THE GRENVILLE ADMINISTRATION.
The king appears to have received Bute's resignation without regret;
indeed it was remarked that the day before it was announced he was in
unusually good spirits, "like a person just emancipated".[65] Bute had
done all that he could do for him as prime minister; he had cleared the
ground for the establishment of the king's system of government; the
whig oligarchy was disorganised and overthrown, and the war was at an
end. George could not have wished to keep a minister in office who was
hated by his people; that would have been contrary to the idea of a
patriot king, and would in time have made him unpopular. Nor was he
perhaps altogether satisfied with Bute's conduct in office; for in later
life he observed that he was "deficient in political firmness".[66] Bute
was to continue to be useful to him in another capacity in which
political firmness was not so important; he was to be the king's private
adviser, and help him to select and manage his responsible ministers.
Through his instrumentality, George had already secured a set of
ministers who would, they both believed, be content to carry out the
king's will. Grenville, though he had opposed Bute in the cabinet with
reference to the negotiations with France, professed that as prime
minister he would try to win his complete approval, and with only one
exception allowed Bute to form his administration for him. Bute and his
master thought they had secured a useful tool, a subservient and
hard-working drudge. They were mistaken in their man; Grenville was
independent and self-confident. He took the two offices of first lord of
the treasury and chancellor of the exchequer. Dashwood retired with Bute
and the barony of Despencer was called out of abeyance in his favour.
Halifax and Egremont remained secretaries of state and Henley lord
chancellor. Bedford distrusted Bute and refused to take office. The new
administration promised to exercise economy, and Grenville took care
that the pledge should be redeemed. Its frugality did not make it
popular; it did not command the confidence of the nation, and was
generally considered a feeble continuation of its predecessor.
The king prorogued parliament on April 19, 1763; his speech described
the peace as honourable to his crown, and claimed, or at least implied,
that it had induced the enemies of the Prussian king "to agree to a
peace which he had approved". On the 23rd appeared No. 45 of the _North
Briton_ with a violent denunciation of the speech. It declared that the
king had given "the sanction of his sacred name to the most odious
measures and to the most unjustifiable public declarations from a throne
ever renowned for truth, honour, and unsullied virtue". That the
ministers were responsible for the king's speech was well understood,
and was clearly recognised in the article. George took the article as
conveying an accusation of falsehood against himself personally, and
there was some excuse for this interpretation of it. Other numbers of
the paper had been violent, and had been passed by without notice. His
present ministers were not deficient in political firmness; he ordered
them to prosecute the writer. Halifax thereupon issued a general
warrant, that is a warrant directed against persons not named, ordering
the king's messengers to search for the authors, printers, and
publishers of the _North Briton_, arrest them and seize their papers.
Warrants of this kind to be executed on persons not named, without
evidence of their identity or guilt, had hitherto been held lawful, but
they were subversive of the liberty of the subject and contrary to the
spirit of the constitution. During three days forty-nine persons were
arrested under this warrant. Among them were the avowed publisher of the
_North Briton_, the printer, and his workmen. They declared that Wilkes
was the author.
[Sidenote: _PROCEEDINGS IN WILKES'S CASE._]
Wilkes was arrested under the general warrant on the 30th, and carried
before the secretaries of state; his house was searched and his papers
seized. He was committed to the Tower. He hoped, he said, that he might
have the room in which Egremont's father had been confined as a rebel,
and, referring to the popular belief as to the consequences of the
dirty habits of Bute's fellow-countrymen, in any case, one which had not
been tenanted by a Scot. Temple at once applied on his behalf for a writ
of _habeas corpus_, which was granted by Pratt, chief justice of the
common pleas, but as Wilkes was no longer in the custody of the
messengers, they could not produce him. He was kept in close
confinement; Temple and the Duke of Grafton who went to see him were not
admitted, and even his solicitor was denied access to him. A new writ
was issued, and on May 3 he was brought before the court of common
pleas. He pleaded his privilege as a member of parliament. Pratt
delivered judgment on the 6th and decided that he was entitled to the
privilege of parliament, which extended to all offences save treason,
felony, and breach of the peace. The other judges concurred, and he was
set at liberty. The crowd which had collected in Westminster Hall
received the result of the trial with loud applause, and escorted Wilkes
to his house in Great George Street. Meanwhile Egremont had in the
king's name ordered Temple, the lord lieutenant of Buckinghamshire, to
deprive Wilkes of his commission as colonel of the Bucks militia. In
forwarding this order to Wilkes, Temple added some complimentary
expressions, and on the 7th the earl was dismissed both from his
lieutenancy and the privy council.
