A pepper-corn, in acknowledgement of the right, is of more value than
millions without it.--George Grenville.
A perpetual jealousy respecting liberty, is absolutely requisite in all
free states.--John Dickinson.
Good Americans everywhere celebrated the repeal of the Stamp Act with
much festivity and joyful noises in the streets, and with "genteel
entertainments" in taverns, where innumerable toasts were drunk to
Liberty and to its English defenders. Before his house on Beacon Hill,
Mr. John Hancock, on occasion a generous man, erected a platform and
placed there a pipe of Madeira which was broached for all comers. At
Colonel Ingersoll's, where twenty-eight gentlemen attended to take
dinner, fifteen toasts were drunk, "and very loyal they were, and suited
to the occasion"; upon which occasion, we are told, Mr. Hancock again
"treated every person with cheerfulness." Throughout the land men with
literary gifts, or instincts, delivered themselves of vigorous free
verse, founded upon the antithesis of Freedom and Tyranny, and enforcing
the universal truth that "in the unequal war Oppressors fall, the hate,
contempt, and endless curse of all." In New York, on the occasion of the
King's birthday, an ox was roasted whole in the Fields, and twenty
kegs of beer were opened for a great dinner at the King's Arms; and
afterwards, through the generosity of the Assembly of that province,
there was erected on the Bowling Green a mounted statue--made of lead
but without present intention of being turned into bullets--representing
His Majesty King George the Third, of ever glorious memory, the Restorer
of Liberty.
The joyful Americans could not know how little King George aspired to
be thought the Restorer of Liberty. In reality he was extremely sulky
in his silent, stubborn way over the repeal of the Stamp Act, and vexed
most particularly at the part which he himself had been forced to
play in it. The idea of a Patriot King, conceived by Lord Bolingbroke
(one-time Jacobite exile) and instilled into the mind of the young
Hanoverian monarch by an ambitious mother, had little to do with
liberty, either British or colonial, but had much to do with authority.
The Patriot King was to be a king indeed, seeking advice of all virtuous
men of whatever connections, without being bound by any man or faction
of men. It was not to restore liberty, nor yet to destroy it, but to
destroy factions, that the King was ambitious; and for this purpose he
desired a ministry that would do his bidding without too much question.
If Mr. Grenville did not satisfy His Majesty, it was not on account
of the Stamp Act, in respect to which the King was wholly of Mr.
Grenville's opinion that it was a just law and ought to be enforced. In
July, 1765, when Mr. Grenville was dismissed, there had indeed as yet
been no open resistance in America; and if the King had been somewhat
annoyed by the high talk of his loyal subjects in Virginia, he had been
annoyed much more by Mr. Grenville, who was disposed, in spite of his
outward air of humility and solemn protestations of respect, to be very
firm with His Majesty in the matter of ministerial prerogative, reading
him from time to time carefully prepared pedantic little curtain
lectures on the customs of the Constitution and the duties of kings
under particular circumstances.
Unable to endure Mr. Grenville longer, the King turned to Mr. Pitt. This
statesman, although extremely domineering in the House, was much subdued
in the presence of his sovereign, and along with many defects had one
great virtue in his Majesty's eyes, which was that he shared the King's
desire to destroy the factions. The King was accordingly ready to
receive the Great Commoner, even though he insisted on bringing "the
Constitution," and Earl Temple into the bargain, with him to St. James's
Palace. But when it appeared that Earl Temple was opposed to the repeal
of the Stamp Act, Mr. Pitt declined after all to come to St. James's on
any terms, even with his beloved Constitution; whereupon the harassed
young King, rather than submit again to Mr. Grenville's lectures,
surrendered himself, temporarily, to the old-line Whigs under the lead
of the Marquis of Rockingham. In all the negotiations which ended in
this unpromising arrangement of the King's business, the Stamp Act had
apparently not been once mentioned; except that Mr. Grenville, upon
retiring, had ventured to say to His Majesty, as a kind of abbreviated
parting homily, that if "any man ventured to defeat the regulations
laid down for the colonies, by a slackness in the execution, he [Mr.
Grenville] should look upon him as a criminal and the betrayer of his
country."
The Marquis of Rockingham and his friends had no intention of betraying
their country. They had, perhaps, when they were thus accidentally
lifted to power, no very definite intentions of any sort. Respecting the
Stamp Act, as most alarming reports began to come in from America,
His Majesty's Opposition, backed by the landed interest and led by
Mr. Grenville and the Duke of Bedford, knew its mind much sooner than
ministers knew theirs. America was in open rebellion, they said, and so
far from doing anything about it ministers were not even prepared, four
months after disturbances began, to lay necessary information before
the House. Under pressure of such talk, the Marquis of Rockingham had
to make up his mind. It would be odd and contrary to well-established
precedent for ministers to adopt a policy already outlined by
Opposition; and in view of the facts that good Whig tradition, even
if somewhat obscured in latter days, committed them to some kind of
liberalism, that the City and the mercantile interest thought Mr.
Grenville's measures disastrous to trade, and that they were much in
need of Mr. Pitt's eloquence to carry them through, ministers at last,
in January, 1766, declared for the repeal.
Now that it was a question of repealing Mr. Grenville's measures,
serious attention was given to them; and honorable members, in the
notable debate of 1766, learned much about America and the rights of
Englishmen which they had not known before. Lord Mansfield, the most
eminent legal authority in England, argued that the Stamp Act was
clearly within the power of Parliament, while Lord Camden, whose opinion
was by no means to be despised, staked his reputation that the law was
unconstitutional. Mr. Grenville, in his precise way, laid it down
as axiomatic that since "Great Britain protects America, America is
therefore bound to yield obedience"; if not; he desired to know when
Americans were emancipated. Whereupon Mr. Pitt, springing up, desired
to know when they were made slaves. The Great Commoner rejoiced that
America had resisted, and expressed the belief that three millions of
people so dead to all the feelings of liberty as voluntarily to submit
to be made slaves would be very fit instruments to make slaves of all
Englishmen.
Honorable members were more disposed to listen to Mr. Pitt than to vote
with him; and were doubtless less influenced by his hot eloquence than
by the representations of English merchants to the effect that trade was
being ruined by Mr. Grenville's measures. Sir George Seville, honorable
member for Yorkshire, spoke the practical mind of business men when he
wrote to Lord Rockingham: "Our trade is hurt; what the devil have you
been doing? For our part, we don't pretend to understand your politics
and American matters, but our trade is hurt: pray remedy it, and a
plague of you if you won't." This was not so eloquent as Mr. Pitt's
speech, but still very eloquent in its way and more easily followed
than Mr. Pitt's theory that "taxation is no part of the governing or
legislative power."
