Part 5 (2/2)
26. THE STAMP ACT CONGRESS (1765.)
[Sidenote: Internal and external taxes.]
Issue was now joined on the question which eventually separated the colonies from the mother-country. Parliament had a.s.serted its right to lay taxes on the colonists for imperial purposes. The colonies had up to this time held governmental relations only with the Crown, from whom came their charters. They had escaped taxation because they were poor, and because hitherto they had not occasioned serious expense; but they had accepted the small import duties. They found it hard to reconcile obedience to one set of laws with resistance to the other; and they therefore insisted that there was a distinction between ”external taxation” and ”internal taxation,” between duties levied at the ports and duties levied within the colonies.
[Sidenote: Remonstrances.]
The moment the news reached America, opposition sprang up in many different forms. The colonial legislatures preferred dignified remonstrance. The Virginia a.s.sembly reached a farther point in a set of bold resolutions, pa.s.sed May 29, 1765, under the influence of a speech by Patrick Henry. They a.s.serted ”that the General a.s.sembly of this colony have the only and sole exclusive right and power to lay taxes and impositions upon the inhabitants of this colony;” and that the Stamp Act”
has a manifest tendency to destroy British as well as American freedom.”
On June 8, 1765, Ma.s.sachusetts suggested another means of remonstrance, by calling upon her sister colonies to send delegates to New York ”to consider of a general and united, dutiful, loyal, and humble representation of their condition to his Majesty and to the Parliament.”
[Sidenote: Riots.]
[Sidenote: Non-Importation.]
Meanwhile opposition had broken out in open violence. In August there were riots in Boston; the house of Oliver, appointed as collector of the stamp taxes, was attacked, and he next day resigned his office. Hutchinson was acting governor of the colony: his mansion was sacked; and the ma.n.u.script of his History of Ma.s.sachusetts, still preserved, carries on its edges the mud of the Boston streets into which it was thrown. The town of Boston declared itself ”particularly alarmed and astonished at the Act called the Stamp Act, by which we apprehend a very grievous tax is to be laid upon the colonies.” In other colonies there were similar, though less violent, scenes. Still another form of resistance was suggested by the organizations called ”Sons of Liberty,” the members of which agreed to buy no more British goods. When the time came for putting the act into force, every person appointed as collector had resigned.
[Sidenote: Stamp Act Congress.]
These three means of resistance--protest, riots, and non-importation--were powerfully supplemented by the congress which a.s.sembled at New York, Oct.
1765. It included some of the ablest men from nine colonies. Such men as James Otis, Livingston of New York, Rutledge of South Carolina, and John d.i.c.kinson of Pennsylvania, met, exchanged views, and promised co- operation. It was the first unmistakable evidence that the colonies would make common cause. After a session of two weeks the congress adjourned, having drawn up pet.i.tions to the English government, and a ”Declaration of Rights and Grievances of the Colonists in America.” In this doc.u.ment they declared themselves ent.i.tled to the rights of other Englishmen. They a.s.serted, on the one hand, that they could not be represented in the British House of Commons, and on the other that they could not be taxed by a body in which they had no representation. They complained of the Stamp Act, and no less of the amendments to the Acts of Trade, which, they said, would ”render them unable to purchase the manufactures of Great Britain.”
In these memorials there is no threat of resistance, but the general att.i.tude of the colonies showed that it was unsafe to push the matter farther.
[Sidenote: Repeal of the Stamp Act.]
Meanwhile the Grenville ministry had given place to another Whig ministry under Rockingham, who felt no responsibility for the Stamp Act. Pitt took the ground that ”the government of Great Britain could not lay taxes on the colonies.” Benjamin Franklin was called before a committee, and urged the withdrawal of the act. The king, who had now recovered his health, gave it to be understood that he was for repeal. The repeal bill was pa.s.sed by a majority of more than two to one, and the crisis was avoided.
[Sidenote: Right of taxation a.s.serted.]
To give up the whole principle seemed to the British government impossible; the repeal was therefore accompanied by the so-called Dependency Act. This set forth that the colonies are ”subordinate unto and dependent upon the Imperial Crown and Parliament of Great Britain, and that Parliament hath, and of right ought to have, full power to make laws and statutes of sufficient force and validity to bind the colonies and people of America subjects to the Crown of Great Britain in all cases whatsoever.” Apparently matters had returned to their former course. The grat.i.tude of the colonies was loudly expressed; but they had learned the effect of a united protest, they had learned how to act together, and they were irritated by the continued a.s.sertion of the power of Parliament to tax and otherwise to govern the colonies.
27. REVENUE ACTS (1767).
[Sidenote: Townshend's plans.]
[Sidenote: Quarrel with New York.]
The repeal of the Stamp Act removed the difficulty without removing the cause. The year 1766 was marked in English politics by the virtual retirement of Pitt from the government. His powerful opposition to taxation of the colonies was thus removed, and Charles Townshend became the leading spirit in the ministry. Jan. 26, 1767, he said in the House of Commons: ”I know a mode in which a revenue may be drawn from America without offence.... England is undone if this taxation of America is given up.” And he pledged himself to find a revenue nearly sufficient to meet the military expenses in America. At the moment that the question of taxation was thus revived, the New York a.s.sembly became involved in a dispute with the home government by declining to furnish the necessary supplies for the troops. An Act of Parliament was therefore pa.s.sed declaring the action of the New York legislature null,--a startling a.s.sertion of a power of disallowance by Parliament.
[Sidenote: Enforcement.]
The three parts of the general scheme for controlling the colonies were now all taken up again. For their action against the troops the New York a.s.sembly was suspended,--the first instance in which Parliament had undertaken to destroy an effective part of the colonial government. For the execution of the Navigation Acts a board of commissioners of customs was established, with large powers. In June, 1767, a new Taxation Act was introduced, and rapidly pa.s.sed through Parliament. In order to avoid the objections to ”internal taxes,” it laid import duties on gla.s.s, and white lead, painters' colors, paper, and tea. The proceeds of the Act, estimated at, 40,000, were to pay governors and judges in America. Writs of a.s.sistance were made legal. A few months afterwards,--December, 1767,--a colonial department was created, headed by a secretary of state. The whole machinery of an exasperating control was thus provided.
[Sidenote: Question of right of taxation.]
Issue was once more joined both in England and America on the const.i.tutional power of taxation. The great principle of English law that taxation was not a right, but a gift of the persons taxed through their representatives, was claimed also by the colonies. Opinions had repeatedly been given by the law officers of the Crown that a colony could be taxed only by its own representatives. The actual amount of money called for was too small to burden them, but it was to be applied in such a way as to make the governors and judges independent of the a.s.semblies. The principle of taxation, once admitted, might be carried farther. As an English official of the time remarked: ”The Stamp Act attacked colonial ideas by sap; the Townshend scheme was attacking them by storm every day.”
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