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REPEAL OF THE REVENUE ACT

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accordance with the will of the Crown. North was a Tory, shrewd and capable, a man of imperturbable temper, and an excellent debater. But his chief merit in the eyes of George III was his profound devotion to his sovereign. Unhappily he placed it above his duty to his country and his own convictions.

North soon seized the opportunity offered by a petition of London merchants to introduce the promised bill for repealing all Townshend's duties, except the 3d. on tea (15 March-12 April 1770). The retention of the tea duty he defended on the grounds that it differed from the others in that they were laid on English manufactures and had proved harmful to trade, whilst the duty on tea was in perfect harmony with commercial precedents. But in fact it had precisely the same intention and effect as the Declaratory Act. The tea tax was retained for the purpose of asserting the authority of Parliament in answer to the opposition of the Americans.1 As a source of revenue it was ridiculous. Had revenue been aimed at, the substitution of the old tax of 12d. on tea when imported into England would, according to both Hutchinson and Franklin, have raised the sum required and provoked no opposition whatever. As it was, the repeal of the rest of Townshend's Act gave the agitators in America the stimulus of a triumph, and the retention of the tea tax left them with a grievance over a principle. The duties levied by the older laws on tobacco, wine, sugar and molasses were also retained, as well as the whole new and efficient machinery for enforcing them. But the Mutiny Act was quietly allowed to lapse, and no attempt was made to punish Massachusetts or South Carolina for refusing to furnish supplies for the troops. Permission was also granted for an issue of paper currency, which was urgently needed in a time of rising prices.

The conciliatory nature of these measures, combined with the promise in Hillsborough's circular, might well have saved the situation for the time being, had there been a general willingness to accept it as an earnest gesture of compromise and good-will. That it did not do so demonstrates that nothing short of some ample and generous measure for revising the whole status of the colonies, urged and granted in the grand manner of which the genius of Chatham was capable, would in the long run have satisfied the "patriots" of 1770. The introduction of the repeal of the Revenue Act coincided with an ugly incident at Boston. The two regiments sent to support the Commissioners of Customs had been quartered within the town. They behaved with great self-restraint and good discipline, but their presence was resented as a symbol of British authority and an infringement of the new doctrine that no regular troops should be kept in a colony and no fortification built there without its consent. In January there had been a clash between insulting patriots and irritated soldiers in New York. In Boston the populace had grown more

1 Parl. Hist. XVI, 854; Mass. State Papers, 161.

and more intractable, and rumours of an attack to be made by the troops were maliciously circulated. On 5 March a crowd gathered threateningly about a solitary sentinel in front of the Custom House and began to insult him. He called for aid, and the guard of six men and a corporal under Captain Preston came to his rescue. The crowd refused to disperse, but shouted abuse at the "lobsters". Snowballs were thrown. A soldier was knocked down. With or without orders, the guard fired and four men were killed. Hutchinson, who had succeeded Bernard as Governor of Massachusetts, agreed to withdraw the troops from Boston to Fort William. The soldiers concerned were tried for their lives. They were bravely defended by John Adams and acquitted, to the lasting honour of all concerned. But the "horrid massacre at Boston", as it was excitedly described, was seized upon by orators throughout the country, grossly exaggerated and assiduously used to influence the masses. Then and long afterwards it was represented as an unprovoked and murderous assault by brutal soldiers upon innocent and peaceful citizens, and as an example of the bloody tyranny typical of British rule.1 Its anniversary was celebrated in the chief towns of America with signs of mourning for the "martyred" citizens and floods of revolutionary rhetoric. So great was the impression produced, that John Adams was to some extent justified in describing the incident as "laying the foundation of American Independence".

The conciliatory policy of the British Government had, however, temporarily deprived the extremists of any other rousing cry. It also widened the breach between them and the moderate patriots, and those who, faced by the conflicting calls of loyalty to the new country and the old, chose that which bound them to the King and Empire. Loyalists no longer saw any reason against the re-establishment of harmony. But since many held that, so long as the tea tax was maintained, the menace to their liberties was as dangerous as ever, the non-importation Associations decided to admit all British goods except tea and any article on which import duties might be imposed. Those who had been thriving on a smuggling trade in Dutch tea were particularly insistent upon this exception.