Constitutional arguments, evenly balanced pro and con, were not certain
to change many minds, while such brief statements as that of Sir George
Seville, although clearly revealing the opinion of that gentleman,
did little to enlighten the House on the merits of the question. That
members might have every opportunity to inform themselves about America,
the ministers thought it worth while to have Benjamin Franklin of
Philadelphia, printer and Friend of the Human Race, brought before the
bar of the House to make such statements of fact or opinion as might be
desired of him. The examination was a long one; the questions very much
to the point; the replies very ready and often more to the point than
the questions. With much exact information the provincial printer
maintained that the colonists, having taxed themselves heavily in
support of the last war, were not well able to pay more taxes, and that,
even if they were abundantly able, the sugar duties and the stamp
tax were improper measures. The stamps, in remote districts, would
frequently require more in postage to obtain than the value of the tax.
The sugar duties had already greatly diminished the volume of colonial
trade, while both the duties and the tax, having to be paid in silver,
were draining America of its specie and thus making it impossible for
merchants to import from England to the same extent as formerly. It
was well known that at the moment Americans were indebted to English
merchants to the amount of several million pounds sterling, which they
were indeed willing, as English merchants themselves said, but unable
to pay. Necessarily, therefore, Americans were beginning to manufacture
their own cloth, which they could very well do. Before their old clothes
were worn out they "would have new ones of their own making."
Against the Stamp Act, honorable members were reminded, there was a
special objection to be urged. It was thought with good reason to be
unconstitutional, which would make its application difficult, if not
impossible. Troops might no doubt be sent to enforce it, but troops
would find no enemy to contend with, no men in arms; they would find no
rebellion in America, although they might indeed create one. Pressed by
Mr. Townshend to say whether the colonies might not, on the ground of
Magna Carta, as well deny the validity of external as internal taxes,
the Doctor was not ready to commit himself on that point. It was true
many arguments had lately been used in England to show Americans that,
if Parliament has no right to tax them internally, it has none to tax
them externally, or to make any other law to bind them; in reply to
which, he could only say that "at present they do not reason so, but in
time they may possibly be convinced by these arguments."
Whether the Parliament was truly enlightened and resolved by statistical
information and lofty constitutional argument is not certainly known;
but it is known that the King, whose steady mind did not readily change,
was still opposed to the repeal, a fact supposed to be not without
influence in unsettling the opinions of some honorable members. Lord
Mansfield had discreetly advised His Majesty that although it was
contrary to the spirit of the constitution to "endeavour by His
Majesty's name to carry questions in Parliament, yet where the lawful
rights of the King and Parliament were to be asserted and maintained, he
thought the making His Majesty's opinion in support of those rights to
be known, was very fit and becoming."
The distinction was subtle, but perhaps not too subtle for a great
lawyer. It was apparently not too subtle for a Patriot King, since
certain noble lords who could be counted on to know the King's wishes
conveyed information to the proper persons that those who found it
against their conscience to vote for the repeal would not for that
reason be received coldly at St. James's Palace. In order to preserve
the constitution as well as to settle the question of the repeal on its
merits, Lord Rockingham and the Earl of Shelburne obtained an interview
with the King at which they pointed out to him the manifest irregularity
of such a procedure, and in addition expressed their conviction that, on
account of the high excitement in the City, failure to repeal the
Stamp Act would be attended with very serious consequences. Whether to
preserve the Constitution, or to allow the repeal to be determined on
its merits, or for some other reason, the King at last gave in writing
his consent to the ministers' measure. On February 22, by a vote of
275 to 167, Mr. Conway was given leave to bring in the bill for a total
repeal of the Stamp Act. The bill was accordingly brought in, passed by
both houses, and on March 18 assented to by the King.
In the colonies the repeal was thought to be a victory for true
principles of government, at least a tacit admission by the mother
country that the American interpretation of the Constitution was the
correct one. No Englishman denied that the repeal was an American
victory; and there were some, like Pitt and Camden, who preferred
the constitutional theories of Daniel Dulaney ¹ to those of George
Grenville. But most Englishmen who took the trouble to have any views on
such recondite matters, having in general a poor opinion of provincial
logic, easily dismissed the whole matter with the convincing phrase of
Charles Townshend that the distinction between internal and external
taxes was "perfect nonsense." The average Briton, taking it for granted
that all the subtle legal aspects of the question had been thoroughly
gone into by Lord Mansfield, was content to read Mr. Soame Jenyns, a
writer of verse and member of the Board of Trade, who in a leisure hour
had recently turned his versatile mind to the consideration of colonial
rights with the happiest results. In twenty-three very small pages
he had disposed of the "Objections to the Taxation of Our American
Colonies" in a manner highly satisfactory to himself and doubtless also
to the average reading Briton, who understood constitutional questions
best when they were "briefly considered," and when they were humorously
expounded in pamphlets that could be had for sixpence.
¹ Daniel Dulaney, of Maryland, was the author of a pamphlet entitled
Considerations on the Propriety of Imposing Taxes on the British
Colonies. Pitt, in his speech on the repeal of the Stamp Act, referred
to this pamphlet as a masterly performance.
Having a logical mind, Mr. Jenyns easily perceived that taxes could
be objected to on two grounds: the ground of right and the ground of
expediency. In his opinion the right of Parliament to lay taxes on
America and the expediency of doing so at the present moment were
propositions so clear that any man, in order not to bring his
intelligence in question, needed to apologize for undertaking to defend
them. Mr. Jenyns wished it known that he was not the man to carry owls
to Athens, and that he would never have thought it necessary to prove
either the right or the expediency of taxing our American colonies, "had
not many arguments been lately flung out ... which with insolence equal
to their absurdity deny them both." With this conciliatory preliminary
disclaimer of any lack of intelligence on his own part, Mr. Jenyns
proceeded to point out, in his most happy vein, how unsubstantial
American reasoning really appeared when, brushing aside befogging
irrelevancies, you once got to the heart of the question.
