Part 2 — CHAPTER IV. Concerning the infallible teaching of the Roman Pontiff: (continued 50)

Q. But who is to judge of that, Britain or the colony? A. Those that feel can best judge.

Q. You say the colonies have always submitted to external taxes, and object to the right of parliament only in laying internal taxes; now can you shew that there is any kind of difference between the two taxes to the colony on which they may be laid? A. I think the difference is very great. An external tax is a duty laid on commodities imported; that duty is added to the first cost, and other charges on the commodity, and when it is offered to sale, makes a part of the price. If the people do not like it at that price, they refuse it: they are not obliged to pay it. But an internal tax is forced from the people without their consent, if not laid by their own representatives. The Stamp Act says, we shall have no commerce, make no exchange of property with each other, neither purchase nor grant, nor recover debts; we shall neither marry nor make our wills, unless we pay such sums, and thus it is intended to extort our money from us, or ruin us by the consequences of refusing to pay it.

Q. But supposing the internal tax or duty to be laid on the necessaries of life imported into your colony, will not that be the same thing in its effects as an internal tax? A. I do not know a single article imported into the northern colonies, but what they can either do without or make themselves.

Q. Don't you think cloth from England absolutely necessary to them? A. No, by no means absolutely necessary; with industry and good management, they may very well supply themselves with all they want.

Q. Will it not take a long time to establish that manufacture among them; and must they not in the mean while suffer greatly? A. I think not. They have made a surprising progress already. And I am of opinion, that before their old clothes are worn out, they will have new ones of their own making.

Q. Can they possibly find wool enough in North America? A. They have taken steps to increase the wool. They entered into general combination to eat no more lamb, and very few lambs were killed last year. This course persisted in, will soon make a prodigious difference in the quantity of wool. And the establishing of great manufactories, like those in the clothing towns here, is not necessary, as it is where the business is to be carried on for the purposes of trade. The people will all spin and work for themselves, in their own houses.

Q. Can there be wool and manufacture enough in one or two years? A. In three years, I think, there may.

Q. Does not the severity of the winter, in the northern colonies, occasion the wool to be of bad quality? A. No, the wool is very fine and good.

Q. In the more southern colonies, as in Virginia, don't you know that the wool is coarse, and only a kind of hair? A. I don't know it. I never heard it. Yet I have been sometimes in Virginia. I cannot say I ever took particular notice of the wool there, but I believe it is good, though I cannot speak positively of it; but Virginia, and the colonies south of it, have less occasion for wool; their winters are short, and not very severe, and they can very well clothe themselves with linen and cotton of their own raising for the rest of the year.

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Q. Are not the people in the more northern colonies obliged to fodder their sheep all the winter? A. In some of the most northern colonies they may be obliged to do it some part of the winter.

Q. Considering the resolutions of parliament as to the right, do you think, if the Stamp Act is repealed, that the North Americans will be satisfied? A. I believe they will.

Q. Why do you think so? A. I think the resolutions of right will give them very little concern, if they are never attempted to be carried into practice. The colonies will probably consider themselves in the same situation, in that respect, with Ireland; they know you claim the same right with regard to Ireland, but you never exercise it. And they may believe you never will exercise it in the colonies, any more than in Ireland, unless on some very extraordinary occasion.

Q. But who are to be the judges of that extraordinary occasion? Is not the parliament? A. Though the parliament may judge of the occasion, the people will think it can never exercise such right, till representatives from the colonies are admitted into parliament, and that whenever the occasion arises, representatives will be ordered.

Q. Did you never hear that Maryland, during the last war, had refused to furnish a quota towards the common defence? A. Maryland has been much misrepresented in that matter. Maryland, to my knowledge, never refused to contribute, or grant aids to the crown. The assemblies every year, during the war, voted considerable sums, and formed bills to raise them. The bills were, according to the constitution of that province, sent up to the council, or upper house, for concurrence, that they might be presented to the governor, in order to be enacted into laws. Unhappy disputes between the two houses, arising from the defects of that constitution principally, rendered all the bills but one or two abortive. The proprietary's council rejected them. It is true, Maryland did not contribute its proportion, but it was, in my opinion, the fault of the government, not of the people.

Q. Was it not talked of in the other provinces as a proper measure to apply to parliament to compel them? A. I have heard such discourse: but as it was well known that the people were not to blame, no such application was ever made, or any step taken towards it.

Q. Was it not proposed at a public meeting? A. Not that I know of.

Q. Do you remember the abolishing of the paper currency in New England, by act of assembly? A. I do remember its being abolished in the Massachusetts Bay.

Q. Was not lieutenant governor Hutchinson principally concerned in that transaction? A. I have heard so.

Q. Was it not at that time a very unpopular law? A. I believe it might, though I can say little about it, as I lived at a distance from that province.

Q. Was not the scarcity of gold and silver an argument used against abolishing the paper? A. I suppose it was.

Q. What is the present opinion there of that law? Is it as unpopular as it was at first? A. think it is not . Q. Have not instructions from hence been sometimes sent over to governors, highly oppressive and unpolitical? A. Yes.

Q. Have not some governors dispensed with them for that reason? A. Yes, I have heard so.

Q. Did the Americans ever dispute the controuling power of parliament to regulate the commerce? A. No.

Q. Can any thing less than a military force carry the Stamp Act into execution? A. I do not see how a military force can be applied to that purpose.

Q. Why may it not? A. Suppose a military force sent into America, they will find nobody in arms; what are they then to do? They cannot force a man to take stamps who chuses to do without them. They will not find a rebellion; they may indeed make one.

Q. If the act is not repealed, what do you think will be the consequences? A. A total loss of the respect and affection the people of America bear to this country, and of all the commerce that depends on that respect and affection.

Q. How can the commerce be affected? A. You will find, that if the act is not repealed, they will take very little of your manufactures in a short time.

Q. Is it in their power to do without them? A. I think they may very well do without them.

Q. Is it their interest not to take them? A. The goods they take from Britain are either necessaries, mere conveniencies, or superfluities. The first, as cloth, &c. with a little industry they can make at home: the second they can do without, till they are able to provide them among themselves; and the last, which are much the greatest part, they will strike off immediately. They are mere articles of fashion, purchased and consumed, because the fashion in a respected country, but will now be detested and rejected. The people have already struck off, by general agreement, the use of all goods fashionable in mournings, and many thousand pounds worth are sent back as unsaleable.

Q. Is it their interest to make cloth at home? A. I think they may at present get it cheaper from Britain, I mean of the same fineness and neatness of workmanship; but when one considers other circumstances, the restraints on their trade, and the difficulty of making remittances, it is their interest to make every thing.

Q. Suppose an act of internal regulations connected with the tax, how would they receive it? A. I think it would be objected to.

Q. Then no regulation with a tax would be submitted to? A. Their opinion is, that when aids to the crown are wanted, they are to be asked of the several assemblies according to the old established usage, who will, as they have always done, grant them freely. And that their money ought not to be given away, without their consent, by persons at a distance, unacquainted with their circumstances and abilities. The granting aids to the crown, is the only means they have of recommending themselves to their sovereign, and they think it extremely hard and unjust, that a body of men, in which they have no representatives, should make a merit to itself of giving and granting what is not its own, but theirs, and deprives them of a right they esteem of the utmost value and importance, as it is the security of all their other rights.

Q. But is not the post office, which they have long received, a tax as well as a regulation? A. No; the money paid for the postage of a letter is not of the nature of a tax; it is merely a quantum meruit for a service done; no person is compellable to pay the money, if he does not chuse to receive the service. A man may still, as before the act, send his letter by a servant, a special messenger, or a friend, if he thinks it cheaper and safer.

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Q. But do they not consider the regulations of the post-office, by the act of last year, as a tax? A. By the regulations of last year the rate of postage was generally abated near thirty per cent. through all America; they certainly cannot consider such abatement as a tax.

Q. If an excise was laid by parliament, which they might likewise avoid paying, by not consuming the articles excised, would they then not object to it? A. They would certainly object to it, as an excise is unconnected with any service done, and is merely an aid which they think ought to be asked of them, and granted by them if they are to pay it, and can be granted for them, by no others whatsoever, whom they have not impowered for that purpose.

Q. You say they do not object to the right of parliament, in laying duties on goods to be paid on their importation; now, is there any kind of difference between a duty on the importation of goods and an excise on their consumption? A. Yes; a very material one; an excise, for the reasons I have just mentioned, they think you can have no right to lay within their country. But the sea is yours; you maintain, by your fleets, the safety of navigation in it, and keep it clear of pirates; you may have therefore a natural and equitable right to some toll or duty on merchandizes carried through that part of your dominions, towards defraying the expense you are at in ships to maintain the safety of that carriage.

