64

The colonies and the Crown

[1689

of spirits had been already evaded, and were now suffered to lapse. It is clear, indeed, that the prohibition of slavery must for some time have been a dead letter, since at the time of the surrender the population consisted of 2381 whites and 1066 negro slaves.

Before the surrender the colony had no constitution. All power, legislative and administrative, was vested in the Trustees; and, though in 1751 a representative assembly was called, its functions were simply deliberative. When the colony came under the Crown it received a constitution of the normal colonial pattern. There was a governor and a council, who, together with all the executive officers, were nominated by the Crown, and a representative assembly elected by the freeholders.

THE COLONIES AND THE CROWN

As we have already seen, the constitutional development of the colonies was by the time of the Hanoverian accession virtually complete. The chief feature of interest in their subsequent domestic history lies in the administrative relations between the colonists and the home government. Unhappily those relations were largely contentious; and the contention turned chiefly on financial questions. In Massachusetts there was a prolonged dispute or series of disputes about the governor's salary, beginning immediately after the grant of the new charter under William and Mary. The first governor appointed by the Crown was Sir William Phipps, a vigorous and enterprising seaman. He was a native of Massachusetts, by birth one of the people, and in the disputes preceding the Revolution he had stood loyally by his own colony. His appointment was distinctly a concession to the feelings and wishes of Massachusetts. Nevertheless, in spite of his own demand for a fixed salary, the Assembly would not do more than vote him an annual grant. Exactly the same policy was adopted towards his successor, Lord Bellemont. Bellemont was also governor of New York; and troubles in that colony, arising out of piracy, left him no leisure to resist the Assembly of Massachusetts.

Bellemont's successor, Joseph Dudley, was peculiarly odious to what one may call the national party in the colony. His father had been one. of the strictest and narrowest among the Puritan founders of Massachusetts. The son had held office under Andros, and was thus looked on as worse than an open enemy, as a deserter, and an apostate. Dudley, understanding the principles and objects of his countrymen better than did Bellemont or the advisers of the Crown in England, saw that the question of fixed salaries to the governor and other officials was of vital importance. On it turned the question whether the officials were to be independent servants of the Crown or merely its nominees, dependent after appointment on the good-will of the Assembly.

1705-29]

Massachusetts and its governors

65

The Board of Trade, acting as the advisers of the Crown on colonial questions, supported Dudley's views in favour of fixed salaries. But the Assembly stood firm. In 1705 the two Houses presented a joint address to the governor, in which they laid down the doctrine that it was "the native privilege and right of English subjects to raise and dispose of money according to the present exigency of affairs." Dudley's personal unpopularity beyond doubt embittered the dispute. But the action of the Assembly fifteen years later made it clear that the contest was one of principle. In 1720 the governorship of Massachusetts was conferred on William Burnet, son of the Bishop of Salisbury. The father's Whiggery and latitudinarianism might be held in the eyes. of New Englanders to wipe out the taint of episcopacy; and the reception given to the son clearly showed approval of the appointment. But neither Burnet nor the Hanoverian government which appointed him had any intention of accepting the interpretation of Whig principles for which the Assembly of Massachusetts was contending. The Crown adopted the exceptional course of sending out by the governor a distinct instruction to the Assembly. "As they hope to recommend themselves to the continuance of our royal grace and favour, they must manifest the same by immediate compliance with what has been so often recommended to them." The instruction went on to say that the recommendation in question was the payment of a fixed salary. The amount was specified as at least £1000; and the Assembly was warned. that non-compliance would be regarded as "a manifest mark of undutiful behaviour," and would necessitate the intervention of Parliament. The Assembly showed that clear and lawyer-like perception of the real issue which marked the proceedings of the colonists in the great dispute half a century later. They voted Burnet £1700, but a fixed salary they would not give. Burnet at length succeeded in winning over the Council, but the representatives were inflexible; and when he died in 1729 the dispute was still unsettled.

Burnet's successor, Jonathan Belcher, was a rich and influential Boston merchant. He had been first a representative and then a councillor, and had been sent by the Assembly to England to plead their cause in the question of salary. No self-respecting man would have accepted a position which necessarily compelled him to turn his back on the very principles which he had just advocated. Belcher's career had shown that he had an elastic political conscience; and the advisers of the Crown might have seen that it was a fatal error to entrust their affairs to a deserter from the popular cause, liable at every moment to be confronted with his own declarations. Again a fixed salary was demanded and Parliamentary intervention threatened, and again the demand was refused. This time the victory of the Assembly was complete. Henceforth the governor was allowed to accept a grant annually voted; only the condition was imposed and accepted that

C. M. H. VII.

5

66

Questions of taxation

[1700

the grant must be made at the beginning of the session, so that the governor might retain some measure of independence. There were citizens of Massachusetts engaged in that dispute who lived to fight the battle of the Stamp Act and the Tea Tax; and we cannot doubt that the feebleness of the British government in abandoning a claim so strongly and so persistently asserted was not forgotten by them. It should be noticed, too, that the Assembly was fighting not against an immediate practical grievance which bore hard on individual citizens, but against a system the evils of which were dormant and potential rather than actual.

Massachusetts was not the only colony in which the question of taxation gave rise to conflict. In Virginia, Governor Dinwiddie claimed in 1753 the right to levy a fee fixed by himself on all documents that required the use of the public seal. The Assembly protested and petitioned the King. The petition was rejected; but it appears from Dinwiddie's letter that the attitude of the Assembly led him to modify his demands. In Pennsylvania a financial dispute raged between the Assembly and the Proprietors. The latter claimed that their lands, of which large tracts were unoccupied and unremunerative, should not be rated on the same terms as the rest of the colony. The Assembly denied the claim to such exemption, and in retaliation refused to levy money for public purposes till the claim was withdrawn, notwithstanding that funds were urgently needed to protect the colony against Indian and French invaders.

