THE STAMP ACT, AND THE REVENUE LAWS.
It did not take four years after the peace of 1763 to show how rapidly
the new situation of affairs was bearing fruit in America. The war had
taught its lessons. Earlier wars had menaced portions of the frontier,
and had been fought by single colonies or alliances of two or three.
This war had menaced the whole frontier, and the colonies, acting for
the first time in general concert, had acquired some dim notion of their
united strength. Soldiers and officers by and by to be arrayed against
one another had here fought as allies,--John Stark and Israel Putnam by
the side of William Howe; Horatio Gates by the side of Thomas Gage,--and
it had not always been the regulars that bore off the palm for skill and
endurance. One young man, of immense energy and fiery temper, united to
rare prudence and fertility of resource, had already become famous
enough to be talked about in England; in George Washington the
Virginians recognized a tower of strength.
[Sidenote: Consequences of the great French War.]
[Sidenote: Need for a steady revenue.]
The overthrow of their ancient enemy, while further increasing the
self-confidence of the Americans, at the same time removed the
principal check which had hitherto kept their differences with the
British government from coming to an open rupture. Formerly the dread of
French attack had tended to make the Americans complaisant toward the
king's ministers, while at time it made the king's ministers unwilling
to lose the good will of the Americans. Now that the check was removed,
the continuance or revival of the old disputes at once foreboded
trouble; and the old occasions for dispute were far from having ceased.
On the contrary the war itself had given them fresh vitality. If money
had been needed before, it was still more needed now. The war had
entailed a heavy burden of expense upon the British government as well
as upon the colonies. The national debt of Great Britain was much
increased, and there were many who thought that, since the Americans
shared in the benefits of the war they ought also to share in the burden
which it left behind it. People in England who used this argument did
not realize that the Americans had really contributed as much as could
reasonably be expected to the support of the war, and that it had left
behind it debts to be paid in America as well as in England. But there
was another argument which made it seem reasonable to many Englishmen
that the colonists should be taxed. It seemed right that a small
military force should be kept up in America, for defence of the
frontiers against the Indians, even if there were no other enemies to be
dreaded. The events of Pontiac's war now showed that there was clearly
need of such a force; and the experience of the royal governors for half
a century had shown that it was very difficult to get the colonial
legislatures to vote money for any such purpose. Hence there grew up in
England a feeling that taxes ought to be raised in America as a
contribution to the war debt and to the military defence of the
colonies; and in order that such taxes should be fairly distributed and
promptly collected, it was felt that the whole business ought to be
placed under the direct supervision and control of parliament. In
accordance with this feeling the new prime minister, George Grenville in
1764 announced his intention of passing a Stamp Act for the easier
collection of revenue in America. Meanwhile things had happened in
America which had greatly irritated the people, especially in Boston, so
that they were in the mood for resisting anything that looked like
encroachment on the part of the British government. To understand this
other source of irritation, we must devote a few words to the laws by
which that government had for a long time undertaken to regulate the
commerce of the American colonies.
[Sidenote: What European colonies were supposed to be founded for.]
When European nations began to plant colonies in America, they treated
them in accordance with a theory which prevailed until it was upset by
the American Revolution. According to this ignorant and barbarous
theory, a colony was a community which existed only for the purpose of
enriching the country which had founded it. At the outset, the Spanish
notion of a colony was that of a military station, which might plunder
the heathen for the benefit of the hungry treasury of the Most Catholic
monarch. But this theory was short-lived, like the enjoyment of the
plunder which it succeeded in extorting. According to the principles and
practice of France and England--and of Spain also, after the first
romantic fury of buccaneering had spent itself--the great object in
founding a colony, besides increasing one's general importance in the
world and the area of one's dominions on the map, was to create a
dependent community for the purpose of trading with it. People's ideas
about trade were very absurd. It was not understood that when two
parties trade with each other freely, both must be gainers, or else one
would soon stop trading. It was supposed that in trade, just as in
gambling or betting, what the one party gains the other loses.
Accordingly laws were made to regulate trade so that, as far as
possible, all the loss might fall upon the colonies and all the gain
accrue to the mother-country. In order to attain this object, the
colonies were required to confine their trade entirely to England. No
American colony could send its tobacco or its rice or its indigo to
France or to Holland, or to any other country than England; nor could it
buy a yard of French silk or a pound of Chinese tea except from English
merchants. In this way English merchants sought to secure for themselves
a monopoly of purchases and a monopoly of sales. By a further provision,
although American ships might take goods to England, the carrying-trade
between the different colonies was strictly confined to British ships.
Next, in order to protect British manufacturers from competition, it was
thought necessary to prohibit the colonists from manufacturing. They
might grow wool, but it must be carried to England to be woven into
cloth; they might smelt iron, but it must be carried to England to be
made into ploughshares. Finally, in order to protect British farmers and
their landlords, corn-laws were enacted, putting a prohibitory tariff on
all kinds of grain and other farm produce shipped from the colonies to
ports in Great Britain.
Such absurd and tyrannical laws had begun to be made in the reign of
Charles II., and by 1750 not less than twenty-nine acts of parliament
had been passed in this spirit. If these laws had been strictly
enforced, the American Revolution would probably have come sooner than
it did. In point of fact they were seldom strictly enforced, because so
long as the French were a power in America the British government felt
that it could not afford to irritate the colonists. In spite of laws to
the contrary, the carrying-trade between the different colonies was
almost monopolized by vessels owned, built, and manned in New England;
and the smuggling of foreign goods into Boston and New York and other
seaport towns was winked at.