Q. Does this reasoning hold in the case of a duty laid on the produce of their lands exported? And would they not then object to such a duty? A. If it tended to make the produce so much dearer abroad as to lessen the demand for it, to be sure they would object to such a duty; not to your right of laying it, but they would complain of it as a burden, and petition you to lighten it.

Q. Is not the duty paid on the tobacco exported a duty of that kind? A. That, I think, is only on tobacco carried coastwise from one colony to another, and appropriated as a fund for supporting the college at Williamsburgh, in Virginia.

Q. Have not the assemblies in the West Indies the same natural rights with those in North America? A. Undoubtedly.

Q. And is there not a tax laid there on their sugars exported? A. I am not much acquainted with the West Indies, but the duty of four and a half per cent., on sugars exported, was, I believe, granted by their own assemblies.

Q. How much is the poll tax in your province laid on unmarried men? A. It is, I think, fifteen shillings, to be paid by every single freeman, upwards of twenty one years old.

Q. What is the annual amount of all the taxes in Pennsylvania? A. I suppose about 20,000_l_. sterling.

Q. Supposing the Stamp Act continued, and enforced, do you imagine that ill humour will induce the Americans to give as much for worse manufactures of their own and use them, preferably to better of ours? A. Yes, I think so. People will pay as freely to gratify one passion as another, their resentment as their pride.

Q. Would the people at Boston discontinue their trade? A. The merchants are a very small number compared with the body of the people, and must discontinue their trade, if nobody will buy their goods.

Q. What are the body of the people in the colonies? A. They are farmers, husbandmen or planters.

Q. Would they suffer the produce of their lands to rot? A. No; but they would not raise so much. They would manufacture more, and plough less.

Q. Would they live without the administration of justice in civil matters, and suffer all the inconveniencies of such a situation for any considerable time, rather than take the stamps, supposing the stamps were protected by a sufficient force, where everyone might have them? A. I think the supposition impracticable, that the stamps should be so protected as that everyone might have them. The Act requires sub-distributors to be appointed in every county town, district, and village, and they would be necessary. But the principal distributors, who were to have had a considerable profit on the whole, have not thought it worth while to continue in the office, and I think it impossible to find sub-distributors fit to be trusted, who, for the trifling profit that must come to their share, would incur the odium, and run the hazard that would attend it; and if they could be found, I think it impracticable to protect the stamps in so many distant and remote places.

Q. But in places where they could be protected, would not the people use them rather than remain in such a situation, unable to obtain any right, or recover, by law, any debt? A. It is hard to say what they would do. I can only judge what other people will think, and how they will act, by what I feel within myself. I have a great many debts due to me in America, and I had rather they should remain unrecoverable by any law than submit to the Stamp Act. They will be debts of honour. It is my opinion the people will either continue in that situation, or find some way to extricate themselves, perhaps by generally agreeing to proceed in the courts without stamps.

Q. What do you think a sufficient military force to protect the distribution of the stamps in every part of America? A. A very great force; I cannot say what, if the disposition of America is for a general resistance.

Q. What is the number of men in America able to bear arms, or of disciplined militia? A. There are, I suppose, at least—[Question objected to. He withdrew. Called in again.]

Q. Is the American Stamp Act an equal tax on that country? A. I think not.

Q. Why so? A. The greatest part of the money must arise from lawsuits for the recovery of debts, and be paid by the lower sort of people, who were too poor easily to pay their debts. It is therefore a heavy tax on the poor, and a tax upon them for being poor.

Q. But will not this increase of expense be a means of lessening the number of lawsuits? A. I think not; for as the costs all fall upon the debtor, and are to be paid by him, they would be no discouragement to the creditor to bring his action.

Q. Would it not have the effect of excessive usury? A. Yes, as an oppression of the debtor.

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Q. How many ships are there laden annually in North America with flax seed for Ireland? A. I cannot speak to the number of ships, but I know that in 1752, 10,000 hogsheads of flax seed, each containing seven bushels, were exported from Philadelphia to Ireland. I suppose the quantity is greatly increased since that time; and it is understood that the exportation from New York is equal to that from Philadelphia.

Q. What becomes of the flax that grows with that flax seed? A. They manufacture some into coarse, and some into a middling kind of linen.

Q. Are there any slitting mills in America? A. I think there are three, but I believe only one at present employed. I suppose they will all be set to work, if the interruption of the trade continues.

Q. Are there any fulling mills there? A. A great many.

Q. Did you never hear that a great quantity of stockings were contracted for, for the army, during the war, and manufactured in Philadelphia? A. I have heard so.

Q. If the Stamp Act should be repealed, would not the Americans think they could oblige the parliament to repeal every external tax law now in force? A. It is hard to answer questions what people at such a distance will think.

Q. But what do you imagine they will think were the motives of repealing the Act? A. I suppose they will think that it was repealed from a conviction of its inexpediency; and they will rely upon it, that while the same inexpediency subsists, you will never attempt to make such another.

Q. What do you mean by its inexpediency? A. I mean its inexpediency on several accounts; the poverty and inability of those who were to pay the tax; the general discontent it has occasioned; and the impracticability of enforcing it. If the Act should be repealed, and the legislature should shew its resentment to the opposers of the Stamp Act, would the colonies acquiesce in the authority of the legislature?

Q. What is your opinion they would do? A. I don't doubt at all, that if the legislature repeal the Stamp Act, the colonies will acquiesce in the authority.

Q. But if the legislature should think fit to ascertain its right to lay taxes, by any act laying a small tax, contrary to their opinion, would they submit to pay the tax? A. The proceedings of the people in America have been considered too much together. The proceedings of the assemblies have been very different from those of the mobs, and should be distinguished, as having no connection with each other. The assemblies have only peaceably resolved what they take to be their rights; they have not built a fort, raised a man, or provided a grain of ammunition, in order to such opposition. The ringleaders of riot they think ought to be punished; they would punish them themselves, if they could. Every sober, sensible man would wish to see rioters punished, as otherwise peaceable people have no security of person or estate. But as to an internal tax, how small soever, laid by the legislature here on the people there, while they have no representatives in this legislature, I think it will never be submitted to.—They will oppose it to the last.—They do not consider it as at all necessary for you to raise money on them by your taxes, because they are, and always have been, ready to raise money by taxes among themselves, and to grant large sums, equal to their abilities, upon requisition from the crown.—They have not only granted equal to their abilities, but, during all the last war, they granted far beyond their abilities, and beyond their proportion with this country, you yourselves being judges, to the amount of many hundred thousand pounds, and this they did freely and readily, only on a sort of promise from the secretary of state, that it should be recommended to parliament to make them compensation. It was accordingly recommended to parliament, in the most honourable manner, for them. America has been greatly misrepresented and abused here, in papers, and pamphlets, and speeches, as ungrateful, and unreasonable, and unjust, in having put this nation to immense expense for their defence, and refusing to bear any part of that expense. The colonies raised, paid, and clothed, near 25,000 men during the last war, a number equal to those sent from Britain, and far beyond their proportion; they went deeply into debt in doing this, and all their taxes and estates are mortgaged, for many years to come, for discharging that debt. Government here was at that time very sensible of this; The colonies were recommended to parliament. Every year the King sent down to the House a written message to this purpose, That his Majesty, being highly sensible of the zeal and vigour with which his faithful subjects in North America had exerted themselves, in defence of his Majesty's just rights and possessions, recommended it to the House to take the same into consideration, and enable him to give them a proper compensation. You will find those messages on your own journals every year of the war to the very last, and you did accordingly give 200,000_l_. annually to the crown, to be distributed in such compensation to the colonies. This is the strongest of all proofs that the colonies, far from being unwilling to bear a share of the burden, did exceed their proportion; for if they had done less, or had only equalled their proportion, there would have been no room or reason for compensation. Indeed the sums reimbursed them, were by no means adequate to the expense they incurred beyond their proportion; but they never murmured at that; they esteemed their sovereign's approbation of their zeal and fidelity, and the approbation of this House, far beyond any other kind of compensation; therefore there was no occasion for this act, to force money from a willing people; they had not refused giving money for the purposes of the act; no requisition had been made: they were al ways willing and ready to do what could reasonably be expected from them, and in this light they wish to be considered.