It will be noticed that all these disputes were concerned with financial matters, and that two of them turned on the broad general question, the right of the colonists to tax themselves. The inevitable result was to give to the colonial conception of liberty a certain practical definiteness and hardness, to divest it of sentiment, and to teach men to fight for it in a technical, lawyer-like temper. When Burke said that taxation had been always the battlefield on which the fight for English liberty was waged, he might have gone further and said that, of all Englishmen, this was most peculiarly applicable to the American colonists.

Other influences had been at work to make them look with suspicion and apprehension on the financial claims of the British government. Though the hardships of the restraint imposed by the mother-country on the commerce and industry of the colonies have often been grossly exaggerated, yet it cannot be doubted that they were enough to create friction and to beget a sense of grievance. The commercial legislation affecting the trade of the colonies falls under two heads-the Acts controlling exportation and importation, and those controlling production. Of the latter we have already spoken. It will probably be convenient to make a clear enumeration of what the former actually were. By an Act of 1660 certain enumerated commodities, being all the chief products of the colonies, could be landed only in British ports. Two later Acts

-1754]

Trade-restrictions and smuggling

67

extended this restriction. Security must be given at the time of loading that the goods should be imported either to an English or Scottish port, or to one in a British colony; and in the last case a duty had to be paid on loading. Moreover, under the Navigation Act of 1660, European goods might not be imported into the colonies except in ships either of Britain or the British colonies, sailing from British ports. This restriction, however, was relaxed in the case of salt, which was necessary for the New England fish-curers; moreover, it did not apply to trade with foreign colonies. But in 1733 an Act was passed which,

if strictly enforced, would no doubt have borne very hardly on the New England colonies. Large quantities of molasses were habitually imported from the French West Indian islands into the American. colonies and used for making rum. The British government, for the benefit of its own sugar plantations, imposed a duty on all molasses imported from foreign colonies.

The view that these restrictions exercised a crippling influence on the trade and industry of the American colonies is often met by the answer that they were systematically and almost universally evaded. It is true that the pamphlets and official documents of the time are full of complaints of smuggling; but they seldom are specific enough to enable us to gauge the real extent of the practice. It must be remembered, too, that smuggling meant not only evasion of the British Navigation Acts, but also evasion of the import duties imposed by the various colonial governments; and those who complained were not always careful to discriminate between the two. Undoubtedly the two restraints which bore most hardly on the colonies were the Molasses Acts and the prohibition to export tobacco to the continent of Europe. It is certain that both were largely evaded. A shipowner was bound to report all tobacco loaded on board his vessel, and to give security for its delivery in a British port. As a matter of fact a supplementary cargo could be carried out at night in boats and shipped. The absence. of any one chief port in Virginia, and the number of navigable rivers and therefore of private landing-stages, made effective supervision wellnigh impossible. The contraband import of European commodities seems to have largely depended on the above-mentioned contraband export trade. Indeed the two almost of necessity went together. If an American vessel landed a cargo in a foreign port, it was clearly better to load with French silk and foreign wine and sail straight back to an American port than to excite suspicion by touching at a British port.

Whatever may have been the extent of this contraband trade, there can be little doubt that the commercial restrictions begat a sense of oppression and a habit of evasion. Yet, in estimating their justice, we must not forget that the mother-country granted compensatory advantages. The tobacco trade of Virginia was rendered possible by the prohibition against growing tobacco in Great Britain, while bounties

68

Currency difficulties

[1700

were given for ship-timber and naval stores; but this class of products supplied another source of dispute, in the persistent and legitimate determination of British officials to retain the woods and unoccupied land as a source of supply for naval timber.

There was yet another fruitful source of dispute between the home government and the colonial assemblies. The latter were constantly seeking to meet financial difficulties by the issue of paper-money. The causes of this desire were of two kinds, commercial and political. All the colonies suffered from lack of specie. In some the difficulty was partly surmounted by what one may call a system of modified and legalised barter. In Virginia, as we have seen, tobacco was the accepted form of currency. In New York beaver-fur held at one time the same position. There was in New England a curious and complex system by which certain commodities were declared to be legal tender at a fixed value. As might have been expected, the vendor indemnified himself by having two prices, one for specie, the other for what was called "country pay."

The deficiency of specie naturally made men welcome the issue of paper; and this in turn reacted and diminished the supply of specie. For it is an accepted economical law that bad money drives out good; or, to put it differently, if one form of currency will circulate more generally than another, no one will introduce that other into an area where both forms are of equal value, or keep it there. The demand for paper-money was further strengthened by administrative considerations; for if payment in kind is inconvenient to the private trader, much more is it so to the collector of public dues. Moreover, there is a natural tendency on the part of young and hopeful communities to escape from financial difficulties by mortgaging their future.

The problem of raising funds for public purposes was also beset by special difficulties. For, while there was plenty of wealth in the colonies, that wealth was mostly in the hands of men actively engaged in trade, and thus took the form of floating capital, not of those accumulations which are the easy and obvious prey of the public financier.

It was natural that the home government should oppose such a policy, for the real inconveniences of a paper currency made themselves felt far more in intercolonial than in internal trade. Thus we find the records of almost every colony full of disputes between governors endeavouring to carry out their instructions prohibiting the issue of paper-money, and assemblies bent on taking a short road to financial relief and prosperity. In 1720 an order was issued by the King in Council forbidding governors of colonies in America to sanction the issue of bills of credit. It may be doubted how far this instruction was held to apply to the proprietary or chartered colonies, two of which -Pennsylvania and Rhode Island - were among the chief offenders. But this limitation did not apply to an Act of Parliament passed in