[Sidenote: Writs of assistance.]
It was in 1761, immediately after the overthrow of the French in Canada,
that attempts were made to enforce the revenue laws more strictly than
heretofore; and trouble was at once threatened. Charles Paxton, the
principal officer of the custom-house in Boston, applied to the Superior
Court to grant him the authority to use "writs of assistance" in
searching for smuggled goods. A writ of assistance was a general
search-warrant, empowering the officer armed with it to enter, by force
if necessary, any dwelling-house or warehouse where contraband goods
were supposed to be stored or hidden. A special search-warrant was one
in which the name of the suspected person, and the house which it was
proposed to search, were accurately specified, and the goods which it
was intended to seize were as far as possible described. In the use of
such special warrants there was not much danger of gross injustice or
oppression, because the court would not be likely to grant one unless
strong evidence could be brought against the person whom it named. But
the general search-warrant, or "writ of assistance," as it was called
because men try to cover up the ugliness of hateful things by giving
them innocent names, was quite a different affair. It was a blank form
upon which the custom-house officer might fill in the names of persons
and descriptions of houses and goods to suit himself. Then he could go
and break into the houses and seize the goods, and if need be summon the
sheriff and his _posse_ to help him in overcoming and browbeating the
owner. The writ of assistance was therefore an abominable instrument of
tyranny. Such writs had been allowed by a statute of the evil reign of
Charles II.; a statute of William III. had clothed custom-house officers
in the colonies with like powers to those which they possessed in
England; and neither of these statutes had been repealed. There can
therefore be little doubt that the issue of such search-warrants was
strictly legal, unless the authority of Parliament to make laws for the
colonies was to be denied.
[Sidenote: James Otis.]
James Otis then held the crown office of advocate-general, with an ample
salary and prospects of high favour from government. When the revenue
officers called upon him, in view of his position, to defend their
cause, he resigned his office and at once undertook to act as counsel
for the merchants of Boston in their protest against the issue of the
writs. A large fee was offered him, but he refused it. "In such a
cause," said he, "I despise all fees." The case was tried in the
council-chamber at the east end of the old town-hall, or what is now
known as the "Old State-House," in Boston. Chief-justice Hutchinson
presided, and Jeremiah Gridley, one of the greatest lawyers of that day,
argued the case for the writs in a very powerful speech. The reply of
Otis, which took five hours in the delivery, was one of the greatest
speeches of modern times. It went beyond the particular legal question
at issue, and took up the whole question of the constitutional relations
between the colonies and the mother-country. At the bottom of this, as
of all the disputes that led to the Revolution, lay the ultimate
question whether Americans were bound to yield obedience to laws which
they had no share in making. This question, and the spirit that answered
it flatly and doggedly in the negative, were heard like an undertone
pervading all the arguments in Otis's wonderful speech, and it was
because of this that the young lawyer John Adams, who was present,
afterward declared that on that day "the child Independence was born."
Chief-justice Hutchinson was a man of great ability and as sincere a
patriot as any American of his time. He could feel the force of Otis's
argument, but he believed that Parliament was the supreme legislative
body for the whole British empire, and furthermore that it was the duty
of a judge to follow the law as it existed. He reserved his decision
until advice could be had from the law-officers of the crown in London;
and when next term he was instructed by them to grant the writs, this
result added fresh impetus to the spirit that Otis's eloquence had
aroused. The custom-house officers, armed with their writs, began
breaking into warehouses and seizing goods which were said to have been
smuggled. In this rough way they confiscated private property to the
value of many thousands of pounds; but sometimes the owners of
warehouses armed themselves and barricaded their doors and windows, and
thus the officers were often successfully defied, for the sheriff was
far from prompt in coming to aid them.
[Sidenote: Patrick Henry, and the Parsons' Cause.]
While such things were going on in Boston, the people of Virginia were
wrought into fierce excitement by what was known as the "Parsons'
Cause." The Church of England was at that time established by law in
Virginia, and its clergymen, appointed by English bishops, were
unpopular. In 1758 the legislature, under the pressure of the French
war, had passed an act which affected all public dues and incidentally
diminished the salaries of the clergy. Complaints were made to the
Bishop of London, and the act of 1758 was vetoed by the king in
council. Several clergymen then brought suits to recover the unpaid
portions of their salaries. In the first test case there could be no
doubt that the royal veto was legal enough, and the court therefore
decided in favour of the plaintiff. But it now remained to settle before
a jury the amount of the damages. It was on this occasion, in December,
1763, that the great orator Patrick Henry made his first speech in the
court-room and at once became famous. He declared that no power on earth
could take away from Virginia the right to make laws for herself, and
that in annulling a wholesome law at the request of a favoured class in
the community "a king, from being the father of his people, degenerates
into a tyrant, and forfeits all right to obedience." This bold talk
aroused much excitement and some uproar, but the jury instantly
responded by assessing the parson's damages at one penny, and in 1765
Henry was elected a member of the colonial assembly.
Thus almost at the same time in Massachusetts and in Virginia the
preliminary scenes of the Revolution occurred in the court-room. In each
case the representatives of the crown had the letter of the law on their
side, but the principles of the only sound public policy, by which a
Revolution could be avoided, were those that were defended by the
advocates of the people. At each successive move on the part of the
British government which looked like an encroachment upon the rights of
Americans, the sympathy between these two leading colonies now grew
stronger and stronger.