Q. But suppose Great Britain should be engaged in a war in Europe, would North America contribute to the support of it? A. I do think they would, as far as their circumstances would permit. They consider themselves as a part of the British empire, and as having one common interest with it; they may be looked on here as foreigners, but they do not consider themselves as such. They are zealous for the honour and prosperity of this nation, and while they are well used, will always be ready to support it, as far as their little power goes. In 1739 they were called upon to assist in the expedition against Carthagena, and they sent 3,000 men to join your army. It is true Carthagena is in America, but as remote from the northern colonies as if it had been in Europe. They make no distinction of wars, as to their duty of assisting in them. {3199} I know the last war is commonly spoke of here as entered into for the defence, or for the sake of the people of America. I think it is quite misunderstood. It began about the limits between Canada and Nova Scotia, about territories to which the crown indeed laid claim, but were not claimed by any British colony; none of the lands had been granted to any colonist; we had therefore no particular concern or interest in that dispute. As to the Ohio, the contest there began about your right of trading in the Indian country, a right you had by the treaty of Utrecht, which the French infringed; they seized the traders and their goods, which were your manufactures; they took a fort which a company of your merchants, and their factors and correspondents, had erected there to secure that trade. Braddock was sent with an army to re-take that fort (which was looked on here as another incroachment on the King's territory) and to protect your trade. It was not till after his defeat that the colonies were attacked. They were before in perfect peace with both French and Indians; the troops were not therefore sent for their defence. The trade with the Indians, though carried on in America, is not an American interest. The people of America are chiefly farmers and planters; scarce any thing that they raise or produce is an article of commerce with the Indians. The Indian trade is a British interest; it is carried on with British manufactures, for the profit of British merchants and manufacturers; therefore the war, as it commenced for the defence of territories of the crown, the property of no American, and for the defence of a trade purely British, was really a British war—and yet the people of America made no scruple of contributing their utmost towards carrying it on, and bringing it to a happy conclusion.

Q. Do you think then that the taking possession of the King's territorial rights, and strengthening the frontiers, is not an American interest? A. Not particularly, but conjointly a British and an American interest.

Q. You will not deny that the preceding war, the war with Spain, was entered into for the sake of America; was it not occasioned by captures made in the American seas? A. Yes; captures of ships carrying on the British trade there, with British manufactures.

Q. Was not the late war with the Indians, since the peace with France, a war for America only? A. Yes: it was more particularly for America than the former, but it was rather a consequence or remains of the former war, the Indians not having been thoroughly pacified, and the Americans bore by much the greatest share of the expense. It was put an end to by the army under general Bouquet; there were not above 300 regulars in that army, and above 1,000 Pennsylvanians.

Q. Is it not necessary to send troops to America, to defend the Americans against the Indians? A. No, by no means; it never was necessary. They defended themselves when they were but a handful, and the Indians much more numerous. They continually gained ground, and have driven the Indians over the mountains, without any troops sent to their assistance from this country. And can it be thought necessary now to send troops for their defence from those diminished Indian tribes, when the colonies are become so populous, and so strong? There is not the least occasion for it; they are very able to defend themselves.

Q. Do you say there were no more than 300 regular troops employed in the late Indian war? A, Not on the Ohio, or the frontiers of Pennsylvania, which was the chief part of the war that affected the colonies. There were garrisons at Niagara, Fort Detroit, and those remote posts kept for the sake of your trade; I did not reckon them, but I believe that on the whole the number of Americans, or provincial troops, employed in the war, was greater than that of the regulars. I am not certain, but I think so.

Q. Do you think the assemblies have a right to levy money on the subject there, to grant to the crown? A. I certainly think so; they have always done it.

Q. Are they acquainted with the Declaration of Rights; and do they know that by that statute, money is not to be raised on the subject but by consent of parliament? A. They are very well acquainted with it.

Q. How then can they think they have a right to levy money for the crown, or for any other than local purposes? A. They understand that clause to relate to subjects only within the realm; that no money can be levied on them for the crown, but by consent of parliament. The colonies are not supposed to be within the realm; they have assemblies of their own, which are their parliaments, and they are, in that respect, in the same situation with Ireland. When money is to be raised for the crown upon the subject in Ireland, or in the colonies, the consent is given in the parliament of Ireland, or in the assemblies of the colonies. They think the parliament of Great Britain cannot properly give that consent till it has representatives from America; for the Petition of Right expressly says, it is to be by common consent in parliament, and the people of America have no representatives in parliament, to make a part of that common consent.

Q. If the Stamp Act should be repealed, and an act should pass, ordering the assemblies of the colonies to indemnify the sufferers by the riots, would they obey it? A. That is a question I cannot answer.

Q. Suppose the King should require the colonies to grant a revenue, and the parliament should be against their doing it, do they think they can grant a revenue to the King, without the consent of the parliament of Great Britain? A. That is a deep question. As to my own opinion I should think myself at liberty to do it, and should do it, if I liked the occasion.

Q, When money has been raised in the colonies, upon requisitions, has it not been granted to the King? A. Yes, always; but the requisitions have generally been for some service expressed, as to raise, clothe, and pay troops, and not for money only.

Q. If the act should pass, requiring the American Assemblies to make compensation to the sufferers, and they should disobey it, and then the parliament should, by another act, lay an internal tax, would they obey it? A. The people will pay no internal tax: and I think an act to oblige the assemblies to make compensation is unnecessary, for I am of opinion, that as soon as the present heats are abated, they will take the matter into consideration, and if it is right to be done, they will do it of themselves.

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Q. Do not letters often come into the post offices in America, directed into some inland town where no post goes? A. Yes.

Q. Can any private person take up those letters, and carry them as directed? A. Yes; any friend of the person may do it, paying the postage that has accrued.

Q. But must not he pay an additional postage for the distance to such an inland town? A. No.

Q. Can the post-master answer delivering the letter, without being paid such additional postage? A. Certainly he can demand nothing, where he does no service.

Q. Suppose a person, being far from home, finds a letter in a post office directed to him, and he lives in a place to which the post generally goes, and the letter is directed to that place, will the post-master deliver him the letter, without his paying the postage received at the place to which the letter is directed? A. Yes; the office cannot demand postage for a letter that it does not carry, or farther than it does carry it.

Q. Are not ferrymen in America obliged, by act of parliament, to carry over the posts without pay? A. Yes.

Q. Is not this a tax on the ferrymen? A. They do not consider it as such, as they have an advantage from persons travelling with the post.

Q. If the Stamp Act should be repealed, and the crown should make a requisition to the colonies for a sum of money, would they grant it? A. I believe they would.

Q. Why do you think so? A. I can speak for the colony I live in; I had it in instruction from the assembly to assure the ministry, that as they always had done, so they should always think it their duty to grant such aids to the crown as were suitable to their circumstances and abilities, whenever called upon for the purpose, in the usual constitutional manner; and I had the honour of communicating this instruction to that honorable gentleman then minister.

Q. Would they do this for a British concern; as suppose a war in some part of Europe, that did not affect them? A. Yes, for any thing that concerned the general interest. They consider themselves as a part of the whole.

Q. What is the usual constitutional manner of calling on the colonies for aids? A. A letter from the secretary of state.

Q. Is this all you mean, a letter from the secretary of state? A. I mean the usual way of requisition, in a circular letter from the secretary of state, by his Majesty's command, reciting the occasion, and recommending it to the colonies to grant such aids as became their loyalty, and were suitable to their abilities.

Q. Did the secretary of state ever write for money for the crown? A. The requisitions have been to raise clothe, and pay men, which cannot be done without money.

Q. Would they grant money alone, if called on? A. In my opinion they would, money as well as men, when they have money, or can procure it.

Q. If the parliament should repeal the Stamp Act, will the assembly of Pennsylvania rescind their resolutions? A. I think not.

Q. Before there was any thought of the Stamp Act, did they wish for a representation in parliament? A. No.

Q. Don't you know that there is, in the Pennsylvania charter, an express reservation of the right of parliament to lay taxes there? A. I know there is a clause in the charter, by which the King grants that he will levy no taxes on the inhabitants, unless it be with the consent of the assembly, or by an act of parliament.

Q. How then could the assembly of Pennsylvania assert, that laying a tax on them by the Stamp Act was an infringement of their rights? A. They understand it thus: by the same charter, and otherwise, they are entitled to all the privileges and liberties of Englishmen; they find in the Great Charters, and the Petition and Declaration of Rights, that one of the privileges of English subjects is, that they are not to be taxed but by their common consent; they have therefore relied upon it, from the first settlement of the province, that the parliament never would, nor could, by colour of that clause in the charter, assume a right of taxing them, till it had qualified itself to exercise such right, by admitting representatives from the people to be taxed, who ought to make a part of that common consent.

Q. Are there any words in the charter that justify that construction? A. The common rights of Englishmen, as declared by Magna Charta, and the Petition of Right, all justify it.

Q. Does the distinction between internal and external taxes exist in the words of the charter? A. No, I believe not.

Q. Then may they not, by the same interpretation, object to the parliament's right of external taxation? A. They never have hitherto. Many arguments have been lately used here to shew them that there is no difference, and that if you have no right to tax them internally, you have none to tax them externally, or make any other law to bind them. At present they do not reason so, but in time they may possibly be convinced by these arguments.

Q. Do not the resolutions of the Pennsylvania assemblies say, all taxes? A. If they do, they mean only internal taxes; the same words have not always the same meaning here and in the colonies. By taxes they mean internal taxes; by duties they mean customs; these are the ideas of the language.