The heart of the question was the proposition that there should be no
taxation without representation; upon which principle it was necessary
to observe only that many individuals in England, such as copyholders
and leaseholders, and many communities, such as Manchester and
Birmingham, were taxed in Parliament without being represented there. If
Americans quoted you "Lock, Sidney, Selden, and many other great names
to prove that every Englishman ... is still represented in Parliament,"
he would only ask why, since Englishmen are all represented in
Parliament, are not all Americans represented in exactly the same way?
Either Manchester is not represented or Massachusetts is. "Are Americans
not British subjects? Are they not Englishmen? Or are they only
Englishmen when they solicit protection, but not Englishmen when taxes
are required to enable this country to protect them?" Americans said
they had Assemblies of their own to tax them, which was a privilege
granted them by charter, without which "that liberty which every
Englishman has a right to is torn from them, they are all slaves, and
all is lost." Colonial charters were, however, "undoubtedly no more than
those of all corporations, which empower them to make bye-laws." As for
"liberty," the word had so many meanings, "having within a few years
been used as a synonymous term for Blasphemy, Bawdy, Treason, Libels,
Strong Beer, and Cyder," that Mr. Jenyns could not presume to say what
it meant.
Against the expediency of the taxes, Mr. Jenyns found that two
objections had been raised: that the time was improper and the manner
wrong. As to the manner, the colonies themselves had in a way prescribed
it, since they had not been able at the request of ministers to suggest
any other. The time Mr. Jenyns thought most propitious, a point upon
which he grew warm and almost serious.
Can any time be more proper to require some assistance from our
colonies, to preserve to themselves their present safety, than when this
country is almost undone by procuring it? Can any time be more proper to
impose some tax upon their trade, than when they are enabled to rival us
in their manufactures by the encouragement and protection which we
have given them? Can any time be more proper to oblige them to settle
handsome incomes on their governors, than when we find them unable to
procure a subsistence on any other terms than those of breaking all
their instructions, and betraying the rights of their Sovereign? ... Can
there be a more proper time to force them to maintain an army at their
expence, than when that army is necessary for their own protection, and
we are utterly unable to support it? Lastly, can there be a more proper
time for this mother country to leave off feeding out of her own vitals
these children whom she has nursed up, than when they are arrived at
such strength and maturity as to be well able to provide for themselves,
and ought rather with filial duty to give some assistance to her
distresses?
Americans, after all, were not the only ones who might claim to have a
grievance!
It was upon a lighter note, not to end in anticlimax, that Mr. Jenyns
concluded his able pamphlet. He had heard it hinted that allowing the
colonies representation in Parliament would be a simple plan for making
taxes legal. The impracticability of this plan, he would not go into,
since the plan itself had nowhere been seriously pressed, but he would,
upon that head, offer the following consideration:
I have lately seen so many specimens of the great powers of speech of
which these American gentlemen are possessed, that I should be much
afraid that the sudden importation of so much eloquence at once would
greatly endanger the safety of the government of this country.... If we
can avail ourselves of these taxes on no other condition, I shall never
look upon it as a measure of frugality, being perfectly satisfied that
in the end, it will be much cheaper for us to pay their army than their
orators.
Mr. Jenyns's pamphlet, which could be had for sixpence, was widely read,
with much appreciation for its capital wit and extraordinary common
sense; more widely read in England than Mr. James Otis's Rights of the
British Colonies Asserted and Proved or Daniel Dulaney's Considerations
on the Propriety of Imposing Taxes on the British Colonies; and it
therefore did much more than these able pamphlets to clarify English
opinion on the rights of Parliament and the expediency of taxing
America. No one could deny that Government had yielded in the face of
noisy clamor and forcible resistance. To yield under the circumstances
may have been wise or not; but Government had not yielded on any ground
of right, but had on the contrary most expressly affirmed, in the
Declaratory Act, that "the King's Majesty, by and with the advice of
the lords spiritual and temporal, and commons of Great Britain, in
Parliament assembled, had, hath, and of right ought to have, full power
and authority to make such laws and statutes of sufficient force and
validity to bind the colonies and people of America, subjects of the
Crown of Great Britain, in all cases whatsoever." Government had not
even denied the expediency of taxing America, the total repeal of the
Stamp Act and the modification of the Sugar Act having been carried on a
consideration of the inexpediency of these particular taxes only. Taxes
not open to the same objection might in future be found, and doubtless
must be found, inasmuch as the troops were still retained in America and
the Quartering Act continued in force there. For new taxes, however, it
would doubtless be necessary to await the formation of a new ministry.
The formation of a new ministry was not an unusual occurrence in
the early years of King George the Third. No one supposed that Lord
Rockingham could hold on many months; and as early as July, 1766, all
London knew that Mr. Pitt had been sent for. The coming and going
of great men in times of ministerial crisis was always a matter of
interest; but the formation of that ministry of all the factions which
the Patriot King had long desired was something out of the ordinary, the
point of greatest speculation being how many irreconcilables Mr. Pitt
(the Earl of Chatham he was now) could manage to get seated about a
single table. From the point of view of irreconcilability, no one was
more eligible than Mr. Charles Townshend, at that moment Paymaster
of the Forces, a kind of enfant terrible of English politics, of whom
Horace Walpole could say, with every likelihood of being believed,
that "his speech of last Friday, made while half drunk, was all wit and
indiscretion; nobody but he could have made it, nobody but he would
have made it if he could. He beat Lord Chatham in language, Burke in
metaphors, Grenville in presumption, Rigby in impudence, himself in
folly, and everybody in good humour."
This gentleman, much to his astonishment, one day received the following
note from Lord Chatham: "Sir: You are too great a magnitude not to be
in a responsible place; I intend to propose you for Chancellor of the
Exchequer, and must desire to have your answer by nine o'clock tonight."
Mr. Townshend was dismayed as well as astonished, his dismay arising
from the fact that the office of Chancellor of the Exchequer was worth
but £2700, which was precisely £4300 less than he was then receiving as
Paymaster of the Forces. To be a great magnitude on small pay had its
disadvantages, and Mr. Townshend, after remaining home all day in great
distress of mind, begged Mr. Pitt to be allowed to retain the office
of Paymaster; which was no sooner granted than he changed his mind and
begged Mr. Pitt to be allowed to accept the Exchequer place, which Mr.
Pitt at first refused and was only persuaded to grant finally upon the
intercession of the Duke of Grafton. The day following, Mr. Townshend
accordingly informed the King that he had decided, in view of the
urgent representations of the Earl of Chatham, to accept the office of
Chancellor of the Exchequer in his Majesty's new ministry.