Moderate patriots, like Franklin, Cushing and Dickinson, were now content to wait until American independence should be peacefully brought about by "our natural increase in wealth and population".2 But the extreme Radicals, of whom Samuel Adams was the determined and unrelenting leader, inspired by intense hatred alike of monarchy and Church, had no wish that the conciliatory policy of Great Britain should succeed. They saw in it merely a device to lull the people into acquiescence in dependency. They believed that

1 See e.g. Bancroft, G., Hist. of U.S., and Kidder, F., Evidence on the Boston Massacre. 2 Mass. Hist. Soc. Coll., Ser. IV., IV, 360; Franklin, B., Works, vin, 30, 78. 3 Boston Gazette, 13 Sept. 1773.

THE GASPÉE AFFAIR

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England would never grant them absolute independence unless compelled. They believed that now was the time to fight for it, before the ardour of the people cooled, whilst their sense of grievance was still acute and bad trade still rendered them restless, and whilst England was still weak from the French war and threatened by foreign enemies. "It is now or never" wrote Joseph Hawley.

The irritant of the Acts of Trade helped them to keep alive the smouldering spirit of discontent. When, in 1771, the Governor of Massachusetts refused his consent to an act by which the salaries of the Commissioners of Customs were to be taxed, the Assembly remonstrated in these words: "We know of no Commissioner of H.M. Customs nor of any revenue H.M. has a right to establish in North America: we know and we feel a tribute levied and extorted from those who, if they have property, have a right to the absolute disposal of it...". Here was the denial absolute of the right of the Crown to levy duties on trade.

The Government, on the other hand, had never faltered in its conviction that somehow or other a civil list must be established, by which the salaries of governors and judges should be withdrawn from the control of the Assemblies. Since parliamentary legislation and taxation for that purpose had failed, it now resorted to the device of an executive order of the Crown, simply directing that such salaries should be paid by warrants drawn upon the revenue collected by the Commissioners of Customs. This was denounced as an outrageous usurpation by the Crown. The Boston Gazette declared (2 November 1772), that unless the liberties of the Colonists were immediately restored, they would form an independent Commonwealth. To stimulate opposition, Samuel Adams and Joseph Warren established a system of Committees of Correspondence in every town in Massachusetts, with a central committee at Boston.1 This system was presently adopted by the other colonies, and soon became, in John Adams's phrase, a very efficient "political engine" for the dissemination of propaganda, the suppression of Loyalists, and the organisation of resistance at the opportune moment. It was not long before the enforcement of the Acts of Trade brought about another serious collision. Rhode Island, enjoying, as we have seen, practically independent government, had long been a centre of illicit trade, and its rum distilleries had flourished accordingly. Attempts to repress smuggling were now answered by the destruction of revenue cutters2 and by serving writs on naval officers for seizures of smuggling vessels which the Newport Admiralty Court refused to condemn. On 9 June 1772, H.M.S. Gaspée, whilst in pursuit of a suspected ship, ran aground off Providence. A party of Rhode Islanders assembled publicly and during the night boarded the Gaspée and set her on fire. Captain Duddingston was wounded. He and his men were taken

1 Hutchinson, Hist. Mass. III, 295-345.

R.I. Col. Recs. vi and vII.

ashore. A writ was served on him and he was mulcted in damages for alleged unlawful seizures of rum and sugar.1

This barefaced defiance of authority and outrage on the British flag not unnaturally caused the utmost indignation at home. By an Act which had recently been passed for the protection of H.M. dockyards, prisoners accused of such treasonable offence might be brought to England for trial. A commission consisting of colonial officials, including the Governor of Rhode Island, was appointed to obtain evidence, in order that the civil magistrates of Rhode Island might have the offenders arrested and sent to England for trial under this law. But though they were perfectly well known, no evidence could be obtained against them. Colonial opinion expressed itself in an outburst of "universal abhorrence" of the idea, not of burning H.M. ships, but of sending those accused of the outrage for trial in England. The loudest protest came once more from Virginia. There Patrick Henry, Jefferson and Richard Henry Lee secured the appointment of a standing Committee of the Assembly (March 1773), the first business of which was to inform itself upon what authority the Gaspée court of enquiry had been established. At its invitation, other Assemblies presently set up similar committees for airing their grievances and corresponding with each other. They formed important links in the chain of growing inter-colonial union. Combined with Adams's local committees, they constituted the basis of a formidable revolutionary organisation.

