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taxation which the mother country had to bear, was now added the cost of suppressing the conspiracy of Pontiac. Looking about for new sources of revenue, Grenville could not fail to be impressed by the enormous extent to which the Acts of Trade were being evaded in America. It has been computed that nine-tenths of the tea, wine, fruit, sugar and molasses consumed in the colonies were being smuggled.1 The chief Custom House officers resided in Great Britain, and so consistently did their poorly paid deputies in the colonies wink at breaches of the Acts of Trade that the whole revenue collected by them did not amount to £2000. This sum it cost the British Exchequer over £7000 to collect. The matter had been brought into prominence during the war by the flagrant treachery of American merchants in trading with the enemy. The French armies in Canada and Louisiana had been plenteously provided with stores by the colonists, who had also supplied goods and provisions for the enemy's expedition to the Ohio Valley. Thus the price of produce required for the British army had been enhanced by the competition of the enemy's commissariat. The wrath of Pitt had been roused by the callousness of this illegal and unpatriotic traffic, by which the resistance of the French was prolonged "principally if not alone,...in this long and expensive war". He gave the strictest orders to governors to bring "all such heinous offenders... to the most exemplary and condign punishment", and, after the fall of Quebec, employed the Navy to bring it temporarily to an end.2 Grenville, in order to increase the revenue, decided to do likewise. The Custom House officers were ordered to their posts, and governors were instructed to help them in suppressing illicit trade. Warships were moved to the coast with orders to intercept smugglers. At the same time the Molasses Act of 1733, which had expired in 1763, was renewed, in spite of the urgent representation of the Americans. Several important modifications were, however, introduced. The duty on molasses was reduced from 6d. to 3d. per gallon. But new duties were laid upon coffee, pimento, French and East India goods, white sugar and indigo from foreign colonies, and upon Spanish and Portuguese wines. Stringent measures were taken to enforce the law. Bonds were exacted from exporters; the jurisdiction of the Admiralty Courts, which tried smuggling cases without a jury, was enlarged; and naval officers were required to act as revenue officers. The pill was gilded by the granting of bounties upon flax and hemp; Georgia and Carolina were permitted to export their rice to the French West Indies; and the duty on the whale fishery was taken off, an important concession to New England. Whilst these measures struck a most serious blow at the trade of the northern colonies, the preamble to the Revenue Act, in which they were embodied, proclaimed that the reason for it was that "it is just and necessary that a revenue be raised in your Majesty's dominions in 2 Kimball, 11, 320.

1 Sabine, L., American Loyalists, 1, 12.

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America for defraying the expenses of defending, protecting, and securing the same ".1

It was not expected that these new measures would produce the revenue of £100,000 which Grenville thought a fair contribution from the dependencies. When, therefore, he introduced them into Parliament, he proposed and carried a resolution in favour of imposing by Act of Parliament "certain stamp duties in the colonies" for further defraying the expense of protecting them (March 1764). The imposition of this tax, however, he delayed for a year, in order to give the colonies an opportunity of proposing any alternative method they might prefer of raising the sum required. To their agents in London he explained that he was by no means wedded to the stamp tax, though he thought it a convenient method, because it was easy to collect, it fell exclusively on property, and would be spread equally over America and the West Indies. However, any other method of raising the required revenue which they might propose would satisfy him. But some contribution from the colonies must be forthcoming towards the additional expenses incurred on their account. For the annual cost of the civil and military establishment in America alone had risen from £70,000 after the Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle to £350,000.

