A Short History of the United States Part 12

103. Early Colonial Policy.--At the outset, England's rulers had been very kind to Englishmen who founded colonies. They gave them great grants of land. They gave them rights of self-government greater than any Englishmen living in England enjoyed. They allowed them to manage their own trade and industries as they saw fit. They even permitted them to wors.h.i.+p G.o.d as their consciences told them to wors.h.i.+p him. But, as the colonists grew in strength and in riches, Britain's rulers tried to make their trade profitable to British merchants and interfered in their government. On their part the colonists disobeyed the navigation laws and disputed with the royal officials. For years Britain's rulers allowed this to go on. But, at length, near the close of the last French war Mr. Pitt ordered the laws to be enforced.

[Sidenote: Difficulties in enforcing the navigation laws.]

[Sidenote: James Otis. _Eggleston_, 163. His speech against writs of a.s.sistance, 1761.]

104. Writs of a.s.sistance, 1761.--It was a good deal easier to order the laws to be carried out than it was to carry them out. It was almost impossible for the customs officers to prevent goods being landed contrary to law. When the goods were once on sh.o.r.e, it was difficult to seize them. So the officers asked the judges to give them writs of a.s.sistance. Among the leading lawyers of Boston was James Otis. He was the king's law officer in the province. But he resigned his office and opposed the granting of the writs. He objected to the use of writs of a.s.sistance because they enabled a customs officer to become a tyrant.

Armed with one of them he could go to the house of a man he did not like and search it from attic to cellar, turn everything upside down and break open doors and trunks. It made no difference, said Otis, whether Parliament had said that the writs were legal. For Parliament could not make an act of tyranny legal. To do that was beyond the power even of Parliament.

[Sidenote: Patrick Henry. _Eggleston_, 162.]

[Sidenote: His speech in the Parson's Cause, 1763.]

105. The Parson's Cause, 1763.--The next important case arose in Virginia and came about in this way. The Virginians made a law regulating the salaries of clergymen in the colony. The king vetoed the law. The Virginians paid no heed to the veto. The clergy men appealed to the courts and the case of one of them was selected for trial. Patrick Henry, a prosperous young lawyer, stated the opinions of the Virginians in a speech which made his reputation. The king, he said, had no right to veto a Virginia law that was for the good of the people. To do so was an act of tyranny, and the people owed no obedience to a tyrant. The case was decided for the clergyman. For the law was clearly on his side.

But the jurymen agreed with Henry. They gave the clergyman only one farthing damages, and no more clergymen brought cases into the court.

The king's veto was openly disobeyed.

[Sidenote: Proclamation of 1763. _McMaster_, 110.]

106. The King's Proclamation of 1763.--In the same year that the Parson's Cause was decided the king issued a proclamation which greatly lessened the rights of Virginia and several other colonies to western lands. Some of the old charter lines, as those of Ma.s.sachusetts, Connecticut, Virginia, and the Carolinas had extended to the Pacific Ocean. By the treaty of 1763 (p. 69) the king, for himself and his subjects, abandoned all claim to lands west of Mississippi River. Now in the Proclamation of 1763 he forbade the colonial governors to grant any lands west of the Alleghany Mountains. The western limit of Virginia and the Carolinas was fixed. Their pioneers could not pa.s.s the mountains and settle in the fertile valleys of the Ohio and its branches.

CHAPTER 12

TAXATION WITHOUT REPRESENTATION

[Sidenote: George III.]

[Sidenote: George Grenville.]

[Sidenote: The British Parliament.]

107. George III and George Grenville.--George III became king in 1760. He was a narrow, stupid, well-meaning, ignorant young man of twenty-one. He soon found in George Grenville a narrow, dull, well-meaning lawyer, a man who would do what he was told. So George Grenville became the head of the government. To him the law was the law.

If he wished to do a thing and could find the law for it, he asked for nothing more. His military advisers told him that an army must be kept in America for years. It was Grenville's business to find the money to support this army. Great Britain was burdened with a national debt. The army was to be maintained, partly, at least, for the protection of the colonists. Why should they not pay a part of the cost of maintaining it?

