THE STAMP ACT.
[Sidenote: 1766--Benjamin Franklin]
That the colonies were not well understood in England was no fault of
the colonists. There was at that time and hour in England a man
specially authorized to speak on behalf of the colony of Pennsylvania,
and indirectly entitled as he was admirably qualified to represent the
other colonies. At that time Benjamin Franklin was the most
distinguished American living and the most distinguished American who
had ever lived. It was not his first visit to England. He had crossed
the Atlantic forty years before when he was a youth of eighteen, eager
to set up for himself as a master printer, and anxious to obtain the
materials for his trade in the old country. In those eighteen years he
had learned many things. He had learned how to print; he had learned
how to bear poverty with courage and ambition with patience; he could
never remember a time when he was unable to read, but he had learned
how to read with inexhaustible pleasure and unfailing profit, and he
had learned how to write. When he was seventeen he had run away from
his birthplace, Boston, and the home of an ill-tempered brother, and
made his way as best he might to Philadelphia. As he tramped into the
city with a loaf under each arm for provender, a young woman leaning in
a doorway laughed at the singular figure. Six years later she married
Franklin, who in the interval had been a journeyman printer in
Philadelphia, a journeyman printer in London, and had at last been able
to set up for himself in Philadelphia. From 1729 the story of
Franklin's life is the story of a steady and splendid advance in
popularity and wealth, and in the greater gifts of knowledge, wisdom,
and humanity. He published a newspaper, {103} the _Philadelphia
Gazette_; he disseminated frugality, thrift, industry, and the cheerful
virtues in "Poor Richard's Almanack," he was the benefactor and the
blessing of the city of his adoption. He founded her famous library;
he devoted the results of his scientific studies to her comfort,
welfare, and comeliness; he maintained her defences as a military
engineer, and was prepared to serve her gallantly in the field against
the Indians as a colonel of Militia of his own raising. No man ever
lived a fuller life or did so many things with more indomitable zeal or
more honorable thoroughness. The colony of Pennsylvania was very proud
of her illustrious citizen and delighted to do him honor. When he
visited England for the second time, in 1757, he was the Agent for the
General Assembly of Pennsylvania, he was Deputy Postmaster-General for
the British colonies, he was famous throughout the civilized world for
his discovery of the identity of lightning with the electric fluid. He
was in London for the third time when Rockingham took office. He had
lived nearly sixty years of a crowded, memorable, admirable life; he
was loaded with laurels, ripe in the learning of books and the learning
of the book of the world. Even he whom few things surprised or took
unawares would have been surprised if he could have been told that the
life he had lived was eventless, bloodless, purposeless in comparison
with the life he had yet to live, and that all he had done for his
country was but as dust in the balance when weighed against the work he
was yet to do for her. He was standing on the threshold of his new
career in the year when Edmund Burke entered Parliament.
The Rockingham Administration did its best to undo the folly of
Grenville's Government. After long debates in both Houses, after
examination of Franklin at the bar of the Commons, after the strength
and acumen of Mansfield had been employed to sustain the prerogative
against the colonies and the voice of Burke had championed the colonies
against the prerogative, after Grenville had defended himself with
shrewdness and Pitt had added to the splendor of his fame, the Stamp
Act was formally {104} repealed. Unhappily, the new Ministry was only
permitted to do good by halves. The same session that repealed the
Stamp Act promulgated the Declaratory Act, asserting the full power of
the King, on the advice of Parliament, to make laws binding the
American colonies in all cases whatsoever. This desperate attempt to
assert what the repeal of the Stamp Act virtually surrendered was
intended as a solace to the King and as a warning--perhaps a friendly
warning--to the colonies. Those who were most opposed to it in England
may well have hoped that it might be accepted without too much
straining in the general satisfaction caused by the repeal of the hated
measure. Even Franklin seemed to believe that the Declaratory Act
would not cause much trouble in America. The event denied the hope,
and indignation at the Declaratory Act outlasted in America the
rejoicing over the subversion of Grenville's policy. Nevertheless, the
rejoicing was very great. On May 16, 1766, the public spirit of Boston
was stimulated by the distribution of a broadsheet headed "Glorious
News." This broadsheet announced the arrival of John Hancock's brig
"Harrison," in six weeks and two days from London, with the important
tidings of the repeal of the Stamp Act. The broadsheet painted a
lively picture of the enthusiasm at Westminster and the rejoicings in
the City of London over the total repeal of the measure. It told of
the ships in the river displaying all their colors, of illuminations
and bonfires in many parts; "in short, the rejoicings were as great as
was ever known on any occasion." This broadsheet, "printed for the
benefit of the public," ended in a rapture of delight. "It is
impossible to express the joy the town is now in, on receiving the
above great, glorious, and important news. The bells on all the
churches were immediately set a-ringing, and we hear the day for a
general rejoicing will be the beginning of next week." Boston had
every reason to rejoice, to ring its bells and fly its flags, and set
poor debtors free from prison in honor of the occasion. The colonies
had stood together against the Home Government, and had learned
something of {105} the strength of their union by the repeal of the
Stamp Act.