With the exception of the representatives of Rhode Island, the agents did not at first offer any objection. But when, a year later, they had become aware of the opposition it was rousing in America, they made attempts, in conjunction with the London merchants, to dissuade Grenville from proceeding with his scheme. He then again invited them to propose an alternative method of raising money, since none as yet had been suggested. Franklin, as agent for Pennsylvania, then urged that the demand for money should be made in the old constitutional way in the form of a requisition by the governor to the several Assemblies. But that method had certainly proved ineffective in the past, and Grenville put his finger on the weak spot when he asked whether they could agree on the proportions each colony should raise. They were obliged to confess that they could not. Connecticut, having no direct interest in the fur and slave trade, thought that a tax on these might serve the purpose. The agent for this colony, Jared Ingersoll, bore witness to the kindly disposition and open mind displayed by Grenville in his discussions with them. "He gave us", he reported, "a full hearing."2 In order to reconcile the Americans to imperial taxation, the admission of colonial representatives into Parliament had been suggested. Grenville declared himself ready to support such a scheme if there was any serious demand for it.3

The details of the stamp tax had been the subject of long and

1 4 Geo. III, cap. 15.
2 Gipson, L. H., Jared Ingersoll, p. 128.
Knox, Extra-Official Papers, 11, 24-33; Hutchinson, T., Hist. Mass. Bay, III, 112.

careful preparation. A similar tax was already in operation in England, and the advice of the British Stamp Commissioners was sought in the autumn of 1763. Henry McCulloh, a former American official and the author of a previous proposal for such a measure, was consulted, but Thomas Whateley, of the Treasury, was mainly responsible for the scheme as finally adopted. He had been in constant communication with the colonial agents and accepted several modifications suggested by Franklin and Ingersoll. The revenue arising from the bill as finally drafted was estimated at from £60,000 to £100,000. Perhaps one-half of this amount would be paid by the West Indian colonies. There was little opposition to the bill when Grenville introduced it into the House of Commons (February 1765). Ingersoll reported that "the point of the authority of Parlia ment to impose such tax... was fully and universally yielded". One outburst of eloquent protest came from Colonel Barré. He spoke of the colonists as the "Sons of Liberty", and in answer to the argument that they had been planted and nurtured by the mother country, exclaimed, "Children planted by your care? No! Your oppression planted them in America....They nourished by your indulgence? They grew by your neglect!" The bill passed the House of Commons by 205 to 49 votes. Many of the latter were cast by representatives of the West Indian interest. "I never", said Burke, "heard a more languid debate."1 "There has been nothing of note in Parliament", wrote that close observer Horace Walpole, "but one slight day on the American taxes. "2

The Stamp Act received the royal assent on 22 March 1765. It was to come into operation on 1 November. At the same time some small relaxation was made in the restrictions upon trade, and a bounty was granted upon timber imported into England from the colonies, which were also permitted to export it freely to Ireland, Madeira, the Azores and any part of Europe south of Cape Finisterre. A measure was also passed-"the Mutiny Act"-obliging the colonists to provide British troops stationed amongst them with quarters, and also with fire, candles, beds, vinegar and salt.

(II) THE CONSTITUTIONAL STRUGGLE WITH THE AMERICAN COLONIES, 1765-1776

By the middle of the eighteenth century the American colonies had reached a stage of development when even loyal members of such communities must become aware of a dual patriotism. The Americans were fast developing into a distinct race. The emigrant who had fled from political and religious persecution or economic misery, and had 1 Burke, Edmund, Speech on American Taxation, 19 April 1774.