Several persons who were arrested on the general warrant brought actions
against the messengers. In the first of these suits Pratt, setting aside
evil precedents, declared general warrants to be illegal. A
master-printer obtained L400 damages, one journeyman L300, and others
L200. Wilkes sued Wood, the under-secretary of state, for ransacking his
house, and the jury awarded him L1,000 damages. He also began actions
for false imprisonment against the two secretaries of state. His suit
against Egremont was cut short by the earl's death on August 20. Halifax
took advantage of various legal devices to delay the hearing of the suit
against himself, and it was not decided until six years later. Temple,
who had paid Wilkes's law expenses, wished him to avoid giving further
cause of offence. Wilkes, however, set up a press in his own house,
reprinted the _North Briton_ in volumes, and printed other matter also.
The arbitrary proceedings of the government in this case excited much
adverse feeling, especially in London, and gave a fresh impetus to the
discontent in the cider districts. They were attributed to Bute's
influence. In some western villages a man in Scottish dress led about an
ass decorated with a blue ribbon and wearing a paper crown; and at
Exeter an effigy of Bute remained hanging on a gibbet for a fortnight,
no one daring to remove it.
[Sidenote: _MINISTERIAL CHANGES._]
George, though at first well pleased with the new administration, soon
saw that it lacked strength. He made an attempt to enlist Hardwicke and
Newcastle, but they would not take office without their party. Bute
advised an offer to Bedford, who declared that he would not join the
government unless Bute would undertake to retire, not only from the
court, but from London. Negotiations were also carried on with Pitt,
whom Bute was most anxious to secure for the king. Pitt made it clearly
understood that he would not take office with Bedford, the man most
responsible for the peace, nor would he come in alone. In spite of
Pitt's objection to him, Bedford, who did not care for office, advised
the king to take him. George was dissatisfied with his ministers; he was
annoyed by their unpopularity and by the growth of a spirit of
turbulence among the lower classes, and personally was wearied by the
constant interviews and the long harangues which Grenville inflicted
upon him. Bute, too, was not finding Grenville so anxious to win his
approval as he expected, and on Egremont's death had an interview with
Pitt. The result was satisfactory; and George, much to Grenville's
disgust, told him that he meant to ask Pitt to enter the administration,
and would "do it as cheap as he could," with as few changes as possible.
Pitt had an interview with the king on August 27. Both evidently thought
that there was nothing to prevent him from taking office, and he
communicated with Devonshire, Newcastle, and Rockingham. The next day
George seems to have changed his mind; he told Grenville that Pitt's
terms were too hard. Bute is said to have instigated this change, and it
is probable that both he and the king were disappointed at finding that
Pitt meant to bring in with him several of the whig leaders. Pitt had a
second interview with the king on the 29th, and George is said to have
closed it with the words: "Well, Mr. Pitt, I see this will not do. My
honour is concerned and I must support it." Pitt's proposals were
probably exaggerated by the ministerial party. It is certain that he
proposed several changes, and the admission of some of the leading
whigs, and that either he or the king suggested Temple for the treasury.
George had made up his mind before the interview that it would probably
be useless. Both he and Bute would gladly have secured Pitt's support,
but they wanted him to take office alone, or at least not with a party.
George had no mind for another whig administration with Pitt as its
master-spirit.
He again turned to Bedford and told him that Pitt had stipulated that he
was to have no office, even about the court, at that time, though in
future years he might be permitted to hold a court appointment, and that
no favour should be shown to any one concerned in the peace. George may
well have believed that this was the meaning of Pitt's words. Even so,
he should not have divulged anything which took place in his closet,
specially if it was likely to make mischief; he was, however, in serious
difficulties. His device succeeded. Though Bedford was already aware
that Pitt would not act with him, he was piqued at this fresh
declaration of hostility; he agreed to take office, and, on September 9,
was appointed president of the council in succession to Lord Granville
who died in the previous January. He was considered head of the
administration. The Earl of Sandwich became secretary of state and took
the northern department, and Lord Hillsborough succeeded Lord Shelburne
as president of the board of trade. Sandwich had official experience,
and was neither idle nor incapable, though unprincipled and extremely
profligate; Hillsborough was deficient in tact and judgment. Shelburne
had been one of Bute's followers, and arranged his bargains with Fox,
who accused him of having deceived him. He was employed in the late
negotiations with Pitt, resigned office on their failure, and attached
himself to Pitt. The king was completely in the hands of Bedford and
Grenville, his only defence against an administration composed of whig
magnates. They used their power to force him to send Bute out of London.