It was in 1763 that George Grenville became prime minister, a man of
whom Macaulay says that he knew of "no national interests except those
which are expressed by pounds, shillings, and pence." Grenville
proceeded to introduce into Parliament two measures which had
consequences of which, he little dreamed. The first of these measures
was the Molasses Act, the second was the Stamp Act.
[Sidenote: The Molasses Act.]
Properly speaking, the Molasses Act was an old law which Grenville now
made up his mind to revive and enforce. The commercial wealth of the New
England colonies depended largely upon their trade with the fish which
their fishermen caught along the coast and as far out as the banks of
Newfoundland. The finest fish could be sold in Europe, but the poorer
sort found their chief market in the French West Indies. The French
government, in order to ensure a market for the molasses raised in these
islands, would not allow the planters to give anything else in exchange
for fish. Great quantities of molasses were therefore carried to New
England, and what was not needed there for domestic use was distilled
into rum, part of which was consumed at home, and the rest carried
chiefly to Africa wherewith to buy slaves to be sold to the southern
colonies. All this trade required many ships, and thus kept up a lively
demand for New England lumber, besides finding employment for thousands
of sailors and shipwrights. Now in 1733 the British government took it
into its head to "protect" its sugar planters in the English West Indies
by compelling the New England merchants to buy all their molasses from
them; and with this end in view it forthwith laid upon all sugar and
molasses imported into North America from the French islands a duty so
heavy that, if it had been enforced, it would have stopped all such
importation. It is very doubtful if this measure would have attained the
end which the British government had in view. Probably it would not have
made much difference in the export of molasses from the English West
Indies to New England, because the islanders happened not to want the
fish which their French neighbours coveted. But the New Englanders could
see that the immediate result would be to close the market for their
cheaper kinds of fish, and thus ruin their trade in lumber and rum,
besides shutting up many a busy shipyard and turning more than 5000
sailors out of employment. It was estimated that the yearly loss to New
England would exceed £300,000. It was hardly wise in Great Britain to
entail such a loss upon some of her best customers; for with their
incomes thus cut down, it was not to be expected that the people of New
England would be able to buy as many farming tools, dishes, and pieces
of furniture, garments of silk or wool, and wines or other luxuries,
from British merchants as before. The government in passing its act of
1733 did not think of these consequences; but it proved to be impossible
to enforce the act without causing more disturbance than the government
felt prepared to encounter. Now in 1764 Grenville announced that the act
was to be enforced, and of course the machinery of writs of assistance
was to be employed for that purpose. Henceforth all molasses from the
French islands must either pay the prohibitory duty or be seized without
ceremony.
Loud and fierce was the indignation of New England over this revival of
the Molasses Act. Even without the Stamp Act, it might very likely have
led that part of the country to make armed resistance, but in such case
it is not so sure that the southern and middle colonies would have come
to the aid of New England. But in the Stamp Act Grenville provided the
colonies with an issue which concerned one as much as another, and upon
which they were accordingly sure to unite in resistance. It was also a
much better issue for the Americans to take up, for it was not a mere
revival of an old act; it was a new departure; it was an imposition of a
kind to which the Americans had never before been called upon to
submit, and in resisting it they were sure to enlist the sympathies of a
good many powerful people in England.
[Sidenote: The Stamp Act.]
The Stamp Act was a direct tax laid upon the whole American people by
Parliament, a legislative body in which they were not represented. The
British government had no tyrannical purpose in devising this tax. A
stamp duty had already been suggested in 1755 by William Shirley, royal
governor of Massachusetts, a worthy man and much more of a favourite
with the people than most of his class. Shirley recommended it as the
least disagreeable kind of tax, and the easiest to collect. It did not
call for any hateful searching of people's houses and shops, or any
unpleasant questions about their incomes, or about their invested or
hoarded wealth. It only required that legal documents and commercial
instruments should be written, and newspapers printed, on stamped paper.
Of all kinds of direct tax none can be less annoying, except for one
reason; it is exceedingly difficult to evade such a tax; it enforces
itself. For these reasons Grenville decided to adopt it. He arranged it
so that all the officers charged with the business of selling the
stamped paper should be Americans; and he gave formal notice of the
measure in March, 1764, a year beforehand, in order to give the colonies
time to express their opinions about it.
[Sidenote: Samuel Adams.]
In the Boston town-meeting in May, almost as soon as the news had
arrived, the American view of the case was very clearly set forth in a
series of resolutions drawn up by Samuel Adams. This was the first of
the remarkable state papers from the pen of that great man, who now, at
the age of forty-two, was just entering upon a glorious career. Samuel
Adams was a graduate of Harvard College in the class of 1740. He had
been reared in politics from boyhood, for his father, a deacon of the
Old South Church, had been chief spokesman of the popular party in its
disputes with the royal governors. Of all the agencies in organizing
resistance to Great Britain none were more powerful than the New England
town-meetings, among which that of the people of Boston stood
preëminent, and in the Boston town-meeting for more than thirty years no
other man exerted so much influence as Samuel Adams. This was because of
his keen intelligence and persuasive talk, his spotless integrity,
indomitable courage, unselfish and unwearying devotion to the public
good, and broad sympathy with all classes of people. He was a thorough
democrat. He respected the dignity of true manhood wherever he found it,
and could talk with sailors and shipwrights like one of themselves,
while at the same time in learned argument he had few superiors. He has
been called the "Father of the Revolution," and was no doubt its most
conspicuous figure before 1775, as Washington certainly was after that
date.
