But, my children, I must tell you, in other and perhaps plainer words,
what these measures were that led to such momentous results, why
resorted to, how carried out, and by whom.
From what you have just been told, you can have no difficulty in
guessing that Great Britain was desperately in debt, and in the very
mood to resort to desperate measures of delivering herself therefrom.
Her being in this particular mood at that particular time (for it is
only now and then that she has shown herself so unamiable) was owing
chiefly to the fact, that she was just then under the rule, or rather
misrule, of that narrow-minded, short-sighted, hard-fisted,
wrong-headed man, who commonly goes in history by the name of King
George the Third. Had he been the superintendent of a town workhouse,
he might perhaps have acquitted himself respectably enough; or, if I
may be so bold, he might have served a life-term as Governor of London
Tower, and gone to his grave without any great discredit or reproach:
but, in all human reason and justice, he certainly had no more
business on the throne of England than your Uncle Juvinell himself.
His ministers, who were of his own choosing, were vultures, of the
same harsh, unsightly plumage, and, at his beck or nod, stood ready to
do whatever knave's work he might have on hand,--even to the grinding
of his people's bones to make his bread, should his royal appetite
turn that way.
With such men at the helm of State, it is no wonder, then, that unwise
and oppressive measures should be resorted to for raising money, or,
as it is more properly called in such cases, a revenue, for paying the
debts and keeping up the expenses of the government. The first pounce
they made was on their young Colonies in America, whom they sought to
burden with heavy taxes laid on exports, or articles of commerce sent
out of the country, and on imports, or articles of commerce brought
into the country. The principal articles thus taxed were paper,
painters' colors, glass, sugar and molasses, and tea. The tax-money or
revenue scraped together from the sale of these articles--and which
made them dearer to him who bought and him who sold, according to the
amount of duty laid on--was to be gathered into the public treasury
for the purposes aforesaid. Another plan for raising revenue, hit upon
by these ingenious kites, was that famous one called the "Stamp Act,"
the design of which was to compel the people of the Colonies, in order
to make their business transactions good and valid, to use a certain
kind of paper, having on it a certain stamp. Each kind of paper had
its own particular stamp, and could only be applied to a certain
purpose specified thereon. Thus there was a deed stamp-paper, the will
stamp-paper, the note-of-hand and bill-of-exchange stamp-paper, the
marriage stamp-paper; and, in short, stamp-paper for every concern in
life requiring an instrument of writing. The paper itself was
altogether a commodity of the government, by whom it was manufactured,
and sold at prices varying from a few pence up to many pounds sterling
of good, hard English money, just according to the magnitude or nature
of the business in hand. Had it gone into effect, it must needs have
borne on the dead as well as on the living: for, if the last will and
testament of a deceased and lamented relative were not written on
paper with the proper stamp, it could not have been good and valid in
the king's eyes; and this would have led to grievous misunderstandings
between the bereaved and affectionate heirs, and perhaps the deceased
himself, in consequence, would have slept uneasily in his grave.
Another oppressive measure--the design whereof, however, was for
saving money, rather than for raising revenue--was that of quartering
troops upon the country in time of peace; by which means they must
needs be supported to a great extent by the people so sponged upon.
But the most brilliant stroke of all was an act forbidding the
Colonies from trading with any foreign ports, and from manufacturing
certain articles, lest the value and sale of the same articles
manufactured in England, and to be sold in America, might be lowered
or hindered thereby.
I have already mentioned, how that the right of choosing their judges
and other civil officers, and the right of trial by jury, had been
taken from them,--measures that had a meanness and odium quite their
own; as serving no end of profit, but merely as safety-valves, through
which the royal bile might find vent now and then.
Now, the good people of the Colonies, as I have hinted elsewhere,
would not have raised the hue and outcry that they did against these
measures, had it not been for one thing, which to them, as Englishmen,
was all in all; to wit, the right of taxing themselves, and
legislating or making laws for themselves through persons of their own
choosing, called representatives. And this is, my little folks, what
is meant by taxation, and legislation by representation, in a nation.
You will do well to bear this in mind continually; for it is the very
keystone to the arch of all true government.
This right of representation, however, was denied them; for what
earthly reason, no one, not in the secret, could imagine. As the king
himself was never able to render a reason for any thing he did, his
ministers would not for any thing they did, and the parliament dared
not for any thing they did.
