonies," said Franklin, "is not only greater but
yearly increasing with the increase of the people.... The occasion for
English goods in North America, and the inclination to have and use
them, is and must be for ages to come, much greater than the ability
of the people to buy them." For English merchants the prospect was
therefore an inviting one; and if Canada rather than Guadeloupe was kept
at the close of the war, it was because statesmen and economists were
coming to estimate the value of colonies in terms of what they could
buy, and not merely, as of old, in terms of what they could sell. From
this point of view, the superiority of the continental over the
insular colonies was not to be doubted. Americans might well find great
satisfaction in this disposition of the mother country to regard her
continental colonies so highly and to think their trade of so much
moment to her; all of which, nevertheless, doubtless inclined them
sometimes to speculate on the delicate question whether, in case they
were so important to the mother country, they were not perhaps more
important to her than she was to them.
The consciousness of rapidly increasing material power, which was
greatly strengthened by the last French war, did nothing to dull the
sense of rights, but it was, on the contrary, a marked stimulus to
the mind in formulating a plausible, if theoretical, justification of
desired aims. Doubtless no American would say that being able to pay
taxes was a good reason for not paying them, or that obligations
might rightly be ignored as soon as one was in a position to do so
successfully; but that he should not "lose his native rights" any
American could more readily understand when he recalled that his
ancestors had without assistance from the mother country transformed a
wilderness into populous and thriving communities whose trade was now
becoming indispensable to Britain. Therefore, in the summer of 1764,
before the doctrine of colonial rights had been very clearly stated
or much refined, every American knew that the Sugar Act and also the
proposed Stamp Act were grievously burdensome, and that in some way or
other and for reasons which he might not be able to give with precision,
they involved an infringement of essential English liberties. Most men
in the colonies, at this early date, would doubtless have agreed with
the views expressed in a letter written to a friend in England by Thomas
Hutchinson of Boston, who was later so well hated by his compatriots for
not having changed his views with the progress of events.
The colonists [said Hutchinson] claim a power of making laws, and
a privilege of exemption from taxes, unless voted by their own
representatives.... Nor are the privileges of the people less affected
by duties laid for the sake of the money arising from them than by an
internal tax. Not one tenth part of the people of Great Britain have a
voice in the elections to Parliament; and, therefore, the colonies can
have no claim to it; but every man of property in England may have his
voice, if he will. Besides, acts of Parliament do not generally affect
individuals, and every interest is represented. But the colonies have
an interest distinct from the interest of the nation; and shall the
Parliament be at once party and judge? ...
The nation treats her colonies as a father who should sell the services
of his sons to reimburse him what they had cost him, but without the
same reason; for none of the colonies, except Georgia and Halifax,
occasioned any charge to the Crown or kingdom in the settlement of
them. The people of New England fled for the sake of civil and religious
liberty; multitudes flocked to America with this dependence, that their
liberties should be safe. They and their posterity have enjoyed them to
their content, and therefore have endured with greater cheerfulness all
the hardships of settling new countries. No ill use has been made
of these privileges; but the domain and wealth of Great Britain have
received amazing addition. Surely the services we have rendered the
nation have not subjected us to any forfeitures.
I know it is said the colonies are a charge to the nation, and they
should contribute to their own defense and protection. But during the
last war they annually contributed so largely that the Parliament was
convinced the burden would be insupportable; and from year to year made
them compensation; in several of the colonies for several years together
more men were raised, in proportion, than by the nation. In the trading
towns, one fourth part of the profit of trade, besides imposts and
excise, was annually paid to the support of the war and public charges;
in the country towns, a farm which would hardly rent for twenty pounds
a year, paid ten pounds in taxes. If the inhabitants of Britain had paid
in the same proportion, there would have been no great increase in the
national debt.
Nor is there occasion for any national expense in America. For one
hundred years together the New England colonies received no aid in their
wars with the Indians, assisted by the French. Those governments now
molested are as able to defend their respective frontiers; and had
rather do the whole of it by a tax of their own raising, than pay their
proportion in any other way. Moreover, it must be prejudicial to the
national interest to impose parliamentary taxes. The advantages promised
by an increase of the revenue are all fallacious and delusive. You will
lose more than you will gain. Britain already reaps the profit of all
their trade, and of the increase of their substance. By cherishing their
present turn of mind, you will serve your interest more than by your
present schemes.
Thomas Hutchinson, or any other man, might write a private letter
without committing his country, or, with due caution to his
correspondent, even himself; but for effective public and official
protest the colonial assemblies were the proper channels, and very
expert they were in the business, after having for half a century and
more devoted themselves with singleness of purpose to the guardianship
of colonial liberties. Until now, liberties had been chiefly threatened
by the insidious designs of colonial governors, who were for the most
part appointed by the Crown and very likely therefore to be infected
with the spirit of prerogative than which nothing could be more
dangerous, as everyone must know who recalled the great events of the
last century. With those great events, the eminent men who directed the
colonial assemblies--heads or scions or protégés of the best families in
America, men of wealth and not without reading--were entirely familiar;
they knew as well as any man that the liberties of Englishmen had been
vindicated against royal prerogative only by depriving one king of his
head and another of his crown; and they needed no instruction in the
significance of the "glorious revolution," the high justification of
which was to be found in the political gospel of John Locke, whose
book they had commonly bought and conveniently placed on their library
shelves.
