THE TRUE HISTORY OF
THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION
By Sydney George Fisher
THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION
IV
PARLIAMENT TAXES PAINT, PAPER, AND GLASS AND
THEN
ABANDONS TAXATION
DURING the year
after the repeal of the Stamp Act
politics were comparatively quiet
in the colonies. The
Assembly of Virginia
voted a statue to the king and an
obelisk to Pitt, and New York voted statues to both the
king and Pitt. Several of the colonies passed
acts indemnifying
those who had suffered in the Stamp Act riots.
There was, however, one cloud in the sky. A clause of
the Mutiny Act, passed
at the same time as the Stamp
Act, had required the colonial legislatures to provide
the
British soldiers quartered
in America with barracks, fires,
beds, candles, and other necessaries. This provision was
now enforced as part of the remodeling of the colonies.
The officers in command demanded their supplies. The
assembly in New York voted part of the supplies, but
failed to furnish vinegar, salt, and pepper.
This disobedience on the part of a dependency was extremely
irritating, even to a Whig ministry ;
and an act
of Parliament was promptly passed prohibiting the New
York Assembly from enacting any law until it complied
with the requisition
for the soldiers. This was internal
regulation with a vengeance,
that Parliament and a Whig
ministry should actually suspend
the power
of a colonial
legislature. Yet the act was unquestionably constitutional,
because the colonists themselves had admitted that Parliament
had full control over them, except
in the matter of
internal taxation.
They now began to realize the absurdity of the ground they had taken, and to see that the colonial relation necessarily implied full power of Parliament over New York or any other colony. New York, however, submitted, obeyed orders, and everything remained comparatively quiet.
A few months after the repeal of the Stamp Act the king and the Rockingham ministry disagreed, and on July 7, 1766, that ministry went out of office. William Pitt formed a new one, made up of politicians from the various cliques and factions of the Whigs, a most impossible and impracticable ministry, and as short-lived as its predecessor.
Pitt was no longer the powerful statesman who had carried England through the great war with France and secured for her Canada and what seemed to be a worldwide empire. His health was broken and his nervous system shattered. He was afflicted with paroxysms of anger, could not bear the slightest noise, or even the presence of his children in the same house with him. He spent enormous sums of money in planting his country seat, " Hayes," and secluding himself within it. He sold the country-seat, but was so unhappy at parting with it that his wife bought it back for him. He required a constant succession of chickens to be kept cooking in his kitchens all day to satisfy his uncertain, but at times ravenous, appetite.*
* Lecky, " England in the Eighteenth Century," edition of 1882, vol. iii. p. 121
In forming the new ministry he compelled the king to give him a title, and henceforth he is known as Lord Chatham. Within a few weeks after forming the ministry his health failed so rapidly that he had to be taken to the continent. He never afterwards exercised any control in the ministry of which he was supposed to be the head and within a little more than a year he retired from it altogether. But up to his death, in 1778, he would occasionally appear in the House of Lords to make those eloquent and pathetic appeals, from which our school-boys used to recite passages, denouncing the government because it would not withdraw all the troops from America, and by peaceful discussion persuade the colonies to stay within the empire.
As for the ministry he had formed, it was not his in any sense. On every question it pursued a course opposed to his policy and after extraordinary confusion and divisions it soon ceased to bear even the semblance of a Whig ministry,* for by successive resignations Tories were admitted until it became all Tory. Lord Hillsborough and Lord North were admitted to it ; and finally that extreme and thorough-going Tory Lord George Germain. The Whigs went entirely out of power, and for the remainder of the time we have a Tory government dealing with the colonies.
* Lecky, " England in the Eighteenth Century," edition of 1882, vol. iii. p. 123, et seq
The constant changing of ministries at this time had not a little to do with the development of the revolutionary spirit in America. A ministry seldom lasted over a year. While there were the two great parties, Whig and Tory, they were strangely confused and split up into factions. Party lines were not distinctly drawn,+ There could be no consistent and steady colonial policy. Whig ministries used Tory methods and Tory ministries used Whig methods. The uncertainty, the shifting back and forth from severity to liberality, passing taxing acts and repealing them, was a vast encouragement to the colonial rebels. As our Revolution advanced we find party lines and policies in England becoming clearer, until towards the end they are quite distinct ; and in 1778 the ministry carried out a distinctly Tory policy.
