Part 2 (2/2)
Western Lands and Defense
There was an immediate need for English government in the former English and French lands. In October 1763 the Board of Trade proposed, and the king in council established, a temporary program for western lands. Under the Proclamation of 1763 a governor-general would run Quebec (an attempt to get the French colonists to use an elected a.s.sembly failed), the French were confirmed in their land grants, and the Roman Catholic Church was retained. East and West Florida became separate colonies. In the disputed lands beyond the Appalachians into which English settlers had moved as soon as General Forbes occupied Fort Duquesne in 1758 and where the Indians under Chief Pontiac were in rebellion against these incursions, no English settlers were allowed until permanent treaties could be worked out with tribes owning the lands.
The Grenville ministry had several aims for its western lands policy.
The Proclamation of 1763 would separate the Indians and whites while preventing costly frontier wars. Once contained east of the mountains, the colonials would redirect their natural expansionist tendencies southward into the Carolinas, Georgia, and Florida, and northward into Nova Scotia. Strong English colonies in former Spanish and French territories would be powerful deterrents to future colonial wars. There is no indication Grenville believed the Americans would be more easily governed if contained east of the mountains. His prime aim was orderly, controlled, peaceful, and inexpensive growth.
The Proclamation of 1763 hurt Virginia land speculators more than individual colonists. For the Ohio Land Company whose stockholders were mostly Northern Neck and Maryland gentry, including the Was.h.i.+ngtons and Lees, it was a crus.h.i.+ng blow to their hopes for regaining the Forks of the Ohio and lands on the southern bank of the Ohio granted to them by the crown in 1749. The rival Loyal Land Company led by Speaker Robinson, Attorney-General Randolph, and the Nelsons, lost their claims to the Greenbriar region, but with less invested, they had less to lose. Also dashed were the hopes of many French and Indian War veterans who had been paid in western land warrants for their service. Many veterans ignored the proclamation, went over the mountains, squatted on the lands, and stayed there with the concurrence of amiable Governor Fauquier. Most Virginians were little injured by the order for they fit into Grenville's plan for colonial growth. The general flow of Virginia migration after 1740 was southward along the Piedmont into the Carolinas or southwestward through the Valley of Virginia, not north and northwest to the Forks of the Ohio. In 1768 and 1770 by the treaties of Fort Stanwix (N.Y.) and Fort Lochaber (S.C.) the Six Nations and Cherokee Indians gave up their claims to the Kentucky country as far west as the Tennessee River. The Virginian occupation, led by John Donelson and Daniel Boone, quickly moved in through the c.u.mberland Gap. Not until the Quebec Act of 1774 thwarted their claims to land north of the Ohio did Virginians react strongly against British land policy.
To defend the new territories and maintain the old, Grenville proposed retaining 10,000 British troops in America, stationing them mainly in Halifax, Boston, New York, Philadelphia, and the West Indies from which they could be moved to trouble spots as needed. The British had learned from the unpredictable response by the colonies during the French and Indian War and the nearly disastrous Pontiac Rebellion in early 1763 that the colonies would not, or could not, provide cooperatively for their own defense even in the face of clear danger. There were too many inter-colonial rivalries and there was stubborn adherence to the English tradition that local militia was not to serve outside its own jurisdiction or for long periods of time. Moreover, the western lands were primarily an imperial responsibility. Thus, the decision was made to station British troops in America.[11]
[11] There are those who suggest the troops were sent to America on a pretext. The ministry, knowing it could not reduce the army to peacetime size in face of French threats, also knew there was strong English resentment against ”a standing army” in England.
The colonial condition offered an excuse for retaining the men in arms See Bernhard Knollenberg, Origin of the American Revolution, 1759-1766 (New York, 1960), chapters 5-9.
In April 1765 parliament pa.s.sed the Quartering Act, similar to one in England, requiring colonies, if requested, to provide quarters in barracks, taverns, inns, or empty private buildings. Although the act did not apply directly to them, Virginians sided with the hard-hit New Yorkers who bitterly denounced it as another form of taxation without representation. So strong was the reaction in New York that her a.s.sembly virtually shut down rather than acquiesce. Finally the New Yorkers gave in, making the Quartering Act to New York what the Stamp Act was to Virginia, a symbol of ”oppression and slavery.” What parliament could do to one colony she could do to all.
A New Revenue Program
At the heart of the Grenville program were his financial schemes. The program had three parts: 1) to strengthen and enforce existing Acts of Trade; 2) to ease inflation and stabilize colonial trade with a uniform currency act; and 3) to raise additional revenue by applying stamp taxes to the colonies. Even then Grenville expected to raise only about one-half the expenses the new empire required. The rest would have to come from British sources.
To close the loopholes in the Navigation Acts and make them profitable, Grenville submitted the American Revenue Act of 1764, popularly known as the Sugar Act. Although the sugar trade provisions were the most dramatic example of a redirection in the Navigation Acts, the American Revenue Act contained radical departures from past att.i.tudes and practices. Heavy duties were applied to foreign goods allowed to enter the colonies directly, including white sugar, Madeira wine, and coffee.
Many goods formerly allowed to enter the colonies directly were placed on the list of enumerated articles which must pa.s.s through England before being s.h.i.+pped to the colonies. The act, although slightly reducing the duty on French West Indian foreign mola.s.ses, contained strict provisions for its collection omitted from the laxly enforced Mola.s.ses Act of 1733. The British fleet was stationed along the American coast to a.s.sist the customs service in enforcing the act.