Q. Have you not seen the resolutions of the Massachusetts Bay assembly? A. I have.

Q. Do they not say, that neither external nor internal taxes can be laid on them by parliament? A. I don't know that they do; I believe not.

Q. If the same tax should say neither tax nor imposition could be laid, does not that province hold the power of parliament can lay neither? A. I suppose that by the word imposition, they do not intend to express duties to be laid on goods imported, as regulations of commerce.

Q. What can the colonies mean then by imposition as distinct from taxes? A. They may mean many things, as impressing of men, or of carriages, quartering troops on private houses, and the like; there may be great impositions that are not properly taxes.

Q. Is not the post-office rate an internal tax laid by act of parliament? A. I have answered that.

Q. Are all parts of the colonies equally able to pay taxes? A. No, certainly; the frontier parts, which have been ravaged by the enemy, are greatly disabled by that means, and therefore, in such cases, are usually favoured in our tax laws.

{3201}

Q. Can we, at this distance, be competent judges of what favours are necessary? A. The parliament have supposed it, by claiming a right to make tax laws for America; I think it impossible.

Q. Would the repeal of the Stamp Act be any discouragement of your manufactures? Will the people that have begun to manufacture decline it? A. Yes, I think they will; especially if, at the same time, the trade is opened again, so that remittances can be easily made. I have known several instances that make it probable. In the war before last, tobacco being low, and making little remittance, the people of Virginia went generally into family manufactures. Afterwards, when tobacco bore a better price, they returned to the use of British manufactures. So fulling mills were very much disused in the last war in Pennsylvania, because bills were then plenty, and remittances could easily be made to Britain for English cloth and other goods.

Q. If the Stamp Act should be repealed, would it induce the assemblies of America to acknowledge the right of parliament to tax them, and, would they erase their resolutions? A. No, never.

Q. Is there no means of obliging them to erase those resolutions? A. None, that I know of; they will never do it, unless compelled by force of arms.

Q. Is there a power on earth that can force them to erase them? A. No power, how great soever, can force men to change their opinions.

Q. Do they consider the post office as a tax, or as a regulation? A. Not as a tax, but as a regulation and conveniency; every assembly encouraged it, and supported it in its infancy, by grants of money, which they would not otherwise have done; and the people have always paid the postage.

Q. When did you receive the instructions you mentioned? A. I brought them with me, when I came to England, about 15 months since.

Q. When did you communicate that instruction to the minister? A. Soon after my arrival, while the stamping of America was under consideration, and before the Bill was brought in.

Q. Would it be most for the interest of Great Britain, to employ the hands of Virginia in tobacco, or in manufactures? A. In tobacco, to be sure.

Q. What used to be the pride of the Americans? A. To indulge in the fashions and manufactures of Great Britain.

Q. What is now their pride? A. To wear their old clothes over again, till they can make new ones.

Withdrew.

Parliamentary History of England, volume 16, pages 138-160.

"Mr. Sparks very justly says that there was no event in Franklin's life more creditable to his talents and character, or which gave him so much celebrity, as this examination before the House of Commons. His further statement, however, that Franklin's answers were given without premeditation and without knowing beforehand the nature or form of the question that was to be put, is a little too sweeping. In a memorandum which Franklin gave to a friend who wished to know by whom the several questions were put, he admitted that many were put by friends to draw out in answer the substance of what he had before said upon the subject."

J. Bigelow, Life of Benjamin Franklin, volume 1, page 507, foot-note.

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1766. The repeal of the Stamp Act and passage of the Declaratory Act. Speech of Pitt.

"The Grenville Ministry had fallen in July [1765], and had been succeeded by that of Rockingham; and Conway, who had been one of the few opponents of the Stamp Act, was now Secretary of State for the Colonies. … The Stamp Act had contributed nothing to the downfall of Grenville; it attracted so little attention that it was only in the last days of 1765 or the first days, of 1766 that the new ministers learnt the views of Pitt upon the subject; it was probably a complete surprise to them to learn that it had brought the colonies to the verge of rebellion, and in the first months of their power they appear to have been quite uncertain what policy they would pursue. … Parliament met on December 17, 1765, and the attitude of the different parties was speedily disclosed. A powerful Opposition, led by Grenville and Bedford, strenuously urged that no relaxation or indulgence should be granted to the colonists. … Pitt, on the other hand, rose from his sick-bed, and in speeches of extraordinary eloquence, and which produced an amazing effect on both sides of the Atlantic, he justified the resistance of the colonists."

W. E. H. Lecky, History of England in the 18th Century, chapter 12 (volume 3).

The following is the main part of the speech delivered by Pitt (not yet made Lord Chatham) on the 14th of January, 1766, as imperfectly reported: "It is my opinion, that this kingdom has no right to lay a tax upon the colonies. At the same time, I assert the authority of this kingdom over the colonies to be sovereign and supreme, in every circumstance of government and legislation whatsoever. They are the subjects of this kingdom; equally entitled with yourselves to all the natural rights of mankind and the peculiar privileges of Englishmen; equally bound by its laws, and equally participating in the constitution of this free country, The Americans are the sons, not the bastards of England! Taxation is no part of the governing or legislative power. The taxes are a voluntary gift and grant of the Commons alone. In legislation the three estates of the realm are alike concerned; but the concurrence of the peers and the Crown to a tax is only necessary to clothe it with the form of a law. The gift and grant is of the Commons alone. … When … in this House, we give and grant, we give and grant what is our own. But in an American tax, what do we do? 'We, your Majesty's Commons for Great Britain, give and grant to your Majesty'—what? Our own property! No! 'We give and grant to your Majesty' the property of your Majesty's Commons of America! It is an absurdity in terms. … There is an idea in some that the colonies are virtually represented in the House. I would fain know by whom an American is represented here. Is he represented by any knight of the shire, in any county in this kingdom? Would to God that respectable representation was augmented to a greater number! Or will you tell him that he is represented by any representative of a borough? a borough which, perhaps, its own representatives never saw! This is what is called the rotten part of the Constitution. It cannot continue a century. If it does not drop, it must be amputated. The idea of a virtual representation of America in this House is the most contemptible idea that ever entered into the head of a man. It does not deserve a serious refutation. The Commons of America represented in their several assemblies, have ever been in the possession of this, their constitutional right, of giving and granting their own money. {3202} They would have been slaves if they had not enjoyed it! At the same time, this kingdom, as the supreme governing and legislative power, has always bound the colonies by her laws, by her regulations, and restrictions in trade, in navigation, in manufactures, in every thing, except that of taking their money out of their pockets without their consent. Here I would draw the line. … Gentlemen, sir, have been charged with giving birth to sedition in America. They have spoken their sentiments with freedom against this unhappy act, and that freedom has become their crime. Sorry I am to hear the liberty of speech in this House imputed as a crime. But the imputation shall not discourage me. It is a liberty I mean to exercise. No gentleman ought to be afraid to exercise it. It is a liberty by which the gentleman who calumniates it might have profited. He ought to have desisted from his project. The gentleman tells us America is obstinate; America almost in open rebellion. I rejoice that America has resisted. Three millions of people, so dead to all the feelings of liberty as voluntarily to submit to be slaves, would have been fit instruments to make slaves of the rest. … Since the accession of King William, many ministers, some of great, others of more moderate abilities, have taken the lead of government. … None of these thought or even dreamed, of robbing the colonies of their constitutional rights. That was reserved to mark the era of the late administration. Not that there were wanting some, when I had the honor to serve his Majesty, to propose to me to burn my fingers with an American stamp act. With the enemy at their back, with our bayonets at their breasts, in the day of their distress, perhaps the Americans would have submitted to the imposition; but it would have been taking an ungenerous, an unjust advantage. The gentleman boasts of his bounties to America! Are not these bounties intended finally for the benefit of this kingdom? If they are not, he has misapplied the national treasures! I am no courtier of America. I stand up for this kingdom. I maintain that the Parliament has a right to bind, to restrain America. Our legislative power over the colonies is sovereign and supreme. I would advise every gentleman to sell his lands, if he can, and embark for that country. When two countries are connected together like England and her colonies, without being incorporated, the one must necessarily govern. The greater must rule the less. But she must so rule it as not to contradict the fundamental principles that are common to both. … The gentleman asks, When were the colonies emancipated? I desire to know, when were they made slaves? But I dwell not upon words. When I had the honor of serving his Majesty, I availed myself of the means of information which I derived from my office. I speak, therefore, from knowledge. My materials were good. I was at pains to collect, to digest, to consider them; and I will be bold to affirm, that the profits to Great Britain from the trade of the colonies through all its branches, is two millions a year. This is the fund that carried you triumphantly through the last war. The estates that were rented at two thousand pounds a year, three-score years ago, are at three thousand at present. Those estates sold then from fifteen to eighteen years purchase; the same may now be sold for thirty. You owe this to America. This is the price America pays you for her protection. And shall a miserable financier come with a boast, that he can bring 'a pepper-corn' into the exchequer by the loss of millions to the nation? I dare not say how much higher these profits may be augmented. … I am convinced on other grounds that the commercial system of America may be altered to advantage. You have prohibited where you ought to have encouraged. You have encouraged where you ought to have prohibited. Improper restraints have been laid on the continent in favor of the islands. You have but two nations to trade with in America. Would you had twenty! Let acts of Parliament in consequence of treaties remain; but let not an English minister become a custom-house officer for Spain, or for any foreign power. Much is wrong! Much may be amended for the general good of the whole! … A great deal has been said without doors of the power, of the strength of America. It is a topic that ought to be cautiously meddled with. In a good cause, on a sound bottom, the force of this country can crush America to atoms. I know the valor of your troops. I know the skill of your officers. There is not a company of foot that has served in America, out of which you may not pick a man of sufficient knowledge and experience to make a governor of a colony there. But on this ground, on the Stamp Act, which so many here will think a crying injustice, I am one who will lift up my hands against it. In such a cause your success would be hazardous. America, if she fell, would fall like the strong man; she would embrace the pillars of the State, and pull down the Constitution along with her. Is this your boasted peace—not to sheathe the sword in its scabbard, but to sheathe it in the bowels of your countrymen? … The Americans have not acted in all things with prudence and temper: they have been wronged: they have been driven to madness by injustice. Will you punish them for the madness you have occasioned? Rather let prudence and temper come first from this side. I will undertake for America that she will follow the example. … Upon the whole I will beg leave to tell the House what is my opinion. It is that the Stamp Act be repealed absolutely, totally and immediately. That the reason for the repeal be assigned, viz., because it was founded on an erroneous principle. At the same time, let the sovereign authority of this country over the colonies 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."