What could they do, then, but send petitions to the king, and
remonstrances to the parliament, complaining of, and crying out
against, their many grievances, and deploring and demanding that they
be removed and redressed. Although they did this with more dignity and
respectfulness, with more clearness and ability, than the like thing
had ever been done before, or has been since, by any people, yet their
petitions were spurned by the king, because they were just and manly,
and he was not; and their remonstrances went unheeded by the
parliament, because they were wise and reasonable, and it was not.
Failing to get redress for their grievances, the colonists resolved
that the source of these same grievances should not be a source of
profit to those who imposed them. To bring about this result, they, as
one man, entered into what was called the "non-importation
agreement,"--or, in other words, an agreement by which they solemnly
pledged themselves to abstain from the use of all articles burdened
with a tax, until such tax should be removed; and, furthermore, that
they would not buy or use any thing that they were forbidden to
manufacture themselves; and, still furthermore, that not a ship of
theirs should trade with British ports, until the act forbidding them
to trade with foreign ports should be repealed. Some of them, I dare
say, would have gone so far, had that been possible, as to pledge
themselves not to die, until the Stamp Act, compelling them to write
their wills on stamp-paper, was also repealed. This agreement was so
rigidly observed, that the men took to wearing jeans, and the women
linsey-woolseys, which they wove in their own looms; the old ladies
drank sassafras-tea, sweetened with maple-sugar; and old gentlemen
wrote no wills, but declared them on their death-bed to their weeping
families by word of mouth. Whether the people stopped marrying or not,
it is not known with certainty; but from my knowledge of human nature,
which is extensive, I do not think I should greatly hazard my
reputation as a historian, were I to state flatly, roundly, and
emphatically, that it had not the least effect in that way.
The days on which these measures were to go into effect were observed
by the colonists as days of fasting, prayer, and humiliation. All
business was laid aside, the shops were closed, the churches opened,
and the church-bells tolled as on some funeral occasion; and between
praying at church, and fasting at home, and brooding over their
grievances, the good people were very miserable indeed. Although they
suffered great inconvenience from their observance of the
non-importation agreement, yet they bore it patiently and cheerfully,
like men who felt that their cause was just and right. But the sudden
stoppage of the immense trade that flowed from the colonial ports into
those of the mother-country told dreadfully on the commerce of Great
Britain; and British merchants and British manufacturers, and British
people in general, soon began to suffer even more than the colonists
themselves. Whereupon, a counter stream of petitions and remonstrances
set in upon the king and parliament from the people at home, who
declared that the country would be ruined, if these odious measures,
crippling American commerce, were not speedily withdrawn. Said they,
"If we cannot sell the Americans our broadcloths, our flannels, and
our silks, the obstinate men of that country will stick to their
jeans, and the perverse women to their linsey-woolseys, till we are
undone for ever. In that one pestilent little town of Boston, our
trade in silks alone is not so good by fifty thousand dollars a year
as it has been heretofore: and we humbly entreat that our American
brothers be allowed to trade with us and foreign nations as in days
gone by; for you must see by this time with your own eyes, that we, as
a nation, are growing poorer every day under this state of things,
instead of richer every year as had been expected."
The commissioners--that is to say, the persons who had been appointed
by the British Government to bring or receive the stamp-paper, and
give it circulation throughout the Colonies--were mobbed and pelted by
the indignant people, whenever and wherever they made the least
attempt to do their odious work. In consequence of this determined
opposition, the paper never went into circulation: so it was stocked
away in outhouses, and there left to mould and to be eaten by rats and
mice, if their stomachs were not too dainty for such vile provender.
Thus this famous piece of ingenuity, the Stamp Act, had no other
effect than that of giving the civilized world a hearty laugh, and
increasing the British debt just so much as the paper cost, instead of
lessening it, as its inventors, in their blind confidence, had hoped.
Beholding how utterly had failed all their pet schemes for raising
revenue, the narrow-minded king, and the king-minded ministry, and the
many-minded parliament, were, so to speak, thrown on their haunches,
and forced to eat their own folly; which, I dare say, they found less
palatable than their roast beef and plum-pudding. In other words, they
repealed the Stamp Act; with one stroke of the royal pen, struck off
the taxes laid on the above-mentioned articles; and once more gave the
Colonies full liberty to manufacture whatsoever, and re-open
commercial intercourse with whomsoever, they chose. And thus this
non-importation agreement worked like a charm: it brought about in a
trice what petitions and remonstrances had failed to accomplish in
years.