This earliest state paper of Samuel Adams contained the first formal and
public denial of the right of Parliament to tax the colonies, because it
was not a body in which their people were represented. The resolutions
were adopted by the Massachusetts assembly, and a similar action was
taken by Connecticut, New York, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and South
Carolina. The colonies professed their willingness to raise money in
answer to requisitions upon their assemblies, which were the only bodies
competent to lay taxes in America. Memorials stating these views were
sent to England, and the colony of Pennsylvania sent Dr. Franklin to
represent its case at the British court. Franklin remained in London
until the spring of 1775 as agent first for Pennsylvania, afterward for
Massachusetts, New Jersey, and Georgia,--a kind of diplomatic
representative of the views and claims of the Americans.
[Sidenote: The Virginia Resolutions, 1765.]
Grenville told Franklin that he wished to do things as pleasantly as
possible, and was not disposed to insist upon the Stamp Act, if the
Americans could suggest anything better. But when it appeared that no
alternative was offered except to fall back upon the old clumsy system
of requisitions, Grenville naturally replied that there ought to be some
more efficient method of raising money for the defence of the frontier.
Accordingly in March, 1765, the Stamp Act was passed, with so little
debate that people hardly noticed what was going on. But when the news
reached America there was an outburst of wrath that was soon heard and
felt in London. In May the Virginia legislature was assembled. George
Washington was sitting there in his seat, and Thomas Jefferson, then a
law-student, was listening eagerly from outside the door, when Patrick
Henry introduced the famous resolutions in which he declared, among
other things, that an attempt to vest the power of taxation in any other
body than the colonial assembly was a menace to the common freedom of
Englishmen, whether in Britain or in America, and that the people of
Virginia were not bound to obey any law enacted in disregard of this
principle. The language of the resolutions was bold enough, but a keener
edge was put upon it by the defiant note which rang out from Henry in
the course of the debate, when he commended the example of Tarquin and
Cæsar and Charles I. to the attention of George III. "If this be
treason," he exclaimed, as the speaker tried to call him to order, "if
this be treason, make the most of it!"
The other colonies were not slow in acting. Massachusetts called for a
general congress, in order that all might discuss the situation and
agree upon some course to be pursued in common. South Carolina responded
most cordially, at the instance of her noble, learned, and far-sighted
patriot, Christopher Gadsden. On the 7th of October, delegates from nine
colonies met in a congress at New York, adopted resolutions like those
of Virginia, and sent a memorial to the king, whose sovereignty over
them they admitted, and a remonstrance to Parliament, whose authority to
tax them they denied. The meeting of this congress was in itself a
prophecy of what was to happen if the British government should persist
in the course upon which it had now entered.
[Sidenote: Stamp Act riots.]
Meanwhile the summer had witnessed riots in many places, and one of
these was extremely disgraceful. Chief-justice Hutchinson had tried to
dissuade the ministry from passing the Stamp Act, but an impression had
got abroad among the wharves and waterside taverns of Boston that he had
not only favoured it but had gone out of his way to send information to
London, naming certain merchants as smugglers. Under the influence of
this mistaken notion, on the night of the 26th of August a drunken mob
plundered Hutchinson's house in Boston and destroyed his library, which
was probably the finest in America at that time. Here, as is apt to be
the case, the mob selected the wrong victim. Its shameful act was
denounced by the people of Massachusetts, and the chief-justice was
indemnified by the legislature. In the other instances the riots were of
an innocent sort. Stamp officers were forced to resign. Boxes of
stamped paper arriving by ship were burned or thrown into the sea, and
at length the governor of New York was compelled by a mob to surrender
all the stamps entrusted to his care. These things were done for the
most part under the direction of societies of workingmen known as "Sons
of Liberty," who were pledged to resist the execution of the Stamp Act.
At the same time associations of merchants declared that they would buy
no more goods from England until the act should be repealed, and lawyers
entered into agreements not to treat any document as invalidated by the
absence of the required stamp. As for the editors, they published their
newspapers decorated with a grinning skull and cross-bones instead of
the stamp.
[Sidenote: Repeal of the Stamp Act.]
These demonstrations produced their effect in England. In July, 1765,
the Grenville ministry fell, and the new government, with Lord
Rockingham at its head, was more inclined to pay heed to the wishes and
views of the Americans. The debate over the repeal of the Stamp Act
lasted nearly three months and was one of the fiercest that had been
heard in Parliament for many a day. William Pitt declared that he
rejoiced in the resistance of the Americans, and urged that the act
should be repealed because Parliament ought never to have passed it; but
there were very few who took this view. As the result of the long
debate, at the end of March, 1766, the Stamp Act was repealed, and a
Declaratory Act was passed in which Parliament said in effect that it
had a right to make such laws for the Americans if it chose to do so.
The people of London, as well as the Americans, hailed with delight the
repeal of the Stamp Act; but the real trouble had now only begun. The
resolutions of Samuel Adams and Patrick Henry and their approval by the
Congress at New York had thrown the question of American taxation into
the whirlpool of British politics, and there it was to stay until it
worked a change for the better in England as well as in America.
[Sidenote: How the question was affected by British politics.]
The principle that people must not be taxed except by their
representatives had been to some extent recognized in England for five
hundred years, and it was really the fundamental principle of English
liberty, but it was only very imperfectly that it had been put into
practice. In the eighteenth century the House of Commons was very far
from being a body that fairly represented the people of Great Britain.
