Beginnings of the American People Part 8

The policy which history a.s.sociates with the name of Grenville did not originate with him, nor yet with his royal master, George III. It was the unhappy experience of the Austrian Succession War that enforced upon the English Government the necessity of a stricter attention to the colonies. Ministers who then set themselves to read the American dispatches were amazed to find the governors everywhere without adequate support against the a.s.semblies, the a.s.semblies everywhere indifferent to imperial interests. After the Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle plantation affairs were accordingly placed under the direction of the able Halifax; and in 1752 the governors were instructed to transmit all correspondence "to His Majesty by one of His Majesty's princ.i.p.al Secretaries of State."

To remedy an untoward situation many schemes were broached, on the eve of the Seven Years' War, designed to bring the colonies "to a sense of their duty to the king, to awaken them to take care of their lives and fortunes." The need of the hour was a union of the colonies for military defense; and in 1754, on the initiative of the English Government, representatives from seven colonies adopted a scheme drafted by Franklin and known as the Albany Plan of Union. It was ominous for the success of all such attempts in the future that a plan which was thought by the ministers too weak to be effective was thought by the colonial a.s.semblies too strong to be safe. In any case, with hostilities already begun, the issue could not be pressed to a conclusion when, as the Board of Trade a.s.serted, "a good understanding between your Majesty's governors and the people is so absolutely necessary." Under the stress of war, all ministerial projects for a stricter control of the colonies were accordingly laid aside until the restoration of peace.

The war itself only proved once more how defective was England's colonial administration. Three years of devastating Indian warfare again demonstrated the necessity of an adequate defense of the frontier, and a stricter control of Indian trade. A customs service which collected annually 2000 of revenue and cost 7000 to maintain, manned by officials who sold flags of truce to traders carrying ammunition and supplies to the enemy, was seen to be but an expensive luxury in time of peace and a military weakness in time of war. The a.s.sistance which Pitt, and Pitt alone, could induce the colonists to render, however adequate, was purchased at the price of concessions which deprived the governors of all but nominal influence, while placing in the a.s.semblies the effective powers of government. And the results achieved by the Peace of Paris but confirmed the conclusions which followed from the experience of the war. The territory then acquired by England was imperial in extent; and the acquisition of it had in six years raised the annual cost of her military and naval establishment from 70,000 to 350,000.

This far-flung and diversified empire had to be organized in order to be governed, and defended in order to be maintained. In view of the unprecedented responsibilities thus thrust upon the little island kingdom, it seemed that the oldest and most prosperous, the most English and best disposed of England's colonies might well be asked to submit to reasonable restraints in the interests of the empire, and in their own defense to furnish a moderate a.s.sistance.

Before the war was over a.s.siduous royal governors were offering counsel as to the "regulation of the North American governments." If there is to be a new establishment "upon a true English const.i.tutional bottom,"

wrote Bernard in 1761, "it must be upon a new plan," for "there is no system in North America fit to be made a module of." High officials in England were not lacking who agreed with the Ma.s.sachusetts governor. The Peace of Paris was scarcely signed before Charles Townshend, First Lord of Trade in Bute's Ministry, proposed that the authority of Parliament should be invoked to remodel the colonial Governments upon a uniform plan, to pa.s.s stringent laws for enforcing the Trade Acts, and by taxation to raise a revenue in America for paying the salaries of royal officials and for the maintenance of such British troops as might be stationed there for the defense of the colonies. Townshend's proposals would doubtless have been formulated into law had it not been for the fall of Bute's Ministry in April; but the measures which were finally carried by Grenville, if they left the colonial charters untouched, were no less comprehensive, in respect to the purely imperial matters of trade and defense, than those initiated by his brilliant predecessor.

Adequate and well-administered laws for advancing the trade and securing the defense of the empire were, indeed, the primary objects of Grenville's colonial legislation. Grenville, who was the fingers rather than the soul of good government, could not endure the lax administration of the customs service which in the course of years had given the colonies, as it were, a vested interest in non-enforcement. He accordingly set himself to correct the faults which Walpole had condoned in the interest of the Hanoverian succession, and which Newcastle had utilized in the service of the Whig faction. Commissioners of the customs, long regarding their offices as sinecures and habitually residing in England, were ordered to repair at once to their posts in America. Additional revenue officers were appointed with more rigid rules for the discharge of their duties. Governors were once more instructed to give adequate support in the enforcement of the Trade Acts. The employment of general writs, or "writs of a.s.sistance," was authorized to facilitate the search for goods illegally entered; and s.h.i.+ps of war were stationed on the American coast to aid in the suppression of smuggling.

More careful administrative supervision was but the prelude to additional legislation. Throughout the eighteenth century, the trade of the Northern and Middle colonies with the French and Spanish West Indies had been one of the most extensive branches of colonial commerce. To divert this traffic to the British sugar islands, Walpole had carried the Mola.s.ses Act in 1733. But the Mola.s.ses Act, though many times renewed and now in 1763 once more about to expire, had never been enforced, and had never, therefore, either benefited the British sugar planters or brought any revenue into the treasury. It was to secure one or both of these advantages that Grenville procured from Parliament the pa.s.sage in 1764 of the law known as the Sugar Act; a law which reduced the duty upon foreign mola.s.ses imported into the continental colonies from 6_d._ to 3_d._, and imposed new duties upon coffee, pimento, white sugar, and indigo from the Spanish and French West Indies, and upon wine from the Madeiras and the Azores. Even such men as Bernard, Hutchinson, and Colden believed that the new duties would destroy a trade which they a.s.serted was indispensable to the Northern colonies and highly beneficial to the commerce of the empire. But the sugar planters, powerfully represented in Parliament, demanded protection, while to Grenville's mind the systematic violation of a law was rather an argument against its repeal than an evidence of its impracticability.