More often than not, it is true, colonial governors were but ordinary
Englishmen with neither the instinct nor the capacity for tyranny,
intent mainly upon getting their salaries paid and laying by a
competence against the day when they might return to England. But if
they were not kings, at least they had certain royal characteristics;
and a certain flavor of despotism, clinging as it were to their official
robes and reviving in sensitive provincial minds the memory of bygone
parliamentary battles, was an ever-present stimulus to the eternal
vigilance which was well known to be the price of liberty.
And so, throughout the eighteenth century, little colonial aristocracies
played their part, in imagination clothing their governors in the
decaying vesture of old-world tyrants and themselves assuming the
homespun garb, half Roman and half Puritan, of a virtuous republicanism.
Small matters were thus stamped with great character. To debate a point
of procedure in the Boston or Williamsburg assembly was not, to be sure,
as high a privilege as to obstruct legislation in Westminster; but men
of the best American families, fashioning their minds as well as their
houses on good English models, thought of themselves, in withholding a
governor's salary or limiting his executive power, as but reënacting
on a lesser stage the great parliamentary struggles of the seventeenth
century. It was the illusion of sharing in great events rather than any
low mercenary motive that made Americans guard with jealous care their
legislative independence; a certain hypersensitiveness in matters of
taxation they knew to be the virtue of men standing for liberties which
Englishmen had once won and might lose before they were aware.
As a matter of course, therefore, the colonial assemblies protested
against the measures of Grenville. The General Court of Massachusetts
instructed its agent to say that the Sugar Act would ruin the New
England fisheries upon which the industrial prosperity of the northern
colonies depended. What they would lose was set down with some care, in
precise figures: the fishing trade, "estimated at £164,000 per annum;
the vessels employed in it, which would be nearly useless, at £100,000;
the provisions used in it, the casks for packing fish, and other
articles, at £22,700 and upwards: to all which there was to be added the
loss of the advantage of sending lumber, horses, provisions, and other
commodities to the foreign plantations as cargoes, the vessels employed
to carry the fish to Spain and Portugal, the dismissing of 5,000 seamen
from their employment," besides many other losses, all arising from
the very simple fact that the British islands to which the trade of
the colonies was virtually confined by the Sugar Act could furnish no
sufficient market for the products of New England, to say nothing of the
middle colonies, nor a tithe of the molasses and other commodities now
imported from the foreign islands in exchange.
Of the things taken in exchange, silver, in coin and bullion, was not
the least important, since it was essential for the "remittances to
England for goods imported into the provinces," remittances which during
the last eighteen months, it was said, "had been made in specie to
the amount of £150,000 besides £90,000 in Treasurer's bills for the
reimbursement money." Any man must thus see, since even Governor Bernard
was convinced of it, that the new duties would drain the colony of all
its hard money, and so, as the Governor said, "There will be an end of
the specie currency in Massachusetts." And with her trade half gone and
her hard money entirely so, the old Bay colony would have to manufacture
for herself those very commodities which English merchants were so
desirous of selling in America.
The Sugar Act was thus made out to be, even from the point of view of
English merchants, an economic blunder; but in the eyes of vigilant
Bostonians it was something more, and much worse than an economic
blunder. Vigilant Bostonians assembled in Town Meeting in May, 1764, in
order to instruct their representatives how they ought to act in these
serious times; and knowing that they ought to protest but perhaps not
knowing precisely on what grounds, they committed the drafting of their
instructions to Samuel Adams, a middle-aged man who had given much time
to the consideration of political questions, and above all to this very
question of taxation, upon which he had wonderfully clarified his ideas
by much meditation and the writing of effective political pieces for the
newspapers.
Through the eyes of Samuel Adams, therefore, vigilant Bostonians saw
clearly that the Sugar Act, to say nothing of the Stamp Act, was not
only an economic blunder but a menace to political liberty as well. "If
our trade may be taxed," so the instructions ran, "why not our lands?
Why not the produce of our lands, and everything we possess or make use
of? This we apprehend annihilates our charter right to govern and tax
ourselves. It strikes at our British privileges which, as we have never
forfeited them, we hold in common with our fellow-subjects who are
natives of Great Britain. If taxes are laid upon us in any shape without
our having a legal representative where they are laid, are we not
reduced from the character of free subjects to the miserable state of
tributary slaves?" Very formidable questions, couched in high-sounding
phrases, and representing well enough in form and in substance the state
of mind of colonial assemblies in the summer of 1764 in respect to the
Sugar Act and the proposed Stamp Act.
Yet these resounding phrases doubtless meant something less to Americans
of 1764 than one is apt to suppose. The rights of freemen had so often,
in the proceedings of colonial assemblies as well as in the newspaper
communications of many a Brutus and Cato, been made to depend upon
withholding a governor's salary or defining precisely how he should
expend a hundred pounds or so, that moderate terms could hardly be
trusted to cope with the serious business of parliamentary taxation.
"Reduced from the character of free subjects to the miserable state
of tributary slaves" was in fact hardly more than a conventional and
dignified way of expressing a firm but entirely respectful protest.
The truth is, therefore, that while everyone protested in such spirited
terms as might occur to him, few men in these early days supposed the
new laws would not take effect, and fewer still counseled the right
or believed in the practicability of forcible resistance. "We yield
obedience to the act granting duties," declared the Massachusetts
Assembly. "Let Parliament lay what duties they please on us," said James
Otis; "it is our duty to submit and patiently bear them till they be
pleased to relieve us." Franklin assured his friends that the passage
of the Stamp Act could not have been prevented any more easily than the
sun's setting, recommended that they endure the one mischance with the
same equanimity with which they faced the other necessity, and even saw
certain advantages in the way of self-discipline which might come of
it through the practice of a greater frugality. Not yet perceiving the
dishonor attaching to the function of distributing stamps, he did
his two friends, Jared Ingersoll of Connecticut and John Hughes of
Pennsylvania, the service of procuring for them the appointment to the
new office; and Richard Henry Lee, as good a patriot as any man and
therefore of necessity at some pains later to explain his motives in the
matter, applied for the position in Virginia.
