CHAPTER XII

THE RISE OF POLITICAL DISCONTENT

THE NEW REVENUE LAWS

The effect

on the Brit

ish of their

victory.

DEFEAT of their rivals after a half century of conflict, giving undisputed possession of an immensely enlarged territory, stretching from the frozen north to the Gulf of Mexico and from the West Indies to the Mississippi, raised new problems and led the British statesmen into an entirely new method of dealing with the colonies. In the early days of the seventeenth century it was a great experiment in the world's history for one nation to attempt to build up and govern a frontier in the wilderness thousands of miles away and separated from the home country by a vast ocean. The British had gone into the experiment , and had on the whole succeeded admirably, as their prosperous and rapidly growing colonies of the eighteenth century proved. Then, going blindly in the face of this acknowledged success, they adopted an entirely different policy and lost thirteen of their most promising colonies.

The new

colonial

policy.

The British statesmen determined to centralize the control of the enlarged empire in London more than ever before, to send forth to the colonies royal officials of new and greater powers, to station more British soldiers in the different parts of the empire, and in the Parliament in London to pass more stringent colonial laws; all despite the fact that the colonists themselves preferred to have things continue in the old way, without new reminders of Great Britain's power over them. Let it be remembered that Great Britain did not aim her new legislation at the “thirteen colonies." Had any one at the time spoken of the "thirteen colonies," the expression would have conveyed no meaning, for no one would have known which thirteen colonies were meant. Great Britain had more than twenty colonies in America and her new policy applied to them all, to Jamaica and Barbados as well as to Massachusetts and Virginia.

To maintain the new empire and to pay the heavy indebtedness incurred in building it up, which had doubled in a few years and by

More rigid enforcement of the navigation laws.

dens.

1763 amounted to £140,000,000, additional revenue was imperative. As a first step, it was decided, even before the last war with the French was concluded, to attempt the rigid enforcement of the existing navigation or tariff laws, and thus compel the Americans to pay a share of the new burThe common disregard of these regulations found especially flagrant expression in the unpatriotic course of merchants who traded with the fleets and garrisons of the French even while hostilities were in progress. To stop the practice the courts issued writs of assistance, which were general search warrants, authorizing the customs officials to search any house or building whatsoever at any time for smuggled goods. James Otis, a lawyer of Boston, in an impassioned argument before the courts against the writs, voiced the opposition of the colonists: "It appears to me the worst instrument of arbitrary power ... that ever was found upon an English law book. . . . One of the most essential branches of English liberty is the freedom of one's house. A man's house is his castle, and whilst he is quiet, he is as well guarded as a prince in his castle. . . What a scene does this open! Every man, prompted by revenge, ill humor or wantonness, to inspect the inside of his neighbor's house, may get a writ of assistance." The writs had frequently been employed in England and occasionally in the colonies, and Otis lost the case.

A new tariff law, the Sugar Act of 1764.

Secondly, to increase the revenue from America, the Molasses Act of 1733 was succeeded by the Sugar Act of 1764, which reduced the old duty on molasses by one-half, and placed new duties on coffee, pimento, wines, silks, linens, and sugar. Strict measures were taken to enforce the law. All officers and even common sailors on ships of war were authorized to assist the regular revenue officials in the suppression of smuggling, and all offenders were to be tried, not in the ordinary courts of law, but in the admiralty courts without a jury. The amount of revenue accruing was not materially increased, whilst an undesirable spirit of resentment against the mother country was aroused, especially in commercial New England.

The stamp tax.

The Sugar Act was a part of the new financial policy of the Prime Minister, George Grenville, the head of the British Cabinet. At his advice, too, Parliament passed the Stamp Act of 1765, which the British historian Lecky has characterized as "one of the most momentous legislative acts in the history of mankind." This latter act required the Americans to place stamps, which were to be purchased from the government, upon legal documents of various kinds, upon newspapers, pamphlets, almanacs, playing cards, and

many other articles. The tax on wills was to be five shillings; on every pack of playing cards purchased, one shilling; on every advertisement in the newspapers, two shillings; and on every almanac two pence. Such a tax was simple and direct, and it was thought that it would be easily and cheaply collected; evasion would be difficult; and it was confidently predicted that the sale of the stamps. would yield a revenue of many thousand pounds per year. The promise was given to the colonies by the British government that the first revenue secured from the sale of the stamps would be expended for the immediate purpose of putting down the conspiracy of Pontiac, an uprising of the Indians west of the Alleghanies, and that under no circumstances would any portion of the money be expended outside of America.