The measure, therefore, became a law; and for its better enforcement the jurisdiction of the admiralty courts was extended, and naval officers were empowered to act as collectors of the customs.

Less noticed at the time, but scarcely less important in its effects upon trade and industry, was the law pa.s.sed by Parliament in the same year for regulating colonial currency. With the rapid development of commerce in the eighteenth century, and on account of the steady flow of specie to London, the colonies had commonly resorted to the use of paper money as a legal tender in the payment of local debts. Such men as Franklin and Colden defended the practice on the ground of necessity, and it was undoubtedly true that without the issue of new bills of credit the colonies could not have given the military a.s.sistance required of them for the conquest of Canada. But it was equally true that in most colonies, except Ma.s.sachusetts where the issues had been retired in 1749, and New York where their par value had been consistently maintained, the evils of depreciated currency had long existed and still went unremedied. Debtors profited at the expense of creditors, while colonial a.s.semblies often took advantage of the situation to pa.s.s laws enabling the American trader to avoid meeting his just obligations to English merchants. In response to the loud complaints of the latter, and without adequately discriminating between the uses and the abuses of a colonial paper currency, Parliament pa.s.sed the act "to prevent paper bills of credit hereafter issued in any of his Majesty's colonies, from being declared to be a legal tender in payment of money, and to prevent the legal tender of such bills as are now subsisting, from being prolonged beyond the periods limited for calling in and sinking the same."

Meanwhile, the Ministry of Grenville had already turned to the problem of defense, so inseparably connected with the question of Indian relations and Western settlement. The English Government had long recognized the necessity of securing the friends.h.i.+p of the Indians; and to this end it had fostered the settlement of the interior. Indian traders, employing methods none too scrupulous, had been encouraged to ply their traffic beyond the mountains. Many thousands of acres of land had been granted, to individuals and to companies of promoters, in the belief that "nothing can more effectively tend to defeat the dangerous designs of the French," or better enable the English "to cultivate a friends.h.i.+p and carry on a more extensive commerce with the Indians inhabiting those parts." It was a policy which all Americans could understand. To those colonists who had fought with Was.h.i.+ngton to beat back the tide of Indian ma.s.sacre, to those who had witnessed the destruction of Fort Duquesne, the conquest of Canada had no meaning unless it opened the great West to free settlement. And during the latter years of the war, thousands of families in all the old provinces were prepared, as Franklin said, "to swarm," while many hundreds had crossed the mountains and were already seated in the upper valleys of the Ohio.

Yet before the war began, the Board of Trade perceived that the policy originally advocated required serious modification. It was obvious enough that if t.i.tles to land were granted, not only by the English Government, but also by different colonies claiming jurisdiction over the same territory, endless conflict and litigation would be the sure result. And it soon appeared that the actual occupation of the interior was after all far more likely to provoke the hostility than to win the allegiance of the Western tribes. Overreached and defrauded in nearly every bargain, the Indian hated the trader whose lure he could not resist, and with the coming of the surveyor and the settler was well aware that the pretended friends.h.i.+p of the English was but a thin mask to conceal the greed of men who had no other desire than to rob him of his land. During the latter years of the war, after the conquest of Canada placed the allies of France under the heavy hand of Amherst and opened the way to actual settlement, it became clear that an ominous spirit of unrest was spreading throughout all the Northwest. It was precisely to guard against the danger of an Indian uprising, which in fact came to pa.s.s in the formidable conspiracy of Pontiac, that the Board of Trade formulated as early as 1761 the policy which found expression in the famous Proclamation of October 7, 1763. The Proclamation announced the intention of the English Government to take exclusive control of Indian relations and Western settlement. "For the present," all territory west of the Alleghanies, from the new provinces of Florida on the south to Canada on the north, was to be "reserved to the Indians." Governors were forbidden to grant land there. Those who had already settled within reserved territory were required to remove forthwith; and every Indian trader was bound to give security for observing such rules as the Imperial Government might establish. It was the intention of the ministers, although unfortunately not so expressed in the Proclamation, to open the reserved lands to settlement as soon as Indian t.i.tles could be justly extinguished. In accordance with this intention, the Government negotiated the Treaty of Fort Stanwix in 1768, by which the Six Nations ceded to the Crown their rights to lands south of the Ohio; and both before and after that event it was seriously concerned with projects for new colonies in the interior. The most famous of these projects was that of the Vandalia Colony, for which a royal grant was about to be executed in 1775 when the promoters were requested to "wait ... until hostilities ... between Great Britain and the United Colonies should cease."