Parliament was the supreme power in the British Empire. It controlled the king, the church, the army, and the navy. Surely a Parliament that had all this power could tax the colonists. At all events, Grenville thought it could, and Parliament pa.s.sed the Stamp Act to tax them.

[Sidenote: Taxation and representation.]

[Sidenote: Henry's resolutions, 1765. _Higginson_, 161-164; _McMaster_, 112-114.]

108. Henry's Resolutions, 1765.--The colonists, however, with one voice, declared that Parliament had no power to tax them. Taxes, they said, could be voted only by themselves or their representatives. They were represented in their own colonial a.s.semblies, and nowhere else.

Patrick Henry was now a member of the Virginia a.s.sembly. He had just been elected for the first time. But as none of the older members of the a.s.sembly proposed any action, Henry tore a leaf from an old law-book and wrote on it a set of resolutions. These he presented in a burning speech, upholding the rights of the Virginians. He said that to tax them by act of Parliament was tyranny. "Caesar and Tarquin had each his Brutus, Charles I his Cromwell, and George III"--"Treason, treason,"

shouted the speaker. "May profit by their example," slowly Henry went on. "If that be treason, make the most of it." The resolutions were voted. In them the Virginians declared that they were not subject to Acts of Parliament laying taxes or interfering in the internal affairs of Virginia.

[Ill.u.s.tration: HENRY'S FIRST AND LAST RESOLUTIONS (FACSIMILE OF THE ORIGINAL DRAFT)]

[Sidenote: Opposition to the Stamp Act, 1765. _Higginson_, 164-165; _McMaster_, 116.]

109. Stamp Act Riots, 1765.--Until the summer of 1765 the colonists contented themselves with pa.s.sing resolutions. There was little else that they could do. They could not refuse to obey the law because it would not go into effect until November. They could not mob the stamp distributers because no one knew their names. In August the names of the stamp distributers were published. Now at last it was possible to do something besides pa.s.sing resolutions. In every colony the people visited the stamp officers and told them to resign. If they refused, they were mobbed until they resigned. In Boston the rioters were especially active. They detested Thomas Hutchinson. He was lieutenant-governor and chief justice and had been active in enforcing the navigation acts. The rioters attacked his house. They broke his furniture, destroyed his clothing, and made a bonfire of his books and papers.

[Sidenote: Colonial congresses.]

[Sidenote: Albany Congress, 1754.]

[Sidenote: Stamp Act Congress, 1765.]

110. The Stamp Act Congress, 1765.--Colonial congresses were no new thing. There had been many meetings of governors and delegates from colonial a.s.semblies. The most important of the early congresses was the Albany Congress of 1754. It was important because it proposed a plan of union. The plan was drawn up by Benjamin Franklin. But neither the king nor the colonists liked it, and it was not adopted. All these earlier congresses had been summoned by the king's officers to arrange expeditions against the French or to make treaties with the Indians. The Stamp Act Congress was summoned by the colonists to protest against the doings of king and Parliament.

[Ill.u.s.tration: PATRICK HENRY "I am not a Virginian, but an American."]

[Sidenote: Declaration of the Rights and Grievances of the Colonists, 1765. _McMaster_, 115.]

111. Work of the Stamp Act Congress.--Delegates from nine colonies met at New York in October, 1765. They drew up a "Declaration of the Rights and Grievances of the Colonists." In this paper they declared that the colonists, as subjects of the British king, had the same rights as British subjects living in Britain, and were free from taxes except those to which they had given their consent. They claimed for themselves the right of trial by jury--which might be denied under the Stamp Act.

But the most important thing about the congress was the fact that nine colonies had put aside their local jealousies and had joined in holding it.

[Sidenote: Benjamin Franklin.]

[Sidenote: Examined by the House of Commons.]