[Sidenote: 1766--Action of the Colonial Governors]
But when the bells had stopped ringing and the flags were hauled down
and the released debtors had ceased to congratulate themselves upon
their newly recovered liberty, Boston and the other colonial cities
found that their satisfaction was not untempered. The broadsheet that
had blazoned the repeal had also assured its readers that the Acts of
Trade relating to America would be taken under consideration and all
grievances removed. "The friends to America are very powerful and
disposed to assist us to the best of their ability." The friends to
America were powerful, but they fought against tremendous odds.
Dulness and mediocrity, a spite that was always stupid, and a stupidity
that was often spiteful, an alliance of ignorance and arrogance were
the forces against which they struggled in vain. The Acts of Trade
were to be enforced as rigidly as ever. The Declaratory Act pompously
asserted the unimpeachable prerogative of British Majesty to make what
laws it pleased for the colonies. The good that had been done seemed
small in comparison with the harm that might yet be done, that in all
probability would be done.
For the time more was to be feared from the viceroys of the provinces
than from the Home Government. Mr. Secretary Conway addressed a
circular letter to the governors of the different colonies, reproving
the colonists, indeed, for the recent disturbances, but with a measured
mildness of reproof that seemed carefully calculated not to give
needless offence or cause unnecessary irritation. "If by lenient
persuasive methods," Conway wrote, "you can contribute to restore the
peace and tranquillity to the provinces on which their welfare and
happiness depend, you will do a most acceptable and essential service
to your country." An appeal so suave, advice so judicious, did not
seem the less prudent and humane because the Secretary insisted upon
the repression of violence and outrage and reminded those to whom his
letter was addressed that if they needed aid in the maintenance of law
and order {106} they were to require it at the hands of the commanders
of his Majesty's land and naval forces in America. If all the
gentlemen to whom the Secretary's circular was addressed had been as
reasonable and as restrained in language as its writer, things might
even then have turned out very differently. It was not to be expected,
and the colonists did not expect, that outrage and violence were to go
unchallenged and unpunished, and it is probable that few even in
Massachusetts would have objected to the formal expression of thanks
for firmness and zeal which was made by Conway to the governor of that
colony. But the temperance that was possible to Conway was impossible
to Bernard. Bernard was one of the worst of a long line of
inappropriate colonial governors. He was a hot-headed, hot-hearted man
who seemed to think that to play the part of a domineering, blustering
bully was to show discretion and discernment in the duties of his
office. He always acted under the conviction that he must always be in
the right and every one else always in the wrong, and he blazed up into
fantastic rages at the slightest show of opposition. As this was not
the spirit in which to deal with the proud and independent men of
Massachusetts, Governor Bernard passed the better part of his life in a
passion and was forever quarrelling with his provincial legislature and
forever complaining to the Home Government of his hard lot and of the
mischievous, mutinous set of fellows he had to deal with.
When Bernard received the Secretary's letters and the accompanying
copies of the two Bills that had been passed by the British Parliament,
he hastened to make them known to the Assembly of Massachusetts. But
he made them known in a speech that was wholly lacking in either
temperance or discretion. Had it been at once his desire and his duty
to inflame his hearers against himself and the Government which he
represented he could hardly have chosen words more admirably adapted
for the purpose. With a wholly unchastened arrogance and a wholly
ungoverned truculence, the governor of the province lectured or rather
hectored the gentlemen of the Council and the {107} gentlemen of the
House of Representatives after a fashion that would have seemed in
questionable taste on the part of an old-fashioned pedagogue to a
parcel of unruly schoolboys. He was for bullying and blustering them
into a better behavior, and he assured those who were willing to make
amends and to promise to be good in the future that their past offences
would be buried in a charitable oblivion. "Too ready a forgetfulness
of injuries hath been said to be my weakness," Bernard urged with
strange ignorance. "However, it is a failing which I had rather suffer
by than be without."