This insolent conduct was specially reprehensible in the case of
Grenville, who owed his advancement to Bute's recommendation. Grenville
continued to weary the king with interviews; he worried him with his
disputes with his colleagues, and irritated him beyond endurance by
suggestions, which were not ill-founded, that he was still under Bute's
influence. "Good God, Mr. Grenville," the poor king exclaimed, "am I to
be suspected after all I have done?"
Parliament met on November 15, and the government at once made an attack
on Wilkes. In the lords, Sandwich complained of two profane and obscene
pieces printed in his private press, _An Essay on Woman_ and a
paraphrase of the _Veni Creator_. There was no evidence of publication;
a few copies only were printed, evidently for private circulation, and
one of them was obtained by tampering with a workman. Even if
publication had been proved, there would still have been no reason for
the lords' interference; for obscene and profane publications were
punishable by law. But the ministers were anxious to obtain support for
their measures of revenge. The name of Bishop Warburton of Gloucester
was attached in mockery to notes in the _Essay on Woman_, and with his
concurrence the case was brought before the house as a breach of
privilege. The lords lent themselves to this transparent device; they
petitioned the king to command the prosecution of Wilkes and, later,
when he was out of their reach, ordered that he should be confined for
his offence against themselves. Their proceedings excited public
ridicule. That Sandwich should complain of obscenity and profanity, and
should censure Wilkes, a fellow-monk of Dashwood's debauched fraternity,
for indulging in them was, indeed, a case of Satan rebuking sin. At a
performance of the "Beggar's Opera" at Covent Garden theatre the
audience caught up with delight Macheath's words, "That Jemmy Twitcher
should peach me I own surprised me," and Sandwich became generally known
as Jemmy Twitcher.
[Sidenote: _WILKES EXPELLED FROM PARLIAMENT._]
On the same day as the proceedings in the lords, Grenville brought a
message from the king to the commons informing them of what had been
done in Wilkes's case. They voted, 273 to 111, that the _North Briton_,
No. 45, was a false and seditious libel, and ordered that it should be
burnt by the common hangman. In the course of the debate, Martin, who
had lately been secretary to the treasury, called Wilkes a cowardly and
malignant scoundrel. The next day, the 16th, they fought a duel with
pistols in the ring in Hyde Park; they had no seconds and each fired
twice. Martin's second shot wounded Wilkes dangerously. In his absence
the commons discussed his plea of privilege. Pitt strongly urged the
house to maintain its privileges. Parliament, he said, had no right to
surrender them; if it did so it would endanger its own freedom and
infringe upon the rights of the people. As for Wilkes personally, Pitt
was anxious to show that he did not approve of Temple's support of him,
and called him "the blasphemer of his God and the libeller of his king".
The house voted by 258 to 133 that privilege of parliament does not
extend to seditious libels, and ought not to obstruct the ordinary
course of the law in such cases. In itself this was an excellent
decision. Parliamentary privileges had increased to a mischievous
extent. By the abandonment of many of them, such as certain invidious
exemptions from the course of law which it claimed for its members, the
exclusion of strangers from its debates, and the prohibition of
reporting, parliament has gained in dignity and purity, and has
confirmed the liberties of the people. Nevertheless, though the
abandonment of privilege was in itself a step in a right direction, it
was reprehensible in Wilkes's case, because it was an _ex post facto_
measure, designed to meet a special case, and vindictive in its
intention.
The lords agreed in the decision of the commons, though a protest
against the surrender of privilege was signed by seventeen peers. On
December 3, the day fixed for the burning of No. 45 in front of the
Royal Exchange, a large mob broke the windows of the sheriff's coach and
pelted the constables. Encouraged by gentlemen at the windows of
neighbouring houses, they tore a large part of the paper from the
executioner with shouts of "Wilkes and liberty," carried it in triumph
outside Temple Bar, the boundary of the city, and there made a bonfire
into which they threw a jack-boot and a petticoat, the popular emblems
of Bute and the Princess of Wales. Yet Wilkes was in an unpleasant
position. A Scot went to his house intending to murder him; was arrested
and found insane. A summons was sent to him to appear at the bar of the
house of commons; his surgeons stated that he was too ill to attend, and
a later day was fixed. Before it came he went off secretly to Paris, and
while there excused himself from obedience to the order of the house by
sending a medical certificate. The commons refused to give any weight to
it, declared him in contempt, and guilty of a seditious libel, and on
January 19, 1764, expelled him the house. An information was laid
against him in the court of king's bench for reprinting and publishing
No. 45; he was convicted and, as he did not appear to receive sentence,
was outlawed.
While little sympathy seems to have been felt for Wilkes personally,
except among the lower classes, the attack upon him was widely resented
because it was regarded as an encroachment on national liberty.