Undoubtedly the Proclamation of 1763 was primarily a measure of defense; but even if strictly enforced, which was found to be quite impossible in fact, it could not alone have secured unbroken peace on the frontier. Primitive in his instincts and treacherous in his nature, the Indian harbored in his vengeful heart the rankling memory of too many grievances, was too easily swayed by his ancient but now humiliated French allies, to be held in check without a show of force to back the most just and wisely administered policy. The English Government would doubtless have been content to leave the management of defense in the hands of the colonists had they shown a disposition to undertake it in a systematic manner. After the Albany Plan was rejected by the a.s.semblies, the Board of Trade recommended a scheme by which commissioners, appointed in each colony by the a.s.sembly and approved by the governor, should determine the military establishment necessary in time of peace, and apportion the expense for maintaining it among the several provinces on the basis of wealth and population. s.h.i.+rley and Franklin were heartily in favor of such a plan. But there is no reason to think that a single a.s.sembly could have been got to agree to it, or to any measure of a like nature. "Everybody cries, a union is absolutely necessary," said Franklin in amused disgust, "but when it comes to the manner and form of the union, their weak noddles are perfectly distracted." The colonies being thus unwilling to cooperate in the management of their own defense, the Board of Trade could see no alternative but an "interposition of the authority of Parliament." This alternative the Government therefore adopted; and the permanent establishment of British troops in America to overawe the Indians and maintain the conquest of Canada, already proposed by Townshend, was now determined upon by Grenville. It was the opinion of Grenville, as well as of most men in England and of many in America, that the colonies might rightly be expected to contribute something to the support of such troops. The Mutiny Act, requiring the a.s.semblies to furnish certain utensils and provisions to soldiers in barracks, was now first extended to the colonies; and for raising in America a portion of the general maintenance fund, the ministry, with some reluctance on the part of Grenville, proposed a stamp tax as the most equitable and the easiest to be levied and collected. "I am, however, not set upon this tax," said Grenville. "If the Americans dislike it, and prefer any other method of raising the money themselves, I shall be content." It was soon apparent that the Americans did dislike it; and in February, 1765, Franklin, speaking for the colonial agents then in England, urged that the money be raised in "the old const.i.tutional way," by requisitions upon the several a.s.semblies. "Can you agree on the proportions each colony should raise?" inquired the minister. Franklin admitted that it was impossible; and Grenville, more concerned with what was equitable than with what was politic, pressed forward with his measure to require the use of stamped paper for nearly all legal doc.u.ments and customs papers, for appointments to offices carrying a salary of 20 except military and judicial offices, for grants of franchises, for licenses to sell liquor, for packages containing playing-cards and dice, for all pamphlets, advertis.e.m.e.nts, hand-bills, calendars, almanacs, and newspapers. The revenue which might be raised by this law, estimated at 60,000, was to be paid into the exchequer, and to be expended solely for supporting the British troops in America.

At the time there were few men either in England or in the colonies who imagined that the Stamp Act would release forces that were destined to disrupt the empire. It was scarcely debated in the House of Commons.

"There has been nothing of note in Parliament," wrote Horace Walpole, "but one slight day on the American taxes." And even in America few men supposed that it would not be executed, however much they might dislike it. It was impossible to prevent the pa.s.sage of the act, Franklin a.s.sured his friends. "We might as well have hindered the sun's setting.

That we could not do. But since 't is down, my friend, ... let us make as good a night as we can. We may still light candles." It was not candles alone that were lighted, but a conflagration; a conflagration which soon spread from the New World to the Old and burned away, as with a renovating flame, so much that was both good and bad in that amiable eighteenth-century society.

II

If the experience of the last French war convinced the English Government that a stricter control of the colonies was necessary, the conquest of Canada convinced the colonists that they could defend themselves, and at the same time removed the only danger which had ever made them feel the need of English protection. As early as 1711, Le Ronde Denys warned the New Englanders that the expulsion of the French from North America would leave England free to suppress colonial liberties, while another French writer predicted that it would rather enable, the colonies to "unite, shake off the yoke of the English monarchy, and erect themselves into a democracy." The prediction was often repeated. Between 1730 and 1763, many men, among them Montesquieu, Peter Kalm, and Turgot, a.s.serted that colonial dependence upon England would not long outlast the French occupation of Canada. The opposition to Grenville's colonial legislation, which gathered force with every additional measure, seemed now about to confirm these predictions.

No single law of these early years would have caused its proper part of the resistance which all of them in fact brought about. A measure of oppression could be attributed to each of them, but the pressure of any one was not felt by all cla.s.ses or all colonies alike. The Proclamation of 1763 was an offense chiefly to speculators in land, and to those border communities that had fought to open free pa.s.sage to the West only to find the fertile Ohio valleys "reserved to the Indians"--the very tribes which had brought death and desolation to the frontier. The Sugar Act was a greater grievance to the New England distiller of rum and the exporters of fish and lumber than it was to the rice and tobacco planters of the South. New York merchants were seriously affected by the Currency Act, which scarcely touched Ma.s.sachusetts, and which, in Virginia, meant money in the pockets of creditors, but bore hardly on debtors and the speculators who bought silver at Williamsburg in depreciated paper in order to sell it at par in Philadelphia. The famous Stamp Act itself chiefly concerned the printers, lawyers, officeholders, the users of the custom-house, and the litigious cla.s.s that employed the courts to enforce or resist the payment of debt.