Richard Henry Lee was no friend of tyrants, but an American freeman,
less distinguished as yet than his name, which was a famous one and not
without offense to be omitted from any list of the Old Dominion's "best
families." The best families of the Old Dominion, tide-water tobacco
planters of considerable estates, admirers and imitators of the minor
aristocracy of England, took it as a matter of course that the political
fortunes of the province were committed to their care and for many
generations had successfully maintained the public interest against the
double danger of executive tyranny and popular licentiousness. It
is therefore not surprising that the many obscure freeholders, minor
planters, and lesser men who filled the House of Burgesses had followed
the able leadership of that little coterie of interrelated families
comprising the Virginia aristocracy. John Robinson, Speaker of the House
and Treasurer of the colony, of good repute still in the spring of 1765,
was doubtless the head and front of this aristocracy, the inner circle
of which would also include Peyton Randolph, then King's Attorney, and
Edmund Pendleton, well known for his cool persuasiveness in debate, the
learned constitutional lawyer, Richard Bland, the sturdy and honest but
ungraceful Robert Carter Nicholas, and George Wythe, noblest Roman of
them all, steeped in classical lore, with the thin, sharp face of a
Cæsar and for virtuous integrity a very Cato. Conscious of their English
heritage, they were at once proud of their loyalty to Britain
and jealous of their well-won provincial liberties. As became
British-American freemen, they had already drawn a proper Memorial
against the Sugar Act and were now, as they leisurely gathered at
Williamsburg in the early weeks of May, 1765, unwilling to protest again
at present, for they had not as yet received any reply to their former
dignified and respectful petition.
To this assembly of the burgesses in 1765, there came from the
back-country beyond the first falls of the Virginia rivers, the frontier
of that day, many deputies who must have presented, in dress and manners
as well as in ideas, a sharp contrast to the eminent leaders of the
aristocracy. Among them was Thomas Marshall, father of a famous son, and
Patrick Henry, a young man of twenty-nine years, a heaven-born orator
and destined to be the leader and interpreter of the silent "simple
folk" of the Old Dominion. In Hanover County, in which this tribune of
the people was born and reared and which he now represented, there were,
as in all the back-country counties, few great estates and few slaves,
no notable country-seats with pretension to architectural excellence,
no modishly dressed aristocracy with leisure for reading and the
cultivation of manners becoming a gentleman. Beyond the tide-water, men
for the most part earned their bread by the sweat of their brows, lived
the life and esteemed the virtues of a primitive society, and braced
their minds with the tonic of Calvin's theology--a tonic somewhat
tempered in these late enlightened days by a more humane philosophy and
the friendly emotionalism of simple folk living close to nature.
Free burgesses from the back-country, set apart in dress and manners
from the great planters, less learned and less practiced in oratory and
the subtle art of condescension and patronage than the cultivated men
of the inner circle, were nevertheless staunch defenders of liberty and
American rights and were perhaps beginning to question, in these days of
popular discussion, whether liberty could very well flourish among men
whose wealth was derived from the labor of negro slaves, or be well
guarded under all circumstances by those who, regarding themselves as
superior to the general run of men, might be in danger of mistaking
their particular interests for the common welfare. And indeed it
now seemed that these great men who sent their sons to London to be
educated, who every year shipped their tobacco to England and bought
their clothes of English merchants with whom their credit was always
good, were grown something too timid, on account of their loyalty to
Britain, in the great question of asserting the rights of America.
Jean Jacques Rousseau would have well understood Patrick Henry, one of
those passionate temperaments whose reason functions not in the service
of knowledge but of good instincts and fine emotions; a nature to be
easily possessed of an exalted enthusiasm for popular rights and for
celebrating the virtues of the industrious poor. This enthusiasm in the
case of Patrick Henry was intensified by his own eloquence, which had
been so effectively exhibited in the famous Parson's Cause, and in
opposition to the shady scheme which the old leaders in the House of
Burgesses had contrived to protect John Robinson, the Treasurer, from
being exposed to a charge of embezzlement. Such courageous exploits,
widely noised abroad, had won for the young man great applause and had
got him a kind of party of devoted followers in the back-country and
among the yeomanry and young men throughout the province, so that to
take the lead and to stand boldly forth as the champion of liberty
and the submerged rights of mankind seemed to Patrick Henry a kind of
mission laid upon him, in virtue of his heavenly gift of speech, by that
Providence which shapes the destinies of men.
It was said that Mr. Henry was not learned in the law; but he had read
in Coke upon Littleton that an Act of Parliament against Magna Carta,
or common right, or reason, is void--which was clearly the case of the
Stamp Act. On the flyleaf of an old copy of that book this unlearned
lawyer accordingly wrote out some resolutions of protest which he showed
to his friends, George Johnston and John Fleming, for their approval.
Their approval once obtained, Mr. Johnston moved, with Mr. Henry as
second, that the House of Burgesses should go into committee of the
whole, "to consider the steps necessary to be taken in consequence of
the resolutions ... charging certain Stamp Duties in the colonies";
which was accordingly done on the 29th of May, upon which day Mr. Henry
presented his resolutions.