Parliament was not in accord with public feeling. A strong effort was
made to induce the commons to declare that general warrants were
illegal. Pitt acknowledged that he had issued them during the war, when
it was necessary to find out and remove suspected persons; but no such
necessity existed at present, and he urged the house to do justice to
the nation, the constitution, and the law, by condemning them. The
ministers managed to shelve the question, but carried the adjournment
only by 234 to 218. Though on other matters they commanded a large
majority, several members from whom they expected support voted against
them in the debates arising out of Wilkes's arrest. Among these were
General Conway and Colonel Barre. Conway, the brother of the Earl of
Hertford, had gained much credit in the war in Germany; he was a dashing
officer and a respectable general, a man of refined tastes and high
principles. As a politician he was thoroughly honest, of small ability
and utterly wanting in decision of character. He was the dearest friend
of Horace Walpole; and Walpole, who regarded politics in a personal
light, exercised an unfortunate influence upon him. Barre, who had
served with distinction in Canada, was a coarse man, eloquent, and
feared by his opponents on account of his remarkable power of invective.
He sat for one of Shelburne's boroughs, and believing himself slighted
by Pitt, attacked him vehemently in the house on his resignation of
office. As a supporter of Bute he was appointed adjutant-general and
governor of Stirling, posts worth L4,000 a year. George, who regarded a
vote against the ministers in this matter as a personal affront to
himself, was determined that all who held either military or civil
appointments should clearly understand that they could not continue to
serve him if they opposed his policy in parliament. With Bedford's
approval, Conway, Barre, and with them General A'Court, who had also
voted in the minority, were deprived of their commands, and Shelburne,
Barre's patron, was dismissed from his office as aide-de-camp to the
king. Barre followed Shelburne's example in attaching himself to Pitt.
[Sidenote: _GRENVILLE'S ECONOMY._]
These dismissals violated the most valuable of the privileges of
parliament, freedom of speech and immunity from royal coercion. It was a
well-established constitutional rule that the king should not take
notice of anything which passed in parliament and that no member should
suffer for his speeches or votes. This rule had been broken in the last
reign when, in 1733, two officers lost their commands and, in 1735, Pitt
his cornetcy for acting with the opposition. On the present occasion the
responsibility for its violation rests on Grenville at least as much as
on the king himself. Parliament took little notice of this infringement
upon its privileges, though on the first day of the session, 1765,
Granby pleased the army by some sharp remarks on the dismission of
officers on account of their votes in parliament.[67] Encouraged by
their success against Wilkes, the ministers waged war on political
libels. A large number of _ex officio_ informations, or accusations
presented by the attorney-general on which the person accused was
brought to trial without the previous finding of a grand jury, were laid
against printers and others during the course of the year. As this
looked like persecution, it excited popular anger. One bookseller who
was sentenced to stand in the pillory in New-palace-yard, Westminster,
drove thither in a hackney coach numbered 45, and was cheered by a crowd
estimated at 10,000 persons. Two hundred guineas was collected for him,
and the mob hung a jack-boot and a "Scotch bonnet" on a gibbet and then
burnt them.
Grenville insisted on economy in the national expenditure; it was
needful, for during the late war the public debt had risen from
L72,500,000 to L132,700,000, and the country was heavily taxed. His
budget stood in honourable contrast to the finance of the late
administration; it did not propose lotteries or a private loan, and it
included an advantageous bargain with the Bank of England for the
renewal of its charter. Yet in some matters his economy was
short-sighted and peddling. He starved the naval estimates. During the
war many ships were built hastily of timber insufficiently seasoned, and
had fallen into so bad a condition that half their original cost was
needed for the repair of their hulls; there were too few workmen in the
dockyards, and the stores were empty of sails, rigging, and cordage.
Lord Egmont, the first lord of the admiralty, represented the necessity
for a large expenditure on the navy, but Grenville would not hear of it.
So, too, in less important matters, he grudged spending money on the
police of London, and highway robbery and other crimes of violence were
insufficiently checked, and he even refused so small a sum as L20,000
which the king wanted for the purchase of some land at the back of
Buckingham House, the site of part of the present Grosvenor Place, in
order that the garden which he was then making might not be overlooked.
The expenditure on the American colonies and the irregularities by which
they evaded their legal obligations, were offensive to his frugal and
orderly temperament; he proposed to enforce their obligations, and to
draw from the colonies some part of their cost to the mother-country.
The colonies occupied a long and comparatively narrow tract of country
stretching for seventeen hundred miles along the Atlantic. They differed
in character. In the northern colonies the puritan element was strong,
and the chief sources of wealth were commerce and farming. The southern
colonies had cavalier traditions, and their wealth was chiefly derived
from plantations which were cultivated by slave labour. Though
puritanism as a religious force was well-nigh extinct in the New England
provinces, it affected the temper of the people; they set a high value
on speech-making and fine words, and were litigious and obstinate;
lawyers were plentiful among them, and had much influence. As a whole
the colonies were impatient of control and jealous of interference.