Only when regarded as a whole was the policy of Grenville seen to spell disaster. Each new law seemed carefully designed to increase the burdens imposed by every other. The Sugar Act, for example, taken by itself, was perhaps the most grievous of all. The British sugar islands, to which it virtually restricted the West Indian trade of the Northern colonies, offered no sufficient market for their lumber and provisions, nor could they, like the Spanish islands, furnish the silver needed by continental merchants to settle London balances on account of imported English commodities. Exports to the West Indies and imports from England must, therefore, be reduced; the one event would cripple essential colonial industries such as the fisheries and the distilling of rum, while the other would force the colonists to devote themselves to those very domestic manufactures which it was the policy of the English Government to discourage. These disadvantages, which attached to the Sugar Act itself, were accentuated by almost every other cardinal measure of Grenville's colonial policy. With the chief source of colonial specie cut off, the Stamp Act increased the demand for it by 60,000; when the need for paper money as a legal tender was more than ever felt, its further use was shortly to be forbidden altogether; when the diminished demand for labor, occasioned by restrictions upon the West Indian trade, was likely to stimulate migration into the interior, the West was closed to settlement. And the close of the French war, which had raised the debt of the colonies to an unprecedented figure, was the moment selected for restricting trade, remodeling the monetary system, and imposing upon the colonies taxes for protection against a danger which no longer threatened. Little wonder that to the colonial mind the measures of Grenville carried all the force of an argument from design: any part, separated from the whole, might signify nothing; the perfect correlation of the completed scheme was evidence enough that somewhere a malignant purpose was at work bent upon the destruction of English liberties.

Members of the House of Commons who yawned while voting the new laws were amazed at the commotion they raised in America. In all the colonies scarcely a man was to be found to defend any of them. Those afterwards known as loyalists, with Hutchinson, Colden, Dulaney, and Galloway as their most distinguished representatives, were of one accord with the Lees, with Patrick Henry, with d.i.c.kinson, and the Adamses, in a.s.serting that the Stamp Act and the Sugar Act were inexpedient and unjust.

Hutchinson urged the repeal of both measures. Colden a.s.sured the Board of Trade that the Currency Act, so far as New York was concerned, was uncalled for and very prejudicial to colonial industry and the manufactures of England. The three-penny duty on mola.s.ses, said Samuel Adams, will make useless one third of the fish now caught, and so remittances to Spain, Portugal, and other countries, "through which money circulates into England for the purchase of her goods of all kinds," must cease. "Unless we are allowed a paper currency," Daniel c.o.xe wrote to Reed, "they need not send tax gatherers, for they can gather nothing--never was money so very scarce as now." Governor Bernard expressed the belief that if the proposed measures were executed "there will soon be an end to the specie currency of Ma.s.sachusetts."

Undoubtedly the general opinion of America was voiced by the Stamp Act Congress when it affirmed that the payment of the new duties would prove, "from the scarcity of specie, ... absolutely impracticable," and render the colonists "unable to purchase the manufactures of Great Britain."

But the colonists did not ground their case upon expediency alone, or rest content with argument and protest. And the bad eminence of the Stamp Act was due to the fact that it alone, of all the measures of Grenville, enabled the defenders of colonial rights to s.h.i.+ft the issue in debate and bring deeds to the support of words. Last of all the cardinal measures to be enacted, the Stamp Act attracted to itself the multiplied resentments acc.u.mulated by two years of hostile legislation.

It alone could with plausible arguments be declared illegal as well as unjust, and it was the one of all most open to easy and conspicuous nullification in fact. The Proclamation of 1763 was, indeed, nullified almost as effectively, but with no accompaniment of harangue, or of burning effigies, or crowds of angry men laying violent hands upon the law's officials. If the Stamp Act seemed the one intolerable grievance, round which the decisive conflict raged, it was because it raised the issue of fundamental rights, and because it could be of no effect without its material symbols--concrete and visible bundles of stamped papers which could be seen and handled as soon as they were landed, and the very appearance of which was a challenge to action.

While all Americans agreed that the Stamp Act, like the Sugar Act, was unjust, or at least inexpedient, not all affirmed that it was illegal.

Hutchinson was one of many who protested against the law, but admitted that Parliament had not exceeded its authority in pa.s.sing it. But the colonial a.s.semblies, and a host of busy pamphleteers who set themselves to expose the pernicious act, agreed with Samuel Adams and Patrick Henry, with the conciliatory John d.i.c.kinson, and the learned Dulaney, that the colonists, possessing all the rights of native-born Englishmen, could not legally be deprived of that fundamental right of all, the right of being taxed only by representatives of their own choosing.

Duties laid to regulate trade, from which a revenue was sometimes derived, were either declared not to be taxes, or else were distinguished, as "external" taxes which Parliament was competent to impose, from "internal" taxes which Parliament could impose only upon those who were represented in that body. And the colonies were not represented in Parliament; no, not even in that "virtual" sense which might be affirmed in the case of many unfranchised English cities, such as Manchester and Liverpool; from which it followed that the Stamp Act, unquestionably an internal tax, was a manifest violation of colonial rights.