The 29th of May was late in that session of the Virginia House of
Burgesses; and most likely the resolutions would have been rejected if
some two-thirds of the members, who knew nothing of Mr. Henry's plans
and supposed the business of the Assembly finished, had not already gone
home. Among those who had thus departed, it is not likely that there
were many of Patrick Henry's followers. Yet even so there was much
opposition. The resolutions were apparently refashioned in committee of
the whole, for a preamble was omitted outright and four "Resolves"
were made over into five which were presented to the House on the day
following.
Young Mr. Jefferson, at that time a law student and naturally much
interested in the business of lawmaking, heard the whole of this day's
famous debate from the door of communication between the House and the
lobby. The five resolutions, he afterwards remembered, were "opposed by
Randolph, Bland, Pendleton, Nicholas, Wythe, and all the old members,
whose influence in the House had, till then, been unbroken; ... not from
any question of our rights, but on the ground that the same sentiments
had been, at their preceding session, expressed in a more conciliatory
form, to which the answers were not yet received. But torrents of
sublime eloquence from Mr. Henry, backed by the solid reasoning of
Johnston, prevailed." It was in connection with the fifth resolution,
upon which the debate was "most bloody," that Patrick Henry is said to
have declared that "Tarquin and Cæsar had each his Brutus, Charles
the First his Cromwell, and George the Third--"; upon which cries of
"Treason" were heard from every part of the House. Treason or not, the
resolution was carried, although by one vote only; and the young law
student standing at the door of the House heard Peyton Randolph say,
as he came hastily out into the lobby: "By God, I would have given 500
guineas for a single vote." And no doubt he would, at that moment, being
then much heated.
Next day Mr. Randolph was probably much cooler; and so apparently were
some others who, in the enthusiasm of debate and under the compelling
eye of Patrick Henry, had voted for the last defiant resolution.
Thinking the matter settled, Patrick Henry had already gone home "to
recommend himself to his constituents," as his enemies thought, "by
spreading treason."
But the matter was not yet settled. Early on that morning of the 31st,
before the House assembled, the young law student who was so curious
about the business of lawmaking saw Colonel Peter Randolph, of his
Majesty's Council, standing at the Clerk's table, "thumbing over the
volumes of journals to find a precedent for expunging a vote of the
House." Whether the precedent was found the young law student did not
afterwards recollect; but it is known that on motion of Peyton Randolph
the fifth resolution was that day erased from the record. Mr. Henry was
not then present. He had been seen, on the afternoon before, "passing
along the street, on his way to his home in Louisa, clad in a pair of
leather breeches, his saddle-bags on his arm, leading a lean horse."
The four resolutions thus adopted as the deliberate and formal protest
of the Old Dominion were as mild and harmless as could well be. They
asserted no more than that the first adventurers and settlers of
Virginia brought with them and transmitted to their posterity all the
privileges at any time enjoyed by the people of Great Britain; that
by two royal charters they had been formally declared to be as surely
possessed of these privileges as if they had been born and were then
abiding within the realm; that the taxation of the people by themselves
or by persons chosen by themselves to represent them "is the only
security against a burthensome taxation, and the distinguishing
characteristick of British freedom, without which the ancient
constitution cannot exist"; and that the loyal colony of Virginia had
in fact without interruption enjoyed this inestimable right, which had
never been forfeited or surrendered nor ever hitherto denied by the
kings or the people of Britain. No treason here, expressed or implied;
nor any occasion for 500 guineas passing from one hand to another to
prove that the province of Virginia was still the ancient and loyal Old
Dominion.
But Fate, or Providence, or whatever it is that presides at the
destinies of nations, has a way of setting aside with ironical smile the
most deliberate actions of men. And so, on this occasion, it turned out
that the hard-won victory of Messrs. Randolph, Bland, Pendleton, and
Wythe was of no avail. William Gordon tells us, without mentioning the
source of his information, that "a manuscript of the unrevised resolves
soon reached Philadelphia, having been sent off immediately upon their
passing, that the earliest information of what had been done might
be obtained by the Sons of Liberty." From Philadelphia a copy was
forwarded, on June 17, to New York, in which loyal city the resolutions
were thought "so treasonable that their possessors declined printing
them"; but an Irish gentleman from Connecticut, who was then in town,
inquired after them and was with great precaution permitted to take a
copy, which he straightway carried to New England. All this may be true
or not; but certain it is that six resolutions purporting to come from
Virginia were printed in the Newport Mercury on June 24, 1765, and
afterwards, on July 1, in many Boston papers.
The document thus printed did not indeed include the famous fifth
resolution upon which the debate in the House of Burgesses was "most
bloody" and which had been there adopted by a single vote and afterwards
erased from the record; but it included two others much stronger than
that eminently treasonable one: Resolved, That his Majesty's Liege
people, the inhabitants of this colony, are not bound to yield obedience
to any law or ordinance whatever, designed to impose any taxation
whatsoever upon them, other than the laws and ordinances of the General
Assembly aforesaid. Resolved, That any person who shall, by speaking or
writing, assert or maintain that any person or persons, other than the
General Assembly of this colony, have any right or power to impose any
taxation on the people here, shall be deemed an enemy to his Majesty's
colony.