BRITISH STAMP

Massachusetts had levied such a tax upon herself in 1755, Great Britain collected such a tax at home, and taxes of the same nature are now collected in the United States; but the Americans

Attitude of

toward the stamp tax.

of 1765 flatly refused to have anything to do with a tax the colonies imposed on them by the British. In New York a congress of nine mainland colonies, called the Stamp Act Congress, came together to plan systematic opposition. While professing "all due subordination to that august body, the Parliament of Great Britain," the Congress maintained "that it is inseparably essential to the freedom of a free people, and the undoubted right of Englishmen, that no taxes be imposed upon them but with their own. consent, given personally or by their representatives," and that the colonies "are not and from their local circumstances cannot be represented in the House of Commons of Great Britain." The distributor of the new stamps in Boston was hanged in effigy from a tree in the main street of the town, the stamp office torn down, and the home of Chief Justice Hutchinson sacked. In New York the effigy of the governor of the colony was paraded around the town and then burned. On the day when the act was to go into effect, flags were hung at halfmast, shops were closed, bells were tolled, and copies of the Stamp Act were hawked about the streets bearing the inscription, "The folly of England and the ruin of America."

Few stamps were sold. Merchants, to express their resentment to the mother country, ceased importations from Britain, until finally, at the wish of the British commercial classes, who feared the loss of the entire American trade if the colo

The repeal

of the stamp

tax.

nies were further exasperated, the act was repealed. Accompanying the Repeal Act, however, was the Declaratory Act, to the effect that Great Britain had full power to make laws "to bind the colonies and people of America, subjects of the Crown of Great Britain, in all cases whatsoever.'

British and American views in regard to the respective rights of colony and mother country, of King and Parliament, were now in Constitutional violent collision. The Americans contended that Pararguments. liament, even if it had come to exercise the royal power in Great Britain, had not the same jurisdiction over the colonies as had the Crown, which in the beginning had granted the charters. In certain of these charters "the rights of Englishmen" were definitely guaranteed to the colonists. No one at all conversant with English history could deny that one of the dearest rights of Englishmen was to vote their own taxes. On this point the Americans made a distinction between internal and external taxes. Theoretically they did not consider that it was contrary to the rights of Englishmen for the mother country to regulate the foreign trade of the colonies by tariff taxes, although, as has been seen, they inconsistently evaded their payment. Internal taxes, however, collected not for the sake of regulating commerce but primarily to raise revenue to pay the expenses of the government, were a different matter. It was their undoubted right as Englishmen, the Americans claimed, to have a voice in the imposition of such taxes, and without their consent the taxes would be void. It was sheer nonsense to hold up to the Americans in the crisis the British theory that every member of the House of Commons represented in that body every subject in the kingdom, and that consequently the Americans, as members of the British empire, were represented in the Parliament in London. The British and the American views of representation were quite different, and just here was a source of misunderstanding. The Americans were in the habit of apportioning their representatives in their several colonial legislatures according to population, and changing the number and size of the districts as population changed; each district in America, moreover, elected its representative from among its own residents. The British, on the other hand, did not change their apportionment of representatives as population changed, and hence with the century-old division of districts new centers of population, such as the manufacturing cities of Manchester and Sheffield for example, were often without an elected representative of their own. A member elected to the House of Commons from any district was not necessarily a resident of that

British and American views of representation.

district but might hail from any section of the kingdom. The Americans, knowing that they elected no representative to the British Parliament and that none left their shores to attend the meetings of that body, could well claim, from their point of view, that they were unrepresented in the law-making body in London, and they failed to accept the British explanation that as members of the empire they were represented by all the members of the House of Commons.

The colonial taxes of

Spain and

France.

In justification of the British taxation of America was the course of Spain, which derived large revenues from her American possessions. She exacted from her American subjects a poll tax, a tax on sales, import and export taxes, a convoy tax, a tax on the sale of offices and on the sale of indulgences, and received the entire income from the state monopolies of the sale of gunpowder, salt, tobacco, and quicksilver. From these sources and from the mines Spain in the year 1796 derived from America a revenue of $16,000,000. France also imposed taxes on her American possessions. Pitt, who had carried his country triumphantly through the French and Indian War, stood firmly for the rights of the Americans. "I rejoice that America has resisted," he said in the debate British symover the repeal of the stamp tax. "Three millions of pathy for the 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 the rest.. The gentleman tells us of many who are taxed and are not represented. . . . But they are all inhabitants, and, as such, are they not virtually represented? . . . If the gentleman does not understand the difference between external and internal taxes, I cannot help it; but there is a plain distinction between. taxes levied for the purpose of raising a revenue, and duties imposed for the regulation of trade, for the accommodation of the subject.

colonies.

America, if she fell, would fall like the strong man. She would embrace the pillars of the state, and pull down the constitution along with her." He urged that continued peaceful trade with America was of more value to the British people than the pittance that could be obtained by taxation. Burke, Conway, and Barré held the same views, and in general the Whig party opposed the stamp tax and all the oppressive policies of the government in American administration. Though the Whigs were the party that had waged successfully the French and Indian War, George III, upon his accession to the throne toward the close of that war, forced their leaders out of The arbitrary office and gathered about him the "King's Friends," course of who were mainly members of the Tory party.

Under

George III.

the two preceding monarchs, George I and George II, who were