CHAPTER V

THE QUARREL WITH GREAT BRITAIN

WE have seen in an earlier chapter how much there was to keep alive a vague spirit of discontent in the colonies towards the mothercountry. The war in Canada had done nothing to allay that feeling. The military co-operation between Great Britain and the colonies had been incomplete and unsatisfactory. Each had seen the worst side of the other. The colonists had seen the dulness and rigidity of British soldiership, the arrogant contempt of British officers for mere provincials. Moreover, English politicians had debated whether to retain Canada or to abandon it and accept Guadaloupe. This was held by the colonists, not altogether unfairly, to show indifference to their safety and well-being. On the other hand British officials had been justly exasperated by the sordid illiberality and lack of public spirit. shown by too many of the colonial assemblies.

There were other causes tending to accentuate ill-feeling. The Episcopalians of New England and their friends in the mother-country had never made any secret of their wish to place the Anglican Churches of the colonies under a bishop. In 1763 John Miller, a leading Episcopalian clergyman in Massachusetts, who represented the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts, died. In a newspaper article published upon his death, he and his work were. disparaged. Thereupon a bitter controversy arose; the protagonist on the Independent side was Dr Mayhew, a Boston minister of robust mind and controversial temper, well endowed with powers of rhetoric and sarcasm. He contended that the Society had gone beyond its legitimate sphere, when, instead of confining itself to missionary work among the Indians, it sought to promote Episcopalianism among the settlers. All experience shows how hard it is to refute such charges, and how difficult it is for an earnest clergy to escape the reproach of proselytising. The question, with which side the victory logically rested, is of minor importance. The main point was that the colonists were taught to believe that those in power sought to establish not only Episcopacy but those incidents of civil government and that spirit of administration which were specially identified with Episcopacy.

1755-69]

Clerical and other disputes

145

The same temper had been aroused in Virginia. There the dues of the clergy, like all other contracts, were calculated and paid in tobacco. The clergyman received a fixed quantity, and thus the amount of his stipend fell or rose as tobacco was cheap or dear. But in 1755 the Assembly passed an Act, under which, when the crop was scanty and tobacco therefore dear, the payment might be made in money. In other words, the clergy were to lose by a plentiful crop, but not to gain by a short one. Patriotic writers have frankly admitted the injustice of this Act, which was vetoed by the King, acting fully within his constituted rights. The tithe-payers, however, disregarded the veto and proceeded as if the Act were in force. The clergy thereupon took legal proceedings. The counsel for the tithe-payers was Patrick Henry, a young lawyer of great readiness and courage, a master of invective and sarcasm, and destined to play a leading part in the coming struggle. He hardly attempted to argue the case on legal grounds. He confined himself to denouncing the moral validity of the royal veto and exciting odium against the clergy. The jury found for the tithe-payers; and the incident left behind it a vague sense of resentment against the rule of the mother-country, none the less bitter because many of those who felt it most were in their hearts conscious of having acted unjustly.

A third incident, one in which the colonists were on surer ground, and one even more distinctly premonitory of the coming struggle, namely, the opposition in Massachusetts to Writs of Assistance, will be fully discussed below.

In North Carolina, also, a spirit of resistance to authority was awakened. There had been, it is alleged, much official corruption; and the secretary of the colony, Fanning, had exacted illegal fees. In 1769 things came to a head, and a mob of nearly five thousand men, designating themselves "regulators," assembled near Raleigh. No disturbance immediately followed. Certain individuals, however, refused to pay the dues claimed by Fanning. Thereupon the sheriff distrained. A mob then assembled, beat the sheriff's officers, and destroyed Fanning's house. The legislature thereupon passed a stringent Act against armed assemblies. The governor, Tryon, raised a force and attacked the rioters. Between twenty and thirty were killed, and some two hundred taken prisoners. A severe blow was inflicted on the prosperity of the colony, as many settlers departed; and the whole affair left behind it a sense of disaffection.

The question has often been discussed how far there was from the outset anything like a fixed and definite purpose of separation. On the one hand there were those, not only in America and in England, but also in France, who foretold that, when the colonists were no longer kept in check by the French in Canada, they would become independent of the mother-country. On the other hand, Franklin, when in 1766 he

C. M. H. VII.

10

146

State of feeling in America

[1750

was examined before the House of Commons, declared emphatically that he knew the whole of the colonies, and that no one "drunk or sober" had ever talked of or contemplated independence. That there were as yet few, and those few not necessarily the wisest, who considered the question of separation, is probably true. On the other hand it was soon to be made clear that there was no desire for continued union strong enough to resist the pressure of a resolute minority favoured by irritating conditions. There was undoubtedly in Boston a small party who, if they had not even in their own minds formulated any scheme for independence, were fully determined to pare down British control to a nullity, and to utilise every administrative error or difficulty to that end, and for whom the prospect of independence as a possible result of their strategy had no terrors. At their head was Samuel Adams, a man of humble social position, but of good education and great ability, personally disinterested, but combining public spirit with unscrupulousness in his choice of methods in a fashion which recalls an Italian politician of the age of Machiavelli. Among his supporters was his namesake and distant kinsman, John Adams, a young lawyer gifted with great powers of thought and expression, egotistical yet capable of subordinating his egotism to the public good. There were also less worthy and less valuable members of the party, such as James Warren, irresponsible young men with a passion for rhetoric and for abstract theories, and incapable of approaching political disputes with any approach to a judicial attitude. Finally there were men, such as Washington, who did not trouble themselves about political theories till such theories were forced upon them by some practical emergency, self-respecting Englishmen whose passion for liberty was largely based on the sense of personal dignity, and capable enough to be readily irritated by official blundering or corruption men, in short, not unlike those country gentlemen who cast in their lot with Pym and Hampden in the struggle against Charles I, not lightly carried away by gusts of partisanship, but unflinchingly staunch to a cause once embraced.