These resolutions, which Governor Fauquier had not seen, and which were
perhaps never debated in the House of Burgesses, were now circulated far
and wide as part of the mature decision of the Virginia Assembly. On the
14th of September, Messrs. Randolph, Wythe, and Nicholas were appointed
a committee to apprise the Assembly's agent "of a spurious copy of the
resolves of the last Assembly ... being dispersed and printed in the
News Papers and to send him a true copy of the votes on that occasion."
In those days of slow and difficult communication, the truth, three
months late, could not easily overtake the falsehood or ever effectively
replace it.
In later years, when it was thought an honor to have begun the
Revolution, many men denied the decisive effect of the Virginia
Resolutions in convincing the colonists that the Stamp Act might be
successfully resisted. But contemporaries were agreed in according them
that glory or that infamy. "Two or three months ago," said Governor
Bernard, "I thought that this people would submit to the Stamp Act.
Murmurs were indeed continually heard, but they seemed to be such
as would die away. The publishing the Virginia Resolutions proved an
alarm-bell to the disaffected." We read the resolutions, said Jonathan
Sewell, "with wonder. They savored of independence; they flattered the
human passions; the reasoning was specious; we wished it conclusive.
The transition to believing it so was easy, and we, almost all America,
followed their example in resolving that the Parliament had no such
right." And the good patriot John Adams, who afterwards attributed the
honor to James Otis, said in 1776 that the "author of the first Virginia
Resolutions against the Stamp Act ... will have the glory with posterity
of beginning ... this great Revolution." ¹
¹ Upon the death of George II., 1760, the collectors of the customs at
Boston applied for new writs of assistance. The grant was opposed by the
merchants, and the question was argued before the Superior Court. It was
on this occasion that James Otis made a speech in favor of the rights
of the colonists as men and Englishmen. All that is known of it is
contained in some rough notes taken at the time by John Adams (Works of
John Adams, ii., 125). An elaboration of these notes was printed in the
Massachusetts Spy, April 29, 1773, and with corrections by Adams fifty
years after the event in William Tudor's Life of James Otis, chs. 5-7.
This is the speech to which Adams, at a later date, attributed the
beginning of the Revolution.
James Otis in 1765 declared the Virginia Resolutions to be treasonable.
It was precisely their treasonable flavor that electrified the country,
while the fact that they came from the Old Dominion made men think that
a union of the colonies, so essential to successful resistance, might be
achieved in spite of all. The Old Dominion, counted the most English of
the colonies in respect to her institutions and her sympathies, had a
character for loyalty that, in any matter of opposition to Britain,
gave double weight to her action. Easy-going tobacco-planters, Church of
England men all, were well known not to be great admirers of the precise
Puritans of New England, whose moral fervor and conscious rectitude
seemed to them a species of fanaticism savoring more of canting
hypocrisy than of that natural virtue affected by men of parts. Franklin
may well have had Virginia and Massachusetts in mind when he said, but
a few years earlier, no one need fear that the colonies "will unite
against their own nation ... which 'tis well known they all love much
more than they love one another." Nor could anyone have supposed that
the "Ancient and Loyal Colony of Virginia" would out-Boston Boston in
asserting the rights of America. Yet this was what had come to pass, the
evidence of which was the printed resolutions now circulating far and
wide and being read in this month of July when it was being noised about
that a Congress was proposed for the coming October. The proposal had
in fact come from Massachusetts Bay in the form of a circular letter
inviting all the colonies to send delegates to New York for the purpose
of preparing a loyal and humble "representation of their condition," and
of imploring relief from the King and Parliament of Great Britain.
No very encouraging response was immediately forthcoming. The Assembly
of New Jersey unanimously declined to send any delegates, although it
declared itself "not without a just sensibility respecting the late acts
of Parliament," and wished "such other colonies as think proper to be
active every success they can loyally and reasonably desire." For two
months there was no indication that any colony would think it "proper
to be active"; but during August and September the assemblies of six
colonies chose deputies to the congress, and when that body finally
assembled in October, less formally designated representatives from
three other colonies appeared upon the scene. The Assembly of New
Hampshire declined to take part. Virginia, Georgia, and North Carolina
were also unrepresented, which was perhaps due to the fact that the
governors of those provinces refused to call the assemblies together to
consider the Massachusetts circular letter.
Of the 27 members of the Stamp Act Congress, few if any were inclined
to rash or venturesome measures. It is reported that Lord Melbourne,
as Prime Minister of England, once remarked to his Cabinet, "It doesn't
matter what we say, but we must all say the same thing." What the Stamp
Act Congress said was to be sure of some importance, but that it should
say something which all could agree to was of even greater importance.
"There ought to be no New England man, no New Yorker, known on the
continent," wrote Christopher Gadsden of South Carolina, "but all of
us Americans." New Yorkers and New England men could not indeed be
so easily transformed over night; but the Stamp Act Congress was
significant as marking a kind of beginning in that slow and difficult
process. After eleven days of debate, in which sharp differences of
opinion were no doubt revealed, a declaration of rights and grievances
was at last adopted; a declaration which was so cautiously and loyally
phrased that all could subscribe to it, and which was perhaps for that
very reason not quite satisfactory to anyone.
