repugnant to the colonists, not only because they retained the traditional English objection to anything of the sort, but also because they feared, probably with reason, that it might be used for enforcing closer British control over their affairs. Unfortunately, too, the tax imposed, although it was intended, not to produce a revenue for Great Britain, but solely to be a contribution towards necessary colonial objects, gave grounds for raising the great constitutional principle of "no taxation without representation", a principle so dear to the hearts of Englishmen that even Lord Camden, in a moment of aberration, described it as a "law of nature".1 It provided the opponents of British rule and all who were feeling the pinch of that baleful system of commercial restrictions, which aimed at securing a monopoly of manufactures and of colonial trade to the mother country, with an opportunity of joining issue on the ideal ground of a battle for freedom against oppression. The ground was the same as that upon which the struggle against the Stuarts had been fought the struggle in which the American colonies had been cradled. "What we did", wrote Jefferson on a subsequent occasion, "was with the help of Rushworth, whom we rummaged over for the Revolutionary precedents of those days."2 The burden of the stamp tax was grossly exaggerated in America. Actually the amount expected to be raised was very small, and it was partly offset by the concessions mentioned above. But Hampden was imprisoned for refusing to pay a 20s. tax. If the stamp tax was an insignificant imposition, that was a good reason for not imposing it; it was not a reason for submitting to it. There was nothing new in the idea of taxing the colonies for their own defence and the support of their civil government. It had been proposed, for instance, by George Vaughan, a native of New Hampshire and agent for that province, as early as 1715.3 In 1717 and 1722 Archibald Cumings, customs officer at Boston, had submitted a plan which included a stamp tax, and in 1728 Sir William Keith, ex-LieutenantGovernor of Pennsylvania, had made a similar suggestion.5 What was new, was its adoption. Walpole, in 1739, had dismissed such a project with the observation that it had always been the object of his administration to encourage the commercial prosperity of the colonies, and that the greater their prosperity, the greater would be the demand for English manufactures. He showed a wisdom in advance of his generation. Indeed, it is possible that if the Wealth of Nations had appeared thirty years before it was actually published-in 1746 instead of in 1776-the argument of Adam Smith might have borne fruit in time. The argument, that is, that Great Britain derived nothing but loss from the monopoly of trade, to maintain which was 1 Parl. Hist. xvi, 178. Cal. St. Pap. Col. 1715, no. 389 (i). Short Discourse on the present state of the Colonies. 2 Jefferson, T., Memoirs, 1, 6. 4 Cal. St. Pap. Col. 1717, no. 486. • Annual Register, 1765, p. 25. EFFECTS OF GRENVILLE'S MEASURES 653 the principal object of the dominion she exercised over her colonies. But the fruit of that profound argument was long in ripening. Its acceptance was rendered difficult by the attitude of all the other nations who monopolised their colonial trade, and by the evident success of the Trade and Navigation Acts in building up the maritime power both of Great Britain and her colonies, and in crippling her commercial rivals, France and Holland. On the other hand, Smith agreed with Grenville that each part of the British Empire ought to support its own civil and military establishments and shoulder its share of the burden of imperial defence. Still more unfortunately, the proposal for the stamp tax followed upon the reimposition of the Sugar Act and it was accompanied by measures for stopping the wholesale smuggling by which the Acts of Trade and Navigation had been evaded. This involved the cessation of the illicit trade with the foreign West Indies and the Spanish colonies of America. But that trade, besides providing a market for their superfluous lumber and provisions, was the main source from which the Americans had obtained the ready money needed for payments to England in order to make good the adverse balance of trade normal with young colonies, which are necessarily large importers, and in their case augmented by those very Acts of Trade. Stimulated by long-term credits and inflated issues of paper currency, there had recently been an orgy of importation, so that British merchants were owed some five millions of pounds by 1775. This indebtedness was mentioned by Jonathan Boucher as an incentive to rebellion. At the same time it was enacted that the money raised by the duties in America should be paid in hard cash into the British Exchequer. By another Act3 the issue of paper money was prohibited. The effect of all these measures, taken together, was to deal a severe blow to American trade, and to create a greater demand for ready money whilst drying