No one supposed, least of all himself, that this delightful man would
have any influence in formulating the policies of the Chatham ministry.
Lord Chatham's policies were likely to be his own; and in the present
case, so far as America was concerned, they were not such as could be
readily associated with Mr. Townshend's views, so far as those views
were known or were not inconsistent. For dealing with America, the
Earl of Shelburne, because of his sympathetic understanding of colonial
matters, had been brought into the ministry to formulate a comprehensive
and conciliatory plan; as for the revenue, always the least part of Lord
Chatham's difficulties as it was the chief of Mr. Grenville's, it was
thought that the possessions of the East India Company, if taken over by
the Government, would bring into the Treasury sums quite sufficient to
pay the debt as well as to relieve the people, in England and America
at least, of those heavy taxes which Mr. Grenville and his party had
thought necessarily involved in the extension of empire. It was a
curious chapter of accidents that brought all these well-laid plans
to nought. Scarcely was the ministry formed when the Earl of Chatham,
incapacitated by the gout, retired into a seclusion that soon became
impenetrable; and "even before this resplendent orb was entirely set,
and while the western horizon was in a blaze with his descending glory,
on the opposite quarter of the heavens arose another luminary, and, for
his hour, became lord of the ascendant." This luminary was Mr. Charles
Townshend.
Mr. Townshend was the "delight and ornament" of the House, as Edmund
Burke said. Never was a man in any country of "more pointed and finished
wit, or (where his passions were not concerned) of a more refined,
exquisite, and penetrating judgment"; never a man to excel him in
"luminous explanation and display of his subject," nor ever one less
tedious or better able to conform himself exactly to the temper of the
House which he seemed to guide because he was always sure to follow it.
In 1765 Mr. Townshend had voted for the Stamp Act, but in 1766, when the
Stamp Act began to be no favorite, he voted for the repeal, and would
have spoken for it too, if an illness had not prevented him. And now,
in 1767, Mr. Townshend was Chancellor of the Exchequer, and as such
responsible for the revenue; a man without any of that temperamental
obstinacy which persists in opinions once formed, and without any fixed
opinions to persist in; but quite disposed, according to habit, to
"hit the House just between wind and water," and to win its applause by
speaking for the majority, or by "haranguing inimitably on both sides"
when the majority was somewhat uncertain.
In January, 1767, when Lord Chatham was absent and the majority was
very uncertain, Mr. Grenville took occasion, in the debate upon the
extraordinaries for the army in England and America, to move that
America, like Ireland, should support its own establishment. The
opportunity was one which Mr. Townshend could not let pass. Much to the
astonishment of every one and most of all to that of his colleagues in
the ministry, he supported Mr. Grenville's resolution, declaring himself
now in favor of the Stamp Act which he had voted to repeal, treating
"Lord Chatham's distinction between internal and external taxation as
contemptuously as Mr. Grenville had done," and pledging himself able, if
necessary, to find a revenue in America nearly adequate to the proposed
project. The Earl of Shelburne, in great distress of mind, at once wrote
to Lord Chatham, relating the strange if characteristic conduct of the
Chancellor of the Exchequer, and declaring himself entirely ignorant of
the intentions of his colleagues. It was indeed an anomalous situation.
If Lord Chatham's policies were still to be considered those of
the ministry, Mr. Townshend might be said to be in opposition, a
circumstance which made "many people think Lord Chatham ill at St.
James's" only.
Lord Chatham was not ill at St. James's. He was most likely very well
at St. James's, being unable to appear there, thus leaving the divided
ministry amenable to the King's management or helpless before a factious
Opposition. The opportunity of the Opposition came when the Chancellor
of the Exchequer, in February, proposed to continue the land tax at four
shillings for one year more, after which time, he thought, it might be
reduced to three shillings in view of additional revenues to be obtained
from the East India Company. But Opposition saw no reason why, in
view of the revenue which Mr. Townshend had pledged himself to find in
America, a shilling might not be taken from the land at once, a proposal
which Mr. Dowdeswell moved should be done, and which was accordingly
voted through the influence of Mr. Grenville and the Duke of Bedford,
who had formerly carried the Stamp Act, aided by the Rockingham Whigs
who had formerly repealed it. If Lord Chatham was ill at St. James's,
this was a proper time to resign. It was doubtless a proper time to
resign in any case. But Lord Chatham did not resign. In March he came
to London, endeavored to replace Mr. Townshend by Lord North, which he
failed to do, and then retired to Bath to be seen no more, leaving Mr.
Townshend more than ever "master of the revels."
Mr. Townshend did not resign either, but continued in office, quite
undisturbed by the fact that a cardinal measure of the ministry had been
decisively voted down. Mr. Townshend reasoned that if Opposition would
not support the ministry, all difficulties would be straightened out by
the ministry's supporting the Opposition. This was the more reasonable
since Opposition had perhaps been right after all, so far as the
colonies were concerned. Late reports from that quarter seemed to
indicate that the repeal of the Stamp Act, far from satisfying the
Americans, had only confirmed that umbrageous people in a spirit of
licentiousness, which was precisely what Opposition had predicted as
the sure result of any weak concession. The New York Assembly, it now
appeared, refused to make provision for the troops according to the
terms of the Quartering Act; New York merchants were petitioning for
a further modification of the trade acts; the precious Bostonians,
wrangling refined doctrinaire points with Governor Bernard, were making
interminable difficulties about compensating the sufferers from the
Stamp Act riots. If Lord Chatham, in February, 1767, could go so far
as to say that the colonies had "drunk deep of the baneful cup of
infatuation," Mr. Townshend, having voted for the Stamp Act and for its
repeal, might well think, in May, that the time was ripe for a return to
rigorous measures.
On May 13, in a speech which charmed the House, Mr. Townshend opened
his plan for settling the colonial question. The growing spirit of
insubordination, which must be patent to all, he thought could be most
effectively checked by making an example of New York, where defiance
was at present most open; for which purpose it was proposed that the
meetings of the Assembly of that province be totally suspended until
it should have complied with the terms of the Mutiny Act. As one chief
source of power in colonial assemblies which contributed greatly to make
them insubordinate was the dependence of executive officials upon them
for salaries, Mr. Townshend now renewed the proposal, which he had
formerly brought forward in 1763, to create an independent civil list
for the payment of governors and judges from England. The revenue for
such a civil list would naturally be raised in America. Mr. Townshend
would not, however, venture to renew the Stamp Act, which had been so
opposed on the ground of its being an internal tax. He was free to say
that the distinction between internal and external taxes was perfect
nonsense; but, since the logical Americans thought otherwise, he would
concede the point and would accordingly humor them by laying only
external duties, which he thought might well be on various kinds of
glass and paper, on red and white lead, and upon teas, the duties to be
collected in colonial ports upon the importation of these commodities
from England. It was estimated that the duties might altogether make
about £40,000, if the collection were properly attended to; and in order
that the collection might be properly attended to, and for the more
efficient administration of the American customs in general, Mr.
