handle it. At Boston three shiploads arrived in December. They were heralded by placards announcing to the inhabitants that "the hour of destruction stares you in the face". Public meetings were held under the direction of Samuel Adams to bring pressure on the governor. Arrogating to themselves the authority of a government, they prohibited the landing of the tea. Hutchinson, however, stood firm and insisted upon its being landed. On 16 December 1773 a band of men disguised as Indians boarded the ships and flung every chest of tea into the harbour. Nobody was punished for this act of violence. It had the desired result. It committed the patriot party all over the country to a more violent and radical position, and forced an open contest over the great question which lay beneath all these years of wrangling. It was followed by an equally significant action on the part of the Assembly. After declaring that all judges who received salaries from the Crown were unworthy of public confidence, it proceeded to impeach Chief Justice Oliver on those grounds (14 February 1774). It was determined to maintain the dependence of the judges on the Assembly. The repercussion in England was strong and immediate. The "Boston tea-party", as it is called, was admitted by Franklin to be an outrage which called for voluntary reparation. Chatham denounced it as a crime. Lord North asked Parliament to provide the means for putting down such disorders and securing the dependence of the colonies. On 14 March he proposed the closing of the Port of Boston and the removal of the Custom House to Salem until compensation should be paid to the East India Company. This was accepted as a fitting punishment even by such ardent Whigs and friends of the Americans as Barré and Conway. But Chatham, like Washington, held that reparation should have been demanded first, and that only on refusal should a bill of pains and penalties have been introduced. Acts were also passed legalising the quartering of troops on the inhabitants of Boston, and providing that persons indicted for murder in the suppression of riots might be brought to England for trial. Finally, the charter of Massachusetts was modified. The council hitherto chosen by the representatives was henceforth to be appointed by the Crown, as in other colonies. Judges, sheriffs, and all executive officers were to be appointed by the governor and be removable at pleasure. Judges' salaries were to be paid by the Crown. Town meetings, unless sanctioned by the governor, were prohibited. Juries were to be selected by the sheriffs. All through the sessions of 1774 Chatham and Burke argued in speeches of unsurpassed splendour on behalf of the Americans. The vigour of their advocacy, indeed, might almost seem to justify the contention that the colonies were sufficiently represented in Parliament by British members in their aspect of imperial representatives. 1 Fisher, S. G., The Struggle for American Independence, 1, pp. 162-77 THE BOSTON TEA-PARTY 675 Burke in his great speech on American taxation argued for conciliation by complete repeal of the tea tax and all the aggressive Acts since 1763. Addresses from the Assemblies had declared that this would content them. "Revert", he said, "to your old principles.... I am not going into distinctions of right....Leave America to tax herself. Leave the Americans as they anciently stood, and these distinctions, born of our unhappy contest, will die along with it.... Be content to bind America by laws of trade; you have always done it. Let this be your reason for binding their trade. Do not burden them with taxes; you were not used to do so from the beginning. Let this be your reason for not taxing." Chatham, whilst glorifying American love of liberty and urging conciliatory measures, proclaimed that if he thought the colonies entertained the most distant idea of throwing off the legislative supremacy of Parliament, he would be the first to enforce that power by every means. To others it seemed evident that even now nothing but force would subdue the agitation in America. Governor Hutchinson from Massachusetts, Governor Tryon from New York were urging the necessity of spirited measures. The Government made the fatal mistake of passing penal measures without providing the means to enforce them and to prevent the cause of Boston being taken up as the cause of the thirteen colonies. In this they were misled by General Gage, who was sent as military and civil governor with a fleet and four regiments to succeed Hutchinson and close the port of Boston. Four regiments, he had assured the King, would suffice; the Bostonians would only be lions so long as we were lambs.1 The assumption was that resistance would be confined to Boston. The policy of punishing one colony whilst doing nothing to exasperate the others and drive them into a confederacy had been advocated by Shelburne.2 It misconceived the universality of the issue at stake, which touched Virginia, for