+Ibid., pp. 110-114
As one reads in this period of English history how weak, divided, and headless every ministry was; how bankrupt and disturbed business had become; how violent the excitement and rioting over Wilkes ; how incapable the government was to keep ordinary civil order even in London, one cannot help smiling to think of the opportunities our ancestors had in this confusion. There has been no period since then when we could have broken away so easily. Luck was an important factor in the Revolution, and attended us from the beginning to the end.
In the autumn of 1766 Parliament went to the country, and, as was naturally to be expected, the new election returned a body more determined than ever to remodel the colonies, It is difficult for any nation to endure a dependency where its sovereignty is not recognized. The colonists had compelled England to repeal an important law, and had brought about this repeal by violence, by withholding trade, by starving English merchants and workingmen. Could this be endured ? could it be possible that a set of inferior people in a dependency had such power as that?
Observing the temper the house was in, Charles Townsend, Chancellor of the Exchequer, a whig, and a most brilliant but uncertain member of the patch-work Chatham ministry, announced, on January 26, 1767, that the administration was prepared to solve the American problem. This solution would render the colonies self 'sustaining, and relieve Great Britain of the expense of securing, defending, and protecting them. He knew, he said, a mode by which revenue could be drawn from America for this purpose without causing the heat and turmoil of the Stamp Act ; and for this hopeful announcement he was vigorously applauded on all sides.
His plan was nothing more than taking the colonists at their word on the distinction between external and internal taxes. They had said that they were willing to pay external taxes, so a bill was introduced laying a duty on paint, paper, glass, and tea imported into the colonies, and to be paid at their seaports in the exact manner which they had said was lawful and constitutional.
It was also at this time that other bills were introduced creating commissioners of customs to reside in Boston, strengthening the jurisdiction of the admiralty courts, and taking other vigorous measures to suppress American smuggling, as already described in a previous chapter. This patch-work Whig ministry felt as strongly as the Tories the necessity for remodeling and reforming the colonies.
The paint, paper, and glass act was a great landmark in the Revolution, and wrought a great change of opinion. The colonists were fairly caught in their own argument. These new taxes were external, and, therefore, constitutional. At the same time they were laid on articles of such universal use, imported in such large quantities from England, that they would be paid in the enhanced price of the articles by all the people all over the country just like the stamp tax, and so were as much an internal taxation as the stamp tax. The colonists could only weakly argue against them that they were purely for raising revenue, and not for the regulation of the commerce of the empire.
But although they were as internal in their effect as the stamp tax, they could not be resisted, as the stamp tax had been resisted, by simply not using the stamps. These taxes were collected at the seaports by the authority and force of the British, navy and army and a host of new revenue officers. If the articles were imported, the taxes would usually be paid, and the articles were of such universal use that it was difficult not to import them.
Petitions, resolves, and remonstrances were again sent to England, and the associations for suspending importations were renewed ; but it is noticeable that there was no rioting. In fact, the colonists were acting in a rather subdued manner. They hardly knew what to think. The next step was a serious one. They must adopt new political principles. Their leaders were holding them in check. A town meeting was held in Boston to discountenance rioting, and Otis urged caution and advised that no opposition should be made to the new duties. On the 20th of November, 1767, when the taxes went into effect, the people were remarkably quiet.*
* Barry, " History of Massachusetts," vol. ii. pp. 340, 341
Their petitions, letters, and public documents are full of the most elaborate expressions of loyalty and devotion. The famous petition which Massachusetts sent to the king in January, 1768, is apparently the perfection of simple hearted unquestioning loyalty. Knowing what was in their hearts, it is most amusing to read the long-drawn-out humble submissiveness of their words. There is no bold arguing against the right to tax. They merely beg and beseech to be relieved from these new taxes. If they cannot be relieved from them, then they can only " regret their unhappy fate." They repeat the old unfortunate admission of the Stamp Act Congress that Parliament has superintending authority over them, but instead of adding the exception of internal taxation, they have a new exception, which they state by saying that this supremo authority extends to "all cases that can consist with the fundamental rights of nature and the constitution." Those words," fundamental rights of nature," were a new way of limiting the authority of Parliament and significant of what was soon to happen.