Townshend further recommended that a Board of Customs Commissioners be
created and established in Massachusetts Bay. With slight opposition,
all these recommendations were enacted into law; and the Commissioners
of the Customs, shortly afterward appointed by the King, arrived in
Boston in November, 1767.
At Boston, the Commissioners found much to be done in the way of
collecting the customs, particularly in the matter of Madeira wines.
Madeira wines were much drunk in the old Bay colony, being commonly
imported directly from the islands, without too much attention to the
duty of £7 per ton lawfully required in that case. Mr. John Hancock, a
popular Boston merchant, did a thriving business in this way; and his
sloop Liberty, in the ordinary course of trade, carrying six pipes of
"good saleable Madeira" for the coffee-house retailers, four pipes of
the "very best" for his own table, and "two pipes more of the best ...
for the Treasurer of the province," entered the harbor on May 9,
1768. In the evening Mr. Thomas Kirk, tide-waiter, acting for the
Commissioners, boarded the sloop, where he found the captain, Nat
Bernard, and also, by some chance, another of Mr. Hancock's skippers,
young James Marshall, together with half a dozen of his friends. They
sat with punch served by the captain all round until nine o'clock, when
young James Marshall casually asked if a few casks might not as well be
set on shore that evening. Mr. Kirk replied that it could not be done
with his leave; whereupon he found himself "hoved down" into the cabin
and confined there for three hours, from which point of disadvantage
he could distinctly hear overhead "a noise of many people at work,
a-hoisting out of goods." In due time Mr. Kirk was released, having
suffered no injury, except perhaps a little in his official character.
Next day Mr. Hancock's cargo was duly entered, no pipes of Madeira
listed; and to all appearance the only serious aspect of the affair
was that young James Marshall died before morning, it was thought from
overexertion and excitement.
Very likely few people in Boston knew anything about this interesting
episode; and a month later much excitement was accordingly raised by
the news that Mr. Hancock's sloop Liberty had been ordered seized
for non-payment of customs. A crowd watched the ship towed, for
safe-keeping, under the guns of the Romney in the harbor. When the
Commissioners, who had come down to see the thing done, left the wharf
they were roughly handled by the incensed people; and in the evening
windows of some of their houses were broken, and a boat belonging to a
collector was hauled on shore and burnt on the Common. Governor Bernard
at last informed the Commissioners that he could not protect them in
Boston, whereupon they retired with their families to the Romney, and
later to Castle William. There they continued, under difficulties, the
work of systematizing the American customs; and not without success,
inasmuch as the income from the duties during the years from 1768 to
1774 averaged about £30,000 sterling, at an annual cost to the revenue
of not more than £13,000. This saving was nevertheless not effected
without the establishment at Boston, on the recommendation of the
Commissioners, of two regiments of the line which arrived September
28, 1768, and were landed under the guns of eight men-of-war, without
opposition. The cost of maintaining the two regiments in Boston was
doubtless not included in the £13,000 charged to the revenue as the
annual expense of collecting £30,000 of customs.
In spite of the two regiments of the line, with artillery, Boston was
not quiet in this year 1768. The soldiers acted decently enough, no
doubt; but their manners were very British and their coats were red,
and "their simple presence," conveying every day the suggestion of
compulsion, was "an intolerable grievance." Every small matter was
magnified. The people, says Hutchinson, "had been used to answer to the
call of the town watch in the night, yet they did not like to answer
to the frequent calls of the centinels posted at the barracks; ... and
either a refusal to answer, or an answer accompanied with irritating
language, endangered the peace of the town." On Sundays, especially,
the Boston mind found something irreverent, something at the very least
irrelevant, in the presence of the bright colored and highly secular
coats; while the noise of fife and drum, so disturbing to the sabbath
calm, called forth from the Selectmen a respectful petition to the
general requesting him to "dispense with the band."
These were but slight matters; but as time passed little grievances
accumulated on both sides until the relation between the people and the
soldiers was one of settled hostility, and at last, after two years, the
tense situation culminated in the famous Boston Massacre. On the evening
of March 5, 1770, there was an alarm of fire, false as it turned out,
which brought many people into the streets, especially boys, whom one
may easily imagine catching up, as they ran, handfuls of damp snow to
make snowballs. For snowballs, there could be no better target than
red-coated sentinels standing erect and motionless at the post of duty;
and it chanced that one of these individuals, stationed before the
Customs House door, was pelted with the close-packed missiles. Being
several times struck, he called for aid, the guard turned out, and a
crowd gathered. One of the soldiers was presently knocked down, another
was hit by a club, and at last six or seven shots were fired, with or
without orders, the result of which was four citizens lying dead on the
snow-covered streets of Boston.
The Boston Massacre was not as serious as the Massacre of Saint
Bartholomew or the Sicilian Vespers; but it served to raise passion to
a white heat in the little provincial town. On the next day there was
assembled, under the skillful leadership of Samuel Adams, a great town
meeting which demanded in no uncertain terms the removal of the troops
from Boston. Under the circumstances, six hundred British soldiers would
have fared badly in Boston; and in order to prevent further bloodshed,
acting Governor Hutchinson finally gave the order. Within a fortnight,
the two small regiments retired to Castle William. Seven months later
Captain Preston and other soldiers implicated in the riot were tried
before a Boston jury. Ably defended by John Adams and Josiah Quincy,
they were all acquitted on the evidence, except two who were convicted
and lightly punished for manslaughter.