The House of Representatives replied to the reproofs of their governor
in an address that was remarkable for the firmness with which it
maintained its own position and the irony with which it reviewed the
governor's pretensions. To prove their independence of action, they
delayed the Act of Indemnity demanded by Secretary Conway for several
months, and then accompanied it with a general pardon to all persons
who had been concerned in the riots provoked by the Stamp Act. Though
this Act was promptly disallowed by the Home Government on the ground
that the power of pardon belonged exclusively to the Crown, it took
effect nevertheless, and added another to the grievances of Bernard and
of his backers in England.
[Sidenote: 1766--End of the Rockingham Administration]
The slowly widening breach between the American colonies and the mother
country might even yet have been filled if it had been possible for the
King to depend upon the services and listen to the advice of ministers
whose good intentions and general good sense had the advantage of being
served and indirectly inspired by the genius of Burke. But unhappily,
the fortunes of the party with whom he was allied were not long fated
to be official fortunes. After a year of honorable if somewhat
colorless existence, the Rockingham Administration came to an end.
There was no particular reason why it should come to an end, but the
King was weary of it. If it had not gravely dissatisfied him, it had
afforded him no grave satisfaction. An Administration always seemed to
George the Third like a candle which he could illuminate or extinguish
at his {108} pleasure. So he blew out the Rockingham Administration
and turned to Pitt for a new one. In point of fact, an Administration
without Pitt was an impossibility. The Duke of Grafton had resigned
his place in the Rockingham Ministry because he believed it hopeless to
go on without the adhesion of Pitt, and Pitt would not adhere to the
Rockingham Ministry. Now, with a free hand, he set to work to form one
of the most amazing Administrations that an age which knew many strange
Administrations can boast of.
The malady which had for so long martyrized the great statesman had
afflicted him heavily of late. His eccentricities had increased to
such a degree that they could hardly be called merely eccentricities.
But though he suffered in mind and in body he was ready and even eager
to return to power, so long as that power was absolute. By this time
he had quarrelled with Temple, who had so often hindered him from
resuming office, and who was now as hostile to him as his brother,
George Grenville, had ever been. Temple, in consequence, found no
place in the new Administration. The Administration was especially
designed to please the King. A party had grown up in the State which
was known by the title of the King's friends. The King's friends had
no political creed, no political convictions, no desire, no ambition,
and no purpose save to please the King. What the King wanted said they
would say; what the King wanted done they would do; their votes were
unquestionably and unhesitatingly at the King's command. They did not,
indeed, act from an invincible loyalty to the royal person. It was the
royal purse that ruled them. The King was the fountain of patronage;
wealth and honors flowed from him; and the wealth and the honors welded
the King's friends together into a harmonious and formidable whole.
The King's friends found themselves well represented in a Ministry that
was otherwise as much a thing of shreds and patches as a harlequin's
coat. Pitt had tried to make a chemical combination, but he only
succeeded in making a mixture that might at any time dissolve into its
component parts. It was composed {109} of men of all parties and all
principles. The amiable Conway and the unamiable Grafton remained on
from Rockingham's Ministry. So did the Duke of Portland and Lord
Bessborough, so did Saunders and Keppel. Pitt did not forget his own
followers. He gave the Great Seal to Lord Camden, who, as Justice
Pratt, had liberated Wilkes from unjustifiable arrest. He made Lord
Shelburne one of the Secretaries of State. The Chancellorship of the
Exchequer was given to a politician with a passion for popularity that
made him as steadfast as a weathercock, Charles Townshend.
