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The Boston tea riot

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The popular leaders were determined to anticipate such a possibility. A mob disguised as Indians took possession of the vessels and threw the whole of the cargoes into the harbour (December 16, 1773).

Two features of this affair are specially worthy of notice. The action of the town-meeting was virtually a claim to override the established government. If the tea had been landed, there was not the smallest compulsion on any individual citizen to consume it. The whole of it might have been left to rot in the warehouses of the consignees. The town-meeting claimed the right to restrict individual liberty of action, and to prohibit individual citizens from consuming a certain article and paying duty on that article even when they wished so to do. At the same time the tea riot illustrated most effectively the control which this de facto government could exercise. From first to last, Samuel Adams and those who acted with him in directing the action of the mob never suffered it to get out of hand.

One can hardly suppose that any citizen of Boston expected the home government to pass over such an outrage as the tea riot. In March, 1774, Lord North proposed certain penal measures. One was to close the port of Boston, and transfer all its rights to Salem, till compensation had been made for the destruction of the tea. Appointments and renewal of judges, justices of the peace, and other minor officers were to be vested in the Crown. Offenders might, at the discretion of the Crown, be removed to England for trial. At the same time the resignation of Hutchinson gave the home government the opportunity of consolidating military and civil authority by the appointment of General Gage as governor. Gage had the misfortune to be denounced by the King for mildness, and by the colonists for tyranny. As a matter of fact Gage seems to have been a respectable official, intelligent enough to understand the difficulties with which he was confronted, but not vigorous or independent enough to face them effectively.

Since the repeal of the Stamp Act, American affairs had awakened no great interest in the House of Commons. Now, however, each of North's punitive measures was the subject of a long and hardly-fought debate. A lack of definiteness and a failure to recognise the patent facts of the case or the general principles of colonial administration run through the whole discussion. This is true alike of the Ministry and of the Opposition. North and his supporters argued as if they had before them a disorderly town, not a continent on the brink of civil war. As essays on the general principles on which dependencies should be governed, Burke's speeches on this and later occasions are admirable. They are not altogether satisfactory as solutions of the administrative difficulties in which the country had been landed by the factiousness of subjects and the ignorance and misjudgment of rulers.

North's majority was enough to carry all his measures without

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[1773-4 difficulty. But, as each month passed, events were making it more clear that the cause of Boston was the cause of the whole body of colonies. The day on which the Act for closing the port of Boston came into force was kept as a fast-day in Virginia and other colonies. Virginia and Maryland resolved to export no tobacco. The former colony helped Boston with a public contribution of corn, South Carolina with one of rice. From almost all the colonies came words of approval and encouragement.

The resistance to the Stamp Act had, as we have seen, given birth to a policy of corporate action on the part of the various colonies. No attempt had been made in the meantime to revive such a movement; but the subject had not been overlooked or forgotten. In the autumn of 1773 two letters appeared in the Boston Gazette, which were known to issue from the pen of Samuel Adams. The first set forth the necessity for a Congress; and it is noteworthy that the expression used was not a Congress of "Colonies," but of "States." The Congress was to draw up a Bill of Rights; it was to be an annual institution, and was to have an ambassador at the British Court. In the second letter the question was asked, "How shall the colonists force their oppressors to proper terms?" And the answer is, " Form an independent State or American Commonwealth." In estimating the policy of British statesmen towards the colonies we must never forget that those words had been written by one who was no mere rhetorician, but one of the subtlest, the most patient, and the most persistent of organisers.

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For more than a year Committees of Correspondence had been established to enable the colonies to concert measures of resistance. These committees were now employed to call into existence a Congress, to which all the colonies, Georgia excepted, sent delegates. Gage endeavoured to prevent the Assembly of Massachusetts from electing representatives to the Congress, and refused to approve of a vote of money from the public chest for their expenses. The Assembly, however, locked its doors and completed the election before Gage could intervene, and raised the necessary funds by a special rate. It is clear that in other colonies there was no regular and definite process by which the members of Congress were chosen, nor any precise qualification for voters. That this should have passed unchallenged is a strong proof of that lack of purpose, of organisation, and of method, which throughout the whole struggle characterised the supporters of the British government in America.

The proceedings of the first Congress, which met in 1774, are fully recorded by John Adams, who was one of the Massachusetts delegates. He tells how in New York he and his colleagues were warned not to alarm the southern delegates, who were prepared to regard the New Englanders as dangerous incendiaries; how they acted on the hint and modified their language, with the result that they were set down as

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First Continental Congress

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half-hearted cowards. At the very opening of the Congress a striking incident illustrated Samuel Adams' tact and self-restraint. Strongly opposed though he was to the Church of England, yet, in order to conciliate Episcopalians from the middle and southern colonies, he moved that prayers should be read by Jacob Duché, a clergyman of that persuasion.

It was found difficult on later occasions to induce the best men to detach themselves from the business of their own colonies and to take a part in Congress. The first Congress suffered from the opposite complaint. Each colony sent its ablest and most energetic men, with the result that members were at times reluctant to be mere listeners. It is clear that the discussions which ensued suffered somewhat from that vagueness which is apt to beset a body discharging no executive functions. The main value of the Congress was to declare to the world the united purpose of the colonies, and to enable the representatives to understand one another and acquire habits of co-operation. Above all, its action effectively checkmated North's policy of isolating Massachusetts. It extended the field of battle from Boston to the whole continent.