up the sources from which it could be obtained. Combined with the sugar tax, they were sufficient in themselves to create grave discontent and to raise in the minds of many the question "By what constitutional right can the British Parliament so restrain the American people?" The imposition of the stamp tax and the declaration in the preamble of the Revenue Act that it was "just and necessary to raise a revenue in His Majesty's Dominions in America for defraying the expenses of defending, protecting, and securing the same", presented them with a constitutional grievance which could be used as a stalking horse for opposition to all those irksome measures and British rule itself. For it was not taxation without representation which stirred the national conscience to the defence of smuggling, but the suppression of smuggling which 1 Boucher, Jonathan, Views of the causes and consequences of the American Revolution (1797); Van Tyne, C. H., England and America, p. 55; cf. Chalmers, G., Hist. of Colonial Currency, pp. 18, 416. 2 4 Geo. III, cap. 34. 3 5 Geo. III, cap. 12. reminded it of the iniquity of taxation without representation. Neither the principle nor the practice was new. The charter of Pennsylvania expressly reserved to Parliament the right of taxing that province. By the Act of 25 Car. II, cap. 7, Parliament had taxed the colonies for the purpose of revenue without granting them representation and without arousing protest, and that statute for the encouragement of the Greenland trade-had been continually renewed.1 The delay granted by Grenville before passing the Stamp Act was kindly meant, but very foolish. It merely gave the colonists time to experience the results of the anti-smuggling measures and to prepare their resistance on constitutional grounds. Echoes of Colonel Barre's rhetoric floated across the Atlantic. The right of the Imperial Government to regulate trade and navigation was, as has been said, universally conceded. The duties levied at the Custom House were generally regarded as the necessary corollary of such regulation. They might be disagreeable; they had hitherto been largely evaded; even now, when they were to be rigidly enforced, there was no question of challenging their validity. But a distinction was observed in the Stamp Act. Here was a tax to be imposed on the planter or merchant without the consent of his representative, and also a tax to be levied in the interior as well as at the seaports. The provision by which offences against the Stamp Act were to be cognisable by the Admiralty Courts roused further resentment. The colonies, it was proclaimed, were to be deprived of the right of trial by jury. The Virginians wrote to their agent in London that no British subject could be made subservient to laws without his consent or that of his representatives, and that "no man or body of men could ...have a right to do anything contrary to reason or justice, or that can lead to the destruction of the Constitution".2 Ignoring the request of the "Gentle Shepherd", that they should propose alternative methods of raising the required revenue, the colonists demanded that taxes should only be imposed by the votes of their own Assemblies. Petitions to that effect from the Assemblies of six colonies were forwarded to the Council of Trade, and were denounced as exhibiting "the most indecent disrespect to the Legislature of Great Britain".3 The Commons refused to allow them to be presented, and the Stamp Act received the royal assent on 22 March 1765. There was not the slightest expectation in England of the storm of opposition which was about to break forth in the colonies, where the long delay granted by Grenville had been utilised by agitators to organise resistance. An ominous incident occurred at Philadelphia. Before the ships bringing the news of the passing of the Act arrived, it was found that the guns of the battery had been spiked (14 April). At Boston the news was received with demonstrations of mourning. 1 2 and 7 Wm. and Mary; 1 and 9 Anne; 3 Geo. I, cap. 7. 3 Parl. Hist. XVI, 121. RESISTANCE TO THE STAMP ACT 655 Flags were flown at the half mast; muffled peals were rung from the church towers, and copies of the Act, with a death's head printed where the stamps should be, were hawked about the streets to the cry of "England's Folly and America's Ruin!" In the constitutional opposition to the "black Act", as it was called, Virginia took the lead. The Address of the Massachusetts Assembly had taken the line that whatever the right of Parliament to impose the tax, its imposition was inexpedient. But now, in Virginia, resolutions submitted by Henry were passed (29 May), which asserted that the colonists possessed the rights of Englishmen; that taxation by themselves or their chosen representatives was the distinguishing characteristic of British freedom; and that the Virginians retained the right, constantly recognised by the British Government, to tax themselves through their own Assembly. Any invasion of that right was an invasion