Representative British Orations, pages 98-119.

The views of Pitt "were defended in the strongest terms by Lord Camden, who pledged his great legal reputation to the doctrine that taxation is not included under the general right of legislation, and that taxation and representation are morally inseparable. … The task of the ministers in dealing with this question was extremely difficult. The great majority of them desired ardently the repeal of the Stamp Act; but the wishes of the King, the abstention of Pitt, and the divided condition of parties had compelled Rockingham to include in his Government Charles Townshend, Barrington, and Northington, who were all strong advocates of the taxation of America. … {3203} In addition to all these difficulties the ministers had to deal with the exasperation which was produced in Parliament by the continual outrages and insults to which all who represented the English Government in America were exposed. Their policy consisted of two parts. They asserted in the strongest and most unrestricted form the sovereignty of the British Legislature, first of all by resolutions and then by a Declaratory Act affirming the right of Parliament to make laws binding the British colonies 'in all cases whatsoever,' and condemning as unlawful the votes of the colonial Assemblies which had denied to Parliament the right of taxing them. Side by side with this measure they brought in a bill repealing the Stamp Act. … The great and manifest desire of the commercial classes throughout England had much weight; the repeal was carried [March, 1766] through the House of Commons, brought up by no less than 200 members to the Lords, and finally carried amid the strongest expressions of public joy. Burke described it as 'an event that caused more universal joy throughout the British dominions than perhaps any other that can be remembered.'"

W. E. H. Lecky, History of England in the 18th Century, chapter 12 (volume 3).

ALSO IN: Parliamentary History, volume 16, pages 112-205.

B. Franklin, Works (Sparks' editor), volume 4.

Lord Mahon (Earl Stanhope), History of England 1713-1783, chapter 45.

See, also, ENGLAND: A. D. 1765-1768.

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1766-1767. The Townshend measures.

"The liberal Rockingham administration, after a few months of power, disappeared [July, 1766], having signalized itself as regarded America by the repeal of the Stamp Act, and by the Declaratory Act. Of the new ministry the leading spirit was Charles Townshend, a brilliant statesman, but unscrupulous and unwise. His inclinations were arbitrary; he regretted the repeal of the Stamp Act, as did also the king and Parliament in general, who felt themselves to have been humiliated. Pitt, indeed, now Earl of Chatham, was a member of the government; but, oppressed by illness, he could exercise no restraint upon his colleague, and the other members were either in sympathy with Townshend's views, or unable to oppose him. Townshend's three measures affecting America, introduced on the 13th of May, 1767, were: a suspension of the functions of the legislature of New York for contumacy in the treatment of the royal troops; the establishment of commissioners of the customs, appointed with large powers to superintend laws relating to trade; and lastly an impost duty upon glass, red and white lead, painters' colors, paper, and tea [see ENGLAND: A. D. 1765-1768]. This was an 'external' duty to which the colonists had heretofore expressed a willingness to submit; but the grounds of the dispute were shifting. Townshend had declared that he held in contempt the distinction sought to be drawn between external and internal taxes, but that he would so far humor the colonists in their quibble as to make his tax of that kind of which the right was admitted. A revenue of £40,000 a year was expected from the tax, which was to be applied to the support of a 'civil list,' namely, the paying the salaries of the new commissioners of customs, and of the judges and governors, who were to be relieved wholly or in part from their dependence upon the annual grants of the Assemblies; then, if a surplus remained, it was to go to the payment of troops for protecting the colonies. To make more efficient, moreover, the enforcement of the revenue laws, the writs of assistance, the denunciation of which by James Otis had formed so memorable a crisis, were formally legalized. The popular discontent, appeased by the repeal of the Stamp Act, was at once awake again, and henceforth in the denial of the right of Parliament to tax, we hear no more of acquiescence in commercial restrictions and in the general legislative authority of Parliament. … The plan for resistance adopted by the cooler heads was that of Samuel Adams, namely, the non-importation and the non-consumption of British products. From Boston out, through an impulse proceeding from him, town-meetings were everywhere held to encourage the manufactures of the Province and reduce the use of superfluities, long lists of which were enumerated. Committees were appointed everywhere to procure subscriptions to agreements looking to the furtherance of home industries and the disuse of foreign products. … Before the full effects of the new legislation could be seen, Townshend suddenly died; but in the new ministry that was presently formed Lord North came to the front, and adopted the policy of his predecessor, receiving in this course the firm support of the king, whose activity and interest were so great in public affairs that he 'became his own minister.'"

J. K. Hosmer, Samuel Adams, chapter 7.

ALSO IN: R. Frothingham, Life and Times of Joseph Warren, chapter 3.

W. Belsham, Memoirs of the Reign of George III., volume 1, page 139-142.

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1767-1768. The Farmer's Letters of John Dickinson. The Circular Letter of Massachusetts, and the "Unrescinding Ninety-two."

