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THE THEORY OF THE REVOLUTION

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colonies were equally entitled with Great Britain to govern themselves. They readily accepted his conclusion that if such government should act contrary to the general good, the compact is broken and the government dissolved. Burlamaqui's argument that "natural society is a state of [political] equality and liberty" fired the imagination of many a reader in Massachusetts and Virginia. The doctrines of natural law absorbed from these books filtered through the minds of men like Alexander Hamilton and Dickinson, and, translated by Jefferson, were to be epitomised in the Declaration of Independence. But political theorists would have had no influential following had not a definite issue forced into opposition such men as George Washington, who felt that their property and their personal liberty as freeborn citizens were at stake, and, having once taken their stand, adhered to it with all the stubborn determination of their race.

In this first stage, the position taken by the Assemblies was radically illogical. Whilst admitting the right of the British Parliament to an unrestricted power of legislation over the colonies, and whilst admitting that Parliament could tax them externally, they claimed that internal taxation was their own exclusive province. But there would appear to be no essential difference between the right to legislate and the right to impose taxes by legislation, or between internal and external taxation. If Parliament had a right to impose a customs duty and to regulate trade, it had a right to raise an inland revenue. Moreover, the admission of a right to tax externally destroyed the argument of "No taxation without representation". "What a pother", said an Irish member of Parliament, "whether money is to be taken out of their coat pocket or their waistcoat pocket." But if the position of the colonists was illogical, practically it offered scope for a compromise which might have been accepted as a preparatory step for further relaxation of British control and the Acts of Trade. That, however, would have involved a reversal of the whole considered policy of the British Government. No proposal, moreover, for relaxing the trade laws would have found any support among the mercantile and moneyed classes who were the chief opponents of the policy of taxing the colonies.

The argument could not rest there. The distinction between internal and external taxation was soon to be abandoned. The denial of the one right had involved the denial of the other. Hopkins was already arguing that the people of Britain had no sovereign authority over their fellow-subjects in America, and that therefore their representatives could not derive from them any power to tax them.1 Hitherto, it had been admitted that Parliament could enact a law by which the life of a colonist was forfeit for a crime; that it could take away his property by taxes levied on goods coming into his seaports; that by the Act of 1732 it could make property in the colonies liable 1 Hopkins, Stephen, Rights of Colonies examined (1765).

CHBE I

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for debts to British merchants; that it could establish a General Post Office in the colonies, fixing the rates of postage. Some of these Acts were admittedly beneficial. But what was the essential distinction between them and the Stamp Act, and what was the authority for either? Once that question had been raised in practical form, theory advanced, logically and inevitably, to a more momentous conclusion. Without representation in Parliament, the new argument ran, Parliament had no right to tax the colonies in any form, or indeed to govern

them at all.

Before the day on which the Stamp Act was to come into force (1 November), Grenville had been dismissed. The fall of his ministry had no connection with the Act by which his name is remembered. Pitt, indeed, when approached by the King, named the question of taxing America as one of the points of his policy. But he refused to take office. George III himself seems to have been one of the first to grasp the magnitude of the principle at stake. "Where this spirit will end", he wrote on 5 December, "is not to be said. It is undoubtedly the most serious matter that ever came before Parliament.”1 The young King was in no way responsible for Grenville's policy, nor did he approve of it. "Mr Grenville's conduct", he wrote in 1767, "is as abundant in absurditys as in the affair of the Stamp Act; for he first deprived the Americans by restraining their trade, from the means of acquiring wealth, and taxed them...." But once the question had been raised, he was determined to maintain the principle of the right of the mother country to tax the colonies. In the present juncture, however, according to his own account, he preferred modification of the Stamp Act to repeal, as the wisest and most efficacious method of "restoring order and obedience in the American colonys... because any part remaining sufficiently ascertained the right of the mother country to tax its colonys and next that it would show a desire to redress any just grievances". But since "the unhappy factions that divide this country would not permit this equitable plan to be followed", he preferred repeal to enforcement, for enforcement would only tend to "widen the breach between this country and America". For these reasons, whilst declaring to Lord Rockingham that "modification was his own constant opinion", he authorised him to state that he preferred repeal to enforcement. On the fundamental principle he never wavered-the principle approved by Parliament on 3 February 1766—that "the King's Majesty, by and with the advice and consent of Parliament, had, hath, and of right ought to have, full power and authority to make laws and statutes of sufficient force and validity to bind the colonys...in all cases whatsoever". All yielding on that point he held to be weakness and

1 George III to General Conway, 5 Dec. 1765.
Corr. of Geo. III (ed. Fortescue), 1, 471.

3 Ibid. 1, nos. 246-8; Grenville Papers, III, 353

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.

" Walpole, H., Memoirs of George III, II, 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. 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.

2 Parl. Hist. XVI, 172.

'Cf. Channing, E., History of the U.S. m, 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".4 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." 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.

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

4 Fitzmaurice, Life of Shelburne, 1, 316.

5 Franklin, Works, IV, 176; Adams, J., Works, II, 203; Hutchinson, Hist. Mass. III, 147.

• Shelburne to Chatham, 6 Feb. 1767; Fitzmaurice, Life of Shelburne, 1, 309.

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