His Majesty's subjects in the colonies, the declaration affirmed, are
entitled to those "inherent rights and liberties" which are enjoyed by
"his natural born subjects" in Great Britain; among which rights is that
most important one of "not being taxed without their own consent"; and
since the people of the colonies, "from local circumstances, cannot be
represented in the House of Commons," it follows that taxes cannot be
"imposed upon them, but by their respective legislatures." The Stamp
Act, being a direct tax, was therefore declared to have a "manifest
tendency to subvert the rights and liberties of the colonies." Of the
Sugar Act, which was not a direct tax, so much could not be said; but
this act was at least "burthensome and grievous," being subversive of
trade if not of liberty. No one was likely to be profoundly stirred by
the declaration of the Stamp Act Congress, in this month of October when
the spirited Virginia Resolutions were everywhere well known.
"The frozen politicians of a more northern government," according to the
Boston Gazette, "say they [the people of Virginia] have spoken treason";
but the Boston Gazette, for its part, thought they had "spoken very
sensibly." With much reading of the resolutions and of the commendatory
remarks with which they were everywhere received, the treasonable flavor
of their boldest phrases no doubt grew less pronounced, and high talk
took on more and more the character of good sense. During the summer
of 1765 the happy phrase of Isaac Barré--"these sons of liberty"--was
everywhere repeated, and was put on as a kind of protective coloring by
strong patriots, who henceforth thought of themselves as Sons of Liberty
and no traitors at all. Rather were they traitors who would in any
way justify an act of tyranny; most of all those so-called Americans,
accepting the office of Stamp Master, who cunningly aspired to make
a farthing profit out of the hateful business of enslaving their own
countrymen.
Who these gentry might be was not certainly known until early August,
when Jared Ingersoll, himself as it turned out one of the miscreants,
brought the commissions over from London, whereupon the names were all
printed in the papers. It then appeared that the gentleman appointed
to distribute the stamps in Massachusetts was Andrew Oliver, a man very
well connected in that province and of great influence with the best
people, not infrequently entrusted with high office and perquisites, and
but recently elected by the unsuspecting Bostonians to represent them in
the council of Massachusetts Bay Colony. It seemed inconsistent that a
man so often honored by the people should meanwhile pledge himself to
destroy their liberties; and so on the morning of the 14th of August,
Mr. Oliver's effigy, together with a horned devil's head peeping out of
an old boot, was to be seen hanging from the Liberty Tree at the south
end of Boston, near the distillery of Thomas Chase, brewer and warm
Son of Liberty. During the day people stopped to make merry over the
spectacle; and in the evening, after work hours, a great crowd gathered
to see what would happen. When the effigy was cut down and carried away,
the crowd very naturally followed along through the streets and through
the Town House, justifying themselves--many respectable people were
in the crowd--for being there by calling out, "Liberty and Property
forever; no Stamp." And what with tramping and shouting in the warm
August evening, the whole crowd became much heated and ever more
enthusiastic, so that, the line of march by some chance lying past
the new stamp office and Mr. Oliver's house, the people were not to be
restrained from destroying the former and breaking in the windows of the
latter, in detestation of the hated Stamp Act and of the principle that
property might be taken without consent.
Mr. Oliver hastened to resign his office, which doubtless led many
people to think the methods taken to induce him to do so were very good
ones and such as might well be made further use of. It was in fact not
long afterwards, about dusk of the evening of the 26th of August, that
a mob of men, more deliberately organized than before, ransacked the
office of William Story, Deputy Registrar of the Court of Admiralty,
and, after burning the obnoxious records kept there, they forcibly
entered the house, and the cellar too, of Benjamin Hallowell,
Comptroller of the Customs. "Then the Monsters," says Deacon Tudor,
"being enflam'd with Rum & Wine which they got in sd. Hallowell's
cellar, proceeded with Shouts to the Dwelling House of the Hon-l. Thos.
Hutchinson, Esq., Lieut. Governor, & enter'd in a voyalent manner." At
that moment the Lieutenant-Governor was sitting comfortably at dinner
and had barely time to escape with his family before the massive front
door was broken in with axes. As young Mr. Hutchinson went out by the
back way he heard someone say: "Damn him, he's upstairs, we'll have him
yet." They did not indeed accomplish this purpose; but when the morning
broke the splendid house was seen to be completely gutted, the partition
walls broken in, the roof partly off, and the priceless possessions of
the owner ruined past repair: mahogany and walnut furniture finished
in morocco and crimson damask, tapestries and Turkey carpets, rare
paintings, cabinets of fine glass and old china, stores of immaculate
linen, India paduasoy gowns and red Genoa robes, a choice collection of
books richly bound in leather and many manuscript documents, the fruit
of thirty years' labor in collecting--all broken and cut and cast about
to make a rubbish heap and a bonfire. From the mire of the street there
was afterwards picked up a manuscript history of Massachusetts which is
preserved to this day, the soiled pages of which may still be seen in
the Boston library. Mr. Hutchinson was no friend of the Stamp Act;
but he was a rich man, Lieutenant-Governor of the province, and
brother-in-law of Andrew Oliver.
Government offered the usual rewards--which were never claimed--for
evidence leading to the detection of any persons concerned in the riots.
Men of repute, including the staunchest patriots such as Samuel Adams
and Jonathan Mayhew, expressed their abhorrence of mobs and of all
licentious proceedings in general; but many were nevertheless disposed
to think, with good Deacon Tudor, that in this particular instance
"the universal Obhorrance of the Stamp Act was the cause of the Mob's
riseing." It would be well to punish the mob, but punishing the mob
would not cure the evil which was the cause of the mob; for where there
was oppression the lower sort of people, as was well known, would
be sure to express opposition in the way commonly practiced by them
everywhere, in London as well as in Boston, by gathering in the streets
in crowds, in which event some deplorable excesses were bound to follow,
however much deprecated by men of substance and standing. If ministers
wished the people to be tranquil, let them repeal the Stamp Act; if
they were determined to persist in it, and should attempt to land and
distribute the stamps, loyal and law-abiding citizens, however much they
might regret the fact, could only say that similar disorders were very
likely to become even more frequent and more serious in the future than
they had been in the past.