[Sidenote: 1766--Pitt as Earl of Chatham]
By this time Pitt was no longer the Great Commoner. The House of
Commons was to know him no more. Under the title of Earl of Chatham he
had entered the Upper House. Such an elevation did not mean then, as
it came later to mean, something little better than political
extinction. But Pitt's elevation meant to him a loss of popularity as
immediate as it was unexpected. Though he was no longer young, though
he was racked in mind and body, though he sorely needed the repose that
he might hope to find in the Upper House, he was assailed with as much
fury of vituperation as if he had betrayed the State. A country that
was preparing to rejoice at his return to power lashed itself into a
fury of indignation at his exaltation to the peerage. In the twinkling
of an eye men who had been devoted yesterday to Pitt were prepared to
believe every evil of Chatham. His rule began in storm and gloom, and
gloomy and stormy it remained. The first act of his Administration
roused the fiercest controversy. A bad harvest had raised the price of
food almost to famine height. Chatham took the bold step of laying an
embargo on the exportation of grain. The noise of the debates over
this act had hardly died away when Pitt's malady again overmastered
him, and once more he disappeared from public life into mysterious
melancholy silence and seclusion. It was an unhappy hour for the
country which deprived it of the services of Chatham and left the helm
of state in the hands of Charles Townshend.
Charles Townshend was the erratic son of a singularly {110} erratic
mother. The beautiful Audrey Harrison married the third Marquis
Townshend, bore him five children, and then separated from him to carry
her beauty, her insolence, and her wit through an amazed and amused
society. It was one of her eccentricities to change her name Audrey to
Ethelfreda. Another was to fancy herself and to proclaim herself to be
very much in love with the unhappy Lord Kilmarnock. She attended the
trial persistently, waited under his windows, quarrelled with Selwyn
for daring to jest about the execution--no very happy theme for
wit--and was all for adopting a little boy whom some of the officials
of the Tower had palmed off upon her as Kilmarnock's son. Walpole
liked her, delighted in her witty, stinging sayings. She was always
entertaining, always alarming, always ready to say or do anything that
came into her mind. She lived, a whimsical, spiteful, sprightly
oddity, to be eighty-seven years of age. [Sidenote: 1766--Peculiar
characteristics of Charles Townshend] Charles Townshend was her second
son, and Charles Townshend was in many ways as whimsical as his mother.
He had a ready wit, a dexterity in epigram, an astonishing facility of
speech, and a very great appreciation of his own power of turning
friends or foes into ridicule. It is told of him that once in his
youth, when a student at Leyden, he suffered from his readiness to jest
at the expense of another. At a merry supper party he plied one of the
guests, a seemingly unconscious, stolid Scotchman named Johnstone, with
sneers and sarcasms which the Scotchman seemed to disregard or take in
good part. On the next morning, however, Townshend's victim,
enlightened by some friend as to the way in which he had been made a
butt of, became belligerent and sent Townshend a challenge. Various
opinions have been expressed of Townshend's action in the matter. He
has been applauded for good sense. He has been reproached for
cowardice. Certainly Townshend did not, would not fight his
challenger. It required a great deal of good sense to decline a duel
in those days, and Townshend did decline the duel. He apologized to
his slow-witted but stubborn-purposed opponent with a profusion of
apology which some of his {111} friends thought to be excessive. In
these days we should consider Townshend's refusal to fight a duel
merely as an unimportant proof of his common-sense, but in the last
century, in the society in which Townshend moved, and on the Continent,
such a refusal suggested the possession of a degree of common-sense
that was far from ordinary--that was, indeed, extraordinary.
Townshend's tact, wit, and good spirits carried him through the scrape
somehow. He made the rounds of Leyden with his would-be adversary,
calling in turn upon each of his many friends, and obtaining from each,
in the presence of his companion, the assurance that Townshend had
never been known to speak of Johnstone slightingly or discourteously
behind his back. The episode, trivial in itself, gains a kind of
gravity by the illustration it affords of Townshend's character all
through Townshend's short career. The impossibility of restraining an
incorrigible tongue, and the unreadiness to follow out the course of
action to which his words would seem to have committed him, were the
distinguishing marks of Townshend's political existence. No man, no
party, nor no friend could count on the unflinching services of
Townshend. His conduct was as irresponsible as his eloquence was
dazzling. In his twenty years of public life he had but one
purpose--to please and to be praised; and to gain those ends he
sacrificed consistency and discretion with a light heart. The beauty
of his person and the fluent splendor of his speech went far towards
the attainment of an ambition which was always frustrated by a fatal
levity. In the fine phrase of Burke, he was a candidate for
contradictory honors, and his great aim was to make those agree in
admiration of him who never agreed in anything else.
