Note 262 — Chapter IX

Prior Documents; or a Collection of Interesting Authentic Papers relating to the Dispute between Great Britain and America, showing the causes and progress of that misunderstanding from 1764 to 1775, pp. 1, 2; London, 1777.

"Four great wars within seventy years had overwhelmed Great Britain with heavy debts and excessive taxation. Her recent conquests, so far from relieving her embarrassments, had greatly increased that debt, which amounted now to £140,000,000, near $700,000,000. Even in the midst of the struggle, in the success of which they had so direct an interest, the military contributions of the colonial assemblies had been sometimes reluctant and capricious, and always irregular and unequal. They might, perhaps, refuse to contribute at all towards a standing army in time of peace, of which they would naturally soon become jealous. It seemed necessary, therefore, by some exertion of metropolitan authority, to extract from the colonies for this purpose a regular and certain revenue." (Hildreth's History of the United States, Vol. II. Chap. xxviii., p. 516.)

This was avowed by the great commoner, Pitt himself, the special friend of America. "In the course of the war between France and England, some of the colonies made exertions so far beyond their equitable quota as to merit a reimbursement from the national treasury; but this was not universally the case. In consequence of internal discord, together with their greater domestic security, the necessary supplies had not been raised in due time by others of the provincial assemblies. That a British Minister should depend on the colonial assemblies for the execution of his plans, did not well accord with the decisive genius of Pitt; but it was not prudent, by any innovation, to irritate the colonies during a war in which, from local circumstances, their exertions were peculiarly beneficial. The advantages that would result from an ability to draw forth the resources of the colonies, by the same authority which commanded the wealth of the mother country, might, in these circumstances, have suggested the idea of taxing the colonies by authority of the British Parliament. Mr. Pitt is said to have told Dr. Franklin that 'when the war closed, if he should be in the Ministry, he would take measures to prevent the colonies from having a power to refuse or delay the supplies that might be wanted for national purposes,' but he did not mention what those measures should be." (Ramsay's Colonial History, Vol. I., Chap. iii., pp. 320, 321.)