Glancing at the documents sent out by the other, colonies, we find another idea obtruding itself. They ask for a return of the conditions and privileges they had enjoyed before the French War closed in 1763; the old days when the French in Canada prevented any remodeling or reform by England. This request for a return to that happy golden age became a watchword in the patriot party.
In the next month, February, 1768, the Massachusetts Assembly sent to all the other colonial assemblies a circular letter, very cautiously worded, and arguing the subject in a quiet way. There is nothing about external and internal taxes ; but the recent duties on paint, paper, and glass are said to be infringements of their natural and constitutional rights, because such duties take away their property without their consent ; which is simply a roundabout way of saying that no taxation without representation, and the doctrine of consent, must now be applied to external as well as internal taxes.
It is to be observed that they say that the duties are infringements of their natural and constitutional rights. A year or two before it was only their constitutional rights ; now it is also their natural rights. They are broadening their position to meet the new conditions. Massachusetts also said in the circular letter that the doctrine of consent was an "unalterable right in nature ingrafted into the British Constitution." This was altogether a new way of looking at the British Constitution, to "ingraft" upon it a right of nature against the will of Parliament and the English people ; and these rights of nature will soon have to be considered in a separate chapter.
The Massachusetts circular letter, of course, insists strongly that it is impossible that the colonies should ever be represented in Parliament ; and it declares in all seriousness that the colonists are not seeking " to make themselves independent of the mother country." In short, they are just dear, good children, who are so devoted to mother England that they will show her how to remodel her constitution.
The British government, however, was not in the least deceived. They very naturally regarded this letter as " of a most dangerous and factious tendency, calculated to inflame the minds of good subjects in the colonies." The chief object of the letter had been to promote union among the colonies, unite them in opposition, and encourage a reciprocal expression of feeling. The government quickly saw this, and there was an unsuccessful attempt to have Massachusetts rescind the letter.* This caused an irritating controversy, which has been most voluminously described in many histories, but into the details of which we have not space to enter.[I have to say I am a bit troubled by this the author implies that this is a true history of our revolution, yet then says he does not have the space to go into detail about what he admits caused a controversy, so it just makes me more aware that the author has a bias and agenda to spin this 'true' history in a certain direction DC]
* Paul Bevere, patriot, silversmith, engraver, and lover of saddlehorses, celebrated the refusal of the legislature to rescind by making a handsome silver punch-bowl, inscribed, To the Memory of the Glorious Ninety-two Members of the Honorable House of Representatives of the Massachusetts Bay, who on the 30th of June, 1708, voted not to rescind.
It has been commonly said that the attempt of the government to have the letter rescinded was unwise because it was practically a denial of the right to petition, and made the colonies more rebellious than ever. But the ministry were in an awkward predicament. They saw that the colonies were evidently moving off. There was a powerful rebel party at work among them. Should the government stand still and let them go ?
The most serious provision of the paint, paper,and glass act remains yet to be mentioned. The colonists had objected to the Stamp Act because it was understood that the revenue from it was to be devoted to keeping an army among them. They were also unalterably opposed to any system by which revenue raised from them was to be turned generally into the English exchequer. The paint, paper, and glass act was intended to obviate both of these objections. The revenue raised from it was to be spent entirely on the colonies themselves in maintaining among them civil government and the administration of justice. There was to be a colonial civil list, as it was called, and hereafter all governors, judges, and other colonial executive officials were to receive fixed salaries paid by the crown out of the revenue raised by the duties on paint, paper, glass, and tea. The old system of the assemblies securing the passage of their favorite laws by withholding the governor's salary, and of controlling the judges in the same way, was to cease. There was to be no more bargain and sale legislation; but in place of it orderly, methodical, regular government.
This, as previously shown, struck at the root of what the colonists considered their system of freedom. If they could no longer control governors and executive officials through their salaries, they could no longer have their favorite laws. They would become mere colonies, compelled to take what was given to them and to do as they were told.