Resentment on both sides was increased by the untoward affair of the Whateley letters. Hutchinson and Oliver, the Governor and Lieutenant-Governor of Massachusetts Bay, had written a series of confidential letters to Thomas Whateley, member of Parliament, who shared the responsibility for the policy of the Stamp Act. Both maintained that in view of the rebellious attitude of Boston and the weakness of the executive, the government must be strengthened, and that some curtailment of the privileges of the province was essential. These letters were stolen and brought to Franklin, who, as Agent of the province, forwarded them to the leading men in Massachusetts for their information. Though he had promised that they should not be copied or printed, it was not long before they were published. Only after Whateley's brother and executor had been wounded in a duel with the supposed purloiner of the letters did Franklin avow his responsibility. As soon as their contents were known, the council and Assembly petitioned for the removal of Hutchinson and Oliver. The petition was referred to the Committee of the Privy Council (January 1774). Franklin's conduct was fairly open to criticism. But Wedderburn, the Solicitor-General, in a brilliant and bitter speech, exceeded all limits. He described Franklin as unfit for civilised society; in an ugly gibe he pilloried him 1 Arnold, S. G., History of Rhode Island, 11, 309 seqq.

THE WHATELEY LETTERS

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as a literary man who, having stolen this correspondence, would henceforth esteem it a libel to be called a man of letters-homo trium literarum (fur). With indecent levity Privy Councillors laughed and applauded. The petition was declared "false, groundless, scandalous, and calculated only for the seditious purpose of keeping up a spirit of clamour and discontent". Franklin was dismissed from his office of Postmaster-General. Though his views had advanced as the situation developed, he had propounded many schemes for the defence of the colonies and the opening of trade which, if they had been adopted, might have saved the situation. He had worked for union with Great Britain. He left the room its bitter and determined foe. The colonists resented the insults which had been heaped upon their distinguished representative. In England his conduct was judged abominable.

Whilst temper was rising over the Gaspée affair and the Whateley letters, the boycott of tea in America had helped to produce a crisis in the affairs of the East India Company which indirectly inaugurated the American Revolution. Huge stocks of tea lay unsold in its warehouses. Exports to America had dropped from 900,000 lbs. in 1769 to 237,000 in 1772. By the Act of 1772 a drawback of threefifths of the duty on tea imported into England was allowed when it was exported to the Plantations. The Company was obliged to sell such tea to dealers at a public sale. To relieve the Company, but also with the intention of benefiting the colonies, North introduced a bill (April 1773) by which the Company was permitted to export a portion of its tea direct from its warehouses without public sale, and a drawback was granted of the whole duty paid upon importation into England. Whilst the dealers were thus eliminated, the cost of tea was reduced, so that the Company would be able to sell in the colonies at a price much below that at which even smuggled foreign tea could be retailed. Very unwisely, the Company appointed as its agents at Boston, not the reputable merchants who had usually handled the London tea trade, but men who had refused to take a share in the boycott of British goods and had earned thereby large profits and great unpopularity, or those who were identified with the administration.

Opposition was at once organised. Patriots were determined to prevent the landing of the tea, because, once landed, its cheapness would have ensured its sale and the consequent collection of the 3d. duty. The cry of monopoly was raised. The new measure was represented as part of the general attack upon colonial liberties; as a scheme of taxation intended to provide funds for the civil list, for taking away control over colonial officials, and providing means for establishing an episcopate. From Philadelphia and New York tea ships were compelled to return without landing their cargoes. At Charleston a cargo was landed, but the consignee did not dare to

CHBE I

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