For a long time there had been no change in the distribution of seats,
and meanwhile the population had been increasing very differently in
different parts of the kingdom. Thus great cities which had grown up in
recent times, such as Sheffield and Manchester, had no representatives
in Parliament, while many little boroughs with a handful of inhabitants
had their representatives. Some such boroughs had been granted
representation by Henry VIII. in order to create a majority for his
measures in the House of Commons. Others were simply petty towns that
had dwindled away, somewhat as the mountain villages of New England have
dwindled since the introduction of railroads. The famous Old Sarum had
members in Parliament long after it had ceased to have any inhabitants.
Seats for these rotten boroughs, as they were called, were simply bought
and sold. Political life in England was exceedingly corrupt; some of the
best statesmen indulged in wholesale bribery as if it were the most
innocent thing in the world. The country was really governed by a few
great families, some of whose members sat in the House of Lords and
others in the House of Commons. Their measures were often noble and
patriotic in the highest degree, but when bribery and corruption seemed
necessary for carrying them, such means were employed without scruple.
[Sidenote: George III. and his political schemes.]
When George III. came to the throne in 1760, the great families which
had thus governed England for half a century belonged to the party known
as Old Whigs. Under their rule the power of the crown had been reduced
to insignificance, and the modern system of cabinet government by a
responsible ministry had begun to grow up. The Tory families during this
period had been very unpopular, because of their sympathy with the
Stuart pretenders who had twice attempted to seize the crown and given
the country a brief taste of civil war. By 1760 the Tories saw that the
cause of the Stuarts was hopeless, and so they were inclined to transfer
their affections to the new king. George III. was a young man of narrow
intelligence and poor education, but he entertained very strong opinions
as to the importance of his kingly office. He meant to make himself a
real king, like the king of France or the king of Spain. He was
determined to break down the power of the Old Whigs and the system of
cabinet government, and as the Old Whigs had been growing unpopular, it
seemed quite possible, with the aid of the Tories, to accomplish this.
George was quite decorous in behaviour, and, although subject to fits of
insanity which became more troublesome in his later years, he had a
fairly good head for business. Industrious as a beaver and obstinate as
a mule, he was an adept in political trickery. In the corrupt use of
patronage he showed himself able to beat the Old Whigs at their own
game, and with the aid of the Tories he might well believe himself
capable of reviving for his own benefit the lost power of the crown.
[Sidenote: The "New Whigs" and parliamentary reform.]
Beside these two parties a third had been for some time growing up which
was in some essential points opposed to both of them. This third party
was that of the New Whigs. They wished to reform the representation in
Parliament in such wise as to disfranchise the rotten boroughs and give
representatives to great towns like Leeds and Manchester. They held that
it was contrary to the principles of English liberty that the
inhabitants of such great towns should be obliged to pay taxes in
pursuance of laws which they had no share in making. The leader of the
New Whigs was the greatest Englishman of the eighteenth century, the
elder William Pitt, now about to pass into the House of Lords as Earl of
Chatham. Their leader next in importance, William Petty, Earl of
Shelburne, was in 1765 a young man of eight-and-twenty, and afterward
came to be known as one of the most learned and sagacious statesmen of
his time. These men were the forerunners of the great liberal leaders of
the nineteenth century, such men as Russell and Cobden and Gladstone.
Their first decisive and overwhelming victory was the passage of Lord
John Russell's Reform Bill in 1832, but the agitation for reform was
begun by William Pitt in 1745, and his famous son came very near winning
the victory on that question in 1782.
Now this question of parliamentary reform was intimately related to the
question of taxing the American colonies. From some points of view they
might be considered one and the same question. At a meeting of
Presbyterian ministers in Philadelphia, it was pertinently asked, "Have
two men chosen to represent a poor English borough that has sold its
votes to the highest bidder any pretence to say that they represent
Virginia or Pennsylvania? And have four hundred such fellows a right to
take our liberties?" In Parliament, on the other hand, as well as at
London dinner tables, and in newspapers and pamphlets, it was repeatedly
urged that the Americans need not make so much fuss about being taxed
without being represented, for in that respect they were no worse off
than the people of Sheffield or Birmingham. To this James Otis replied,
"Don't talk to us any more about those towns, for we are tired of such a
flimsy argument. If they are not represented, they ought to be;" and by
the New Whigs this retort was greeted with applause.
The opinions and aims of the three different parties were reflected in
the long debate over the repeal of the Stamp Act. The Tories wanted to
have the act continued and enforced, and such was the wish of the king.
Both sections of Whigs were in favour of repeal, but for very different
reasons. Pitt and the New Whigs, being advocates of parliamentary
reform, came out flatly in support of the principle that there should be
no taxation without representation. Edmund Burke and the Old Whigs,
being opposed to parliamentary reform and in favour of keeping things
just as they were, could not adopt such an argument; and accordingly
they based their condemnation of the Stamp Act upon grounds of pure
expediency. They argued that it was not worth while, for the sake of a
little increase of revenue, to irritate three million people and run the
risk of getting drawn into a situation from which there would be no
escape except in either retreating or fighting. There was much practical
wisdom in this Old Whig argument, and it was the one which prevailed
when Parliament repealed the Stamp Act and expressly stated that it did
so only on grounds of expediency.
[Sidenote: Why George III. was ready to pick a quarrel with the
Americans.]