Their constitutions differed in various points; in some the governor was
appointed by the crown, in others by the proprietary. All alike enjoyed
a large measure of personal and political freedom: they had the form and
substance of the British constitution; they had representative
assemblies in which they taxed themselves for their domestic purposes,
chose most of their own magistrates, and paid them all; and it was
seldom that their legislation was interfered with except with respect to
commerce.
[Sidenote: _RESTRICTIONS ON COLONIAL TRADE._]
The freedom which they enjoyed did not extend to commerce and
manufactures. In those matters the policy of Great Britain was founded
on the "mercantile theory," then universally accepted, and was directed
towards securing a monopoly of trade. Other countries pursued a like
policy towards their colonies, though they treated them with far less
liberality. The restrictions placed by Great Britain on colonial trade
were based on the Navigation acts of 1660 and later years, which were
originally aimed at the maritime power of the Dutch. Briefly, they
confined trade with the colonies to English or colonial ships; the
Americans were debarred from exporting a number of the most important
products of their country, their tobacco, grain, sugar, hides, and
timber for masts, except to Great Britain; no foreign ship might enter
their harbours, nor, with certain exceptions, could they import foreign
merchandise, except in ships sailing directly from England. Various acts
debarred them from manufactures which would have entered into
competition with English goods; they depended on the mother-country for
the commonest and most necessary things, for their cloth, hardware, and
a host of manufactured articles. Port duties were imposed by England,
and were collected by officers of the customs, whose business it was to
prevent contraband trading. These duties were not imposed for the sake
of revenue, but for the regulation of trade; and the whole system of
restrictions was founded on the idea that colonies should be made to
serve the interest of the mother-country by giving its merchants and
manufacturers the monopoly of the colonial market.
The colonies received some compensations for the restrictions placed
upon their industry and commerce. With certain exceptions their trade
was free. While some of their products were confined to the British
market, they had the monopoly of that market; no Englishman, for
example, might buy tobacco which did not come from America or Bermuda.
Their export trade to England was encouraged by bounties, and, though
their foreign imports generally had to come to them through England, a
system of drawbacks, by which the duties were remitted on exportation to
America, enabled them to buy continental goods more cheaply than they
could be bought in England. Nothing indeed can be further from the truth
than the idea that England's treatment of her colonies was harsh or
illiberal. Unfortunately the mercantile theory set up an opposition
between the interests of a mother-country and her colonies. A far more
important mitigation of the restrictions imposed on the colonies than
any that came from English liberality, was derived from the constant
violation of them. Few English statesmen knew or cared to know anything
about colonial affairs. Left to themselves the American colonies grew
rich. Their merchants, especially in New England, carried on a brisk and
extremely profitable contraband trade. In exchange for lumber, fish, and
cattle the New England merchants obtained sugar and molasses, and
bullion from the French and Spanish colonies; and vast quantities of rum
were distilled in Boston and exported to Africa to be used in the slave
trade.
England was not altogether a loser by these transactions. The richer a
Boston merchant became, the more British goods did he import, and as he
had to pay for them in bullion, his contraband trade enabled him to meet
his obligations. These advantages were indirect, the loss to the English
West India merchants was obvious and heavy. In order to protect them an
attempt was made in 1733 to stop this contraband trade by the imposition
of heavy duties; but the profits of the trade were so large that the
revenue officers found it to their interest to be careless or actually
conniving, and scarcely any duties were paid. On an average the American
customs cost England from L7,000 to L8,000 a year and did not bring in
quite L2,000. During the war the contraband trade afforded the French
useful supplies, and in 1760 Pitt ordered the colonial governors to
punish those who traded with the enemy. More power was placed in the
hands of the revenue officers by the issue of writs of assistance
enabling them to search for dutiable articles in any place without
alleging specific information. These writs were lawful and were
specially justifiable in time of war. Their lawfulness was
unsuccessfully disputed before the superior court of Massachusetts by a
lawyer named Otis, an eloquent speaker, singularly devoid of moderation.
His speech, in which rhetoric is more conspicuous than a knowledge of
law, attacked the commercial legislation of parliament generally; it was
much admired, and has been regarded by some Americans as the first step
towards revolution.