As the first of November approached, that being the day set for the
levying of the tax, attention and discussion came naturally to center
on the stamps rather than on the Stamp Act. Crowds of curious people
gathered wherever there seemed a prospect of catching a glimpse of
the bundles of stamped papers. Upon their arrival the papers had to be
landed; they could therefore be seen; and the mere sight of them was
likely to be a sufficient challenge to action. It seemed a simple matter
to resist a law which could be of no effect without the existence
of certain papers, paper being a substance easily disposed of. And
everywhere in fact the stamps were disposed of--disposed of by mobs,
with the tacit consent and impalpable encouragement of many men who,
having a reputable position to maintain, would themselves by no means
endure to be seen in a common crowd; men of good estate whom no one
could think of as countenancers of violence, but who were, on this
occasion, as Mr. Livingston said, "not averse to a little rioting"
on condition that it be kept within bounds and well directed to the
attainment of their just rights.
A little rioting, so easy to be set on foot, was difficult to keep
within reasonable bounds, as Mr. Livingston and his friends in New York
soon discovered, somewhat to their chagrin. In New York, even after the
stamps were surrendered by Lieutenant-Governor Colden and safely lodged
in the Town House, there were many excesses wholly unnecessary to the
attainment of the original object. Mr. Colden's new chariot, certainly
never designed to carry the stamps, was burned; and on repeated
occasions windows were broken and "particulars" threatened that their
houses would presently be pulled down. Mr. Livingston was himself the
owner of houses, had an immense respect for property rights and for the
law that guaranteed them, and therefore wished very much that the lower
sort of people would give over their mobbish practices now that the
stamps had been disposed of. Since the law could not now operate without
stamps, what more was necessary except to wait in good order, patiently
denying themselves those activities that involved a violation of the
law, until the law should be repealed? The Stamp Act Congress had
protested in a proper and becoming manner; merchants had agreed not to
import British goods; the Governor had closed the courts. Stopping of
business would doubtless be annoying and might very likely produce
some distress. But it would be legal and it would be effective: the
government would get no revenue; British merchants no profit; and
Americans could not be charged with violating a law the failure of
which was primarily due to the fact that papers indispensable to its
application were, for one reason or another, not forthcoming.
Mr. Livingston, happily possessed of the conservative temperament, was
disposed to achieve desired ends with the least possible disturbance of
his own affairs and those of his country; and most men of independent
means, landowners and merchants of considerable estates, moneyed men and
high salaried officials whose incomes were not greatly affected by any
temporary business depression, were likely to be of Mr. Livingston's
opinion, particularly in this matter of the Stamp Act. Sitting
comfortably at dinner every day and well knowing where they could lay
hands on money to pay current bills, they enjoyed a high sense of
being defenders of liberty and at the same time eminently law-abiding
citizens. They professed a decided preference for nullifying the Stamp
Act without violating it. Sitting at dinner over their wine, they swore
that they would let ships lie in harbor and rot there if necessary, and
would let the courts close for a year or two years, rather than employ
taxed papers to collect their just debts; with a round oath they bound
themselves to it, sealing the pledge, very likely, by sipping another
glass of Madeira. In the defense of just rights, Mr. Livingston and his
conservative friends were willing to sacrifice much: they foresaw some
months of business stagnation, which they nevertheless contemplated with
equanimity, being prepared to tide over the dull time by living in a
diminished manner, if necessary even dispensing with customary bottles
of Madeira at dinner.
Men of radical temperament, having generally less regard for the status
quo, are quick to see ulterior motives back of conservative timidity and
solemn profession of respect for law and order. It was so in the case of
the Stamp Act. Small shopkeepers who were soon sold out and had no great
stock of "old moth-eaten goods" to offer at enhanced prices, rising
young lawyers whose fees ceased with the closing of the courts, artisans
and laborers who bought their dinners (no Madeira included) with their
daily wage--these, and indeed all the lower sort of people, contemplated
the stopping of business with much alarm. Mr. John Adams, a young lawyer
of Braintree and Boston, was greatly interested in the question of the
courts of justice. Were the courts to be closed on the ground that no
legal business could be done without stamped papers? Or were they to go
on trying cases, enforcing the collection of debts, and probating wills
precisely as if no Stamp Act had ever been heard of? The Boston superior
court was being adjourned continuously, for a fortnight at a time,
through the influence of Messrs. Hutchinson and Oliver, to the great
and steadily rising wrath of young Mr. Adams. The courts must soon be
opened, he said to himself; their inactivity "will make a large chasm
in my affairs, if it should not reduce me to distress." Young Mr. Adams,
who had, no less than Mr. Oliver, a family to support and children to
provide for, was just at the point of making a reputation and winning a
competence "when this execrable project was set on foot for my ruin as
well as that of America in general." And therefore Mr. Adams, and Mr.
Samuel Adams, and Mr. Otis, and Mr. Gridley, in order to avert the ruin
of America in general, were "very warm" to have the courts open and
very bitter against Messrs. Hutchinson and Oliver whose "insolence and
impudence and chicanery" in the matter were obvious, and whose secret
motives might easily be inferred. Little wonder if these men, who had
managed by hook or crook to get into their own hands or into the hands
of their families nearly all the lucrative offices in the province, now
sought to curry favor with ministers in order to maintain their amazing
ascendancy!