"The English ministry was probably misled by the strong emphasis which had been laid here during the controversies concerning the Stamp Act upon the alleged distinction between external and internal taxation. We had refused to submit to the latter, but admitted that the former might be binding upon the whole empire as a commercial regulation. In form the duties levied on paints, glass, tea, etc., were undoubtedly such a regulation, but it was at once contended here that, in point of fact and of principle, this was as much an exercise of the alleged right of Parliamentary taxation for the purpose of raising a revenue for imperial purposes as the Stamp Act itself. Although it was passed by the opponents of the Stamp Act, and by the Rockingham ministry, who professed to be our friends, the act met at once with opposition here. Late in October, 1767, it was denounced by a public meeting in Boston, which suggested a non-importation agreement as the best means of rendering its operations ineffective. These agreements were favorite expedients for manifesting political discontent in those days, but, as they were voluntary, their obligation sat somewhat loosely upon those who signed them. The truth is, that those who were most decided in opposition to the course of the ministry were somewhat puzzled as to the plan they should adopt to exhibit the earnestness of their discontent. … While the leaders of the opposition throughout the country were doubtful and hesitating, there appeared in the Pennsylvania Chronicle for the 2d of December, 1767, the first of a series of letters on the political situation, afterwards known as the 'Farmer's Letters.' {3204} … The letters, fourteen in number, followed one another in quick succession, and they were read by men of all classes and opinions throughout the continent as no other work of a political kind had been hitherto read in America. It was, of course, soon known that John Dickinson was their author, and people remembered that he was the person who had formulated what was a genuine Bill of Rights in the Stamp Act Congress. The more these letters were read, the more convinced people became that in the comprehensive survey they took of our political relations with the mother-country, especially as these were affected by the last obnoxious act of Parliament, and in the plans which were proposed to remedy the evil, Mr. Dickinson had struck the true key-note of the opposition to the ministerial measures. He appeared at this crisis, as he did in the Stamp Act Congress, as the leader and guide in the controversy. From this time until the Declaration of Independence the Pennsylvania idea, which was embodied by Mr. Dickinson in these Farmer's Letters, 'controlled the destinies of the country;' and Mr. Bancroft only does justice to Mr. Dickinson's position when he recognizes fully his commanding influence during that period. We may say with pardonable pride (and it is one of those truths which many of our historians have managed in various ways to relegate to obscurity), that, as the leading spirit in the Stamp Act Congress, Dickinson gave form and color to the agitation in this country which brought about the repeal of that act, and that the arguments by which the claim of the ministry to tax us for revenue by such an act of Parliament as that levying duties on glass, paints, etc. was answered in the 'Farmer's Letters' first convinced the whole body of our countrymen, groping blindly for a cure for their grievances, that there was a legal remedy, and then forced the ministry to consent in a measure to the demand for a repeal of some of its most obnoxious provisions. It is worth remarking that when the ministry yielded at all it yielded to argument, and not to the boastful threats which were so common. The 'Farmer's Letters' gave courage and force to those who in February denounced the law in Pennsylvania; they formed the mainspring of the movement which resulted in the circular letter sent by the legislature of Massachusetts on the 17th of that month to the Assemblies of the other Colonies; in short, they had the rare good fortune not only of convincing those who suffered that the remedy was in their own hands, but also of pursuading those who had the power to abandon, or at least to modify their arbitrary measures. … Mr. Dickinson begins these grave essays with an air of simplicity as charming as it is calculated to attract the attention of the reader. 'I am a farmer,' he says, 'settled, after a variety of fortunes, near the banks of the river Delaware, in the Province of Pennsylvania. I received a liberal education, and have been engaged in the busy scenes of life, but am now convinced that a man may be as happy without bustle as with it. Being generally master of my time, I spend a good deal of it in my library, which I think the most valuable part of my small estate. I have acquired, I believe, a greater knowledge of history and of the laws and constitution of my country than is generally attained by men of my class,' etc. He then explains the nature of the controversy with the mother-country, making it so clear that the points in dispute are comprehensible by a child. … As to our method of asserting our rights, he says, with an elevation of sentiment which reminds one of Edmund Burke more than of any other political writer, 'The cause of liberty is a cause of too much dignity to be sullied by turbulence and tumult. It ought to be maintained in a manner suitable to her nature. Those who engage in it should breathe a sedate yet fervent spirit, animating them to actions of prudence, justice, modesty, bravery, humanity, and magnanimity.' He shrinks, evidently with terror, from speaking of what may be the consequences of the persistent refusal of England to change her oppressive measures. … After showing in the most striking manner the nature of our wrongs, the letters turn gladly to the remedy that lies open to us. That remedy is based upon a cultivation of the spirit of conciliation on both sides, and Mr. Dickinson urges again and again upon his English readers the folly of their policy, by showing them the value of the American Colonies to them, and especially how the trade and wealth of the English merchants are bound up in the adoption of a liberal policy towards us. This is one of the most interesting and important topics discussed in these letters, and the subject is treated with elaborate skill, leading to convincing conclusions drawn from our history. It must not be forgotten that prior to the Revolution an impression widely prevailed among the most thoughtful of our own people, as well as among our friends in England, that if the English people could be made to understand the frightful losses they would suffer in case of a war in which we should be fighting for our independence, or even during a short interruption of the trade between the two countries, they would force the government to yield rather than run the risk of the consequences. … Even Dr. Franklin in London, who had had so many proofs of the indifference and contempt with which the representations of the Colonies in England were regarded … thought the appeal of the Farmer to Englishmen so irresistible that, although no friend of Dickinson's, he arranged that these letters should be reprinted in London."

C. J. Stillé, The Life and Times of John Dickinson, chapter 4.

In February, 1768, "the Legislature of Massachusetts sent a Circular Letter [ascribed to Samuel Adams] to the Assemblies of the other colonies, in which was set forth the necessity of all acting together harmoniously, and of freely communicating the mind of each to the others. The course Massachusetts had pursued was described, with the contents of the petition and letters which had been written, and with the hope expressed that she would have their cordial co-operation in resistance to the ministerial measures. The notion that political independence was aimed at was strenuously denied, and the trust was entertained that what had been done would meet the approval of their 'common head and father,' and that the liberties of the colonies would be confirmed. This letter elicited response from some, others returned none officially, but all who answered replied favorably. It gave, however, the greatest offence to the ministry, and particularly to Lord Hillsborough, the Secretary of State for the Colonies. {3205} It seems that he read it entirely by the light which a letter from Governor Bernard to Lord Barrington had shed upon it. This epistle declared the real motive of the colonies to be a determination to be independent. Hillsborough, filled with this idea, communicated it to the other members of the cabinet, and thus the Circular Letter was laid before them, prejudged. It was determined that it merited consideration, but that the only notice to be given it should be one of censure, and, on the spur of the moment, they resolved upon two things: to require the Massachusetts Assembly to rescind the Letter, and to require the other legislatures before whom it had been laid to reject it. This was done, and the consequences were, that the General Court, or Legislature, of Massachusetts voted, by ninety-two to seventeen, that they would do nothing of the kind, and that the other legislatures gave the outcast a hearty welcome. As for the people, they showed their approval of their representatives by toasting, from one end of the country to the other, 'The unrescinding Ninety-two,' with whom was coupled the number Forty-five, or that of the famous' North Briton'; while the Bostonians added fuel to the flame by a riot on the score of the sloop Liberty, in which they attacked the houses of the Commissioners of the Customs, and made a bonfire of the Collector's boat. Shortly afterward, (but not by reason of the riot), four ships of war anchored in Boston harbor, and two regiments of soldiers were quartered on the town."

E. G. Scott, The Development of Constitutional Liberty, chapter 10 (with corrections by the author).

ALSO IN: R. Frothingham, The Rise of the Republic of the United States, chapter 6.

W. Thornton, The Pulpit of the Revolution, page 150.

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1768-1770. The quartering of troops in Boston. The Massacre, and the removal of the troops.

See BOSTON: A. D. 1768; and 1770.

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1769. Massachusetts threatened, and Virginia roused to her support.

"The proceedings in Massachusetts attracted in England the greatest attention, elicited the severest comment, and, because a military force had been ordered to Boston to support the stand of the administration, created the greatest solicitude. … The king, on opening parliament, characterized the action of Boston as a subversion of the Constitution and evincing a disposition to throw off dependence on Great Britain. The indictment against the colonies was presented in sixty papers laid before parliament. Both Houses declared that the proceedings of the Massachusetts assembly in opposition to the revenue acts were unconstitutional, and derogatory to the rights of the crown and the parliament; that the Circular Letter tended to create unlawful combinations; that the call of a convention by the selectmen of Boston was proof of a design of setting up an independent authority; and both Houses proposed to transport the originators of the obnoxious proceedings to England for trial and condign punishment, under the cover of an obsolete act of Henry VIII. … The administration determined to make an example of Massachusetts, as the ring-leading province in political mischief, by transporting its popular leaders to England to be tried for their lives in the king's bench. Such was the purport of an elaborate despatch which Lord Hillsborough sent to Governor Bernard, directing an inquiry to be instituted into the conduct of any persons who had committed any overt act of resistance to the laws. … Thus a great issue was created that affected all the colonies. … There was no adequate step taken to meet the threatened aggression until the House of Burgesses of Virginia convened in May."

R. Frothingham, The Rise of the Republic of the United States, chapter 6.

"On the day of the prorogation of parliament [May 9, 1769] the legislature of Virginia assembled at Williamsburg. Great men were there; some who were among the greatest—Washington, Patrick Henry, and, for the first time, Jefferson. Botetourt [the governor], who opened the session in state, was in perfect harmony with the council, received from the house of burgesses a most dutiful address, and entertained fifty-two guests at his table on the first day, and as many more on the second. … But the assembly did not forget its duty, and devised a measure which became the example for the continent. It claimed the sole right of imposing taxes on the inhabitants of Virginia. With equal unanimity, it asserted the lawfulness and expediency of a concert of the colonies in defence of the violated rights of America. It laid bare the flagrant tyranny of applying to America the obsolete statute of Henry VIII.; and it warned the king of 'the dangers that would ensue' if any person in any part of America should be seized and carried beyond sea for trial. It consummated its work by communicating its resolutions to every legislature in America, and asking their concurrence. The resolves were concise, simple, and effective; so calm in manner and so perfect in substance that time finds no omission to regret, no improvement to suggest. The menace of arresting patriots lost its terrors; and Virginia's declaration and action consolidated union. … The next morning, the assembly had just time to adopt an address to the king, when the governor summoned them, and said: 'I have heard of your resolves, and augur ill of their effects; you have made it my duty to dissolve you, and you are dissolved accordingly.' Upon this, the burgesses met together as patriots and friends, with their speaker as moderator. They adopted the resolves which "Washington had brought with him from Mount Vernon, and which formed a well-digested, stringent, and practicable scheme of non-importation, until all the 'unconstitutional' revenue acts should be repealed. … The voice of the Old Dominion roused the merchants of Pennsylvania to approve what had been done. The assembly of Delaware adopted the Virginia resolves word for word; and every colony south of Virginia followed the example."

