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REPEAL OF THE STAMP ACT

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Whiggery-a thing he detested-and consistently maintained that but for the vacillations and factiousness of parties, it would never have been allowed to be seriously challenged.

Grenville was succeeded by the Marquess of Rockingham, a man of good sense and integrity, and a sound Whig. The Rockingham Whigs drew their inspiration mainly from his secretary, Edmund Burke, who had made a diligent and sympathetic study of the colonies. In the new ministry, General Conway, who had been one of the few to oppose the Stamp Act, was one Secretary of State, the Duke of Grafton the other. The Duke of Newcastle took the Privy Seal. But the ministry was weakened by the abstention of Pitt, the distrust of the King, and the inclusion of such strong advocates of taxing the colonies as Charles Townshend, Lord Barrington, and Lord Northington.

The disturbances in America had caused surprise and annoyance in England, and considerable distress owing to the interruption of trade. Merchants and manufacturers began to petition Parliament to repeal the Acts of 1764 and 1765, representing that the colonists, who owed them two or three millions, were declaring themselves unable to pay owing to the new taxes and restrictions, which had so interrupted "the most fruitful branches of their commerce, that the former means of remittance were utterly taken from them".1 Meantime the violence of the Americans made the task of the Government more difficult.2 In January 1766 the American question was raised in the House of Commons. Led by Grenville and the Duke of Bedford, a powerful opposition argued vehemently against concession. The right of taxation, they contended, was an essential part of the sovereign power. If Parliament yielded to intimidation, its authority was gone, and only its authority could hold the Empire together. Law and logic, perhaps, were on their side. All the majesty of eloquence and statesmanship were on the other. Pitt answered Grenville in a series of magnificent speeches whose thunder reverberated across the Atlantic. Whilst asserting that the authority of the mother country was "sovereign and supreme in every circumstance of government and legislation whatsoever", he maintained that taxation was no part of the governing or legislative power. He upheld the distinction between internal and external taxation. The right of self-taxation was essential to freedom. Without it, the Americans would have been slaves. In an immortal passage he unfurled the flag of freedom and gave utterance to his life-long hatred of despotic power. "I rejoice", he cried, "that America has resisted. Three millions of people so dead to all feelings of liberty as voluntarily to submit to be slaves, would have been fit instruments to make slaves of the rest." He urged the absolute repeal of the Stamp Act, as having been founded on an

1 Petition to House of Commons, 17 Jan. 1766.

2 Walpole, H., Memoirs of George III, 11, 221.

erroneous principle. "At the same time," he concluded, "let the sovereign authority of this country be asserted in as strong terms as can be devised, and be made to extend to every point of legislation whatsoever; that we may bind their trade, confine their manufactures, and exercise every power whatsoever-except that of taking their money out of their pockets without their consent."1 Pitt was supported by Lord Camden, but by Camden alone of the legal authorities. Neither Lord Lyttleton, nor Lord Northington, nor Lord Mansfield would listen to the idea of concession, or to the suggestion that exercise of the legislative power might be inexpedient. The colonists, Mansfield urged, were subjects of Great Britain, and the British Parliament, representing the whole British Empire, had authority to bind every subject, whether within or without the realm.2 The question was debated with zeal on both sides. The examination of Franklin, Agent for Pennsylvania and Massachusetts, at the bar of the House, indicates a genuine desire to understand the colonial point of view. Franklin was a somewhat disingenuous witness, but he made clear the distinction that was drawn by the colonies between internal and external taxation, and that they would never rescind their resolutions against the right of Great Britain to tax them, "unless compelled by force of arms".3

Pitt's advocacy enabled the Government to repeal the Stamp Act (22 February). This was done on the grounds of expediency and the damage inflicted on British trade. The Revenue Act was modified by converting the import duty on textiles into an export duty from England; reducing import duties on coffee and pimento from British Plantations and on foreign cambrics and lawns, and the 3d. per gallon on foreign molasses to id. on British and foreign molasses alike. The West Indies were compensated by the creation of free ports at Dominica and Jamaica. The sugar duty then ceased to be a real commercial grievance. The penny tax raised £17,000 a year, for it had made smuggling not worth while. Grenville's threepence had yielded only £2000. This readjustment, however, altered the whole character of the impost. It ceased to be a regulation of trade and a protective duty for the Sugar Colonies, and became an external tax levied for revenue purposes. It was passed by Rockingham Whigs and the followers of Pitt; by a ministry of which Charles Townshend was a member. One may see in it the beginning of a new chapter in colonial policy, and the forerunner of Townshend's disastrous budget in the following year.