112. Franklin's Examination.--Born in Boston, Benjamin Franklin ran away from home and settled at Philadelphia. By great exertion and wonderful shrewdness he rose from poverty to be one of the most important men in the city and colony. He was a printer, a newspaper editor, a writer, and a student of science. With kite and string he drew down the lightning from the clouds and showed that lightning was a discharge of electricity. He was now in London as agent for Pennsylvania and Ma.s.sachusetts. His scientific and literary reputation gave him great influence. He was examined at the bar of the House of Commons. Many questions and answers were arranged beforehand between Franklin and his friends in the House. But many questions were answered on the spur of the moment. Before the pa.s.sage of the Stamp Act the feeling of the colonists toward Britain had been "the best in the world." So Franklin declared. But now, he said, it was greatly altered. Still an army sent to America would find no rebellion there. It might, indeed, make one. In conclusion, he said the repeal of the act would not make the colonists any more willing to pay taxes.

[Sidenote: Fall of Grenville.]

[Sidenote: Repeal of the Stamp Act, 1766.]

[Sidenote: The Declaratory Act, 1766.]

113. Repeal of the Stamp Act, 1766.--It chanced that at this moment George III and George Grenville fell out. The king dismissed the minister, and gave the Marquis of Rockingham the heads.h.i.+p of a new set of ministers. Now Rockingham and his friends needed aid from somebody to give them the strength to outvote Grenville and the Tories. So when the question of what should be done about the Stamp Act came up, they listened most attentively to what Mr. Pitt had to say. That great man said that the Stamp Act should be repealed wholly and at once. At the same time another law should be pa.s.sed declaring that Parliament had power to legislate for the colonies in all cases whatsoever. The Rockinghams at once did as Mr. Pitt suggested. The Stamp Act was repealed. The Declaratory Act was pa.s.sed. In the colonies Pitt was praised as a deliverer. Statues of him were placed in the streets, pictures of him were hung in public halls. But, in reality, the pa.s.sage of the Declaratory Act was the beginning of more trouble.

[Sidenote: The Chatham Ministry.]

[Sidenote: The Townshend Acts, 1767. _McMaster_, 117-118.]

114. The Townshend Acts, 1767.--The Rockingham ministers did what Mr. Pitt advised them to do. He then turned them out and made a ministry of his own. He was now Earl of Chatham, and his ministry was the Chatham Ministry. The most active of the Chatham ministers was Charles Townshend. He had the management of the finances and found them very hard to manage. So he hit upon a scheme of laying duties on wine, oil, gla.s.s, lead, painter's colors, and tea imported into the colonies. Mr.

Pitt had said that Parliament could regulate colonial trade. The best way to regulate trade was to tax it. At the same time that Townshend brought in this bill, he brought in others to reorganize the colonial customs service and make it possible to collect the duties. He even provided that offences against the revenue laws should be tried by judges appointed directly by the king, without being submitted to a jury of any kind.

[Sidenote: The Sugar Act.]

[Sidenote: Enforcement of the Navigation Acts.]

115. Colonial Opposition, 1768.--Many years before this, Parliament had made a law taxing all sugar brought into the continental colonies, except sugar that had been made in the British West Indies. Had this law been carried out, the trade of Ma.s.sachusetts and other New England colonies would have been ruined. But the law was not enforced. No one tried to enforce it, except during the few months of vigor at the time of the arguments about writs of a.s.sistance. As the taxes were not collected, no one cared whether they were legal or not. Now it was plain that this tax and the Townshend duties were to be collected. The Ma.s.sachusetts House of Representatives drew up a circular letter to the other colonial a.s.semblies asking them to join in opposing the new taxes.

The British government ordered the House to recall the letter. It refused and was dissolved. The other colonial a.s.semblies were directed to take no notice of the circular letter. They replied at the first possible moment and were dissolved.

[Sidenote: Seizure of the sloop _Liberty_, 1768.]

116. The New Customs Officers at Boston, 1768.--The chief office of the new customs organization was fixed at Boston. Soon John Hanc.o.c.k's sloop, _Liberty_, sailed into the harbor with a cargo of Madeira wine.