The ablest arguments against the Stamp Act were those set forth by John d.i.c.kinson, of Philadelphia, and Daniel Dulaney, of Maryland: the ablest and the best tempered. Unfortunately, the conciliatory note was all but lost in the chorus of angry protest and bitter denunciation that was designed to spur the Americans on to reckless action rather than to induce the ministers to withdraw an unwise measure. Clever lawyers seeking political advantage, such as John Morin Scott; zealots who knew not the meaning of compromise, such as Patrick Henry and Samuel Adams; preachers of the gospel, such as Jonathan Mayhew, who took this occasion to denounce the doctrine of pa.s.sive resistance, and with over-subtle logic identified the defense of civil liberty with the cause of religion and morality;--such men as these, with intention or all unwittingly raised public opinion to that high tension from which spring insurrection and the irresponsible action of mobs. Everywhere stamp distributors, voluntarily or to the accompaniment of threats, resigned their offices. Stamped papers were no sooner landed than they were seized and destroyed, or returned to England, or transmitted for safe-keeping to the custody of local officials pledged not to deliver them. Often inspired and sometimes led by citizens of repute who were "not averse to a little rioting," the mobs were recruited from the quays and the grogshops, and once in action were difficult to control. In true mob fas.h.i.+on they testified to their patriotism by parading the streets at night, "breaking a few gla.s.s windows," and destroying the property of men, such as Hutchinson and Colden, whose unseemly wealth or lukewarm opinions were an offense to stalwart defenders of liberty.

The November riots disposed of the stamps but not of the Stamp Act.

Business had to go on as usual without stamps or cease altogether.

Either course would make the law of no effect; but the latter course would be a strictly const.i.tutional method of resistance, while the former would involve a violation of law. Many preferred the const.i.tutional method. Let the courts adjourn, they said, and offices remain vacant; let print-shops close, and s.h.i.+ps lie in harbor: English merchants will soon enough feel the pressure of slack business and force ministers to another line of conduct. A good plan enough for the man of independent fortune, for the judge whose income was a.s.sured, or the thrifty merchant who, signing a non-importation agreement, had laid in a stock of goods to be sold at high prices. But the wage-earner, the small shopkeeper who was soon sold out, the printer who lived on his weekly margin of profit, the rising lawyer whose income rose or fell with his fees: such men were of another mind. The inactivity of the courts "will make a large chasm in my affairs, if it should not reduce me to distress," John Adams confides to his _Diary_ in December; and adds navely that he was just on the point of winning a reputation and a competence "when this execrable project was set on foot for my ruin as well as that of my country." Men who saw their incomes dwindle were easily disposed to think that the cessation of business was an admission of the legitimacy of the law, a kind of betrayal of the cause. And it was to counteract the influence of lukewarm conservatives, men who were content to "turn and s.h.i.+ft, to luff up, and bear away," that those who regarded themselves as the only true patriots, uniting in an a.s.sociation of the Sons of Liberty, set about the task of "putting business in motion again in the usual channels without stamps."

The object of the Sons of Liberty was in part, but only in part, attained. Newspapers were printed as usual, and certainly there was no lack of pamphlets. Retailers did not hesitate to sell playing-cards or dice, nor were the grogshops closed for want of stamped licenses. Yet the courts of law were nearly everywhere closed for a time, and if the clamor of creditors and the influence of lawyers forced them to open in most places, in New York and Ma.s.sachusetts, at least, they did little business or none at all so long as the Stamp Act remained on the statute-book. But it was in connection with commercial activities that the plan of the conservatives was most effective. Non-importation agreements, generally signed by the merchants, were the more readily kept because the customs officials were inclined to refuse any but stamped clearance papers, while the war vessels in the harbors intercepted s.h.i.+ps that attempted to sail without them. As the conservatives had predicted, the effect was soon felt in England.

Thousands of artisans in Manchester and Leeds were thrown out of employment. Glasgow, more dependent than other cities upon the American market, loudly complained that its ruin was impending; and the merchants of London, Bristol, and many other towns, a.s.serting that American importers were indebted to them several million pounds sterling, which they were willing but unable to pay, pet.i.tioned Parliament to take immediate action for their relief.

And, indeed, to ignore the situation in America was now impossible. The law had to be withdrawn or made effective by force of arms. When the matter came up in Parliament in January, 1766, Grenville, as leader of the opposition, still claimed that the Stamp Act was a reasonable measure, and one that must be maintained, more than ever now that the colonists had insolently denied its legality, and with violence amounting to insurrection prevented its enforcement. But the Rockingham Whigs, whose traditions, even if somewhat obscured, marked them out as the defenders of English liberties, were pledged to the repeal of the unfortunate law. Lord Camden, in defense of the colonial contention, staked his legal reputation on the a.s.sertion that Parliament had no right to tax America. Pitt was of the same opinion. Following closely the argument in Dulaney's pamphlet, which he held up as a masterly performance, the Great Commoner declared that "taxation is no part of the governing or legislating power." He was told that America had resisted. "I rejoice that America has resisted," he cried in words that sounded a trumpet call throughout the colonies. "Three millions of people, so dead to all the feelings of liberty as voluntarily to submit to be slaves, would have been fit instruments to make slaves of all the rest.... America, if she fell, would fall like the strong man with his arms around the pillars of the const.i.tution." More convincing than the eloquence of Pitt was the evidence offered by the merchants' pet.i.tions, and by the shrewd and weighty replies of Franklin in his famous examination in the House of Commons, to show that the policy of Grenville, legal or not, was an economic blunder. The Stamp Act was accordingly repealed, March 18, 1766; and a few weeks later, as a further concession, the Sugar Act was modified by reducing the duty on mola.s.ses from 3_d._ to 1_d._, and some new laws were pa.s.sed intended to remove the obstacles which made it difficult for the Northern and Middle colonies to trade directly with England. Yet the ministers had no intention of yielding on the main point: the theoretical right of Parliament to bind the colonies in all matters whatever was formally a.s.serted in the Declaratory Act; while the reenactment of the Mutiny Law indicated that the practical policy of establis.h.i.+ng British troops in America for defense was to be continued.