When the Stamp Act was passed, all men in America had professed
themselves, and were thought to be, Sons of Liberty. Even Mr. Hutchinson
had declared himself against ministerial measures. But scarce a month
had elapsed since the law was to have gone into effect before it was
clear to the discerning that, for all their professions, most of
the "better sort" were not genuine Sons of Liberty at all, but timid
sycophants, pliant instruments of despotism, far more intent upon the
ruin of Mr. Adams and of America in general than any minister could
be shown to be. For the policy of dispensing with activities requiring
stamped papers, much lauded by these gentry as an effective and
constitutional means of defeating the law, was after all nothing but "a
sort of admittance of the legality of the Stamp Act, and had a tendency
to enforce it, since there was just reason to apprehend that the
secret enemies of liberty had actually a design to introduce it by
the necessity to which the people would be reduced by the cessation of
business." It was well, therefore, in view of such insidious designs of
secret enemies, that the people, even to the lowest ranks, should become
"more attentive to their liberties, and more inquisitive about them, and
more determined to defend them, than they were ever before known or had
occasion to be."
To defend their liberties, not against ministers but against ministerial
tools, who were secret betrayers of America, true patriots accordingly
banded themselves in societies which took to themselves the name of Sons
of Liberty and of which the object was, by "putting business in motion
again, in the usual channels, without stamps," to prevent the Stamp Act
ever being enforced. Such a society composed mainly of the lower orders
of people and led by rising young lawyers, was formed in New York. On
January 7, at Mr. Howard's coffee house, abandoning the secrecy which
had hitherto veiled their activities, its members declared to the world
their principles and the motives that would determine their action in
the future:
Resolved: That we will go to the last extremity and venture our lives
and fortunes effectively to prevent the said Stamp Act from ever taking
place in this city and province; Resolved: That any person who shall
deliver out or receive any instrument of writing upon stamped paper ...
shall incur the highest resentment of this society, and be branded with
everlasting infamy; Resolved: That the people who carry on business as
formerly on unstamped Paper ... shall be protected to the utmost power
of this society.
Malicious men said that the Sons of Liberty were "much concerned that
the gentlemen of fortune don't publically join them," for which reason
the society "formed a committee of correspondence with the Liberty Boys
in the neighboring provinces." In February, the society did in fact
appoint such a committee, which sent out letters to all the counties of
New York and to all the colonies except Georgia, proposing the formation
of an intercolonial association of the true Sons of Liberty; to which
letters many replies were received, some of which are still preserved
among the papers of the secretary, Mr. John Lamb. The general sense
of these letters was that an intercolonial association and close
correspondence were highly necessary in view of the presence, in nearly
every colony, of many "secret and inveterate enemies of liberty," and of
the desirability of keeping "a watchful eye over all those who, from
the nature of their offices, vocations, or dispositions, may be the most
likely to introduce the use of stamped paper, to the total subversion of
the British constitution."
No doubt the society kept its watchful eye on every unusual activity and
all suspicious characters, but to what extent it succeeded in "putting
business in motion again, in the usual channels, without stamps," cannot
be said. Both before and after the society was founded, much business
was carried on in violation of the law: newspapers and pamphlets
continued to flourish in the land; the inferior courts at least were
sooner or later opened in nearly every colony; and not infrequently
unstamped clearance papers were issued to shipmasters willing to take
the risk of seizure in London or elsewhere. Mr. John Hancock, easily
persuading himself that there should be no risk, shipped a cargo of oil
with the Boston packet in December. "I am under no apprehensions," he
wrote his London agent. "Should there be any Difficulty in London as
to Marshall's clearance, You will please to represent the circumstances
that no stamps could be obtained, ... in which case I think I am to be
justified, & am not liable to a seizure, or even run any risque at all,
as I have taken the Step of the Law, and made application for clearance,
& can get no other."
Notwithstanding such practices, which were frequent enough, it was a
dull winter, with little profit flowing into the coffers of Mr. Hancock,
with low wages or none at all for worthy artisans and laborers; so that
it must often have seemed, as Governor Moore said, "morally impossible
that the people here can subsist any time under such inconveniences
as they have brought on themselves." Such inconveniences became more
irksome as time passed, with the result that, during the cold and
dreary months of February and March, it became every day a more pressing
question, particularly for the poor, to know whether the bad times would
end at last in the repeal or the admission of the tyrannical act.
Confronted with this difficult dilemma, the faithful Sons of Liberty
were preparing in April to assemble a continental congress as a last
resort, when rumors began to spread that Parliament was on the point
of carrying the repeal. The project of a congress was accordingly
abandoned, and everywhere recrimination gave place to rejoicing. On
April 21, 1766, the vigilant Boston Sons voted that when the rumors
should be confirmed they would celebrate the momentous event in a
befitting manner--would celebrate it "Under the deepest Sense of Duty
and Loyalty to our Most Gracious Sovereign King George, and in respect
and Gratitude to the Patriotic Ministry, Mr. Pitt, and the Glorious
Majority of both Houses of Parliament, by whose Influence, under Divine
Providence, against a most strenuous Opposition, a happy Repeal of the
Stamp Act, so unconstitutional as well as Grievous to His Majesty's good
Subjects of America, is attained; whereby our incontestible Right of
Internal Taxation remains to us inviolate."