There was one person, however, who was far from satisfied with this
result, and that was George III. He was opposed to parliamentary reform
for much the same reason that the Old Whigs were opposed to it, because
he felt that it threatened him with political ruin. The Old Whigs needed
the rotten boroughs in order to maintain their own control over
Parliament and the country. The king needed them because he felt himself
able to wrest them from the Old Whigs by intrigue and corruption, and
thus hoped to build up his own power. He believed, with good reason,
that the suppression of the rotten boroughs and the granting of fair and
equal representation would soon put a stronger curb upon the crown than
ever. Accordingly there were no men whom he dreaded and wished to put
down so much as the New Whigs; and he felt that in the repeal of the
Stamp Act, no matter on what ground, they had come altogether too near
winning a victory. He felt that this outrageous doctrine that people
must not be taxed except by their representatives needed to be sternly
rebuked, and thus he found himself in the right sort of temper for
picking a fresh quarrel with the Americans.
[Sidenote: Charles Townshend and his revenue acts, 1767.]
[Sidenote: Lord North.]
An occasion soon presented itself. One of the king's devices for
breaking down the system of cabinet government was to select his
ministers from different parties, so that they might be unable to work
harmoniously together. Owing to the peculiar divisions of parties in
Parliament he was for some years able to carry out this policy, and
while his cabinets were thus weak and divided, he was able to use his
control of patronage with telling effect. In July, 1766, he got rid of
Lord Rockingham and his Old Whigs, and formed a new ministry made up
from all parties. It contained Pitt, who had now, as Earl of Chatham,
gone into the House of Lords, and at the same time Charles Townshend, as
Chancellor of the Exchequer. Townshend, a brilliant young man, without
any political principles worth mentioning, was the most conspicuous
among a group of wire-pullers who were coming to be known as "the king's
friends." Serious illness soon kept Chatham at home, and left Townshend
all-powerful in the cabinet, because he was bold and utterly
unscrupulous and had the king to back him. His audacity knew no limits,
and he made up his mind that the time had come for gathering all the
disputed American questions, as far as possible, into one bundle, and
disposing of them once for all. So in May, 1767, he brought forward in
Parliament a series of acts for raising and applying a revenue in
America. The colonists, he said, had objected to a direct tax, but they
had often submitted to port duties, and could not reasonably refuse to
do so again. Duties were accordingly to be laid on glass, paper, lead,
and painter's colours; on wine, oil, and fruits, if carried directly to
America from Spain and Portugal; and especially on tea. A board of
commissioners was to be established at Boston, to superintend the
collection of revenue throughout the colonies, and writs of assistance
were to be expressly legalized. The salaries of these commissioners were
to be paid out of the revenue thus collected. Governors, judges, and
crown-attorneys were to be made independent of the colonial legislatures
by having their salaries paid by the crown out of this same fund. A
small army was also to be kept up; and if after providing for these
various expenses, any surplus remained, it could be used by the crown in
giving pensions to Americans and thus be made to serve as a
corruption-fund. These measures were adopted on the 29th of June, and as
if to refute anybody who might be inclined to think that rashness could
no further go, Townshend accompanied them with a special act directed
against the New York legislature, which had refused to obey an order
concerning the quartering of troops. By way of punishment, Townshend now
suspended the legislature. A few weeks after carrying these measures
Townshend died of a fever, and his place was taken by Lord North, eldest
son of the Earl of Guilford. North was thirty-five years of age. He was
amiable and witty, and an excellent debater, but without force of will.
He let the king rule him, and was at the same time able to show a strong
hand in the House of Commons, so that the king soon came to regard him
as a real treasure. Soon after North's appointment, Lord Chatham and
other friends of America in the cabinet resigned their places and were
succeeded by friends of the king. From 1768 to 1782 George III. was to
all intents and purposes his own prime minister, and contrived to keep a
majority in Parliament. During those fourteen years the American
question was uppermost, and his policy was at all hazards to force the
colonists to abandon their position that taxation must go hand in hand
with representation.
[Sidenote: What the Townshend acts really meant.]
This purpose was already apparent in Charles Townshend's acts. They were
not at all like previous acts imposing port duties to which the
Americans had submitted. British historians sometimes speak of the
American Revolution as an affair which grew out of a mere dispute about
money; and even among Americans, in ordinary conversation and sometimes
in current literature, the unwillingness of our forefathers to pay a tax
of threepence a pound on tea is mentioned without due reference to the
attendant circumstances which made them refuse to pay such a tax. We
cannot hope to understand the fierce wrath by which they were animated
unless we bear in mind not only the simple fact of the tax, but also the
spirit in which it was levied and the purpose for which the revenue was
to be used. The Molasses Act threatening the ruin of New England
commerce was still on the statute-book, and commissioners, armed with
odious search-warrants for enforcing this and other tyrannical laws,
were on their way to America. For more than half a century the people
had jealously guarded against the abuse of power by the royal governors
by making them dependent upon the legislatures for their salaries. Now
they were all at once to be made independent, so that they might even
dismiss the legislatures, and if need be call for troops to help them.
The judges, moreover, with their power over men's lives and property,
were no longer to be responsible to the people. If these changes were to
be effected, it would be nothing less than a revolution by which the
Americans would be deprived of their liberty. And, to crown all, the
money by which this revolution was to be brought about was to be
contributed in the shape of port duties by the Americans themselves! To
expect our forefathers to submit to such legislation as this was about
as sensible as it would have been to expect them to obey an order to buy
halters and hang themselves.