These measures were accompanied by a Declaratory Act "for securing the dependency of the colonies". It went far beyond what Pitt had suggested, and was strenuously opposed by him. But in view

1 Chatham Correspondence, 11, 363 seqq.

Parl. Hist. XVI, 172.

'Cf. Channing, E., History of the U.S. II, 78.

Franklin, Works, IV, 176.

THE DECLARATORY ACT

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of the strength of the Opposition and the boldness of the American challenge to parliamentary authority, the repeal of the Stamp Act could not have been carried without it.1 The Declaratory Act did, indeed, merely repeat what Parliament had affirmed on 3 February 1766.2 It asserted that the colonies were “subordinate and dependent upon the Imperial Crown and Parliament", and that Parliament had full power and authority to make laws binding them in all cases whatsoever. It annulled all recent proceedings which involved a denial of parliamentary supremacy. The constitutional right of taxing the colonies was thus asserted. Yet the criticism of history must be that of Shelburne: "The British Government ought to have enforced the Stamp Act with its whole power, or to have acknowledged its error with ingenuousness and candour, which would have showed a frankness and condescension which must have been interpreted into true dignity; but unhappily the British Parliament did neither. It affirmed its own right of enacting, whilst it repealed the Act itself in visible compliance to the clamour of America, and thereby naturally suggested to the Provinces, that the timidity of the British Parliament kept pace with its ill dispositions towards them". The repeal of the Stamp Act was received in America with transports of joy and gratitude. Statues were erected of King George and Pitt. Moderate men were delighted at the triumph of their cause and at the removal of excuse for agitation and mob violence. They were ready to accept the resolutions of right, so long as no attempt was made to enforce them, regarding the Declaratory Act as a mere device for securing an honourable retreat from a position which had been rendered untenable.5 Many, on the other hand, looked upon the Act with suspicion, as a prelude to a renewed attempt at taxation.6 The demand that compensation should be paid to sufferers from the late riots was resented and resisted, notably by Massachusetts. When a Compensation Act was at length agreed to there, it included a clause indemnifying the rioters, and was on that account repealed. Inevitably the prestige of a country which had failed to protect its officials in the execution of their duty and had repealed a law at the dictation of rioters suffered in the eyes of many. The abandonment of the Stamp Act was at once interpreted by Otis and other extremists as an abandonment of the trade laws. If no other occasion had been given for exciting that "irritable and umbrageous people", as Pitt described the Americans, the Whig policy of conciliation might indeed have succeeded for a while. But only permanently, if the enforcement of the Acts of Trade and Navigation had been abandoned

1 Albemarle, Life of Rockingham, 1, 305.

2 Corr. of Geo. III (ed. Fortescue), 1, 262.

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Todd, A., Parliamentary Government in British Colonies, p. 241.

Fitzmaurice, Life of Shelburne, 1, 316.

Franklin, Works, IV, 176; Adams, J., Works, 11, 203; Hutchinson, Hist. Mass. III, 147. Shelburne to Chatham, 6 Feb. 1767; Fitzmaurice, Life of Shelburne, 1, 309.

together with the whole policy of closer control of the colonies. But the need for retaining the Acts of Trade, for remodelling and consolidating the Empire, and preventing the colonies from escaping from control was held as strongly by their Whig champions, Shelburne and Conway for instance, as by Tories. Francis Bernard, Governor of Massachusetts Bay, was now continually urging it, and, as a first step towards settling the whole colonial system on a new uniform type, the resumption of all the charters. He had begun by opposing the Stamp Act and advocating freer trade; but his experience of the agitation in Boston and the weakness of the executive changed his attitude. He was convinced that there was a powerful party which intended to break away from Great Britain if it could. It soon found occasion for blowing up the dying embers of discontent. The Mutiny Act, extended to the colonies in 1765, was annually renewed. It was strenuously resisted in Massachusetts, and positively rejected by New York. It was denounced as an attempt to establish a precedent for a Tax Act, and as a step towards dragooning the colonies into the acceptance of the "new sovereignty". For since it directed the Assemblies to enact, without debate, that certain articles should be provided, it implied the principle that Parliament could tax the colonies internally through the medium of their Assemblies, leaving to them only the choice of means. New York, especially, felt aggrieved, because as the military headquarters of the two provinces it was disproportionately burdened. General Gage reported some dangerous rioting in July 1766. New York merchants presently petitioned for a relaxation of the Acts of Trade, and especially of the Sugar Act.

