Note 12 — Chapter II

This speech will long be memorable, as it again opened the wounds scarce skinned over by the repeal of the Stamp Act. The loss of the land-tax occasioned this speech and the ensuing taxes; those taxes produced opposition; that opposition gave a handle to the friends of prerogative to attempt despotism in America; and that attempt has caused a civil war in America, whence is just arrived notice of the first bloodshed, as I transcribe these Memoirs—in June, 1775.

At this later period (when thirteen provinces are actually lost) the leading steps may be summed up thus: Grenville (who had adopted from Lord Bute a plan of taxation formed by Jenkinson) had provoked America to resist. The Rockingham Administration had endeavoured to remedy that mischief by repealing the Stamp Act; and perhaps might have prevented a farther breach, though ambitious leaders, and perhaps some true republican patriots, might have entertained hopes of separating the Colonies from Great Britain; and France had certainly fomented those designs. The pernicious mischief of lowering the land-tax gave a handle to Charles Townshend to propose his new taxes (instigated, as was supposed, by the secret cabal at Court, or officiously to make his court there.) Thus the ambition of the Court began the quarrel; Grenville was a second time, though then without foreseeing it, an instrument of renewing it; and the Crown, that delighted in the mischief, ended with being the great sufferer, and America happily became perfectly free.—W.

[It is not unlikely, as Sir George Colebrooke observes, “that as the Court had never intended to abandon the principle of taxation. Mr. Townshend was not sorry to have an opportunity of ingratiating himself at St. James’s, by proposing taxes which, though levied in America, were not laid on American growth, or American industry, and so far he hoped they would find admittance into the Colonies.”—(Sir George Colebrooke’s MS. Memoirs.) Many of the Americans attached to the British connexion were also of that opinion, and told Mr. Townshend “Only let the tax bear the appearance of port duties, and it will not be objected to.”—(Cavendish’s Debates, vol. i. p. 213.) At home the measure was opposed by a very slender minority in Parliament representing no powerful interests exclusive of the merchants engaged in the American trade, whose fears for the debts owing to them in the Colonies made them so tremblingly apprehensive, that their remonstrances carried less weight with the Government than would otherwise have been due to their intelligence and wealth. The country also had taken umbrage at the intemperate language of the Colonists, and regarded with some distrust the moderate policy of the Government; so that Mr. Townshend had to contend with the taunts of the Opposition, the popular voice, and the wishes of the Court—a combination far too strong for a statesman of his temperament to resist.]—E.