Part 12 (1/2)

103. Early Colonial Policy.--At the outset, England's rulers had been very kind to Englishmen who founded colonies. They gave them great grants of land. They gave them rights of self-government greater than any Englishmen living in England enjoyed. They allowed them to manage their own trade and industries as they saw fit. They even permitted them to wors.h.i.+p G.o.d as their consciences told them to wors.h.i.+p him. But, as the colonists grew in strength and in riches, Britain's rulers tried to make their trade profitable to British merchants and interfered in their government. On their part the colonists disobeyed the navigation laws and disputed with the royal officials. For years Britain's rulers allowed this to go on. But, at length, near the close of the last French war Mr. Pitt ordered the laws to be enforced.

[Sidenote: Difficulties in enforcing the navigation laws.]

[Sidenote: James Otis. _Eggleston_, 163. His speech against writs of a.s.sistance, 1761.]

104. Writs of a.s.sistance, 1761.--It was a good deal easier to order the laws to be carried out than it was to carry them out. It was almost impossible for the customs officers to prevent goods being landed contrary to law. When the goods were once on sh.o.r.e, it was difficult to seize them. So the officers asked the judges to give them writs of a.s.sistance. Among the leading lawyers of Boston was James Otis. He was the king's law officer in the province. But he resigned his office and opposed the granting of the writs. He objected to the use of writs of a.s.sistance because they enabled a customs officer to become a tyrant.

Armed with one of them he could go to the house of a man he did not like and search it from attic to cellar, turn everything upside down and break open doors and trunks. It made no difference, said Otis, whether Parliament had said that the writs were legal. For Parliament could not make an act of tyranny legal. To do that was beyond the power even of Parliament.

[Sidenote: Patrick Henry. _Eggleston_, 162.]

[Sidenote: His speech in the Parson's Cause, 1763.]

105. The Parson's Cause, 1763.--The next important case arose in Virginia and came about in this way. The Virginians made a law regulating the salaries of clergymen in the colony. The king vetoed the law. The Virginians paid no heed to the veto. The clergy men appealed to the courts and the case of one of them was selected for trial. Patrick Henry, a prosperous young lawyer, stated the opinions of the Virginians in a speech which made his reputation. The king, he said, had no right to veto a Virginia law that was for the good of the people. To do so was an act of tyranny, and the people owed no obedience to a tyrant. The case was decided for the clergyman. For the law was clearly on his side.

But the jurymen agreed with Henry. They gave the clergyman only one farthing damages, and no more clergymen brought cases into the court.

The king's veto was openly disobeyed.

[Sidenote: Proclamation of 1763. _McMaster_, 110.]

106. The King's Proclamation of 1763.--In the same year that the Parson's Cause was decided the king issued a proclamation which greatly lessened the rights of Virginia and several other colonies to western lands. Some of the old charter lines, as those of Ma.s.sachusetts, Connecticut, Virginia, and the Carolinas had extended to the Pacific Ocean. By the treaty of 1763 (p. 69) the king, for himself and his subjects, abandoned all claim to lands west of Mississippi River. Now in the Proclamation of 1763 he forbade the colonial governors to grant any lands west of the Alleghany Mountains. The western limit of Virginia and the Carolinas was fixed. Their pioneers could not pa.s.s the mountains and settle in the fertile valleys of the Ohio and its branches.

CHAPTER 12

TAXATION WITHOUT REPRESENTATION

[Sidenote: George III.]

[Sidenote: George Grenville.]

[Sidenote: The British Parliament.]

107. George III and George Grenville.--George III became king in 1760. He was a narrow, stupid, well-meaning, ignorant young man of twenty-one. He soon found in George Grenville a narrow, dull, well-meaning lawyer, a man who would do what he was told. So George Grenville became the head of the government. To him the law was the law.

If he wished to do a thing and could find the law for it, he asked for nothing more. His military advisers told him that an army must be kept in America for years. It was Grenville's business to find the money to support this army. Great Britain was burdened with a national debt. The army was to be maintained, partly, at least, for the protection of the colonists. Why should they not pay a part of the cost of maintaining it?

Parliament was the supreme power in the British Empire. It controlled the king, the church, the army, and the navy. Surely a Parliament that had all this power could tax the colonists. At all events, Grenville thought it could, and Parliament pa.s.sed the Stamp Act to tax them.

[Sidenote: Taxation and representation.]

[Sidenote: Henry's resolutions, 1765. _Higginson_, 161-164; _McMaster_, 112-114.]

108. Henry's Resolutions, 1765.--The colonists, however, with one voice, declared that Parliament had no power to tax them. Taxes, they said, could be voted only by themselves or their representatives. They were represented in their own colonial a.s.semblies, and nowhere else.

Patrick Henry was now a member of the Virginia a.s.sembly. He had just been elected for the first time. But as none of the older members of the a.s.sembly proposed any action, Henry tore a leaf from an old law-book and wrote on it a set of resolutions. These he presented in a burning speech, upholding the rights of the Virginians. He said that to tax them by act of Parliament was tyranny. ”Caesar and Tarquin had each his Brutus, Charles I his Cromwell, and George III”--”Treason, treason,”

shouted the speaker. ”May profit by their example,” slowly Henry went on. ”If that be treason, make the most of it.” The resolutions were voted. In them the Virginians declared that they were not subject to Acts of Parliament laying taxes or interfering in the internal affairs of Virginia.

[Ill.u.s.tration: HENRY'S FIRST AND LAST RESOLUTIONS (FACSIMILE OF THE ORIGINAL DRAFT)]

[Sidenote: Opposition to the Stamp Act, 1765. _Higginson_, 164-165; _McMaster_, 116.]