III

The repeal of the Stamp Act was the occasion for general rejoicing in America. Loyal addresses were voted to the king, and statues erected to commemorate the virtues and achievements of Pitt. Imperfectly aware of the conditions in England that had contributed to the happy event, it was taken by the colonists to mean that their theory of the const.i.tution had been accepted. The Declaratory Act was thought to be no more than a formal concession to the dignity of government; and although the Mutiny Act was causing trouble in New York, and merchants were pet.i.tioning for a further modification of the Trade Laws, most men looked forward to the speedy reestablishment of the old-time cordial relations between the two countries. The Sons of Liberty no longer a.s.sembled; rioting ceased; the noise of incessant debate was stilled. "The repeal of the Stamp Act,"

John Adams wrote in November, 1766, "has hushed into silence almost every popular clamor, and composed every wave of popular disorder into a smooth and peaceful calm."

And no doubt most Englishmen would willingly have let the question rest.

But an unwise king, stubbornly bent on having his way; precise administrators of the Grenville type, concerned for the loss of a farthing due; egoists like Wedderburne, profoundly ignorant of colonial affairs, convulsed and readily convinced by the light sarcasms with which Soame Jenyns disposed of the pretensions of "our American colonies": such men waited only the opportune moment for retrieving a humiliating defeat. That moment came with the mischance that clouded the mind of Pitt and withdrew him from the direction of a government of all the factions. The responsibility relinquished by the Great Commoner was a.s.sumed by Charles Townshend, Chancellor of the Exchequer, a man well fitted to foster the spirit of discord which then reigned, to the king's great content, in that "mosaic" ministry. In January, 1767, without the knowledge of the Cabinet, this "director of the revels" pledged himself in the House of Commons to find "a mode by which a revenue may be drawn from America without offense." Since the Americans admit that external taxes are legal, he said, let us lay an external tax. Backed by the king, he accordingly procured from Parliament, in May of the same year, an act laying duties on gla.s.s, red and white lead, paper, and tea. The revenue to be derived from the law, estimated at 40,000, was to be applied to the payment of the salaries of royal governors and of judges in colonial courts. A second act established a board of commissioners to be stationed in America for the better enforcement of the Trade Acts; while a third, known as the Restraining Act, suspended the New York a.s.sembly until it should have made provision for the troops according to the terms of the Mutiny Act.

The Townshend Acts revived the old controversy, not quite in the old manner. Mobs were less in evidence than in 1765, although riots occasioned by business depression disturbed the peace of New York in the winter of 1770, and the presence of the troops in Boston, the very sight of which was an offense to that civic community, resulted in the famous "ma.s.sacre" of the same year. Yet the duties were collected without much difficulty; and although the income derived from them amounted to almost nothing, the commissioners reorganized the customs service so successfully that an annual revenue of 30,000 was obtained at a cost of 13,000 to collect. Forcible resistance was, indeed, less practicable in dealing with the Townshend Acts than in the case of the Stamp Act; but it was also true that men of character and substance, many of whom in 1765 had not been "averse to a little rioting," now realized that mobs and the popular ma.s.s meeting undermined at once the security of property rights and their own long-established supremacy in colonial politics.

Desiring to protect their privileges against encroachment from the English Government without sharing them with the unfranchised populace, they were therefore more concerned than before to employ only const.i.tutional and peaceful methods of obtaining redress. To this end they resorted to non-importation agreements, to pet.i.tion and protest, so well according with English tradition, and to the reasoned argument, of which the most notable in this period was that series of _Farmer's Letters_ which made the name of John d.i.c.kinson familiar in Europe and a household word throughout the colonies.

If in point of action the defenders of colonial rights were inclined to greater moderation, in point of const.i.tutional theory they were now constrained to take a more radical stand. When Franklin, in his examination before the House of Commons in 1766, was pressed by Townshend to say whether Americans might not as readily object to external as to internal taxes, he shrewdly replied: "Many arguments have lately been used here to show them that there is no difference;--at present they do not reason so; but in time they may possibly be convinced by these arguments." That time was now at hand. As early as 1766, Richard Bland, of Virginia, had declared that the colonies, like Hanover, were bound to England only through the Crown. This might be over-bold; but the old argument was inadequate to meet the present dangers, inasmuch as the Townshend Acts, the establishment of troops in Boston and New York, and the attempt to force Ma.s.sachusetts to rescind her resolutions of protest, all seemed more designed to restrict the legislative independence of the colonies than to a.s.sert the right of Parliamentary taxation. Franklin himself, to whom it scarcely occurred in 1765 that the legality of the Stamp Act might be denied, could not now master the Ma.s.sachusetts principle of "subordination," or understand what that distinction was which d.i.c.kinson labored to draw between the right of taxing the colonies and the right of regulating their trade.