When tidings came of what had been done at home, there was great
rejoicing throughout the provinces: the church-bells were tolled to
another tune than that with which they had been tolled a short time
before; the good people met at church, but this time to give thanks;
and went home, not to fast, but to feast; and were now quite as
comfortable as they had before been miserable. But I have gone a
little too far, however. There was one circumstance that greatly
dampened the general feeling of joy, and made a mere thanksgiving of
what might else have been a high-sounding jubilee. This was the tax on
tea, which had not been struck off along with the rest, but had been
suffered to remain; not that any great revenue was expected to arise
therefrom, but simply to show that they--the king and parliament--had
not disclaimed or yielded up the right to tax and burden the Colonies
when and how they thought fit and proper. This vexed the American
people sorely; for though the bulk of the nuisance had been taken
away, yet all the odor still remained: or, speaking more plainly, the
right of laying such burdens on themselves, of their own free will,
was still denied them; and this, in fact, was the very thing that made
it so intolerable for them to bear. "Is it," said Washington in a
letter to a friend, "the duty of threepence per pound upon tea that we
object to as burdensome? No; but it is the right to lay this duty upon
ourselves for which we contend."
Therefore, as far as the commodity tea was concerned, the people of
the Colonies still observed the non-importation agreement. From some
of the ports, the ships that had come over from England laden with
this delightful plant were sent back, without being suffered to
discharge their cargoes; in others, where it had been landed, it was
not allowed to be sold, but was stowed away in cellars and the like
out-of-the-way places, where it moulded, or became the food of rats
and mice, whose bowels, if we may trust the testimony of some of our
great-grandmothers, were so bound up thereby, that a terrible
mortality set in among them, that swept them away by cart-loads.
Now, the East-India Company, to whom had been granted the sole
privilege of trading in tea for the space of a hundred years, if I
remember rightly, were greatly alarmed at the consequences of the
tea-tax. Enormous quantities of the article had begun to accumulate in
their London warehouses, now that there was no market for it in
America, which hitherto had fed the purse in their left-hand pocket,
as did that in Great Britain the larger one in their right-hand
pocket. "Something must be done," said they to themselves (they
certainly said it to nobody else),--"something must be done, or these
high-spirited women of America will drink their wishy-washy sassafras
till their blood be no thicker than whey, and the purse in our
left-hand pocket become as light and lean and lank as when we sent our
first ship-load thither years ago." This "something to be done" was a
loud petition to parliament, praying for speedy relief from the ruin,
which has an uncomfortable fashion of staring at great mercantile
companies, and was now staring them full in the face.
So, putting their heads together, the king and parliament hit upon an
ingenious plan, by which they, the East-India Company, could sell
their tea, and the government collect the duty thereon. It was this:
The price of the article should be so far reduced, that it would be
lower, even with the duty on it, than, at the usual rate of sale,
without any duty at all. This was a brilliant scheme indeed, and would
have succeeded to admiration, had the good people of America been a
nation of bats and geese; but, as they were not, the scheme failed
disgracefully, as you shall presently see.
By way of giving this plan a trial, a few ships loaded with tea were
sent over to Boston, where they lay for some time in the harbor,
without being permitted by the people to land their cargoes. One day,
as if to show the king and ministers and parliament, the East-India
Company, and the whole British nation, that they, the Americans, were,
and had been from the very beginning, desperately in earnest in all
that they had said and done for years past, a party, composed of about
fifty of the most sober and respectable citizens of Boston and the
country around, disguised themselves as Indians, and went aboard these
ships. Not a word was to be heard among them; but, keeping a grim and
ominous silence, they ranged the vessel from stem to stern, ransacked
their cargoes, broke open the tea-chests, and, pouring their contents
into the sea, made the fishes a dish of tea, which is said to have had
the same effect on them as on the rats and mice. This done with
perfect coolness and sobriety, the party returned to their homes as
orderly and silent as they had come; not the first movement towards a
mob or tumult having been made by the people during the whole
proceeding.
This affair, commonly known in history as the Boston Tea-party, and
which took place in 1774, overwhelmed his majesty with stupid
astonishment, threw his ministers into fits of foaming rage, fell like
a thunder-clap upon the House of Parliament, and effectually
demolished the last forlorn hope of the East-India Company. The spirit
of resistance on the part of the Colonies had now been carried to such
a length, that the home-government determined to send over the
military to awe them by the terror of its presence into obedience to
their unreasonable and oppressive demands; and, should not this be
found sufficient, to compel them into submission by the force of its
arms.
Oh, woful, woful, that ever a tyrant should live to keep his
dragon-watch on the birth of the free-born thought, the independent
wish, and ere the full, clear light of heaven descend upon it, warming
it into strength and beauty, to seize and crush it into slavish fear,
and love and justice without power to stay his impious hand!