G. Bancroft, History of the United States (Author's last revision), pages 347-348.

ALSO IN: W. Irving, Life of Washington, volume 1, chapter 29.

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1770. Repeal of the Townshend duties except on Tea.

On the 5th of March, 1770—the same day on which the tragical encounter of the king's troops with citizens of Boston occurred—Lord North introduced a motion in Parliament for the partial repeal of Townshend's revenue act; "not on the petitions of America, because they were marked by a denial of the right, but on one from merchants and traders of London. 'The subject,' said he, 'is of the highest importance. {3206} The combinations and associations of the Americans for the temporary interruption of trade have already been called unwarrantable in an address of this house; I will call them insolent and illegal. The duties upon paper, glass, and painters' colors bear upon the manufacturers of this country, and ought to be taken off. It was my intention to have extended the proposal to the removal of the other duties; but the Americans have not deserved indulgence. The preamble to the act and the duty on tea must be retained, as a mark of the supremacy of parliament and the efficient declaration of its right to govern the colonies.' … Thomas Pownall moved the repeal of the duty on tea. The house of commons, like Lord North in his heart, was disposed to do the work of conciliation thoroughly. … Had the king's friends remained neutral, the duty on tea would have been repealed; with all their exertions, in a full house, the majority for retaining it was but 62. Lord North seemed hardly satisfied with his success; and reserved to himself liberty to accede to the repeal, on some agreement with the East India Company. The decision came from the king."

G. Bancroft, History of the United States (Author's last revision), volume 3, pages 381-382.

ALSO IN: Lord Mahon (Earl Stanhope), History of England, 1713-1783, chapter 48 (volume 5.)

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1771. Suppression of the Regulators of North Carolina.

See NORTH CAROLINA: A. D. 1766-1771.

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1772. The Watauga Association. The founding of the State of Tennessee.

See TENNESSEE: A. D. 1769-1772.

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1772. The burning of the Gaspe.

"One of the first overt acts of resistance that took place in this celebrated struggle [in the war of independence] occurred in 1772, in the waters of Rhode Island. A vessel of war had been stationed on the coast to enforce the laws, and a small schooner, with a light armament and twenty-seven men, called the Gaspé, was employed as a tender, to run into the shallow waters of that coast. On the 17th of June, 1772, a Providence packet, that plied between New York and Rhode Island, named the Hannah, and commanded by a Captain Linzee, hove in sight of the man-of-war, on her passage up the bay. The Hannah was ordered to heave-to, in order to be examined; but her master refused to comply; and being favoured by a fresh southerly breeze, that was fast sweeping him out of gunshot, the Gaspé was signalled to follow. The chase continued for five-and-twenty miles, under a press of sail, when the Hannah coming up with a bar, with which her master was familiar, and drawing less water than the schooner, Captain Linzee led the latter on a shoal, where she struck. The tide falling, the Gaspé … was not in a condition to be removed for several hours. The news of the chase was circulated on the arrival of the Hannah at Providence. A strong feeling was excited among the population, and towards evening the town drummer appeared in the streets, assembling the people in the ordinary manner. As soon as a crowd was collected, the drummer led his followers in front of a shed that stood near one of the stores, when a man disguised as an Indian suddenly appeared on the roof, and proclaimed a secret expedition for that night, inviting all of 'stout hearts' to assemble on the wharf, precisely at nine, disguised like himself. At the appointed hour, most of the men in the place collected at the spot designated, when sixty-four were selected for the bold undertaking that was in view. This party embarked in eight of the launches of the different vessels lying at the wharves, and taking with them a quantity of paving stones, they pulled down the river in a body. … On nearing the Gaspé, about two in the morning, the boats were hailed by a sentinel on deck. This man was driven below by a volley of the stones. The commander of the Gaspé now appeared, and ordering the boats off, he fired a pistol at them. This discharge was returned from a musket, and the officer was shot through the thigh. By this time, the crew of the Gaspé had assembled, and the party from Providence boarded. The conflict was short, the schooner's people being soon knocked down and secured. All on board were put into the boats, and the Gaspé was set on fire. Towards morning she blew up."

J. F. Cooper, Naval History of the United States, volume 1, chapter 3.

ALSO IN: S. G. Arnold, History of Rhode Island, chapter 19 (volume 2).

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1772-1173. The instituting of the Committees of Correspondence. The Tea Ships and "the Boston Tea-Party."

"The surest way to renew and cement the union [of the colonies] was to show that the ministry had not relaxed in its determination to enforce the principal of the Townshend acts. This was made clear in August, 1772, when it was ordered that in Massachusetts the judges should henceforth be paid by the crown. Popular excitement rose to fever heat, and the judges were threatened with impeachment should they dare accept a penny from the royal treasury. The turmoil was increased next year by the discovery in London of the package of letters which were made to support the unjust charge against Hutchinson and some of his friends that they had instigated and aided the most extreme measures of the ministry. In the autumn of 1772 Hutchinson refused to call an extra session of the assembly to consider what should be done about the judges. Samuel Adams then devised a scheme by which the towns of Massachusetts could consult with each other and agree upon some common course of action in case of emergencies. For this purpose each town was to appoint a standing committee, and as a great part of their work was necessarily done by letter they were called 'committees of correspondence.' This was the step that fairly organized the Revolution."

J. Fiske, The War of Independence, chapter 5.

"The town records of Boston [November 2, 1772] say:— 'It was then moved by Mr. Samuel Adams that a Committee of Correspondence be appointed, to consist of twenty-one persons, to state the rights of the colonists and of this Province in particular as men and Christians and as subjects; and to communicate and publish the same to the several towns and to the world as the sense of this town, with the infringements and violations thereof that have been or from time to time may be made.' The motion occasioned some debate and seems to have been carried late at night; the vote in its favor, at last, was nearly unanimous. The colleagues of Adams, who had left him almost alone thus far, now declined to become members of the committee, regarding the scheme as useless or trifling. The committee was at last constituted without them; it was made up of men of little prominence but of thorough respectability. James Otis, in another interval of sanity, was made chairman, a position purely honorary, the town in this way showing its respect for the leader whose misfortunes they so sincerely mourned. {3207} The Committee of Correspondence held its first meeting in the representatives' chamber at the town-house, November 3, 1772, where at the outset each member pledged himself to observe secrecy as to their transactions, except those which, as a committee, they should think it proper to divulge. According to the motion by which the committee was constituted, three duties were to be performed: 1st, the preparation of a statement of the rights of the colonists, as men, as Christians, and as subjects; 2d, a declaration of the infringement and violation of those rights; 3d, a letter to be sent to the several towns of the Province and to the world, giving the sense of the town. The drafting of the first was assigned to Samuel Adams, of the second to Joseph Warren, of the third to Benjamin Church. In a few days tidings came from the important towns of Marblehead, Roxbury, Cambridge, and Plymouth, indicating that the example of Boston was making impression and was likely to be followed. On November 20, at a town-meeting in Faneuil Hall, the different papers were presented: Otis sat as moderator, appearing for the last time in a sphere where his career had been so magnificent. The report was in three divisions, according to the motion. … In the last days of 1772, the document, having been printed, was transmitted to those for whom it had been intended, producing at once an immense effect. The towns almost unanimously appointed similar committees; from every quarter came replies in which the sentiments of Samuel Adams were echoed. In the library of Bancroft is a volume of manuscripts, worn and stained by time, which have an interest scarcely inferior to that possessed by the Declaration of Independence itself, as the fading page hangs against its pillar in the library of the State Department at Washington. They are the original replies sent by the Massachusetts towns to Samuel Adams's committee sitting in Faneuil Hall, during those first months of 1773. One may well read them with bated breath, for it is the touch of the elbow as the stout little democracies dress up into line, just before they plunge into actual fight at Concord and Bunker Hill. There is sometimes a noble scorn of the restraints of orthography, as of the despotism of Great Britain, in the work of the old town clerks, for they generally were secretaries of the committees; and once in a while a touch of Dogberry's quaintness, as the punctilious officials, though not always 'putting God first,' yet take pains that there shall be no mistake as to their piety by making every letter in the name of the Deity a rounded capital. Yet the documents ought to inspire the deepest reverence. They constitute the highest mark the town-meeting has ever touched. Never before and never since have Anglo-Saxon men, in lawful folk-mote assembled, given utterance to thoughts and feelings so fine in themselves and so pregnant with great events. To each letter stand affixed the names of the committee in autograph. This awkward scrawl was made by the rough fist of a Cape Ann fisherman, on shore for the day to do at town-meeting the duty his fellows had laid upon him: the hand that wrote this other was cramped from the scythe-handle, as its possessor mowed an intervale on the Connecticut; this blotted signature, where smutted fingers have left a black stain, was written by a blacksmith of Middlesex, turning aside a moment from forging a barrel that was to do duty at Lexington. They were men of the plainest; but as the documents containing statements of the most generous principles find the most courageous determination, were read in the town-houses, the committees who produced them, and the constituents for whom the committees stood, were lifted above the ordinary level. Their horizon expanded to the broadest; they had in view not simply themselves, but the welfare of the continent; not solely their own generation, but remote posterity. It was Samuel Adams's own plan, the consequences of which no one foresaw, neither friend nor foe. Even Hutchinson, who was scarcely less keen than Samuel Adams himself, was completely at fault. 'Such a foolish scheme,' he called it, 'that the faction must necessarily make themselves ridiculous.' But in January the eyes of men were opening. One of the ablest of the Tories, Daniel Leonard, wrote:—'This is the foulest, subtlest, and most venomous serpent ever issued from the egg of sedition. I saw the small seed when it was implanted; it was a grain of mustard. I have watched the plant until it has become a great tree.' It was the transformation into a strong cord of what had been a rope of sand."