instance, as closely as New England. The conflict of ideals represented by Samuel Adams and North could not be settled by ignoring those of Jefferson and Mason. Radical views were not confined to Massachusetts. The clamour that arose from the wharves of Boston was echoed by the mechanics of New York and on the quays of Charleston. The coercive measures brought the quarrel to a head. General Gage closed the harbour of Boston on 1 June. Within a few weeks thousands were thrown out of work and threatened with starvation. But the unanimity of the colonies was demonstrated not only by words of encouragement, but by contributions of money and provisions which poured along the roads even from Carolina, and by the decision of Virginia and Maryland to cease exporting tobacco. A "solemn league and covenant" was formed to stop all commercial relations with Great Britain. Though hampered by the opposition of 1 Letters of George III to Lord North (ed. Donne), 1, 164. 2 Fitzmaurice, 1, 318, 320. the people, Gage built camps and barracks for his troops, and strengthened his position in Boston by fortifying the isthmus which connected it with the mainland. On 1 September, in view of the annual muster of the militia, he seized the powder in the arsenal at Charleston. A rumour was spread that the troops and fleet were firing on Boston, and a large body of New Englanders sprang to arms, but was dissuaded from marching on the town. Gage promptly abandoned the new seat of government which had been established at Salem, and shut himself up with all his troops in Boston. Already he had begun to ask for reinforcements and the suspension of the punitive Acts. When he endeavoured to put the Act for regulating the government of Massachusetts into force, the new councillors were mobbed.1 Jurors refused to serve at the assizes, and judges were compelled to abandon their courts. The efforts of moderate men to secure peace by paying for the damaged tea were defeated. But the leaders of the revolutionary party were well aware that only support from the other provinces could save them from collapse. For some time Samuel Adams had been openly advocating the institution of an annual "Congress of States", and the formation of an "Independent State or American Commonwealth". Now, in response to the appeal of the Boston patriots, a Congress of Delegates from all the colonies was summoned to meet at Philadelphia and to consider the case of Massachusetts as one that concerned them all. To this Continental Congress, as it was called, for the term national could not yet be applied, all the colonies save Canada, Florida and Georgia sent delegates (5 September 1774). Practically no attempt was made to prevent its meeting. This was partly because, with Gage shut up in Boston, there was no sufficient military force available; partly because it was desired not to provoke rioting; and partly because it was thought that a genuine attempt to settle the Boston trouble would be made. It was probably expected that matters would be conducted upon the basis on which the delegates of most of the colonies were instructed to proceed, namely, to demand redress of grievances and to restore union and harmony with Great Britain. Some such conciliatory proposal as that made by Joseph Galloway would, it might be hoped, show the way to a settlement. Galloway, a Pennsylvanian, proposed that a Grand Council elected by the provincial Assemblies should legislate for the colonies on matters affecting more than one; and that its acts should be revised by Parliament, whilst the Council should have the right of vetoing any Act of Parliament relating to the colonies. Moderates and extremists were at first evenly matched, and this suggestion met 1 Mass. Hist. Soc., Proceedings, Ser. II, XVI, 287. 2 Boston Gazette, 1773; Hosmer, J. K., Life of Samuel Adams, p. 238. Jones, Thomas, New York in Revolution, 1, 34; Journal of Proceedings of Congress, 1. SUPPRESSION OF LOYALISTS 677 with strong support. But the extremists gained their way and presently dominated Congress. For the Loyalists had been allowed little or no share in the election of the delegates, who were for the most part chosen either by the Committees of Correspondence or by Assemblies under the control of extremists.1 American revolutionaries, like their French successors, quickly realised that the rights of man are not like the rains of Heaven, which descend upon the just and unjust, but that by some perhaps divine dispensation they are withheld from one's opponents. All over the country, but especially in New England, a reign of terror was being directed against supporters of the British Government. Loyal farmers were tarred and feathered and driven off their lands.2 Meanwhile, in Massachusetts independence had practically been proclaimed by the "Suffolk Resolves". At a meeting held at that place resolutions were passed which, after describing England as a parricide, declared that no obedience was due to the recent Acts