As it happened, the Boston Massacre occurred on the 5th of March, 1770,
which was the very day that Lord North rose in the House of Commons to
propose the partial repeal of the Townshend duties. This outcome was not
unconnected with events that had occurred in America during the eighteen
months since the landing of the troops in Boston in September, 1768. In
1768, John Adams could not have foretold the Boston Massacre, or have
foreseen that he would himself incur popular displeasure for having
defended the soldiers. But he could, even at that early date, divine the
motives of the British government in sending the troops to Boston. To
his mind, "the very appearance of the troops in Boston was a strong
proof ... that the determination of Great Britain to subjugate us was
too deep and inveterate to be altered." All the measures of ministry
seemed indeed to confirm that view. Mr. Townshend's condescension in
accepting the colonial distinction between internal and external taxes
was clearly only a subtle maneuver designed to conceal an attack upon
liberty far more dangerous than the former attempts of Mr. Grenville.
After all, Mr. Townshend was probably right in thinking the distinction
of no importance, the main point being whether, as Lord Chatham had
said, the Parliament could by any kind of taxes "take money out of their
pockets without their consent."
Duties on glass and tea certainly would take money out of their pockets
without their consent, and therefore it must be true that taxes could be
rightly laid only by colonial assemblies, in which alone Americans could
be represented. But of what value was it to preserve the abstract
right of taxation by colonial assemblies if meanwhile the assemblies
themselves might, by act of Parliament, be abolished? And had not the
New York Assembly been suspended by act of Parliament? And were not
the new duties to be used to pay governors and judges, thus by subtle
indirection undermining the very basis of legislative independence?
And now, in the year 1768, the Massachusetts Assembly, having sent a
circular letter to the other colonies requesting concerted action in
defense of their liberties, was directed by Lord Hillsborough, speaking
in his Majesty's name, "to rescind the resolution which gave birth
to the circular letter from the Speaker, and to declare their
disapprobation of, and dissent to, that rash and hasty proceeding."
Clearly, it was no mere question of taxation but the larger question of
legislative independence that now confronted Americans.
A more skillful dialectic was required to defend American rights against
the Townshend duties than against the Stamp Act. It was a somewhat
stubborn fact that Parliament had for more than a hundred years passed
laws effectively regulating colonial trade, and for regulating trade had
imposed duties, some of which had brought into the Exchequer a certain
revenue. Americans, wishing to be thought logical as well as loyal,
could not well say at this late date that Parliament had no right to lay
duties in regulation of trade. Must they then submit to the Townshend
duties? Or was it possible to draw a line, making a distinction, rather
more subtle than the old one between internal and external taxes,
between duties for regulation and duties for revenue? This latter feat
was undertaken by Mr. John Dickinson of Pennsylvania, anonymously, under
the guise of a simple but intelligent and virtuous farmer whose arcadian
existence had confirmed in him an instinctive love of liberty and had
supplied him with the leisure to meditate at large upon human welfare
and the excellent British Constitution.
Mr. Dickinson readily granted America to be dependent upon Great
Britain, "as much dependent upon Great Britain as one perfectly
free people can be on another." But it appeared axiomatic to the
unsophisticated mind of a simple farmer that no people could be free if
taxed without its consent, and that Parliament had accordingly no right
to lay any taxes upon the colonies; from which it followed that the
sole question in respect to duties laid on trade was whether they were
intended for revenue or for regulation. Intention in such matters was
of primary importance, since all duties were likely to be regulative
to some extent. It might be objected that "it will be difficult for any
persons but the makers of the laws to determine which of them are made
for regulation of trade, and which for raising a revenue." This was
true enough but at present of academic importance only, inasmuch as the
makers of the Sugar Act, the Stamp Act, and the Townshend duties had
conveniently and very clearly proclaimed their intention to be the
raising of a revenue. Yet this question, academic now, might soon become
extremely practical. The makers of laws might not always express their
intention so explicitly; they might, with intention to raise a revenue,
pass acts professing to be for regulation only; and therefore, since
"names will not change the nature of things," Americans ought "firmly
to believe ... that unless the most watchful attention be exerted, a
new servitude may be slipped upon us under the sanction of usual and
respectable terms." In such case the intention should be inferred from
the nature of the act; and the Farmer, for his part, sincerely hoped
that his countrymen "would never, to their latest existence, want
understanding sufficient to discover the intentions of those who rule
over them."
Mr. Dickinson's Farmer's Letters were widely read and highly commended.
The argument, subtle but clear, deriving the nature of an act from the
intention of its makers, and the intention of its makers from the nature
of the act, contributed more than any other exposition to convince
Americans that they "have the same right that all states have, of
judging when their privileges are invaded."
"As much dependent on Great Britain as one perfectly free people can be
on another," the Farmer said. Englishmen might be excused for desiring
a more precise delimitation of parliamentary jurisdiction than could
be found in this phrase, as well as for asking what clear legal ground
there was for making any delimitation at all. To the first point, Mr.
Dickinson said in effect that Parliament had not the right to tax the
colonies and that it had not the right to abolish their assemblies
through which they alone could tax themselves. The second point Mr.
Dickinson did not clearly answer, although it was undoubtedly most
fundamental. To this point Mr. Samuel Adams had given much thought;
and in letters which he drafted for the Massachusetts Assembly, in the
famous circular letter particularly, and in the letter of January 12,
1769, sent to the Assembly's agent in England, Mr. Dennys De Berdt,
Mr. Adams formulated a theory designed to show that the colonies
were "subordinate" but not subject to the British Parliament. The
delimitation of colonial and parliamentary jurisdictions Mr. Adams
achieved by subordinating all legislative authority to an authority
higher than any positive law, an authority deriving its sanction from
the fixed and universal law of nature. This higher authority, which no
legislature could "overleap without destroying its own foundation," was
the British Constitution.
Mr. Adams spoke of the British Constitution with immense confidence, as
something singularly definite and well known, the provisions of which
were clearly ascertainable; which singular effect doubtless came from
the fact that he thought of it, not indeed as something written down
on paper and deposited in archives of state, but as a series of
propositions which, as they were saying in France, were indelibly
"written in the hearts of all men." The British Constitution, he said,
like the constitution of every free state, "is fixed," having its
foundation not in positive law, which would indeed give Parliament an
ultimate and therefore a despotic authority, but in "the law of God
and nature." There were in the British Empire many legislatures, all
deriving their authority from, and all finding their limitations in,
the Constitution. Parliament had certainly a supreme or superintending
legislative authority in the Empire, as the colonial assemblies had
a "subordinate," in the sense of a local, legislative authority; but
neither the Parliament nor any colonial assembly could "overleap the
Constitution without destroying its own foundation." And therefore,
since the Constitution is founded "in the law of God and nature," and
since "it is an essential natural right that a man shall quietly enjoy
and have the sole disposal of his property," the Americans must enjoy
this right equally with Englishmen, and Parliament must be bound to
respect this right in the colonies as well as in England; from which it
followed irresistibly that the consent of the colonies to any taxation
must be sought exclusively in their own assemblies, it being manifestly
impossible for that consent to be "constitutionally had in Parliament."