J. K. Hosmer, Samuel Adams, chapter 13.

"In the spring of 1773, Virginia carried this work of organization a long step further, when Dabney Carr suggested and carried a motion calling for committees of correspondence between the several colonies. From this point it was a comparatively short step to a permanent Continental Congress. It happened that these preparations were made just in time to meet the final act of aggression which brought on the Revolutionary War. The Americans had thus far successfully resisted the Townshend acts and secured the repeal of all the duties except on tea. As for tea they had plenty, but not from England; they smuggled it from Holland in spite of custom-houses and search-warrants. Clearly unless the Americans could be made to buy tea from England and pay the duty on it, the king must own himself defeated. Since it appeared that they could not be forced into doing this, it remained to be seen if they could be tricked into doing it. A truly ingenious scheme was devised. Tea sent by the East India Company to America had formerly paid a duty in some British port on the way. This duty was now taken off, so that the price of the tea for America might be lowered. The company's tea thus became so cheap that the American merchant could buy a pound of it and pay the threepence duty beside for less than it cost him to smuggle a pound of tea from Holland. It was supposed that the Americans would of course buy the tea which they could get most cheaply, and would thus be beguiled into submission to that principle of taxation which they had hitherto resisted. Ships laden with tea were accordingly sent in the autumn of 1773 to Boston, New York, Philadelphia, and Charleston; and consignees were appointed to receive the tea in each of these towns. Under the guise of a commercial operation, this was purely a political trick. {3208} It was an insulting challenge to the American people, and merited the reception which they gave it. They would have shown themselves unworthy of their rich political heritage had they given it any other. In New York, Philadelphia, and Charleston mass-meetings of the people voted that the consignees should be ordered to resign their offices, and they did so. At Philadelphia the tea-ship was met and sent back to England before it had come within the jurisdiction of the custom-house. At Charleston the tea was landed, and as there was no one to receive it or pay the duty, it was thrown into a damp cellar and left there to spoil. In Boston things took a different turn."

J. Fiske, The War of Independence, chapter 5.

"Acting upon the precedent of the time of the Stamp Act, when Oliver, the stamp commissioner, had resigned his commission under the Liberty Tree, a placard was posted everywhere on the 3d of November, inviting the people of Boston and the neighboring towns to be present at Liberty Tree that day at noon, to witness the resignation of the consignees of the tea, and hear them swear to re-ship to London what teas should arrive. The placard closed,—'Show me the man that dares take this town.' At the time appointed, representatives Adams, Hancock, and Phillips, the selectmen and town clerk, with about five hundred more, were present at the Liberty Tree. But no consignees arrived, whereupon Molineux and Warren headed a party who waited upon them. The consignees, Clarke, a rich merchant, and his sons, Benjamin Faneuil, Winslow, and the two sons of Hutchinson, Thomas and Elisha, sat together in the counting-house of Clarke in King Street. Admittance was refused the committee, and a conversation took place through a window, during which the tone of the consignees was defiant. There was some talk of violence, and when an attempt was made to exclude the committee and the crowd attending them from the building, into the first story of which they had penetrated, the doors were taken off their binges and threats uttered. Molineux, generally impetuous enough, but now influenced probably by cooler heads, dissuaded the others from violence. … A town-meeting on November 5, in which an effort of the Tories to make head against the popular feeling came to naught, showed how overwhelming was the determination to oppose the introduction of the tea. … When news arrived on the 17th that three tea-ships were on the way to Boston, for a second time a town-meeting demanded through a committee, of which Samuel Adams was a member, the resignation of the consignees. They evaded the demand; the town-meeting voted their answer not satisfactory, and at once adjourned without debate or comment. The silence was mysterious; what was impending none could tell. … On the 28th, the first of the tea-ships, the Dartmouth, Captain Hall, sailed into the harbor. Sunday though it was, the Committee of Correspondence met, obtained from Benjamin Rotch, the Quaker owner of the Dartmouth, a promise not to enter the vessel until Tuesday, and made preparations for a mass-meeting at Faneuil Hall for Monday forenoon, to which Samuel Adams was authorized to invite the surrounding towns. A stirring placard the next morning brought the townsmen and their neighbors to the place. After the organization, Samuel Adams, arising among the thousands, moved that: 'As the town have determined at a late meeting legally assembled that they will to the utmost of their power prevent the landing of the tea, the question be now put,—whether this body are absolutely determined that the tea now arrived in Captain Hall shall be returned to the place from whence it came.' There was not a dissenting voice. … In the afternoon, the meeting having resolved that the tea should go back in the same ship in which it had come, Rotch, the owner of the Dartmouth, protested, but was sternly forbidden, at his peril, to enter the tea. Captain Hall also was forbidden to enter any portion of it. 'Adams was never in greater glory,' says Hutchinson. The next morning, November 30, the people again assembling, the consignees made it known that it was out of their power to send the tea back; but they promised that they would store it until word should come from their 'constituents' as to its disposal. … The Dartmouth each night was watched by a strong guard; armed patrols, too, were established, and six couriers held themselves ready, if there should be need to alarm the country. … During the first week in December arrived the Eleanor and the Beaver, also tea-ships, which were moored near the Dartmouth, and subjected to the same oversight. The 'True Sons of Liberty' posted about the town the most spirited placards. … The days flew by. At length came the end of the time of probation. If the cargo of the Dartmouth had not been 'entered' within that period, the ship according to the revenue laws, must be confiscated. Rotch, the Quaker owner, had signified his willingness to send the ship back to England with the cargo on board, if he could procure a clearance. The customs officials stood on technicalities; under the circumstances a clearance could not be granted. The grim British admiral ordered the Active and the Kingfisher from his fleet to train their broadsides on the channels, and sink whatever craft should try to go to sea without the proper papers. The governor alone had power to override these obstacles. It was competent for him to grant a permit which the revenue men and the admiral must respect. If he refused to do this, then on the next day the legal course was for the revenue officers to seize the Dartmouth and land the tea under the guns of the fleet. It was the 16th of December. A crowd of seven thousand filled the Old South and the streets adjoining. Nothing like it had ever been known. Town-meeting had followed town-meeting until the excitement was at fever heat. The indefatigable Committee of Correspondence had, as it were, scattered fire throughout the whole country. … Poor Quaker Rotch … felt himself, probably, the most persecuted of men, when the monster meeting forced him in the December weather to make his way out to Milton Hill to seek the permit from Hutchinson. … Meantime darkness had fallen upon the short winter day. The crowd still waited in the gloom of the church, dimly lighted here and there by candles. Rotch reappeared just after six, and informed the meeting that the governor refused to grant the permit until the vessels were properly qualified. As soon as the report had been made, Samuel Adams arose, for it was he who had been moderator, and exclaimed: 'This meeting can do nothing more to save the country.' {3209} It was evidently a concerted signal, for instantly … the famous war-whoop was heard, and the two or three score of 'Mohawks' rushed by the doors, and with the crowd behind them hurried in the brightening moonlight to Griffin's wharf, where lay the ships. The tea could not go back to England; it must not be landed. The cold waters of the harbor were all that remained for it. Three hundred and forty-two chests were cast overboard. Nothing else was harmed, neither person nor property. All was so quiet that those at a distance even could hear in the calm air the ripping open of the thin chests as the tea was emptied. The 'Mohawks' found helpers, so that in all perhaps one hundred and fifty were actively concerned. Not far off in the harbor lay the ships of the fleet, and the Castle with the 'Sam Adams Regiments.' But no one interfered."

J. K. Hosmer, Samuel Adams, chapter 16.

ALSO IN: W. V. Wells, Life of Samuel Adams, volume 1, pages 372-375, 495-512; volume 2, pages 1-9, 24-29, 61-63, 80-81, 103-130.

R. Frothingham, Life of Joseph Warren, chapter 9.

Force's American Archives, volume 1.

See, also, BOSTON: A. D. 1773; and NEW YORK: A. D. 1773-1774.

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1774 (March-April). The Boston Port Bill. The Massachusetts Act and the Quebec Act.