The first man to come forward with a popular and encouraging statement of the colonist side of the controversy was John Dickinson, a young man of thirty-five, a Quaker, and a lawyer of considerable practice in Philadelphia. He had been for some years more or less concerned in politics ; had been a member of the Stamp Act Congress, and had drafted several of its documents.
He seems to have understood that the arguments thus far published were too brief and general. There was not enough of detail in them. The aggressive or patriot party among the colonists needed more light and were not sufficiently aroused. He accordingly wrote for one of the newspapers a series of " Letters from a Farmer" which accomplished his purpose most admirably. They awoke the colonists with a bound. The title was also fortunate, for the farmers were by far the largest and most important class in the community.
His opening sentence was captivating. "I am a farmer," he said, "settled after a variety of fortunes near the banks of the Delaware in the province of Pennsylvania," His farm was small, his servants few and good ; he had a little money at interest ; he asked for no more.
There were twelve of these letters by Dickinson published in the Pennsylvania Chronicle between December 2, 1767, and February 15, 1768. They were quickly copied in most of the other colonial newspapers, reprinted in pamphlet form in numerous editions in America and England, and translated in France. They caused the greatest excitement among our people. Town meetings, societies, and grand juries sent votes of thanks to the author. They toasted him at public dinners, and wrote poems and eulogies in his honor. At the same time we must remember that these letters were also attacked as going entirely too far and " calculated to excite the passions of tiie unthinking." *
* "Life and Writings of Dickinson," vol. ii. p. 280.
They enlarged in detail on the danger of losing control of the salaries of the governors. They showed the full meaning of Parliament's suspension of the legislative power of New York. They showed that if Parliament could suspend the functions of a colonial legislature, it was omnipotent in its control of the colonies. Dickinson was bold enough to answer the argument that England was too powerful to be resisted. It is also significant that he describes as a warning to the colonists how Ireland had lost her liberties.
He took the new ground of rejecting all authority of Parliament, and at the same time tried to make it appear that there was no change from the old line of argument. He kept all the old arguments going, so as to conceal the new movement. He clung to the old absurdity of allowing Parliament to regulate the commerce of the colonies by duties which should not be for revenue. This effort to conceal the change of ground renders a great deal of his reasoning very obscure to a modern reader.* But the patriot party understood him- Englishmen also understood his purpose and saw what was coming,+
* Franklin, who was in England at the time, was puzzled by this obscurity. "I know not what bounds the farmer sets to the power he acknowledges in Parliament to regulate the trade of the colonies, it being difficult to draw lines between duties for regulating and those for revenue ; and, if Parliament is to be the judge, it seems to me that establishing such principles of distinction will amount to little. 33 "Life and Writings of Dickinson," vol. ii. p. 281.
+Critical Review, xxvi. 62; "Life and Writings of Dickinson," vol. ii. p. 282.
In this same year, 1768, more strenuous efforts than ever were made to suppress smuggling. On June 10 there was the riot over the seizure of the sloop "Liberty." In September men-of-war and transports loaded with troops arrived in Boston to keep order. The British officials in the colony had asked for these troops.# By September 30 Boston Common was covered with tents, and about fourteen men-of-war lay in the harbor, with springs on their cables, and their broadsides covering the town.
# The loyalists said that citizens also asked for them. " The Conduct of the Late Administration examined," p. 53, et passim.
The position was serious and very peculiar; for, as Franklin said in his criticism on Dickinson's Letters, the Boston people were in their resolutions and documents acknowledging subordination to Parliament and at the same time denying its power to make laws for them.
The year 1769 opened with Parliament declaring in both speeches and resolutions that the colonies were in a state of disobedience to law and government, adopting measures subversive of the constitution and disclosing an inclination to throw off all obedience to the mother-country. This was unquestionably a true description of the situation ; and I cannot see that any good purpose is served by obscuring or denying it by means of those passages in the documents of the colonists in which they declare their " heartfelt loyalty" to Great Britain, disclaim all intention of independence, and acknowledge the supreme authority of Parliament. Those fulsome expressions deceived no one at that time, and why should they be used to deceive the guileless modern reader ? The patriot party made many such prudent statements, which were merely the nets and mattresses stretched below the acrobat in case he should fall.