[Sidenote: _ENGLAND AND HER COLONIES._]
A system which cramped the trade and industry of a self-reliant people,
growing in wealth and intent on gain, for the benefit of a country
separated from them by 3,000 miles of ocean, then only crossed by
sailing ships, must sooner or later have led to revolt. The Americans
were impatient of control and apt to quarrel with their governors, who
often found their office an unenviable one. "Such wrong-headed people,"
said one of them, "I thank God I had never to do with before." They were
not a people patiently to submit to restrictions. Two causes had
contributed to bind them to Great Britain. One of these was their fear
of the French in Canada. So long as the French and their Indian allies
threatened their homes, even the most turbulent of them knew that they
gained by being subjects of the English king. The war with France called
forth a feeling of loyalty. The triumph of England freed them from the
fear of French aggression and their protestations of gratitude were
exuberant. Yet there were many who saw that the conquest of Canada
loosened the tie which bound the American colonies to the mother-country
and would probably lead to an assertion of independence. Separation
would, however, have been impossible without union. The jealousies
between the colonies were so strong that revolt seemed improbable. Were
they left to themselves, Otis declared in 1765, "America would be a mere
shambles of blood and confusion". A common cause alone could bring about
union, and such a cause was soon to be found. The termination of the war
enabled the ministers to direct their attention to the contraband trade
which had assisted the common enemy, defrauded the government, and
annoyed the commercial class. During Bute's administration, in 1763,
revenue cutters were sent to cruise off the American coast, the officers
of the king's ships were sworn to act as revenue officers, and revenue
cases were heard in the admiralty courts. Smuggling was more effectually
checked, and the irritation caused by the loss of trade was aggravated
by the roughness with which the seamen enforced the law.
Grenville adopted a new policy apparently contemplated by Bute's ministry.
Hitherto parliament had imposed customs duties on the colonies solely for
the purpose of regulating trade; he designed to raise revenue from them.
The idea was suggested to Walpole as a means of obtaining money on the
failure of his excise scheme, and that wary statesman promptly rejected
it. The money, however, which Grenville hoped to raise from the colonies
was not to swell the revenues of England; it was to be applied to their
own defence. His design was reasonable. The war had enormously increased
the public debt. It is true that it was not undertaken only for the
defence of the colonies; it is not less true that it was not a merely
insular war. The war concerned the empire at large, and Great Britain's
lavish sacrifices of blood and treasure delivered her children across the
ocean from the fear of French conquest. Her expenditure on their defence
could not end with the war; a small standing army had to be maintained for
their protection. It seemed not unlikely that France would attempt to
regain her lost dominions; it would have been fatal to leave the American
colonies undefended. And another foe was always at hand, for the Indians
regretted the overthrow of the French and were exasperated by the
ill-treatment they received from the British colonists. In 1763 Pontiac,
head-chief of the Ottawas, formed a confederation against the English.
Along the borders of Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Maryland the Indians
massacred outlying settlers, surprised many forts and slew their
garrisons. Three provinces might have been overrun before the inhabitants
had organised any defence, had not Sir Jeffrey (later Lord) Amherst, the
commander-in-chief, had a small British force at his disposal, consisting
mainly of companies of the 7th, 42nd, and 77th regiments of the line, and
of the Royal American regiment (later the 60th Rifles), formed in 1755 for
service in America. A little army composed largely of men of the 42nd
Highlanders, and commanded by Colonel Bouquet, defeated the Indians at
Bushy Run on August 5. Fort Pitt was relieved and, the victory having
encouraged the provincials to make a stand, the war virtually ended in
November, 1764.
[Sidenote: _THE STAMP ACT PROPOSED._]
The provincials disliked the idea of a standing army, and would have
preferred that their defence should have been left to themselves. That
was impossible. They were largely farmers and traders, peaceful folk
unwilling to leave their profitable pursuits. There was no central
authority to dictate the proportion of troops which each of the colonies
should contribute to a common force, and their selfishness and
jealousies made them grudge help one to another. The Americans behaved
shabbily to the troops sent to defend them, but Pontiac's war proved
that in times of pressing danger their safety might depend upon the
presence of a British force. Was it right or just that the colonies
should be defended by England and should contribute nothing towards the
cost of their defence? Grenville thought that it was not. On March 10,
1764, he laid before parliament a list of port dues; some of them were
higher than before, and to counterbalance the increase he proposed to
give several new advantages to colonial trade. Payment was no longer to
be evaded so easily as in past times, and smuggling would be attended
with greater risk. The money was to be paid into the English treasury
and was to be used only for colonial defence. More would be wanted for
that purpose, and he proposed to raise it by an act requiring that all
legal documents should bear stamps. This measure he deferred for a year
in order to ascertain the feeling of the colonies and to give them an
opportunity of raising the money in some other way if they preferred it.