"The more I have thought and read on the subject," he wrote in 1768, "the more I find ... that no middle doctrine can well be maintained, I mean not clearly with intelligible arguments. Something might be made of either of the extremes: that Parliament has a power to make all laws for us, or that it has a power to make no laws for us; and I think the arguments for the latter more numerous and weighty than those for the former." Before the Townshend duties were repealed, the colonists were entirely familiar with the doctrine of complete legislative independence; and the popular cry of "no representation no taxation"

began to be replaced by the far more radical cry of "no representation no legislation."

In support of argument and protest, the colonists once more resorted to the practice of non-importation. The earliest agreement was signed by Boston merchants in October, 1767. But a far more rigid a.s.sociation, not to import with trifling exceptions any goods from England or Holland, was formed in New York in August, 1768, and agreed to by the merchants in most colonies. Better observed in New York than elsewhere, it was so far maintained as to reduce the English importations into the Middle and Northern colonies from 1,333,000 in 1768 to 480,000 in 1769. In inducing the Ministry of Lord North to repeal the duties the a.s.sociation played its part; but from the point of view of the conservatives it was not without its disadvantages. The importation of goods from Holland was forbidden in order to catch the smuggler; but the smuggler ignored the agreement as readily as he signed it. Yet for a time the a.s.sociation was no burden to the fair trader, who in antic.i.p.ation had doubled his orders, or sold "old, moth-eaten goods" at high prices. The merchants were "great patriots," Chandler told John Adams, "while their old rags lasted; but as soon as they were sold at enormous prices, they were for importing." And in truth the fair trader's monopoly could not outlast his stock, whereas the smuggler's business improved the longer the a.s.sociation endured. In the spring of 1770, the New York merchants, with their shelves empty, complaining that Boston was more active in "resolving what it ought to do than in doing what it had resolved,"

declared that the a.s.sociation no longer served "any other purpose than tying the hands of honest men, to let rogues, smugglers, and men of no character plunder their country." Supported by a majority of the inhabitants of the city, and undeterred by the angry protests of the Sons of Liberty, they accordingly agreed to "a general importation of goods from Great Britain, except teas and other articles which are or may be taxed." Boston and Philadelphia soon followed the lead of New York, and before the year was out the policy of absolute non-importation had broken down.

The adoption of the modified non-importation policy was the more readily approved by conservative patriots everywhere inasmuch as the English Government had already made concessions on its part. It was on March 5, the very day of the Boston ma.s.sacre, that Lord North, characterizing the law as "preposterous," moved the repeal of all the Townshend duties, saving, for principle's sake, that on tea alone. For the second time a crisis seemed safely pa.s.sed, and cordial relations seemed once more restored. British officers concerned in the ma.s.sacre, defended by the patriots John Adams and Josiah Quincy, were honorably acquitted in a Ma.s.sachusetts court. The New York a.s.sembly, recently permitted to issue bills of credit to the extent of 120,000, made annual provision for the troops, and friendly relations between soldiers and citizens were again resumed. Imports from England at once rose to an unprecedented figure.

Tea was procured from Holland; the 3_d._ duty well-nigh forgotten. In England most men regarded the ten years' quarrel as finally composed.

For three years the colonies were barely once mentioned in Parliament, and a page or two of the _Annual Register_ was thought sufficient s.p.a.ce to chronicle the doings of America. America also seemed content. During these uneventful years the high enthusiasm for liberty burned low, even in Ma.s.sachusetts. "How easily the people change," laments John Adams, "and give up their friends and their interests." And Samuel Adams himself, implacable patriot, working as tirelessly as ever, but deserted by Hanc.o.c.k and Otis and half his quondam supporters, had so far lost his commanding influence as to inspire the sympathy of his friends and the tolerant pity of his enemies.

It was hardly for the purpose of restoring the prestige of Samuel Adams, though nothing could have been better designed to that end, that Lord North, rising in the House of Commons on April 17, 1773, offered a resolution permitting the East India Company to export teas stored in its English warehouses free of all duties save the 3_d._ tax in America.

Many years later the Whig pamphleteer Almon a.s.serted that the measure was inspired by the king's desire to "try the question with America."

The statement is unsupported by contemporary evidence. Lord North said that the measure was intended solely in the interest of the Company, which had in fact but just been rescued from bankruptcy by the interposition of the Government, and the resolution was pa.s.sed into law without comment and without opposition. Information obtained from reliable American merchants determined the directors to take advantage of the opportunity thus offered. They were a.s.sured that, although there was strong opposition to the 3_d._ tax, "mankind are in general governed by interest," and "the Company can afford their teas cheaper than the Americans can smuggle them from foreigners, which puts the success of the design beyond a doubt." Acting upon this a.s.surance, cargoes of a.s.sorted teas amounting to 2051 chests were sent to the four ports of Boston, New York, Philadelphia, and Charleston.

But the American merchants who advised this step had fatally misjudged the situation. The approach of the tea-s.h.i.+ps was the signal for instant and general opposition. Smugglers opposed the East India Company venture because it threatened to destroy the very lucrative Holland trade; the fair trader because it conferred a monopoly upon an English corporation, but above all because, if the Company could sell its tea, the non-importation agreement, that favorite conservative method of obtaining redress, at once effective and legal, would have proved after all a useless measure. Unless they were ready for decisive action, the long struggle against Parliamentary taxation must end in submission.