We find Parliament in this year directing that the governor of Massachusetts obtain " the fullest information touching all treason or misprision of treason within his government since the 30th day of December, 1767, in order, as the instruction went on to say, that his Majesty might have such offences tried within the realm of England, according to the statute passed in the thirty-fifth year of the reign of Henry VIII."
The meaning of this, in plain English, was that a colonist suspected or accused of treason must not be tried in the colonies where any jury that could be called would probably acquit him as a matter of course. It seemed better to take him to England and try him there in the calm and impartial light of regular British administration. This measure filled the patriotic party in the colonies with the most violent indignation. They denounced it in every form of language ; and although no one was ever taken to England to be tried, it was enumerated in the Declaration of Independence as one of the causes of separation.
It was natural that our people, who, under the restraining power of France, had enjoyed so much liberty that they scarcely understood what a colony was, should be indignant at this suggestion of transporting them for trial. On the other hand, the ministry wished to establish British authority in the so-called colonies ; the law of Henry VIII. was on the statute-book ; it had been used several times ; the Scotch rebels had been tried out of the country in which their crimes were committed ; so, also, the Sussex smugglers and the murderers of Mr. Park, the governor of the "Windward Islands.
It afterwards also seemed necessary to prevent the colonists from trying in their courts British officials who might be accused by them of murder, when in their official capacity they were suppressing riots. They would be convicted as a matter of course. Provision was therefore made for taking such officials to England, or to another and more peaceable colony, for trial. This measure, like the other, was never enforced, but vigorously denounced by our people. There were no trials for treason in the Revolution, although England was on the verge of it several times.
Meantime, the non-importing associations were revived, in the hope that they would be as successful as they had been with the Stamp Act ; and we notice now for the first time that force and intimidation were used to compel merchants and others to join these associations and refrain from importing. Thus the year 1769 wore away until November, when, before the non-importation agreements had had any great effect, the extraordinary and unexpected news was received that the Tory ministry had of their own accord decided to repeal the duties on paint, paper, and glass and leave only the duty on tea.*
* Ramsay, " American Revolution," Trenton edition, 1811, p. 110 j Byerson, "American Loyalists,' 7 vol. i. p. 301; Hildreth, "United States," edition of 1880, vol. ii. p. 653; Bancroft, "United States," edition of 1883, vol. iii. p. 362,
In the spring they had been denouncing the colonial rebellion and preparing to punish traitors. In the autumn they had eaten their own words, and in effect complied with the request of the rebels. The small duty on tea was left standing merely to show that the right to tax remained, just as the Declaratory Act had been passed when the Stamp Act was repealed. This duty on tea would also, it was believed, be a test of the real sentiments of the colonists, and show whether or not they were bent on rebellion and independence under any pretext.
During the following winter this promise of repeal was promptly fulfilled. The duties on paint, paper, and glass were repealed, and the ministry even went farther and abandoned all attempt to compel the colonists to pay for their defense or to maintain the troops stationed among them. What could have been more gracious, more friendly, or more conciliatory than this ? I cannot agree with those writers, both American and English, who hold that a conciliatory policy would have saved the colonies to England.
We must remember that on this occasion Lord Hillsborough officially informed all the colonial governors that the ministry "entertained no design to propose to Parliament to lay any further taxes on America for the purpose of raising a revenue." This was in strict compliance with the colonial argument and with Dickinson's "Letters from a Farmer" that what America objected to was " taxation for the purpose of raising a revenue." The ministry had abandoned the revenue and abandoned the compulsory maintenance of the army. They could hardly have done more unless they had declared England the colony and America the mother-country. The colonies were put back very nearly into the old condition that prevailed before 1763.
Lord Hillsborough's promise that no more taxes should be laid on the colonies was faithfully kept. The British Parliament never passed another taxing act ; and, when five years later actual warfare began, no one could say that the promise had been broken, for there had not been even an attempt to pass such an act.