The force to be kept in America was twenty regiments, or about 10,000
men, which, with the maintenance of fortifications, would cost L350,000
a year. Of this sum the proposed stamp act would, it was calculated,
bring in about L100,000. The bill passed without remark.
In an interview with the agents of the colonies Grenville pointed out
that the tax was reasonable, and was an easy and equitable way of
raising the required money, but promised that if the colonies disliked
it, and would raise the money themselves in some other way, he would be
content. Before the year was out they met him again and, acting on
instructions from their colonies, tried to dissuade him from his
purpose. Chief among them was Benjamin Franklin, then agent for
Pennsylvania, a New Englander by birth, not a puritan either in religion
or morals, a wise politician, shrewd, public-spirited, inventive, and
full of schemes of practical usefulness. He proposed that the money
should be voted by the provincial assemblies, but could not say that the
colonies would agree as to the amount which each should contribute. On
that of course the whole matter depended. When Grenville brought in his
stamp bill the debate, Burke says, was extremely languid. Parliament had
no idea that the act would lead to serious consequences. Nor were the
American agents much better informed, for Franklin, who considered that
a small standing army might be useful, believed that the colonies had no
choice but to submit to the tax. Pitt was absent from parliament,
suffering from gout. Conway and Barre opposed the bill, and Barre, in a
speech of fervid eloquence, described the Americans as "sons of
liberty," driven from their country by tyranny and treated by her with
neglect. In the commons the bill was carried with only forty
dissentients, and in the lords apparently without a division. It
received the royal assent on March 22, 1765, and was to come into
operation on November 1. In April the mutiny act was extended to
America, binding the colonies to provide the king's troops with quarters
and certain necessaries, such as fuel and candles.
[Sidenote: _AMERICAN RESISTANCE._]
The stamp act raised a storm of indignation in the American colonies.
Some of them, and especially the New England colonies, already had a
substantial grievance in the heavy blow dealt to their prosperity by the
repression of their contraband trade. Their discontent was increased by
a suspicion that England was about to establish episcopacy among them at
their expense, for Archbishop Secker and other English churchmen were
anxious to introduce bishops into America. A more sentimental, though an
efficient cause of irritation also existed in the affectation of
superiority adopted by Englishmen towards their colonial
fellow-subjects. The stamp tax brought their discontent to a head, and
gave the party hostile to government an opportunity for stirring up
opposition. During the year unwisely allowed by Grenville for
considering the proposed tax, they busily agitated against it. While at
that time the Americans allowed that parliament had a right to impose
duties for the regulation of trade, they denied its right to levy an
internal tax for the purpose of revenue, because they were not
represented in parliament.
Opposition to the ministerial policy naturally began in Boston, where
the repression of contraband trade weighed most heavily and
where--though that was a smaller matter--the dislike to episcopacy was
specially strong. The town-meeting promptly passed resolutions denying
the right of parliament to tax the colonies without their consent. The
meeting was led by Samuel Adams, a man of frugal life and austere
character, who, after failing as a brewer and as a tax collector,
adopted the career most congenial to his tastes and talents of political
agitator. The resolutions were adopted by the provincial assembly, and
on its invitation five other colonies joined with Massachusetts in
sending memorials and petitions to England against the proposed tax. The
assembly of Virginia was in session when the news came that the tax was
enacted, and Patrick Henry, a lawyer, brought forward some defiant
resolutions, of which four were carried, though only by a small
majority. His speech, which contained an insolent reference to the king,
was much admired. A general congress of the colonies was proposed by
Massachusetts and met at New York on November 7. Representatives of nine
colonies attended and others sent expressions of good-will. The members
drew up a statement of their claims and grievances in moderate terms,
and further expressed them in an address to the king, a memorial to the
lords, and a petition to the commons.
These orderly proceedings were accompanied by outbursts of lawless
violence. Societies for resistance were organised. The "sons of
liberty," as they called themselves in reference to Barre's speech, were
active in Boston, and in August, 1765, a mob plundered the house of a
man who was nominated as a distributor of stamps, destroyed a building
on his land which they believed was to be used as a stamp-office, hanged
him in effigy, and forced him to renounce his appointment. A sermon
preached by Jonathan Mayhew, a popular unitarian minister, on the words
"I would that they were even cut off which trouble you," was followed by
a more serious riot. Public buildings were attacked, the records of the
admiralty court were burnt, and the rioters forced their way into the
custom-house and got at the liquor in the cellars. Maddened by drink
they wrecked the stately mansion of Hutchinson, the lieutenant-governor,
and destroyed his fine collection of books and manuscripts. Persons of
good position more or less openly encouraged these excesses and no one
was punished for them. Outbreaks of mob violence, though of a less
riotous kind, took place in Rhode Island, Connecticut, and elsewhere. On
November 1, the day on which the stamp act came into operation, copies
of it were offered for sale headed, "The folly of England and the ruin
of America," bells were tolled, and mock funerals passed through the
streets.