It was commonly thought in America that Mr. Adams, although not a judge,
had a singular gift for constitutional interpretation. Far-sighted men
could nevertheless believe that a powerful party in England, inspired by
inveterate hatred of America and irretrievably bent upon her ruin, would
pronounce all his careful distinctions ridiculous and would still reply
to every argument by the mere assertion, as a fact behind which one
could not go, that Parliament had always had and must therefore still
have full power to bind the colonies in all cases whatsoever. If Britain
would not budge from this position, Americans would soon be confronted
with the alternative of admitting Parliament to have full power or
denying it to have any.
With that sharp-set alternative in prospect, it would be well to keep in
mind the fact that arguments lost carrying power in proportion to their
subtlety; and in the opinion of so good a judge as Benjamin Franklin the
reasoning of Mr. Adams and Mr. Dickinson was perhaps not free from this
grave disadvantage.
I am not yet master [he was free to confess] of the idea these ...
writers have of the relation between Britain and her colonies. I know
not what the Boston people mean by the "subordination" they acknowledge
in their Assembly to Parliament, while they deny its power to make laws
for them, nor what bounds the Farmer sets to the power he acknowledges
in Parliament to "regulate the trade of the colonies," it being
difficult to draw lines between duties for regulation and those for
revenue; and, if the Parliament is to be the judge, it seems to me that
establishing such a principle of distinction will amount to little.
The more I have thought and read on the subject, the more I find myself
confirmed in opinion, that no middle ground can be well maintained, I
mean not clearly with intelligible arguments. Something might be made of
either of the extremes: that Parliament has a power to make all laws
for us, or that it has a power to make no laws for us; and I think the
arguments for the latter more numerous and weighty, than those for the
former.
The good Doctor had apparently read and thought a great deal about the
matter since the day when Mr. Grenville had called him in to learn if
there were good objections to be urged against the Stamp Act.
Practical men were meanwhile willing to allow the argument to take
whatever direction the exigencies of the situation might require, being
ready to believe that Mr. Dickinson counseled well and that Mr. Franklin
counseled well; being nevertheless firmly convinced from past experience
that an Englishman's ability to see reason was never great except when
his pocket was touched. Practical men were therefore generally of the
opinion that they could best demonstrate their rights by exhibiting
their power. This happily, they could do by bringing pressure to bear
upon English merchants by taking money out of their pockets--without
their consent to be sure but in a manner strictly legal--by means of
non-importation agreements voluntarily entered into.
As early as October, 1767, the Boston merchants entered into such an
agreement, which was however not very drastic and proved to be of no
effect, as it was at first unsupported by the merchants in any other
colony. In April, 1768, the merchants of New York, seeing the necessity
of concerted action, agreed not to import "any goods [save a very few
enumerated articles] which shall be shipped from Great Britain after the
first of October next; provided Boston and Philadelphia adopt similar
measures by the first of June." Philadelphia merchants said they were
not opposed to the principle of non-importation, but greatly feared the
New York plan would serve to create a monopoly by enabling men of means
to lay in a large stock of goods before the agreement went into effect.
This was very true; but the objection, if it was an objection, proved
not to be an insurmountable one. Before the year was out, in the late
summer for the most part, the merchants in all the commercial towns had
subscribed to agreements, differing somewhat in detail, of which the
substance was that they would neither import from Great Britain any
commodities, nor buy or sell any which might inadvertently find their
way in, until the duties imposed by the Townshend act should have been
repealed.
The merchants' agreements were, for whatever reason, much better
observed in some places than in others. Imports from Great Britain to
New York fell during the year 1769 from about £482,000 to about £74,000.
Imports into New England and into Pennsylvania declined a little more
than one half; whereas in the southern colonies there was no decline at
all, but on the contrary an increase, slight in the case of Maryland
and Virginia and rather marked in the Carolinas. In spite of these
defections, the experiment was not without effect upon English
merchants. English merchants, but little interested in the decline or
increase of trade to particular colonies, were chiefly aware that the
total exportation to America was nearly a million pounds less in 1769
than in 1768. Understanding little about colonial rights, but knowing
only, as in 1766, that their "trade was hurt," they accordingly applied
once more to Parliament for relief. The commerce with America which was
"so essential to afford employment and subsistence to the manufactures
of these kingdoms, to augment the public revenue, to serve as a nursery
for seamen, and to increase our navigation and maritime strength"--this
commerce, said the Merchants and Traders of the City of London Trading
to America, "is at present in an alarming state of suspension"; and
the Merchants and Traders of the City of London therefore humbly
prayed Parliament to repeal the duties which were the occasion of their
inconveniences.
The petition of the London merchants came before the House on March 5,
1770, that being the day fixed by Lord North for proposing, on behalf
of the ministry, certain measures for America. No one, said the first
minister, could be more free than himself to recognize the importance
of American trade or more disposed to meet the wishes of the London
merchants as far as possible. The inconveniences under which that trade
now labored were manifest, but he could not think, with the petitioners,
that these inconveniences arose from "the nature of the duties" so much
as "through the medium of the dissatisfaction of the Americans,
and those combinations and associations of which we have
heard"--associations and combinations which had been called, in an
address to the House, "unwarrantable," but which he for his part would
go so far as to call illegal. These illegal combinations in America
were obviously what caused the inconveniences of which the merchants
complained. To the pressure of illegal combinations alone Parliament
ought never to yield; and ministers wished it clearly understood that,
if they were about to propose a repeal of some of the duties, they were
not led to take this step from any consideration of the disturbances in
the colonies.
On the contrary, the duties which it was now proposed to repeal--the
duties on lead, glass, and paper--were to be repealed strictly on
the ground that they ought never to have been laid, because duties on
British manufactures were contrary to true commercial principles. Last
year, when ministers had expressed, in a letter of Lord Hillsborough to
the governors, their intention to repeal these duties, some members had
been in favor of repealing all the duties and some were still in favor
of doing so. As to that, the first minister could only say that he had
not formerly been opposed to it and would not now be opposed to it,
had the Americans, in response to the Earl of Hillsborough's letter,
exhibited any disposition to cease their illegal disturbances or
renounce their combinations. But the fact was that conditions in America
had grown steadily worse since the Earl of Hillsborough's letter, and
never had been so bad as now; in view of which fact ministers could not
but think it wise to maintain some tax as a matter of principle purely.