Parliament created a new vice-admiralty court to sit at Halifax without a jury as an alternative to the colonial vice-admiralty courts whose juries were notoriously biased against the customs officers and whose judges often were colonials engaged in illicit trade.
In the Sugar Act, Grenville and parliament took the existing Navigation Acts and rea.s.serted parliamentary authority over imperial trade, reaffirmed the 17th Century colonial philosophy that the colonies existed to promote the welfare of the mother country and the empire, granted trade monopolies to British merchants and manufacturers where none existed before, and discriminated in favor of one set of colonies, the British West Indies, and against another set, the North American colonies. To this was added a new principle--the Navigation Acts should not only regulate trade, they should produce revenue. Cleverly designed within the const.i.tutional system, the Sugar Act brought howls of protests from New England and Middle Colony traders, smugglers and legitimate operators alike, who had flourished under the benevolence of ”salutary neglect” for the past half-century. For many Americans the new act with its favoritism to British and West Indian merchants, its use of the navy as law enforcer, and the founding of a vice-admiralty court in Nova Scotia with jurisdiction over all America was an abuse of parliament's power. As events developed the Sugar Act was a failure.
The old act designed for regulatory purposes, cost approximately three times as much to enforce as the revenues collected; the new act, expected to produce annual revenues of about 100,000, averaged about 20,000 in revenues at an annual cost of over 200,000.
The Currency Act of 1764
Virginians, only indirectly effected by the Sugar Act, were deeply effected by the second part of the Grenville program--the Currency Act of 1764. During the French and Indian War Virginia had printed several paper money issues to finance the war and provide currency in the specie-short colony. The various issues, eventually totaling over 500,000, circulated for a fixed number of years and then were to be redeemed upon presentation to the treasurer, Speaker John Robinson. As the war lengthened and the number of paper money issues increased, considerable confusion developed over the amount of money outstanding, the rate of exchange, and its use as legal tender for personal debts as well as public taxes. Although backed by the ”good will” of the General a.s.sembly, this money (called ”current money”) was discounted when used to pay debts contracted in pounds sterling. Although the official exchange rate set by the a.s.sembly was 125, Virginia current money equalled 130-165 per 100 sterling, averaging 155-160 in 1763 and early 1764. The citizens were compelled by law to accept inflated Virginia paper currency as legal tender for debts which they had contracted in pounds sterling. The fiscal problems were most critical in Virginia, but they also existed in most colonies outside New England whose colonies parliament restricted under a currency act in 1751. In response to pleas from London merchants, Grenville devised and parliament pa.s.sed the Currency Act of 1764, prohibiting the issuing of any more paper money and commanding all money in circulation to be called in and redeemed.
The result in Virginia was sheer consternation, especially among the hard-pressed Tidewater planters. In the process of calling in the money a severe currency shortage developed and some financial hards.h.i.+p occurred at the same time the Stamp Act took effect. More significant than the economic impact was the political impact of the Currency Act on Virginia politics and the political fortunes of key Virginians.
Among the many Virginians caught up in the Currency Act none was more involved than Speaker John Robinson. At his death in May 1766 an audit revealed ma.s.sive shortages in his treasurer's account books resulting from heavy loans to many Tidewater gentry and political a.s.sociates. The Robinson scandal brought about a redistribution of political leaders.h.i.+p in Virginia and brought into the leaders.h.i.+p circle the Northern Neck and Piedmont planters who formerly were excluded.[12]
[12] For a favorable and convincing view of Virginia's motives in pa.s.sing the paper money bills, see Joseph Ernst, ”Genesis of the Currency Act of 1764, Virginia Paper Money and the Protection of British Investments”, William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd ser., XXII, 3-32, and ”The Robinson Scandal Redivius”, Virginia Magazine of History and Biography, LXXVII, 146-173. Ernst is critical of Robinson's political use of the funds. For a more charitable view of Robinson's actions, see the outstanding biography by David Mays, Edmund Pendleton 1721-1803 (Harvard Press, 1952), 2 vols.
Pendleton was the executor of the Robinson estate.
The third facet of the Grenville revenue plan was the infamous Stamp Act. Grenville and his aides perceived the tax bill as a routine piece of legislation which would extend to the colonies a tax long used in Britain. Grenville announced in March 1764 the ministry's intention to present to the commons a stamp tax bill at the February 1765 session of parliament. He ”hoped that the power and sovereignty of parliament, over every part of the British dominions, for the purpose of raising or collecting any tax, would not be disputed. That if there was a single man doubted it, he would take the sense of the House....” As another observer put it, ”Mr. Grenville strongly urg'd not only the power but the right of parliament to tax the colonys and hop'd in G.o.ds Name as his Expression was that none would dare dispute their Sovereignty.”[13]
The House of Commons, as quick as the Virginia House of Burgesses to proclaim its sovereignty rose to Grenville's bait and declared in a resolution of March 17, 1764 that ”toward defending, protecting, and securing the British colonies and Plantations in America, it may be proper to charge certain Stamp Duties in the said Colonies and Plantations....” In that simple phrase parliament declared its full sovereignty over the colonies and from it never retreated.
[13] Both quotes cited in Edmund and Helen Morgan, The Stamp Act Crisis paperback edition (Collier Books: New York, 1962), 76.
This is the standard work on the Stamp Act.
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