Everywhere the new stamps were seized and destroyed. At New York the
lieutenant-governor, encouraged by the presence of the king's troops,
tried to secure the stamps sent to the town. A riot ensued. General
Gage, the commander-in-chief, declined to interfere at the risk of
beginning a civil war, and the stamps were surrendered and locked up in
the town hall. Besides these not a parcel of stamps was left in the
colonies. For a time this put an end to legal business, and the courts
were closed. Then lawyers agreed to take no notice of the lack of stamps
on documents, and at last the governors declared that the operation of
the act was to be reckoned as suspended. Retaliatory measures were
concerted. Merchants combined to stop all importation from England,
cancelled their orders and delayed sending remittances. Associations
were formed for abandoning the use of English goods, and the richest
citizens either wore old clothes or rough material of colonial
production. Manufactories of linen, cloth, and hardware were started,
and in order to insure a supply of wool, butchers were forbidden by
their customers to kill lambs.
The distinction made by the party of resistance between external and
internal taxation was in accordance with previous practice. Though
parliament had frequently imposed port-duties on the colonies, it had
abstained from imposing taxes within them. The stamp act was a new
departure. English history afforded ground for the distinction, which
was alleged in Bate's case, in the reign of James I., in support of the
claim of the crown. Yet it is clearly artificial, for a division of
taxes, such as into external and internal, only concerns their
incidence; it is a matter which belongs to economics and does not affect
political right. The colonists' claim of exemption from parliamentary
taxation on the ground of non-representation appeals to the sympathy of
Englishmen. Both in England and America there were some who desired that
the colonies should be represented in parliament, but their distance
from England and the ignorance of both peoples as regards the
circumstances and needs of each other would have been fatal objections
to any such scheme. The claim of the colonists seems to imply a
misapprehension of the character of parliament; for parliament is not a
mere meeting of delegates, it is an imperial assembly, and its
sovereignty is neither derived from the perfection of its constitution
nor lessened by its imperfection. Taxation is an attribute of
sovereignty, and parliament had a right to tax the colonies because the
sovereign power resided in it. Where else could it reside? To deny the
right to tax and to admit the right to legislate was inconsistent. How
could parliament, in virtue of its sovereign authority, have a right to
pass a bill ensuring personal freedom in the colonies, and yet have no
right to pass another bill imposing a tax on them? The logical outcome
of the American contention was that all parliamentary legislation
concerning the colonies was null, except so far as they chose to admit
it. Under all their arguments lay the germ of independence, though as
yet the leaders of the agitation loudly professed loyalty.
[Sidenote: _UNSTATESMANLIKE POLICY._]
That the tax was reasonable in intention, equitable in incidence, and in
itself tolerable, few probably will now deny. Nor will any one surely
deny that the act was foolish and unstatesmanlike. Strict definitions of
legal right are not safe guides in practical politics: sentiment and
circumstances should be held to be of far greater account. The Americans
maintained that there was an important difference between external and
internal taxation, and, in common with all other Englishmen, they highly
valued the right expressed in the maxim, "No taxation without
representation". It was a fatal mistake to disregard their belief and,
for the sake of avoiding a not very serious expenditure, to seem to deny
what they claimed as their heritage as Englishmen. Heavy as its expenses
were, Great Britain could have afforded to take upon itself the sum
required for the defence of the colonies. Grenville could not see the
matter in this light. Well-meaning and wishing to act fairly both
towards England and the colonies, he brought trouble on both alike by
his insistence on legal right. His administration was fruitful in evil.
He permitted parliament to enter on a disastrous struggle with Wilkes in
order to gratify the king; he raised up discord between England and her
most important colonies; he allowed the strength of England to decay by
grudging to spend the money needed for the maintenance of the navy, and
its dignity to be impaired by neglecting to insist on the payment of the
Manila ransom, though for that he was not individually responsible. One
judicious act of his administration may be recorded here. The Isle of
Man, though under the allegiance of the king, was not fully under the
royal authority; the king had no courts and no officers there, and it
was, as Burke said, "the very citadel of smuggling". In 1765 the crown
bought the rights of the Duke and Duchess of Atholl over the island for
L70,000, and it became thenceforward an integral part of the realm of
England.
FOOTNOTES:
[65] Hardwicke to Newcastle, Add. MS. 32,948, f. 54.
[66] G. Rose, _Diaries_, ii., 192.
[67] James Grenville to Lady Chatham, Jan. 12, 1765, MS. Pitt Papers,
35.