They would therefore recommend that the tax on tea, no burden certainly
on anyone, be continued as a concrete application of the right of
Parliament to tax the colonies.
In so far as they were designed to bring pressure to bear upon the
mother country, the merchants' agreements were clearly not without a
measure of success, having helped perhaps to bring Parliament to the
point of repealing the duties on lead, glass, and paper, as well as
to bring ministers to the point of keeping the duty on tea. Americans
generally were doubtless well pleased with this effect; but not all
Americans were able to regard the experiment in non-importation with
unqualified approval in other respects. Non-importation, by diminishing
the quantity and increasing the price of commodities, involved a certain
amount of personal sacrifice. This sacrifice, however, fell chiefly on
the consumers, the non-importation not being under certain circumstances
altogether without advantage to merchants who faithfully observed their
pledges as well as to those who observed them only occasionally. So long
as their warehouses, well stocked in advance, contained anything that
could be sold at a higher price than formerly, non-importation was no
bad thing even for those merchants who observed the agreement. For those
who did not observe the agreement, as well as for those who engaged in
the smuggling trade from Holland, it was no bad thing at any time,
and it promised to become an increasingly excellent thing in exact
proportion to the exhaustion of the fair trader's stock and the
consequent advance in prices. As time passed, therefore, the fair
trader became aware that the non-importation experiment, practically
considered, was open to certain objections; whereas the unfair trader
was more in favor of the experiment the longer it endured, being every
day more convinced that the non-importation agreement ought to be
continued and strictly adhered to as essential to the maintenance of
American liberties.
The practical defects of non-importation were likely to be understood,
by those who could ever understand them, in proportion to the decay of
business; and in the spring of 1770 they were nowhere better understood
than in New York, where the decay of business was most marked. This
decrease was greatest in New York, so the merchants maintained, because
that city had been most faithful in observing the agreement, importation
having there fallen from £482,000 to £74,000 during the year. It is
possible, however, that the decay of business in New York was due in
part and perhaps primarily to the retirement, in November, 1768, of the
last issues of the old Bills of Credit, according to the terms of
the Paper Currency Act passed by Parliament during Mr. Grenville's
administration. As a result of this retirement of all the paper money in
the province, money of any sort was exceedingly scarce during the
years 1769 and 1770. Lyon dollars were rarely seen; and the quantity
of Spanish silver brought into the colony through the trade with the
foreign islands, formerly considerable but now greatly diminished by the
stricter enforcement of the Townshend Trade Acts, was hardly sufficient
for local exchange alone, to say nothing of settling heavy balances in
London, although, fortunately perhaps, there were in the year 1769
no heavy London balances to be settled on account of the faithful
observance of the non-importation agreement by the merchants. The lack
of money was therefore doubtless a chief cause of the great decay
of business in New York; and some there were who maintained that the
faithful observance of the non-importation agreement by the merchants
was due to the decay of trade rather than the decay of trade being due
to the faithful observance of the non-importation agreement.
Whatever the true explanation of this academic point might be, it was an
undoubted fact that business was more nearly at a standstill in New
York than elsewhere. Accordingly, in the spring of 1770, when money was
rarely to be seen and debtors were selling their property at one-half
or one-third of its former value in order to discharge obligations long
overdue, the fair trading merchants of New York were not disposed to
continue an experiment of which, as they said, they had borne the chief
burden to the advantage of others and to their own impending ruin.
Zealous Sons of Liberty, such as Alexander MacDougall and John Lamb,
popular leaders of the "Inhabitants" of the city, were on the other
hand determined that the non-importation agreement should be maintained
unimpaired. The hard times, they said, were due chiefly to the monopoly
prices exacted by the wealthy merchants, who were not ruined at all, who
had on the contrary made a good thing out of the non-importation as long
as they had anything to sell, and whose patriotism (God save the mark!)
had now suddenly grown lukewarm only because they had disposed of all
their goods, including "old moth-eaten clothes that had been rotting in
the shops for years."
These aspersions the merchants knew how to ignore. Their determination
not to continue the non-importation was nevertheless sufficiently
indicated in connection with the annual celebration, in March, of the
repeal of the Stamp Act. On this occasion the merchants refused to meet
as formerly with the Sons of Liberty, but made provision for a dinner of
their own at another place, where all the Friends of Liberty and Trade
were invited to be present. Both dinners were well attended, and at both
the repeal of the Stamp Act was celebrated with patriotic enthusiasm,
the main difference being that whereas the Sons of Liberty drank a toast
to Mr. MacDougall and to "a continuance of the non-importation agreement
until the revenue acts are repealed," the Friends of Liberty and Trade
ignored Mr. MacDougall and drank to "trade and navigation and a speedy
removal of their embarrassments."
In the determination not to continue the old agreement, the Friends of
Liberty and Trade were meanwhile strongly confirmed when it was learned
that Britain was willing on her part to make concessions. By the middle
of May it was known that the Townshend duties (except the duty on tea)
had been repealed; and in June it was learned that Parliament had at
last, after many representations from the Assembly, passed a special act
permitting New York to issue £120,000 in Bills of Credit receivable
at the Treasury. It was thought that concession on the part of Great
Britain ought in justice to meet with concession on the part of America.
Accordingly, on the ground that other towns, and Boston in particular,
were more active "in resolving what they ought to do than in doing what
they had resolved," and on the ground that the present non-importation
agreement no longer served "any other purpose than tying the hands of
honest men, to let rogues, smugglers, and men of no character plunder
their country," the New York merchants, on July 9, 1770, resolved
that for the future they would import from Great Britain all kinds
of commodities except such as might be subject to duties imposed by
Parliament.
The New York merchants were on every hand loudly denounced for having
betrayed the cause of liberty; but before the year was out the old
agreement was everywhere set aside. Yet everywhere, as at New York, the
merchants bound themselves not to import any British teas. The duty
on British teas was slight. Americans might have paid the duty without
increasing the price of their much prized luxury; ministers might have
collected the same duty in England to the advantage of the Exchequer.
That Britain should have insisted on this peppercorn in acknowledgement
of her right, that America should have refused it in vindication of her
liberty, may be taken as a high tribute from two eminently practical
peoples to the power of abstract ideas.