When the news of the Townshend acts reached Massachusetts, the assembly
at its next session took a decided stand. Besides a petition to the king
and letters to several leading British statesmen, it issued a circular
letter addressed to the other twelve colonies, asking for their friendly
advice and coöperation with reference to the Townshend measures. These
papers were written by Samuel Adams. The circular letter was really an
invitation to the other colonies to concert measures of resistance if it
should be found necessary. It enraged the king, and presently an order
came across the ocean to Francis Bernard, royal governor of
Massachusetts, to demand of the assembly that it rescind its circular
letter, under penalty of instant dissolution. Otis exclaimed that Great
Britain had better rescind the Townshend acts if she did not wish to
lose her colonies. The assembly decided, by a vote of 92 to 17, that it
would not rescind. This flat defiance was everywhere applauded. The
assemblies of the other colonies were ordered to take no notice of the
Massachusetts circular, but the order was generally disobeyed, and in
several cases the governors turned the assemblies out of doors. The
atmosphere of America now became alive with politics; more meetings were
held, more speeches made, and more pamphlets printed, than ever before.
[Sidenote: The quarrel was not between England and America, but
between George III. and the principles which the Americans
maintained.]
In England the dignified and manly course of the Americans was generally
greeted with applause by Whigs of whatever sort, except those who had
come into the somewhat widening circle of "the king's friends." The Old
Whigs,--Burke, Fox, Conway, Savile, Lord John Cavendish, and the Duke of
Richmond; and the New Whigs,--Chatham, Shelburne, Camden, Dunning,
Barré, and Beckford; steadily defended the Americans throughout the
whole of the Revolutionary crisis, and the weight of the best
intelligence in the country was certainly on their side. Could they have
acted as a united body, could Burke and Fox have joined forces in
harmony with Chatham and Shelburne, they might have thwarted the king
and prevented the rupture with America. But George III. profited by the
hopeless division between these two Whig parties; and as the quarrel
with America grew fiercer, he succeeded in arraying the national pride
to some extent upon his side and against the Whigs. This made him feel
stronger and stimulated his zeal against the Americans. He felt that if
he could first crush Whig principles in America, he could then turn and
crush them in England. In this he was correct, except that he
miscalculated the strength of the Americans. It was the defeat of his
schemes in America that ensured their defeat in England. It is quite
wrong and misleading, therefore, to remember the Revolutionary War as a
struggle between the British people and the American people. It was a
struggle between two hostile principles, each of which was represented
in both countries. In winning the good fight, our forefathers won a
victory for England as well as for America. What was crushed was George
III. and the kind of despotism which he wished to fasten upon America in
order that he might fasten it upon England. If the memory of George III.
deserves to be execrated, it is especially because he succeeded in
giving to his own selfish struggle for power the appearance of a
struggle between the people of England and the people of America; and in
so doing, he sowed seeds of enmity and distrust between two glorious
nations that, for their own sakes and for the welfare of mankind, ought
never for one moment to be allowed to forget their brotherhood. Time,
however, is rapidly repairing the damage which George III.'s policy
wrought, and it need in nowise disturb our narrative. In this brief
sketch we must omit hundreds of interesting details; but, if we would
look at things from the right point of view, we must bear in mind that
every act of George III., from 1768 onward, which brought on and carried
on the Revolutionary War, was done in spite of the earnest protest of
many of the best people in England; and that the king's wrong-headed
policy prevailed only because he was able, through corrupt methods, to
command a parliament which did not really represent the people. Had the
principles in support of which Lord Chatham joined hands with Samuel
Adams for one moment prevailed, the king's schemes would have collapsed
like a soap-bubble.
As it was, in 1768 the king succeeded, in spite of strong opposition, in
carrying his point. He saw that the American colonies were disposed to
resist the Townshend acts, and that in this defiant attitude
Massachusetts was the ringleader. The Massachusetts circular pointed
toward united action on the part of the colonies. Above all things it
was desirable to prevent any such union, and accordingly the king
decided to make his principal attack upon Massachusetts, while dealing
more kindly with the other colonies. Thus he hoped Massachusetts might
be isolated and humbled, and in this belief he proceeded faster and more
rashly than if he had supposed himself to be dealing with a united
America. In order to catch Samuel Adams and James Otis, and get them
sent over to England for trial, he attempted to revive an old statute of
Henry VIII. about treason committed abroad; and in order to enforce the
revenue laws in spite of all opposition, he ordered troops to be sent to
Boston.
[Sidenote: Troops sent to Boston.]
This was a very harsh measure, and some excuse was needed to justify it
before Parliament. It was urged that Boston was a disorderly town, and
the sacking of Hutchinson's house could be cited in support of this
view. Then in June, 1768, there was a slight conflict between
townspeople and revenue officers, in which no one was hurt, but which
led to a great town-meeting in the Old South Meeting-House, and gave
Governor Bernard an opportunity for saying that he was intimidated and
hindered in the execution of the laws. The king's real purpose, however,
in sending troops was not so much to keep the peace as to enforce the
Townshend acts, and so the people of Boston understood it. Except for
these odious and tyrannical laws, there was nothing that threatened
disturbance in Boston. The arrival of British troops at Long Wharf, in
the autumn of 1768, simply increased the danger of disturbance, and in a
certain sense it may be said to have been the beginning of the
Revolutionary War. Very few people realized this at the time, but Samuel
Adams now made up his mind that the only way in which the American
colonies could preserve their liberties was to unite in some sort of
federation and declare themselves independent of Great Britain. It was
with regret that he had come to this conclusion, and he was very slow in
proclaiming it, but after 1768 he kept it distinctly before his mind. He
saw clearly the end toward which public opinion was gradually drifting,
and because of his great influence over the Boston town-meeting and the
Massachusetts assembly, this clearness of purpose made him for the next
seven years the most formidable of the king's antagonists in America.
