§ 236]

PATRICK HENRY'S RESOLUTIONS

197

ity of one vote. One day later (the last day of the session), Henry having started home, the fifth resolution - the most important of the five was expunged from the record. But meantime the whole seven had been published to the world; and these resolutions" rang the alarm bell for the continent."

The sixth and seventh resolutions (never really adopted) asserted that the colonists were "not bound to yield obedience" to any law that so imposed taxation upon them from without, and denounced any one who should defend such taxation as an "enemy to his majesty's colony." These were the clauses that sanctioned forcible resistance.

The fifth resolution declared that every attempt to vest power to tax the colonists in "any persons whatsoever" except the colonial Assemblies “has a manifest tendency to destroy British as well as American freedom.” It was in the debate upon this resolution that Henry startled the House by his famous warning from history. "Tarquin and Cæsar," cried his thrilling voice, "had each his Brutus; Charles the First, his Cromwell; and George the Third". here he was interrupted by cries of Treason! Treason! from the Speaker and royalist members, but " rising to a loftier attitude," with flashing eye, the orator continued, example. If this be treason, make the most of it."

"may profit by their

235. On the day that Henry moved his resolutions, the Massachusetts Assembly invited the legislatures of the other colonies to send "committees" to a general meeting at New York in October. At first the suggestion was ignored; but in August and September (as public feeling mounted under the stimulus of the Virginia resolutions), colony after colony named delegates, and the Stamp Act Congress duly assembled. Fervently protesting loyalty to the crown, that meeting drew up a noble Declaration of Rights and a group of admirable addresses to king and parliament. It did not directly suggest forcible opposition; but it helped, mightily, to crystallize public opinion, and to give dignity to the agitation against the law. Better still, it prophesied united action. Christopher Gadsden, delegate from South Carolina, exclaimed — “There ought to be no New England man, no New Yorker, known on this continent; but all of us, Americans.”

236. Meanwhile, payment of debts to British creditors was

generally suspended,1 and local associations pledged themselves to import no British goods until the Stamp Act should be repealed. More violent resistance was taken care of by secret societies known as Sons of Liberty, which terrorized the stamp distributors and compelled hesitating merchants to obey the non-importation arguments. In various places, supporters of the law were brutally handled. A Boston mob sacked the house of Thomas Hutchinson; and Andrew Oliver, stamp distributor for Massachusetts, standing under the "Liberty Tree " (on which he had been hanged in effigy shortly before), was forced, in the presence of two thousand people, to swear to a

Pro Patria

The first Man that either

solemn "recantation and detestation" of his office before a justice of the peace. When the day came

distributes or makes use of Slamp for the law to go into

Paper, let him take care of
his House, Person, & Effects.

Vox Populi ;
We dare

A HANDBILL OF THE NEW YORK SONS OF
LIBERTY. From O'Callaghan's Documents.

effect every stamp dis

tributor on the continent had been "persuaded" into resigning, and no stamps were to be had. After a short period of hesitation, the courts opened as usual

in most of the colonies, newspapers resumed publication, and all forms of business ignored the law.

237. In England the ministry had changed, and the new government was amazed at the uproar in the colonies. It was

1 This method of coercing English public opinion was renewed in the later period of the struggle. In 1774 George Washington wrote to a friend in England: "As to withholding our remittances, that is a point on which I own I have my doubts on several accounts, but principally on that of justice."

2 The Source Book, No. 120 c, gives the royal governor's story of the surrender of the distributor for Virginia.

§ 238]

SONS OF LIBERTY

199

deluged, too, with petitions for repeal from English merchants, who already felt the loss of American trade; and, after one of the greatest of parliamentary debates, the Stamp Act was repealed (March 17, 1766). No serious attempt had been made to enforce it, and no demand was made for the punishment of the rioters. The English government did ask the colonial assemblies to compensate citizens who had suffered in the riots; but even this request was attended to very imperfectly.