When we seek to discover why the Tory ministry made this sudden change, which was in effect an adoption of the Whig policy and Whig methods, we find that they had discovered that the new duties would not produce 16,000 per year, and that the military expenses in the colonies had increased to more than ten times that sum. The paint, paper, and glass duties being therefore a failure and an expense, causing great irritation, and England being already oppressed with debt, the ministry wished to compromise with the colonists and settle the dispute in a friendly way. They had been divided on the question, and, after long discussion of their differences, settled them in favor of the colonists.
If we seek still farther to explain this change of front, we may account for it, as a great deal of subsequent conciliation or vacillation may be accounted for, by the fear of France, Her shadow was appearing. She was again coming on the scene. The colonists were threatening to appeal to her ; and the Boston Gazette of September 20, 1768 ; had openly made the threat.* Even without the threat it was obviously France's policy to take advantage of any open rupture or difficulty that England might have with the colonies. France wished to revenge her humiliation in 1763 and cripple England's power as an empire. This fear paralyzed all of England's action. It was an underlying influence of debates in Parliament and consultations of ministers. England must avoid if possible the forcing of the dispute to that extremity.
* Holmes, Annals," vol. ii. pp. 177, 178.
But whatever may be the reasons, the important fact remains that in this year 1770 Great Britain withdrew the two great colonial grievances, taxation for revenue, and compulsory support of a standing army; and this event should not be obscured or placed in the background of historical narratives merely because it does not show sufficient tyranny or oppression on the part of England.
The first and most important consequence of this conciliation was that among the patriot or rebel party England's prestige was gone forever. She had lost much of her prestige and vastly encouraged that party when she repealed the Stamp Act at its dictation ; and now she had given the finishing stroke,+
+ " Letters of James Murray, Loyalist," p. 170.
England, of course, lost no prestige among the people afterwards called loyalists, people un-Americanized, inclining strongly towards England by taste and associations, and not inspired with the passion for ownership of the country in which they lived. These people accepted the repealing act in the spirit in which it was offered, as redressing grievances and tending to secure the colonies within the empire.
So very conciliatory was the repealing act and the promise of the ministry, that it had a quieting effect on all parties and put an end to excitement and turmoil for three or four years. The moderates in the patriot party were willing to let well enough alone, and the small duty on the one item of tea did not bother them any more than the old Declaratory Act. In truth, the extreme radicals of the Samuel Adams type had nothing with which to arouse the moderates. The agitation business was at a low ebb.
Within a few months, however, an accident occurred which could be used, and was used for a time, for purposes of excitement. It was one of those accidents which, in strained relations between independent nations, often precipitate a war.
The ministry had not thought it a necessary part of conciliation to withdraw the troops from Boston ; and it is difficult to see how they could properly have withdrawn them. The lives of the customs officials in that town had been threatened by the mobs, and were not safe ; and the troops and war-vessels had been asked for, and sent, for the purpose of protecting those officials as well as to assist them in enforcing the navigation laws.
The ministry could not very well abandon the enforcement of those laws. They had decided to stop smuggling, and had started to stop it. They could hardly draw back from that undertaking without surrendering completely to the colonists and abandoning the little that remained of British authority in America. Moreover, the colonists had admitted that such laws regulating trade were constitutional.
The contest and the strained relations were now confined to Boston. The rest of the colonies were quiet and had no particular grievance; and the contest itself had now returned to the old subject of smuggling.
The soldiers in Boston were extremely irritating; not only because they were swaggering and offensive after the British manner, but because Massachusetts was entirely unaccustomed to anything of that sort. If she had always been a real colony, accustomed to supervision, her people might have treated the military occupation as a small matter. British colonies often have considerable bodies of troops stationed in them. In our own time in Canada we have often seen the people quietly acquiescing in the presence of the red-coated regiments which caused such frenzy in Massachusetts. But Massachusetts had at one time enjoyed semi-independence, and the presence of troops to enforce laws which she had disobeyed for a hundred years, and grown rich through disobeying, was almost unbearable. Her people felt towards those troops very much as they would feel today if Boston were occupied by a foreign soldiery.