Political parties in England were in a condition which made them singularly ill-fitted to cope with any disputes arising out of administrative difficulties. Party divisions no longer corresponded to real distinctions of faith and principle. Whatever we may think of Walpole's personal character or of the good effect of his commercial and administrative policy, we cannot doubt that his ascendancy, and the conduct of other party-leaders, except Pitt, in the following generation, coincided with, if it did not cause, a decay in the public life of England, a falling-away alike in principle and practical capacity. There were to be found, sometimes coexisting in the same man, on the one hand, a vague attachment to abstract views, on the other, a cynical indifference to principle and a belief in what one may call hand-to-mouth methods in politics. Instances of the latter meet us at every turn in the administrative history

-1763]

Parties and opinions in England

147

of the time; while men of principle frequently allowed their judgment to be vitiated by unfounded theory. When we find a trained lawyer like Lord Camden, in the debate on the Stamp Act, laying down the doctrine that the union of taxation and representation is "a law of nature," we are filled with wonder and despair. Pitt, indeed, alone among British statesmen of that day, had that mixture of imaginative insight with practical grasp of detail which might have enabled him to solve the problem of colonial administration. To reconcile the claims of the British government with the aspirations of the colonists was, indeed, scarcely possible. Yet he might so have appealed to the sentiments of the colonists as to lead them to forego, for a while, those aspirations, and to overlook what was implied in the claim of authority. But no such capacity could be found elsewhere among English statesmen. George Grenville was virtually the leader of what in the dislocated and confused state of affairs must be called the Tory party. In all questions of administration and finance, his industry, method, and clear mastery of details gave him paramount influence over his followers. He approached colonial questions in the technical unbending spirit of a lawyer wholly insensible to the importance of understanding, still more of conciliating, colonial sentiment. The Whig followers of Rockingham, inspired by Burke, rose to a far higher level. Yet one cannot but see that Burke, in his estimate of colonial views and feelings, too often lost himself in abstractions, and theorised without any real knowledge of all those cross-currents of opinion which were at work in America.

Vagueness and ignorance of details were not the only hindrances to effective administration. During the whole dispute with the colonies one is reminded at every turn how ill-fitted a system of party government is for a task which is practically one of diplomacy, where success can only be obtained by patient co-operation and unanimity in direction. We feel that even a high-minded and patriotic statesman like Burke could not, in approaching colonial questions, wholly forget the possibilities of gain or loss in the game of party politics. Vital questions are not often greatly influenced by the existence or absence of political machinery. Yet one cannot but feel that a strong permanent department, representing experience in colonial administration and independent of parties, might have done much by keeping parliamentary and public opinion well-informed and in touch with the colonies.

Projects for taxation of the colonies had more than once come under the notice of British administrators. An elaborate scheme of colonial taxation submitted by some individual to Lord Townshend, Walpole's brother-in-law and colleague, is extant in the Record Office; and there is a tradition that Walpole refused to listen to such a scheme, pleading that the Old World was against him already and that he would not make an enemy of the New. It therefore hardly showed any surprising lack of statesmanship or indifference to the interests of the colonies

148

Introduction of the Stamp Act

[1764-5 when, in 1764, George Grenville, acting as Chancellor of the Exchequer, put such a project into a definite form. He gave notice of a bill, to be introduced in the following year, requiring that a stamp, for which duty must be paid in England, should be imposed on all written agreements which were to have legal validity. As a concession to the colonies he promised that, if they would suggest some alternative scheme of taxation equally effective, the measure should be abandoned.

Unfortunately at the very same time Grenville was exasperating the colonists by a sudden increase of severity in administering the revenue laws, and by an instruction that officers in the royal navy should give assistance to the collectors of customs. Moreover, the Molasses Act, already referred to, which had been only passed as a provisional measure, was about to expire; and the probability of its renewal was agitating the minds of the colonists.

The disapproval of Grenville's scheme in the colonies was general. None of them showed the least inclination to comply with his offer and bring in an alternative scheme. At the same time the form in which their disapproval was expressed revealed differences of opinion. Some regarded self-taxation as a natural and inalienable right attaching to the colonies; others ignored the question of abstract right and were content to treat the Act as unwise and inexpedient. This was the view taken in a formal remonstrance sent to Parliament by the Assembly of Massachusetts. It is noteworthy that Hutchinson, the lieutenantgovernor, afterwards fiercely assailed as a traitor to his country, was actually the man who drafted this address; and he never at any later time withdrew or deviated from the position then taken up. Another view, held, as we are told, by many in America, but not formally expressed in any resolution or protest, was that the colonists might acquiesce in the right of Parliament to tax them if only they were granted some share of Parliamentary representation. Most persons will consider that without facilities for communication better than those which then existed such a scheme was impracticable.

No heed was paid to the remonstrances of the colonists; and in March, 1765, the Stamp Act was introduced and passed. Since it was carried by a majority of nearly two hundred and fifty and only opposed by one or two irresponsible and irreconcilable opponents of the government, Parliament as a whole must share whatever blame attaches to the Ministry. Apart from the expediency of its introduction at such a time, the Stamp Act has been defended on the ground that it was easy of collection and uniform in its operation. The soundness of this contention may, however, be doubted. The schedule of purposes, for each of which a different form of stamp was required, contained no less than forty-three heads; and the prices of the stamped sheets varied from two pence to ten pounds.

The Stamp Act, which came into force on November 1, 1765, was