It has been given to few men to desire fame more ardently, and to
attain it more disastrously, than Charles Townshend. If we may
estimate the man by the praises of his greatest contemporary, no one
better deserved a fairer fortune than fate allotted to him. Burke
spoke of Townshend as the delight and ornament of the House of Commons,
and the charm of every private society which he honored with his
presence. Though his passion for {112} fame might be immoderate, it
was at least a passion which is the instinct of all great souls. While
Burke could rhapsodize over Townshend's pointed and finished wit, his
refined, exquisite, and penetrating judgment, his skill and power in
statement, his excellence in luminous explanation, Walpole was no less
enthusiastic in an estimate that contrasted Townshend with Burke.
According to Walpole, Townshend, who studied nothing with accuracy or
attention, had parts that embraced all knowledge with such quickness
that he seemed to create knowledge instead of seeking for it. Ready as
Walpole admits Burke's wit to have been, he declares that it appeared
artificial when set by that of Townshend, which was so abundant in him
that it seemed a loss of time to think. Townshend's utterances had
always the fascinating effervescence of spontaneity, while even Burke's
extempore utterances were so pointed and artfully arranged that they
wore the appearance of study and preparation. This brilliant,
resplendent creature, in every respect the opposite to George
Grenville, showy where Grenville was solid, fluent where he was formal,
glittering and even glowing where he was sober or sombre, fascinating
where he was repellent, gracious where he was sullen, and polished
where he was rude, was nevertheless destined to share Grenville's
hateful task and Grenville's deserved condemnation. Such enthusiasm as
Parliament had permitted itself to show over the repeal of Grenville's
Stamp Act had long flickered out. The colonists were regarded with
more disfavor than ever by a majority that raged against their
ingratitude and bitterly repented the repeal of the Act. Townshend's
passion for popularity forced him into the fatal blunder of his life.
He was indeed, as Burke said, the spoiled child of the House of
Commons, never thinking, acting, or speaking but with a view to its
judgment, and adapting himself daily to its disposition, and adjusting
himself before it as before a looking-glass. The looking-glass showed
him a member of a Ministry that was unpopular because it refused to tax
America. He resolved that the looking-glass should show him a member
of a Ministry popular because {113} it was resolved to tax America.
His hunger and thirst after popularity, his passion for fame, were
leading him into strange ways indeed. He was to leave after him an
enduring name, but enduring for reasons that would have broken his
bright spirit if he could have realized them. The shameful folly of
George Grenville was the shameful folly of Charles Townshend. His name
stands above Grenville's in the roll of those who in that disastrous
time did so much to lower the honor and lessen the empire of England.
It became plain to Townshend that the Parliamentary majority regretted
the repeal of the Stamp Act and resented the theory that America should
not be taxed. Townshend resolved that revenue could and should be
raised out of America. He introduced a Bill imposing a tax on glass,
paper, and tea upon the American colonies. Though the amount to be
raised was not large, no more than forty thousand pounds, and though it
was proposed that the whole of the sum should be spent in America, it
was as mischievous in its result as if it had been more malevolently
aimed. [Sidenote: 1766--Death of Townshend] Townshend himself did not
live long enough to learn the unhappy consequences of his folly. A
neglected fever proved fatal to him in the September of 1767, in the
forty-third year of his age. Walpole lamented him with an ironical
appreciation. "Charles Townshend is dead. All those parts and fire
are extinguished; those volatile salts are evaporated; that first
eloquence of the world is dumb; that duplicity is fixed, that cowardice
terminated heroically. He joked on death as naturally as he used to do
on the living, and not with the affectation of philosophers who wind up
their works with sayings which they hope to have remembered."
Townshend had passed away, but his policy remained, a fatal legacy to
the country.
Townshend was immediately succeeded in the Chancellorship of the
Exchequer by a young politician who had been for some years in
Parliament and had held several offices without conspicuously
distinguishing himself. When Lord North entered the House of Commons
as member for Banbury, his record was that of any intelligent young
{114} nobleman of his time. He had written pleasing Latin love poems
at Eton, he had been to Oxford, he had studied at Leipzig. George
Grenville saw great promise in North. He even predicted that if he did
not relax in his political pursuits he was very likely to become Prime
Minister. Unhappily for his country, North did not relax in his
political pursuits. There was an ironic fitness in the fact that North
should be admired by Grenville and should succeed to Townshend, for no
man was better fitted to carry on the fatal policy of the two men who
had outraged the American colonies by the Stamp Act and the tax on tea.
{115}