It was naturally
to be expected
that anything
like ill conduct
by the soldiery would be exaggerated by the
people and used by
the patriot leaders to stimulate their
resentment. There is no question
that some of the more
radical and fiery spirits were constantly exciting the townspeople
to quarrel with the soldiers. Both men and boys
made a constant practice
to insult the "bloody-backs," or
"
scoundrels in red,"
as they
called them
;
and they would
shout at them,
"lobsters for sale." The soldiers in their
turn had their insults for the
"
mohairs,"
or
"
dung-hill
tribe," as they called the colonists. The soldiers were
often arrested by the local magistrates, whom we may be
sure were not lenient with them and the colonists complained
that the officers screened their men from punishment.
On the 2nd of March, 1770, a soldier asking for employment at Gray's rope-walk was refused in. coarse language. He insisted on having a boxing-match with one of the workmen, and was beaten. He returned with some companions and was driven off, and a larger number coming to fight with clubs and cutlasses were also driven off. On the night of the 5th there was much disturbance in the streets ; the soldiers were swaggering and threatening, and the citizens and boys replying to them in language equally abusive. The mob, armed with clubs, balls of ice, and stones inside of snow-balls, finally pressed upon a picket guard of eight men, daring them to fire. The soldiers restrained themselves for some time, until one, receiving a blow, fired his musket, and immediately six of the others fired. Three citizens were killed and eight wounded.*
*John Adams, "Works, vol. ii. p. 229; Ramsay, "Colonial History," vol. i. pp. 364, 365 ; Holmes, " Annals," vol. ii. pp. 166, 167 ; Hildreth, u History of the United States," vol. ii. chap. xxix. pp. 554, 555
There was at once great excitement in the town. The bells were rung; the cry was spread, "The soldiers are rising," and many believed that a general attack by the citizens on the soldiery was narrowly averted. The next day a town meeting was called. A committee, of which Samuel Adams was chairman, urged Governor Hutchinson to remove all the soldiers from the town to preserve the peace and prevent an attack by the people, who would soon be swarming in from the country. After some hesitation Hutchinson agreed that the soldiers should be sent down the harbor to the castle. This was, from one point of view, a wise and creditable expedient to prevent violence. But we must also remember that it was a yielding on the part of England to the demands of the colonists, with the redoubtable rebel Sam Adams at their head.
The captain of the guard and the eight men had been
immediately arrested. They were turned over to the civil
authorities of the colony, regularly tried, defended by John Adams and Josiah Quincy, and the captain and six of the
men acquitted. The remaining two were brought
in guilty
of manslaughter, and slightly punished. This trial reflected
the greatest
credit not only on the jury, but on
Adams and Quincy, who were patriot leaders; and the
verdict of the jury showed that the soldiers had not been
seriously to blame. But most of the patriot party seized
upon the occurrence for their own purposes. They called
it the
"
Boston Massacre," and Paul Revere prepared
a
colored engraving
of the scene, calling
it the
"Bloody
Massacre." They exaggerated
it into a ferocious and unprovoked
assault by brutal soldiers upon
a defenseless people,
and the eagerness with which this exaggeration was
encouraged showed whither events were tending.
The evidence taken at the trial has been published,* and contains all we really know about the event. It is worth reading as an astonishing revelation of the times, the anger and resentment of a large part of the people, the torrents of abuse and slang that were exchanged, the hatred of England and English control, and the readiness to destroy any symbol of that control. After reading the description by the witnesses of that night in Boston, one sees that the American communities could never be turned into modern colonies by the conciliatory policy, or any policy except some sort of extermination.
* "The Trial of the British Soldiers of the Twenty-ninth Regiment of Foot for the Murder," etc., Boston, 1807. It reveals a great deal of local color, and discloses to us the Boston street boy of that day.
The government had been most lenient in surrendering the guard to be tried by a jury of colonists and in removing the troops from Boston, so that the "massacre" could not at that time be worked up into rebellion. The government had certainly not acted harshly. On the contrary, there had been so much yielding that the two regiments that had been sent out of Boston were ever afterwards ridiculed in England as the " Sam Adams regiments."
The colonists quieted down. John Adams retired from politics and devoted himself to his profession. Except for the partially successful attempts to repress their smuggling, the people were very much in the same semi-independent condition as before the French War. The slight tax on tea, which had been left partly to show that Parliament was the supreme power and partly as a test to see how rebellious the colonists were, worked well enough, because the colonists did not mind it ; and continued to smuggle tea from Holland.