The hostile attitude of New York, deplored by Pitt himself, caused great irritation in England. It played into the hands of the court party, who echoed the sentiments of the King in regarding the repeal of the Stamp Act as a humiliation,5 and strengthened those who had never abandoned its principle. Nor could the idea of a standing army in America be shelved. The threatening aspect of foreign affairs, the direct menace of France under Choiseul, and the burden of taxation kept alive the temptation to insist upon a direct contribution from the colonies to imperial expenditure. Even Shelburne held "that it was highly reasonable that an American fund should be formed to support the exigencies of government". He thought that such a fund might be obtained from the quit-rents and grants of land in America. If this scheme had come to fruition, the necessity for imperial taxation would have been avoided, and the American crisis would have ended, at least for the time.

1 Fitzmaurice, Life of Shelburne, 1, 304-7, 318.

2 Dickinson, John, Address to Philadelphia Meeting, 1768.

3 Fitzmaurice, 1, 309, 316, 317.

Chatham to Shelburne, Corr. III, 189.

5 Burke, E., Speech on American Taxation, 1774.

• Fitzmaurice, 1, 306.

TOWNSHEND'S IMPORT DUTIES

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On the fall of the Rockingham ministry, Pitt, taking the title of Earl of Chatham, joined the King in an attempt to govern without party. The "mosaic" Government, as Burke dubbed it, was formed, with Grafton as its nominal head and Camden as Lord Chancellor. Shelburne as Secretary of State for the Southern Department took charge of colonial affairs, whilst General Conway remained as Secretary of State for the Northern Department. All of these, with the exception of Conway, were Pittites, and Conway was a Rockinghamite, who had moved the rejection of the Stamp Act. A political prophet, scanning such a ministry, might well have scouted the idea that within a few months it would be imposing taxes on the colonies. If so, he would have forgotten Townshend. Townshend was Chancellor of the Exchequer. That brilliant but erratic genius had experience, industry, wit, ambition, and an unrivalled power of charming the House of Commons. He was soon to show that, like Grenville, he still clung to the policy matured under Halifax. The illness of Chatham gave him his opportunity.

In a debate on the army estimates, Grenville raised the question of making the colonists pay for the troops stationed in America (26 January 1767). Great Britain, he declared, must be relieved from the burden, which now amounted to £400,000 a year, almost the sum produced by a shilling in the pound land tax. Townshend in reply announced to a delighted House that he knew a mode by which a revenue could be drawn from America without offence, and he intended to do it. His colleagues listened in indignant silence as he pledged himself to a policy wholly at variance with their wishes. They did not resign, for the doctrine of Cabinet responsibility had not yet been matured; and no one, in Chatham's absence, had the authority to insist upon Townshend's dismissal. Shelburne wrote in alarm to Chatham, but Chatham, in the throes of suppressed gout, was incapable of attending to business. Townshend, therefore, had his way. On 19 February Grenville and Dowdeswell followed up the attack. Championing the cause of the heavily taxed "Country Party", and supported on this occasion by most of the Rockingham Whigs, they outvoted the Government proposal for a 4s. in the pound land tax, and secured its reduction by one shilling. Townshend was left to make good the resulting deficit of half a million in his estimates. On 15 April he opened his budget. He announced that the distinction drawn by the Americans between internal and external taxation was, in his opinion, "perfect nonsense". But since they admitted the right of Parliament to regulate their trade, so long as it raised no internal revenue, he would humour them. By laying an "external" or port duty upon glass, paper, painters' colours, and tea imported into the colonies, he proposed to raise a revenue of £40,000. Tea, coffee, and cocoa exported to the colonies were allowed a drawback of the duties paid on their importation into England. In the case of

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