A REDUCED FACSIMILE, from Scharf and Wescott's History of Philadelphia. The skull and crossbones take the place of the stamp required by law. This paper resumed publication in one week without stamps.

238. Within a few months the English ministry was changed once more. Pitt was the head of the new government; and, excepting for Charles Townshend, all its members were "friends of America." But ill-health soon forced Pitt to give up the active management of affairs, and the brilliant but unscrupulous Townshend, backed by the King, seized the leadership. "From this time," says Lecky, "the conduct of the government toward America is little more than a series of deplorable blunders."

Townshend turned promptly to schemes of American taxation, and in May, 1767, he secured the enactment of tariff duties on glass, red and white lead, paper, painters' colors, and tea imported into the colonies. In the Stamp Act discussions, some Americans had objected to the stamp duties as an internal tax. Now Townshend cynically professed his readiness to give them the external taxation they preferred. This tone was bad enough to a sensitive people flushed with recent victory; and two other features made the bill unendurable: (1) Trials for attempts to evade the law were to take place before admiralty courts without juries; and (2) the revenue was appropriated to the payment of colonial governors and judges, so as to give the crown complete control over such officers. (Cf. § 189.)

Thus this law began a wholly new phase of the struggle with England. In the Stamp Act period the honest purpose of the English Government had been to protect the colonies, not to oppress them. But the Townshend law was a wanton attempt to demonstrate supremacy, with no pretense of protecting America.

Townshend died that same summer; but, for three years, his successor, Lord North, maintained his policy. Meantime the American continent seethed once more with pamphlets, addresses, and non-importation agreements. Assemblies denounced the law; royal governors, under strict instructions, ordered them to rescind, received defiant answers, and replied with messages of dissolution. Then, in the absence of means for legal action, the colonists turned again to illegal violence. Mobs openly landed goods that had paid no tax, and sometimes tarred and feathered the customs officials.

239. To check such resistance to law, parliament, in 1769, added to its offenses by providing that a colonist, accused of treason, might be carried to England for trial, - in flat defiance of the ancient English principle of trial by a jury of the neighborhood. This threat roused Virginia again. Virginia was still the most important colony. It had been less affected by the Townshend regulations than the commercial colonies had been; and the ministry had been particularly gentle toward

§ 240]

THE TOWNSHEND ACTS

1

201

But

it, hoping to draw it away from the rest of America. now the Assembly unanimously adopted resolutions denouncing both the Townshend law and this recent attack on jury trial as unconstitutional and tyrannical. Nicholas, one of the Virginia leaders, declared that the new law was "fraught with worse evils than the Stamp Act, by as much as life is more precious than property"; and George Washington affirmed that it touched a matter "on which no one ought to hesitate to take up arms."

The governor punished the House by immediate dissolution (Source Book, 121). But other Assemblies copied the Virginia resolutions or adopted similar ones; and non-importation agreements, enforced by semi-revolutionary committees, became nearly universal.

240. During this turmoil, came the Boston "Massacre." Two regiments of British regulars had been sent to Boston, in the fall of 1768, to overawe that turbulent community. This quartering of soldiery upon the town in time of peace, not for protection, but for intimidation, was one more infringement of fundamental English liberties. Incessant bickerings followed. Town officials quarreled with the royal governor ; and the townspeople and the soldiers squabbled and indulged in fisticuffs in the streets. The troops were subjected to constant and bitter insult; and on the evening of March 5, 1770, came the long-delayed collision. Soldiers and people had been called into the streets by an alarm of fire. Various fracases occurred. In particular, a sentinel on duty was pelted with epithets and snowballs. Six or seven of his companions, under an officer, came to his rescue. One of them, hit by a club, shot an assailant, and immediately the rest of the squad, believing an order to fire had been given, discharged a volley into the crowd. Five persons were killed and six injured.

The next day, on the demand of a crowded town meeting, and as the only way to prevent an organized attack by the

1 The Assembly had progressed since the close division on the Henry resolutions four years before.