of British and American liberty. The Pennsylvanian Assembly went further. It declared that its government being “founded on the natural right of mankind and the noble principle of English liberty is and ought to be perfectly free". The "Virginia resolves" sounded throughout the land "like an alarm bell to the disaffected". Rioting broke out all over the country. At Boston, the effigy of the stamp distributor was hung upon a tree; his house, the Stamp Office and the records of the Admiralty Court were destroyed. The house of Lieutenant-Governor Hutchinson was sacked and a bonfire made of the records he had collected for his history of the province. In New York the effigy of Lieutenant-Governor Colden was carried round the city in his coach and then burnt. Mob leaders, such as John Lamb and Isaac Sears, formed radical associations, chiefly composed of mechanics, and, adopting Barré's phrase, styled themselves "Sons of Liberty". Merchants bound themselves to order no goods from England. Societies were formed for encouraging domestic manufactures. Patriotic citizens wore homespun, and abstinence from lamb was enjoined, in order to provide the necessary wool. By the end of the year trade with England had practically ceased. The stamp distributors, upon Grenville's suggestion, had been chosen by the American agents from the colonists themselves. But in Philadelphia, as in Boston, the stamp master was compelled to resign. Their example was everywhere followed. The stamps, when they arrived in September, were seized and destroyed. In North Carolina the inhabitants compelled the commander of H.M.S. Viper to surrender two vessels which he had seized for sailing without stamped clearances. From Carolina to Halifax the distribution of the stamps was practically suspended. All legal business was brought to a standstill. Such was the weakness of the executive that the governors, left without military or other support, were unable to check rioting or enforce the law. With surprising unanimity-for the 1 Governor Bernard to Lord Halifax, 15 Aug. 1765. clash between the two loyalties was not yet apparent to many-the people combined to render the Stamp Act a dead letter. Business was then resumed by ignoring it. The Massachusetts General Court suggested that a Congress of Delegates should meet at New York to condemn the Stamp Act.1 Nine colonies sent representatives (7 October). A petition to the King and a memorial to Parliament were drawn up, wherein, whilst acknowledging "all due subordination" to Parliament, protest was entered against the extension of the jurisdiction of the Admiralty Court and the sole right of taxing themselves was claimed by the colonists. Their main contention was that Parliament could not tax them internally unless they were represented in that body, and representation was an impossibility. The idea of representation had quickly been dropped, not because it was impossible, but from fear of its being accepted, as Governor Bernard suggested, and that the colonial representatives would then be outvoted. The colonists claimed that they owed the same allegiance and had the same inherent rights as Englishmen born within the realm. It was, of course, possible to reply that in that case they must be bound by the Acts of the British Parliament, and could not claim exemption from any particular one of the obligations under which all British subjects lay.2 The Council of Trade denounced the Stamp Act Congress as forming a precedent of "dangerous tendency". It was indeed, like the associations of the "Sons of Liberty", a first step towards united action by colonies which hitherto had been at least as jealous of each other as of the mother country. The American Revolution, like most others, was largely the work of an influential minority. Planters, merchants and lawyers led the masses into the movement. Subsequently it was mainly carried out by the middle and lower classes. But the constitutional and legal reasoning on which the Revolution was based, and the application of the doctrines of the "rights of man", were necessarily the work of highly educated men. The political theory which inspired such leaders as Otis, Henry, John and Samuel Adams, James Warren, John Dickinson and Thomas Jefferson, was derived mainly from the writings of John Locke, reinforced by those of Harrington, Grotius, Hume, Selden, Puffendorf, Montesquieu, Beccaria, Burlamaqui and Rousseau. Cradled in the Protestant and democratic tradition of the Reformation, they readily accepted Locke's argument that "men being by nature all free, equal and independent...instituted a government by consent to protect them in their rights to life, liberty, and property"; and drew from it the practical corollary that the 1 Journal of House of Representatives, Massachusetts, 1765. 2 Cf. Knox, William, The claim of the Colonies, etc. examined (1765); Hutchinson, Thomas, Diary and Letters, 1, 21. 3 Parl. Hist. XVI, 122. Wirt, Wm., Life of Patrick Henry; Fisher, S. G., The struggle for American Independence, 1, |