The people of Boston were all the more indignant at the arrival of
troops in their town because the king in his hurry to send them had even
disregarded the act of Parliament which provided for such cases.
According to that act the soldiers ought to have been lodged in Castle
William on one of the little islands in the harbour. Even according to
British-made law they had no business to be quartered in Boston so long
as there was room for them, in the Castle. During the next seventeen
months the people made several formal protests against their presence in
town, and asked for their removal. But these protests were all fruitless
until innocent blood had been shed. The soldiers generally behaved no
worse than rough troopers on such occasions are apt to do, and the
townspeople for the most part preserved decorum, but quarrels now and
then occurred, and after a while became frequent. In September, 1769,
James Otis was brutally assaulted at the British Coffee House by one of
the commissioners of customs aided and abetted by two or three army
officers. His health was already feeble and in this affray he was struck
on the head with a sword and so badly injured that he afterward became
insane. After this the feeling of the people toward the soldiers was
more bitter than ever. In February, 1770, there was much disturbance.
Toward the end of the month an informer named Richardson fired from his
window into a crowd and killed a little boy about eleven years of age,
named Christopher Snyder. The funeral of this poor boy, the first victim
of the Revolution, was attended on Monday, the 26th, by a great
procession of citizens, including those foremost in wealth and
influence.
[Sidenote: The "Boston Massacre."]
The rest of that week was full of collisions which on Friday almost
amounted to a riot and led the governor's council to consider seriously
whether the troops ought not to be removed. But before they had settled
the question the crisis came on Monday evening, March 5, in an affray
before the Custom House on King street, when seven of Captain Preston's
company fired into the crowd, killing five men and wounding several
others. Two of the victims were innocent bystanders. Two were sailors
from ships lying in the harbour, and they, together with the remaining
victim, a ropemaker, had been actively engaged in the affray. One of the
sailors, a mulatto or half-breed Indian of gigantic stature, named
Crispus Attucks, had been especially conspicuous. The slaughter of these
five men secured in a moment what so many months of decorous protest had
failed to accomplish. Much more serious bloodshed was imminent when
Lieutenant-governor Hutchinson arrived upon the scene and promptly
arrested the offending soldiers. The next day there was an immense
meeting at the Old South, and Samuel Adams, at the head of a committee,
came into the council chamber at the Town House, and in the name of
three thousand freemen sternly commanded Hutchinson to remove the
soldiers from the town. Before sunset they had all been withdrawn to the
Castle. When the news reached the ears of Parliament there was some talk
of reinstating them in the town, but Colonel Barré cut short the
discussion with the pithy question, "if the officers agreed in removing
the soldiers to Castle William, what minister will dare to send them
back to Boston?"
[Sidenote: Lord North, as prime minister removes all duties except
on tea, 1770.]
Thus the so-called "Boston Massacre" wrought for the king a rebuff which
he felt perhaps even more keenly than the repeal of the Stamp Act. Not
only had his troops been peremptorily turned out of Boston, but his
policy had for the moment weakened in its hold upon Parliament. In the
summer of 1769 the assembly of Virginia adopted a very important series
of resolutions condemning the policy of Great Britain and recommending
united action on the part of the colonies in defence of their liberties.
The governor then dissolved the assembly, whereupon its members met in
convention at the Raleigh tavern and adopted a set of resolves prepared
by Washington, strictly forbidding importations from England until the
Townshend acts should be repealed. These resolves were generally adopted
by the colonies, and presently the merchants of London, finding their
trade falling off, petitioned Parliament to reconsider its policy. In
January, 1770, Lord North became prime minister. In April all the duties
were taken off, except the duty on tea, which the king insisted upon
retaining, in order to avoid surrendering the principle at issue. The
effect of even this partial concession was to weaken the spirit of
opposition in America, and to create a division among the colonies. In
July the merchants of New York refused to adhere any longer to the
non-importation agreement except with regard to tea, and they began
sending orders to England for various sorts of merchandise. Rhode Island
and New Hampshire also broke the agreement. This aroused general
indignation, and ships from the three delinquent colonies were driven
from such ports as Boston and Charleston.
[Sidenote: Want of union.]
Union among the colonies was indeed only skin deep. The only thing
which kept it alive was British aggression. Almost every colony had some
bone of contention with its neighbours. At this moment New York and New
Hampshire were wrangling over the possession of the Green Mountains, and
guerrilla warfare was going on between Connecticut and Pennsylvania in
the valley of Wyoming. It was hard to secure concerted action about
anything. For two years after the withdrawal of troops from Boston there
was a good deal of disturbance in different parts of the country;
quarrels between governors and their assemblies were kept up with
increasing bitterness; in North Carolina there was an insurrection
against the governor which was suppressed only after a bloody battle
near the Cape Fear river; in Rhode Island the revenue schooner Gaspee
was seized and burned, and when an order came from the ministry
requiring the offenders to be sent to England for trial, the
chief-justice of Rhode Island, Stephen Hopkins, refused to obey the
order. But amid all these disturbances there appeared nothing like
concerted action on the part of the colonies. In June, 1772, Hutchinson
said that the union of the colonies seemed to be broken, and he hoped it
would not be renewed, for he believed it meant separation from the
mother-country, and that he regarded as the worst of calamities.