Page images
PDF
EPUB

EVOLUTION OF AMERICAN SENTIMENT

647

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.

[blocks in formation]

modified them. But they created a tremendous impression, and were described by John Adams as the first step on the road to revolution.1

In Virginia, also, a recent episode had brought odium upon Church and State. Resentment against the exercise of the royal prerogative had been stirred by the exciting rhetoric of a great orator, who having failed in business had taken to the law. Patrick Henry, destined to be the force which drove Virginia into rebellion, now first revealed his powers and his detestation of British rule. He had not a good case. The stipends of the clergy had hitherto been paid in fixed quantities of tobacco. In 1755, when tobacco was scarce and the price therefore high, the Assembly enacted that they should be paid in money. When the price was low, they had received no compensation. The act was very justly annulled. But the tithe-payers ignored the royal veto. The clergy brought actions to recover the sums out of which they had been defrauded. They were defeated by the eloquence of Henry, who denied the validity of the veto and told the juries that the action of the British Government was an instance of tyranny which dissolved the political compact.

Clearly the time was at hand when the prophecies of Turgot and Vergennes might be realised. "Colonies", the former had declared, "are like fruits which remain on the tree only till they are ripe. America, as soon as she can take care of herself, will do as Carthage did." Vergennes, after the Peace of Paris, foretold that Great Britain would call upon the colonies to share the burden she had incurred on their behalf, and that they, no longer needing her protection, would answer by declaring their independence.2 In these circumstances it was the business of good statesmanship to see to it that the calls of the two loyalties of which we have spoken did not clash, and that the bonds of the old home and the new home across the seas should not be subjected to the strain of a crisis, in which economical self-interest was joined to the defence of a vital constitutional principle. It is obvious enough now that the time had come for a relaxation of trade restrictions and a withdrawal of political interference, or for giving to the colonies a share in the regulation of the common concerns of the Empire as many people, including practical administrators like Governor Pownall and political philosophers like Adam Smith, thought possible. The Americans had reached a stage of growth which involved a change of relationship. In the light of experience which was not theirs, it is easy to see that it was imperative that statesmen should find a new formula for their new age, and provide an escape from tutelage without forcing the adolescent to leave home. Unfortunately the idea of an empire held together by a federal union of States and united by freedom was wholly strange to the imperial nations of the eighteenth century. Devolution of

1 Tudor, William, Life of James Otis, chaps. v-vii.

2 Bancroft, G., Hist. U.S. 1, 525.

sovereignty was almost inconceivable to them. Dr Johnson's dictum that "in sovereignty there are no gradations" was deemed indisputable. Logically and historically perhaps it was. For the modern compromise on the point-the conception of a gradual development of self-governing to practically independent sovereign States within an empire—had not been formulated, and possibly but for the lesson taught by the revolt of the American colonies might never have been reached. Thomas Pownall, indeed, an ex-colonial governor of large experience, had glimpses of the modern imperial ideal when he urged the conception of Great Britain, "not as a Kingdom of this Isle only" with colonial appendages, but "as a grand marine dominion... united into one Empire"; and Adam Smith in the Wealth of Nations projected an empire wherein the colonies would enjoy equality in status, burden and opportunity with the mother country. That ideal is implicit in all the demands of the colonies during the ensuing period. But they themselves did not realise it. As late as 1775 they were declaring that they would be content with a return to the status quo of 1763.2 Shelburne at the last hoped for a federal union.

The alternative seemed to be the enforcement of subservience. Parliament was as jealous of its honour and as tenacious of its authority as the King. A long stride in political understanding had to be taken before the British people could look upon their countrymen in the colonies as one with themselves in rights as in race; as equal fellow-subjects of the Crown across the seas. As it was, in the words of Benjamin Franklin, "every man in England seems to consider himself as a piece of a sovereign over America; seems to jostle himself into the throne with the King, and talks of our subjects in the Colonies".

In spite of the domination of the mercantile theory and the policy of restricting the Plantations to the production of raw materials for British manufactures, the mother country cannot be regarded as treating them merely as milch cows kept for her profit. In return for the restraints imposed upon their trade and manufactures, Great Britain gave freely in exchange. She provided naval and military protection and military stores; she fought for their preservation and extension; she gave bounties to encourage the industries included under the heading of naval stores; she supplied money for religious establishments and in aid of Protestant emigrants; she presented the tobacco colonies with a monopoly in tobacco at the expense of the home farmer. She had incurred a great burden of debt as the result of her efforts largely on their behalf. Politically and commercially she gave her colonies greater freedom than did any other imperial nation. The elder Mirabeau wrote of the English as "the most enlightened of the people of Europe in their conduct in the New World". The fundamental error Great Britain now made was not so much

1 Pownall, Thomas, Administration of the Colonies, pp. xv, 19.
2 Franklin, Works, IV, 432; Washington, Works, 11, 501.

COLONIAL SEPARATISM

651

that she did what was done by all other empires of the period, nor even that she asserted a sovereignty to which all British people alike were subject. It lay in the assertion of that sovereignty in a way which put the colonies in a state of inferiority, whilst their trade was controlled for the benefit of their fellow-subjects in England. The colonies were placed in the position "not so much of a State in federation as of a conquered State".1 The very liberality of the institutions to which the mother country had accustomed them prepared them to rebel against that condition. Naturally, too, the wholesale evasion of commercial laws which ran counter to the feeling and interests of the country, had accustomed the people to the defiance of British authority.

The really critical part of the Revenue Act of 1764 lay in the steps taken for enforcing it and the observance of the Acts of Trade. The right of the mother country to control colonial trade was universally admitted. But restrictions of trade were bound to cause irritation, producing sooner or later political reactions. No political reaction of the first magnitude could take place so long as only the might of Great Britain stood between the colonists and absorption or expulsion by the aggressive power of France. By the irony of fate, the results of the prodigious effort made by Great Britain to remove that menace led directly to the measures which called into active being the latent demand of the American colonies for practical independence, and drove them first into resistance and then into unity.

For as yet the spirit of colonial separatism reigned supreme. Franklin himself emphasised their mutual jealousy and their resistance to the idea of a union even for their common defence against the French and Indians. He ridiculed, therefore, the idea of their uniting against their own nation, which "they all love much more than they love one another".2 "Nothing", wrote the traveller Burnaby, "can exceed the jealousy and emulation which they possess in regard to each other."3 Both he and Otis expressed their convictions that, if left to themselves, civil war would rage from one end of the continent to the other.

We have seen that the Government's policy embraced three measures: the strict enforcement of the trade laws, and, in the absence of quotas of men and money raised by the colonies for their own protection, the establishment of British troops in America, and the raising of a revenue there by an imperial tax to contribute towards their support. So long, however, as the Acts of Trade were enforced, the Americans could reasonably maintain that their contribution to imperial defence was to be found in the advantage derived by Great Britain from control of the colonial trade. There the matter might well have been left.

Unfortunately, the idea of a standing army was naturally * Franklin, Works, IV, 41.

1 Seeley, J. R., Expansion of England, chap. iv.

Burnaby, A., Travels in N. America; Pinkerton, Voyages, XIII, 752.

« PreviousContinue »