2 Walpole, H., Letters (ed. Toynbee), vi, 187.

EVOLUTION OF AMERICAN SENTIMENT

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helped to make a new and prosperous country out of a wilderness, could not remain precisely of the same type either in mental outlook or even in physical qualities as those who stayed in Europe. The long, lean frontiersman, who, axe and gun in hand, was clearing and settling the western lands without perhaps ever seeing a British ship or a British soldier; the New Englander, eager, forceful and self-sufficient, with a mind well educated to grasp an essential principle and with the moral training and tradition to cling tenaciously to it, had developed recognisable individualities of physique as well as definite mental characteristics, born of climate and environment. The Americans had begun to be themselves and to think for themselves. They had many officers who had been trained in the colonial wars; many merchants whose only wish was to push an untrammelled trade; many backwoodsmen and pioneers who drew their learning from the freedom of the open spaces; many lawyers and politicians who were looking hungrily for colonial careers, "ready", as Burke put it, "to snuff the approach of tyranny in every tainted breeze". Like the Germans after 1866, only the shock of war was needed to galvanise them into a separate and united people. The majority were conscious of a profound double loyalty to America and Great Britain.1 Released from the menace of the French, they looked forward to becoming the centre of an Empire in which they should advance on equal terms with the branch of their race at home. They had become so rich and populous-they numbered now one and a half million freemen-that they believed themselves as necessary to Great Britain as Great Britain was to them. They clung, above all, to the principles which they regarded as common to themselves and the race from which they had mainly sprung, the principles of liberty and selfgovernment. But though the native-born and loyal Americans were largely in the ascendant, there were others who had emigrated with a burning sense of grievance against Europe in general and Great Britain in particular. Nor was the idea of separation and independence unfamiliar. The Swedish traveller Kalm, for instance, described in 1748 the effects of the commercial oppression from which the colonists were suffering: "I have been told not only by native Americans, but by English emigrants publicly, that within thirty or fifty years the English colonies in North America may constitute a separate State entirely independent of England". And it has been seen that during the first half of the eighteenth century an obstinate effort had been made to acquire complete control of the legislative and executive functions of government.

But though there was considerable jealousy of British rule, and, especially at Boston, a determination to reduce it to a mere fiction, there was no general conscious desire for separation. Even the most 1 Becker, Carl, The Spirit of '76. 2 Kalm, Pehr, Travels into N. America, 1, 265. 3 See chapter XIV.

radical Bostonians had not yet formulated any scheme for obtaining it. In their addresses the Assemblies during the years of the coming crisis never ceased to deny any such wish; even after acts of rebellion had been committed, honest and moderate men like George Washington still disclaimed it. Yet it is perfectly plain that they would not be satisfied with anything short of the virtual independence for which they had so long been contending, and the liberty to work their own lands, dispose of their own produce and conduct their own affairs for and by themselves. They would, if they could, be true to their twofold loyalty. But the majority would not long continue to accept subservience to the British Parliament, though they wished to remain a part of the Empire and to preserve their allegiance to the Crown. With at least a large minority, however, that allegiance was paramount. But in the background were extremists who had no such loyalty and no such desire. And there were plenty of French agents in their midst, all very anxious to point out their true interests and to paint the motives of the British Government in the blackest colours. Already, of the several ties by which States are usually held together -community of race, of religion, of culture and political institutions, and community of interest-the first and last were considerably weakened and the second was growing daily of less importance. Reaction from the excitement and excesses of the "Great Awakening" had loosened the hold of religion on the colonists. At the same time the activity of the Church of England had increased the dread of ecclesiasticism. The fear lest taxation should be used for the establishment of an American episcopacy was a lively one and not without some justification.1

In New England a violent controversy had arisen over the activities of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, which was charged with promoting Episcopalianism, and in so doing was regarded as pursuing the policy of the State. Political tension, too, had been created by the action of the Custom House officers, who, in order to suppress the smuggling trade with the enemy, had applied in 1761 to the Supreme Court of Massachusetts for writs of assistance. These were general writs authorising the search of any house where smuggled goods were suspected to be. They were perfectly legal, but open to the same objection as the general warrants which presently excited so much controversy in England. Their issue was opposed without success by the Boston merchants. Speaking on their behalf, James Otis, a youthful lawyer and son of a rich merchant, delivered a violent attack upon the whole commercial system. Parliament, he declared, had no authority whatever over the colonies. Acts extending the writs to America, as well as the Acts of Trade and Navigation themselves, were therefore null and void there. These views were considerably in advance of his time and he subsequently

1 Cf. Chamberlain, Mellen, John Adams, pp. 17-45.

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