of Parliament; that no taxes should be paid, and that government officials should be seized if any attempt at arrests were made. The Quebec Act was denounced as threatening American liberties and the Protestant religion. These resolves were submitted to the Continental Congress. By accepting them, approving the resistance of Massachusetts, and declaring that, if force were used against her, “all America ought to support her", Congress proclaimed the solidarity of the colonies, but also identified itself with a definite act of rebellion. The documents finally drawn up by Congress made an appeal to arms inevitable. The Declaration of Rights was in the nature of an ultimatum. It demanded the repeal of thirteen Acts of Parliament to which exception had been taken since 1763. This was to demand, in effect, the abolition of the old colonial system and the laying down of the sovereign authority of Parliament. Exception was made, however, to Acts "bona fide restrained to the regulation of our external commerce,... excluding every idea of raising a revenue on the subjects in America". This exception was insisted upon by the New York delegates. Like the reiteration in the addresses of a heartfelt desire for union and harmony, it represented the views of those who were still averse from separation, and was intended also to appeal to supporters in England, whose strength was greatly overestimated. For in Parliament the opponents of the American policy of the Government, though they now included Fox as well as Burke and Richmond, were small in numbers, divided in policy, and discredited in reputation. When Grafton resigned office and joined the Opposition in August 1775, he did not take with him half a dozen votes. Conway's resignation exercised even less influence. The 1 Journal of Congress, 1, 2–7. 2 Am. Archives, 4th Ser. 1-VI, passim. * Walpole, H., Last Journals, ш, 3; Lecky, W. E. H., Hist. of Eng. in Eighteenth Cent. IV, 329. 1 conciliatory proposals of Burke in March of that year were defeated by 270 to 78 votes. In the country it was the same story. According to Burke himself, the landed interest, the mercantile community and the people were now alike in favour of the coercive measures of the ministry. The Established Church was firmly anti-American; literary opinion for the most part, and legal opinion almost unanimously, supported the Government. "I never remember", says Burke, "the opposition so totally abandoned",2 and a little later he added, "the good people of England seem to partake every day more and more of the character of the administration". Opposition, he complained, had to face a torrent, not merely of ministerial and court power, but also of almost general opinion.3 Among the Acts which Congress required to be repealed was the Quebec Act of 1774. That measure, so admirable in other respects, was a source of annoyance and suspicion to the Americans for two reasons. On the one hand it sanctioned the Roman Catholic faith as held by the enormous majority of the inhabitants of Canada. Thereby it aroused the fierce resentment of Protestant New Englanders. On the other hand, it reversed the decision of Shelburne in 1763, and extended the boundaries of Canada in the direction of the back settlements, so as to include all the lands which had not previously been granted or comprised in any charter in the regions, stretching southwards to the Ohio and westwards to the Mississippi, represented by the modern States of Michigan, Indiana, Illinois, Ohio and Wisconsin. At the same time it placed this whole enlarged province of Quebec under a military governor and nominated council. But settlers from Virginia, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania and Connecticut had been moving on towards the Ohio and Mississippi, and several provinces held that they had claims in that direction. They saw in the new ordinance an intention on the part of the British Government to check their development westwards, and in the establishment of a military governorship merely a step towards wholesale reconstruction of colonial administration and the prohibition of new settlements under free institutions. Congress, therefore, with somewhat short-sighted finesse, despatched two Addresses, one to the people of Great Britain, denouncing the establishment of Roman Catholicism in Canada, and the other to the Canadians, inciting them to rebel against the tyranny of Great Britain. For it was supposed that the Canadians were fretting under despotic restrictions on their liberty. But in fact, while providing additional irritants to the Americans, the Quebec Act had secured the loyalty of Canada. Still more significant was the adoption of an agreement, or "Association", for enforcing a complete cessation of commercial 1 Burke, Corresp. 11, 2 (Jan. 1775). 2 Ibid. 11, 48 (Aug.). 3 Ibid. 11, 68 (Sept.). Josiah Quincey to Franklin, Mass. Hist. Soc. Proc. 1863, p. 119; Warren-Adami, Corresp. 1, 258, Mass. Hist. Soc. Proc. 1917. |