The Congress found itself at once brought face to face with the standing difficulty which attaches to every form of federal action. Were all the States to be on an equality, or were their voting powers to be proportioned to their numbers? And, if so, was the slave population to be reckoned? Finally, it was resolved that the States should vote as equal units, but that this should not be regarded as a final settlement. The Congress addressed a petition to the King, and a memorial to the people of Great Britain, setting forth the hardships inflicted on the colonies and promising loyalty if only redress were granted. Taken by themselves, these documents offered a perfectly satisfactory basis for agreement. But unfortunately they had to be taken in conjunction with the revolutionary speeches of Warren and Henry, with the persistent determination to make the most of every trifling official error, and with the uncompromising attitude of resistance taken up by Massachusetts. The Congress also drafted an address to the people of Canada. In this the Act recently passed by Parliament for the government of Canada was denounced because it did not give full civil rights; and an appeal was made to the Canadians to make common cause with the colonists.

While Congress was still sitting a public meeting was held at Suffolk, near Boston, at which certain resolutions were passed which went further in their defiance of British authority than any formal or authorised declaration had yet gone. They declared that "no obedience was due to the recent Acts of Parliament"; and these were denounced as "the attempts of a wicked administration to enslave America." If any political arrests were made, government

C. M. H. VII.

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Schemes of conciliation

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officials were to be seized in retaliation. Not only were these resolutions passed, but they were transmitted to Congress, and approved by that body. We may doubt whether they really expressed its views, but here, as usual, unity, organisation, and definiteness of purpose gave the minority a victory over half-hearted opponents.

Nevertheless Joseph Galloway of Pennsylvania, who may be regarded as the leader of the moderate party, brought forward a scheme for conciliation. He proposed to call into existence a Grand Council, elected for three years by the various colonial legislatures. The President of this body was to be appointed by the King, and to hold office during his pleasure. Either the Council or Parliament might initiate legislation for the colonies, but both must approve. The scheme was not wholly unlike that proposed twenty years earlier by Franklin. Apart from its practical merits or defects, it was quite certain that the time was quite unfit. Such a project might possibly have worked had there been a strong general desire for co-operation. In an atmosphere filled with suspicion and ill-will it was inevitably doomed to failure.

In the autumn of 1774 a general election took place in England; and on November 1 a new Parliament met. American affairs were naturally the all-absorbing topic. The measures proposed by Lord North showed that he understood that he was no longer faced by the disaffection of Massachusetts alone, but by that of the whole body of colonies. The military forces in America were to be strengthened; and all the colonies, New York, Delaware, and North Carolina excepted, were to be cut off from the American fisheries and from trade with the mother-country.

The policy of the Ministry was met in both Houses by counter-proposals of conciliation. A bill was introduced into the House of Lords by Chatham, taking up a line similar to that adopted by the Rockingham Whigs when they withdrew the stamp duty and passed the Declaratory Act. The bill affirmed the right of Parliament to control the colonies in matters of trade, and also to quarter soldiers on the colonists. An elective body representing the colonies and constituted on the same lines as the present Congress was to be called into existence, and was to make a free grant to the imperial exchequer. The proposal was open to two obvious objections. Like Galloway's scheme, it could only work where there was a genuine wish on both sides for co-operation, not when they approached the question with mutual aversion and distrust. Moreover, the division between internal taxation and commercial regulation could never be drawn with exact precision. Nevertheless, the respect due to the name and authority of Chatham, and the importance of fully considering at such a crisis every possible remedy, should have saved the bill from rejection on the first reading.

In the House of Commons, Burke and David Hartley moved resolutions on the same lines as Chatham's scheme, proposing to leave the question of taxation entirely to the colonists themselves. No one now

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can doubt that this would have been treated by the colonists as a total abandonment of all fiscal rights; it virtually meant the final overthrow of that commercial and colonial policy which had hitherto been unquestioned on this side of the Atlantic. To have frankly adopted this attitude would no doubt have saved Great Britain from much loss and humiliation; but Burke's position would have been logically stronger if he had treated his proposal as one not of compromise but of surrender. He would have shown better judgment had he accepted, as a basis for legislation, the conciliatory proposals made by North himself.

In February, 1775, the Prime Minister proposed in the House of Commons that any colony which would make such a contribution for the purposes of common defence and civil government as should satisfy Parliament should be exempt from taxation. This concession was so distasteful to North's own followers that it was only carried by a rigid application of party discipline. Yet it did nothing to pacify the Opposition. There could be no stronger illustration of the evils of the party system than the fact that North's scheme was contemptuously condemned by the Opposition, instead of being treated as a genuine though ineffectual attempt at a pacific solution.

While Parliament was discussing suggestions for compromise, the colonists had taken steps which effectually rendered all such solutions impossible. Gage, alarmed by the tone of the Suffolk resolution, refused to call together the Massachusetts Assembly; but an elective Congress, constituted precisely as the Assembly would have been, met at Salem (October 5, 1774). That its members should pass resolutions severely denouncing the policy of the British government was a matter of course. They also protested against the preparations which Gage was making for fortifying Boston against an invasion from the mainland. They took steps for raising public funds, for providing fire-arms and military supplies, and for securing the alliance of the Indians. Outside the Congress a reign of terror had been organised, under which all who ventured to express any approval of the British government were liable to brutal and humiliating punishments.

Massachusetts, though still first, was no longer alone in its display of overt disaffection. There was hardly a colony in which British authority was not openly challenged. In New Hampshire a mob seized the whole supply of arms and ammunition stored in the fort. In Rhode Island the governor and the Assembly in conjunction, and in direct contravention of an order from the British government, took steps to prevent such cannon as there were in the colony from coming into the hands of British officers, and further proceeded to raise and arm troops. In Connecticut the Assembly appointed officers for the militia, and enforced regular drills by fines for non-attendance. In Maryland a convention had pledged the colony to resist any attempt by the British government to carry out the recent Acts in any colony and