Volume Ii Part 7 (2/2)

flinging open to their energies in the days to come the boundless plains of the West, laid the foundation of the United States.”

CHAPTER II.

GEORGE III. AND HIS AMERICAN COLONIES

[1760]

The year after the capture of Quebec a young king ascended the throne of England, whose action was to affect profoundly the fortunes of the American colonies. Of narrow mental range and plebeian tastes, but moral, sincere, and stout-hearted, George III. a.s.sumed the crown with one dominant purpose--to rule personally; and the first decade of his reign was a constant struggle to free himself from the dictation of cabinet ministers. In 1770, during the premiers.h.i.+p of North, who was little more than his page, the king gained the day; and for the next dozen years he had his own way perfectly. All points of policy, foreign and domestic, even the management of debates in Parliament, he was crafty enough to get into his hands. To this meddling of his with state affairs, his impracticable and fickle plans, and the stupidity of the admirers whom his policy forced upon him, may be traced in very large measure the breach between England and the colonies.

The Revolution, however, cannot be wholly accounted for by any series of events which can be set down and labelled. The ultimate causes lie deeper. Three thousand miles of ocean rolled between England and the colonies. A considerable measure of colonial self-government was inevitable from the first, and this, by fostering the spirit of independence, created a demand for more and more freedom. The social ties which had bound the early Pilgrims to their native land grew steadily weaker with each new generation of people who knew no home but America. The colonists had begun to feel the stirrings of an independent national life. The boundless possibilities of the future on this new continent, with its immense territory and untold natural wealth, were beginning to dawn upon them. Their infancy was over. The leading-strings which bound them to the mother-country must be either lengthened or cast off altogether.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Portrait.]

King George III.

But England did not see this. Most Englishmen at the beginning of George III.'s reign regarded the colonies as trading corporations rather than as political bodies. It was taken for granted that a colony was inferior to the mother-country, and was to be managed in the interests of the commercial cla.s.ses at home. Conflict was therefore inevitable sooner or later. We have to trace briefly the chief events by which it was precipitated.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Portrait.]

James Otis, Jr.

[1764]

In 1760-61 England tried to enforce the navigation laws more strictly.

Writs of a.s.sistance issued, empowering officers to enter any house at any time, to search for smuggled goods. This measure aroused a storm of indignation. The popular feeling was voiced, and at the same time intensified, by the action of James Otis, Jr., a young Boston lawyer, who threw up his position as advocate-general rather than defend the hated writs, which he denounced as ”instruments of slavery.” ”Then and there,” said John Adams, ”the trumpet of the Revolution was sounded.”

In May, 1764, a report reached Boston that a stamp act for the colonies had been proposed in Parliament, to raise revenue by forcing the use in America of stamped forms for all sorts of public papers, such as deeds, warrants, and the like. A feeling of mingled rage and alarm seized the colonists. It seemed that a deliberate blow was about to be struck at their liberties. From the day of their founding the colonies had never been taxed directly except by their own legislatures. Ma.s.sachusetts, New York, Rhode Island, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, and Virginia at once sent humble but earnest protests to Parliament against the proposed innovation.

The act was nevertheless pa.s.sed in March of the next year, with almost no opposition. By its provisions, business doc.u.ments were illegal and void unless written on the stamped paper. The cheapest stamp cost a s.h.i.+lling, the price ranging upward from that according to the importance of the doc.u.ment. The prepared paper had to be paid for in specie, a hards.h.i.+p indeed in a community where lawsuits were very common, and whose entire solid coin would not have sufficed to pay the revenue for a single year. Even bitterest Tories' declared this requirement indefensible. Another flagrant feature of the act was the provision that violators of it should be tried without a jury, before a judge whose only pay came from his own condemnations.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Crowd of well-dressed men standing around a fire.]

Burning the Stamps in New York.

[1765]

The effect upon the colonies was like that of a bomb in a powder-magazine. The people rose up en ma.s.se. In every province the stamp-distributor was compelled to resign. In Portsmouth, N. H., the newspaper came out in mourning, and an effigy of the G.o.ddess of Liberty was carried to the grave. The Connecticut legislature ordered a day of fasting and prayer kept, and an inventory of powder and ball taken. In New York a bonfire was made of the stamps in the public square. The bells in Charleston, S. C., were tolled, and the flags on the s.h.i.+ps in the harbor hung at half-mast. The colonists entered into agreements to buy no goods from England until the act was repealed. Even mourning clothes, since they must be imported, were not to be worn, and lamb's flesh was abjured that more wool might be raised for home manufacture.

England's colonial trade fell off so alarmingly in consequence that Manchester manufacturers pet.i.tioned Parliament to repeal the act, a.s.serting that nine-tenths of their workmen were idle. Besides these popular demonstrations, delegates from nine colonies met in New York, in October, 1765, often called the Stamp Act Congress, and adopted a declaration of rights, a.s.serting that England had no right to tax them without their consent. During the days of the Stamp Act excitement, the term ”colonist” gave way to ”American,” and ”English” to ”British,” a term of the deeper opprobrium because Bute, the king's chief adviser, was a Briton.

Startled by this unexpected resistance, Parliament, in January of the next year, began to debate repeal. We must in fairness to England look at both sides of the problem of colonial taxation. As general administrator of colonial affairs, the English Government naturally desired a fixed and certain revenue in America, both for frontier defence against Indians and French and for the payment of colonial governors. While each stood ready to defend its own territory, the colonies were no doubt meanly slow about contributing to any common fund. They were frequently at loggerheads, too, with their governors over the question of salaries. On the other hand, the colonists made the strong plea that self-taxation was their only safeguard against tyranny of king, Parliament, or governor.

In the great debate which now ensued in Parliament over England's right to tax America, Mansfield, the greatest const.i.tutional lawyer of his day, maintained--first, that America was represented in Parliament as much as Manchester and several other large cities in England which elected no members to the House of Commons, and yet were taxed; and, second, that an internal tax, such as that on stamps, was identical in principle with customs duties, which the colonies had never resisted. In reply, Pitt, the great champion of the colonies, a.s.serted--first, that the case of the colonies was not at all like that of Manchester; the latter happened not to be represented at that time because the election laws needed reforming, while the colonies, being three thousand miles away, could in the nature of the case never be adequately represented in an English Parliament; and, second, that as a matter of fact a sharp distinction had always, since the Great Charter, been made between internal taxation and customs duties.

Had the colonies rested their case upon const.i.tutional argument alone it would have been relatively weak. While it was then a question, and will be forever, whether the American settlements were king's colonies, Parliament's colonies, or neither, but peculiar communities which had resulted from growth, the English lawyers had a good deal of logic on their side. Unconst.i.tutional measures had indeed been resorted to--the writs of a.s.sistance, taking Americans beyond sea for trial, internal taxation; yet the real grievance lay far less in these things than in the fact that the English const.i.tution itself was working in a manner contrary to colonial interests. Social considerations, too, accounted for more bitterness than has usually been thought. Our fathers hated the presence here of a privileged cla.s.s.

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