Many conservatives were content to try non-consumption agreements; but it was a foregone conclusion that if the tea was once landed, it would be sold, and a great majority were in favor of destroying it or sending it back to England. The latter method was employed in New York and Philadelphia; but in Boston Governor Hutchinson refused to issue return clearance papers until the cargoes were discharged. There the radicals, with the moral support of the great body of conservative citizens, carried the day. On December 16, 1773, undisturbed by the English s.h.i.+ps of war, men disguised as Mohawks, "no ordinary Mohawks, you may depend upon it," boarded the East India Company's vessels and emptied its tea into Boston Harbor.

Neither the Government nor the people of England were now in any mood for further concessions. The average Briton had given little thought to America since the repeal of the Stamp Act. He easily recalled that three years before the ministers had good-naturedly withdrawn the major part of the Townshend duties, and since then had rested in the confident belief that the quarrel was happily ended. The destruction of the tea seemed to him a gratuitous insult, for it pa.s.sed his understanding that the Americans should resent a measure which enabled them to buy their tea cheaper than he could himself; and he was, therefore, ready to back the Government in any measures it might take for a.s.serting the authority of Parliament over these excitable colonists whose whims had too long been seriously regarded. This task the Government, now for the first time effectively controlled by the king, was quite willing to undertake, all the more so on account of the recent burning of the Gaspee and the dishonorable publication of Hutchinson's letters. By overwhelming majorities Parliament accordingly pa.s.sed the coercive acts, closing Boston Harbor to commerce until the town made compensation to the East India Company, remodeling the Ma.s.sachusetts charter in such a manner as to give to the Crown more effective control of the executive and administrative functions of government, making provision for quartering troops upon the inhabitants, and providing for the trial in England of persons indicted for capital offenses committed while aiding the magistrates to suppress tumults or insurrection.

Drastic as these measures were, they were regarded in England as the necessary last resort, unless the Government, hitherto so indulgent and long-suffering, was prepared to ignore the most flagrant flouting of its laws and to renounce all effective control of the colonies. In the colonies, on the other hand, they were generally thought, even by conservative patriots, to be clear evidence of a bold and unblus.h.i.+ng design, unapproved by the majority of Englishmen, no doubt, but harbored in secret for many years by the king's hireling ministers, to enslave America as a preliminary step in the destruction of English liberties.

Firm in this belief, the colonists elected their deputies to the First Continental Congress, which was called to meet at Philadelphia on the 1st of September, 1774, in order to unite upon the most effective measures for defending their common rights.

IV

The causes which had brought the two countries to this pa.s.s lie deeper than the hostile designs of ministers, or the ambition of colonial agitators bent on revolution. It has been said that the Revolution was the result of an unfortunate misunderstanding. A misunderstanding it was, sure enough, in one sense; but if by misunderstanding is meant lack of information there is more truth in the famous epigram which has it that Grenville lost the colonies because he read the American dispatches, which none of his predecessors had done. In the decade before the Declaration of Independence every exchange of ideas drove the two countries farther apart, and personal contact alienated more often than it reconciled the two peoples. It was the years of actual residence in England that cooled Franklin's love for the mother country. "Had I never been in the American colonies," he writes in 1772, "but was to form my judgement of civil society from what I have lately seen, I should never advise a nation of savages to admit of civilization."

Governor Hutchinson, one of the most aristocratic and most English of Americans, was amazed to find himself but an alien in a far country during the years of exile which gave him his first sight of English society since 1742. Cultivated man of the world as he thought himself, but Puritan still, it was with a profound sense of disillusionment that he mingled with the "best people" of England. How pathetic are those London letters of this unhappy exile who likes the people of Bristol best because they remind him of Boston select-men, whose one desire is to return home and lie buried in the land of his fathers! It is not too fanciful to think that if Hutchinson had lived earlier in England he might have died a patriot, whereas had Franklin seen as little of England as his son he might have ended his days as a Loyalist. It was "Old England" indeed that these cultivated Americans loved: the England of Magna Carta and the Pet.i.tion of Right; the England of Drake, of Pym and Falkland, and of the Glorious Revolution; the little island kingdom that harbored liberty and was the builder of an empire justly governed: they thought of England in terms of her history, scarcely aware that her best traditions were more cherished in the New World than in the Old.

Rarely, indeed, would an appeal to England's best traditions have met with less cordial response among her rulers. For during the decade following the Peace of Paris the vision of liberty was half obscured by the vision of empire. Observant contemporaries noted the sudden rise of an insular egoism following the war that in Voltaire's phrase saw "England victorious in four parts of the world." Cowper was not alone in complaining "that thieves at home must hang, but he that puts into his over-gorged and bloated purse the wealth of Indian provinces, escapes"; and Horace Walpole has recorded in his incomparable letters, with a cynical and an engaging wit which reflects the spirit of the times better than his own sentiments, the corruption and prodigality, the levity and low aims of that generation. With many n.o.ble exceptions, the men who gathered round the young king, the men who "lived on their country or died for her," who too often admired if they could not always emulate the brutal degradation of a Sandwich or the matchless _abandon_ of the young Charles James Fox, had singularly little in common with those American communities which the Frenchman Segur fancied "might have been made to order out of the imagination of Rousseau or Fenelon."