There were strong indications that possibly the American problem had been settled, and that the colonies would remain colonies of the old smuggling kind, disregarding such laws as failed to please them. Violent efforts were made by the more radical to keep up the non-importation associations, but without success. One by one the Southern colonies and then Pennsylvania and the New England colonies and New York began importing all English commodities except tea. The protest which the extreme patriots made against this is instructive as showing the condition of parties. They declared that the spirit of liberty was dead. The students at Princeton, among whom was James Madison, put on black gowns, and Lynch, of South Carolina, is said to have shed tears over what he deemed the lost cause.
This state of quietude lasted three years, to the great annoyance of men like Samuel Adams, who were bent on absolute independence. But most of the patriots were content that they could repeal acts of Parliament and order British troops out of a town.
to be continued...next...
THE TEA EPISODE
They now began to realize the absurdity of the ground they had taken, and to see that the colonial relation necessarily implied full power of Parliament over New York or any other colony. New York, however, submitted, obeyed orders, and everything remained comparatively quiet.
A few months after the repeal of the Stamp Act the king and the Rockingham ministry disagreed, and on July 7, 1766, that ministry went out of office. William Pitt formed a new one, made up of politicians from the various cliques and factions of the Whigs, a most impossible and impracticable ministry, and as short-lived as its predecessor.
Pitt was no longer the powerful statesman who had carried England through the great war with France and secured for her Canada and what seemed to be a worldwide empire. His health was broken and his nervous system shattered. He was afflicted with paroxysms of anger, could not bear the slightest noise, or even the presence of his children in the same house with him. He spent enormous sums of money in planting his country seat, " Hayes," and secluding himself within it. He sold the country-seat, but was so unhappy at parting with it that his wife bought it back for him. He required a constant succession of chickens to be kept cooking in his kitchens all day to satisfy his uncertain, but at times ravenous, appetite.*
* Lecky, " England in the Eighteenth Century," edition of 1882, vol. iii. p. 121
In forming the new ministry he compelled the king to give him a title, and henceforth he is known as Lord Chatham. Within a few weeks after forming the ministry his health failed so rapidly that he had to be taken to the continent. He never afterwards exercised any control in the ministry of which he was supposed to be the head and within a little more than a year he retired from it altogether. But up to his death, in 1778, he would occasionally appear in the House of Lords to make those eloquent and pathetic appeals, from which our school-boys used to recite passages, denouncing the government because it would not withdraw all the troops from America, and by peaceful discussion persuade the colonies to stay within the empire.
As for the ministry he had formed, it was not his in any sense. On every question it pursued a course opposed to his policy and after extraordinary confusion and divisions it soon ceased to bear even the semblance of a Whig ministry,* for by successive resignations Tories were admitted until it became all Tory. Lord Hillsborough and Lord North were admitted to it ; and finally that extreme and thorough-going Tory Lord George Germain. The Whigs went entirely out of power, and for the remainder of the time we have a Tory government dealing with the colonies.
* Lecky, " England in the Eighteenth Century," edition of 1882, vol. iii. p. 123, et seq
The constant changing of ministries at this time had not a little to do with the development of the revolutionary spirit in America. A ministry seldom lasted over a year. While there were the two great parties, Whig and Tory, they were strangely confused and split up into factions. Party lines were not distinctly drawn,+ There could be no consistent and steady colonial policy. Whig ministries used Tory methods and Tory ministries used Whig methods. The uncertainty, the shifting back and forth from severity to liberality, passing taxing acts and repealing them, was a vast encouragement to the colonial rebels. As our Revolution advanced we find party lines and policies in England becoming clearer, until towards the end they are quite distinct ; and in 1778 the ministry carried out a distinctly Tory policy.
+Ibid., pp. 110-114
As one reads in this period of English history how weak, divided, and headless every ministry was; how bankrupt and disturbed business had become; how violent the excitement and rioting over Wilkes ; how incapable the government was to keep ordinary civil order even in London, one cannot help smiling to think of the opportunities our ancestors had in this confusion. There has been no period since then when we could have broken away so easily. Luck was an important factor in the Revolution, and attended us from the beginning to the end.
In the autumn of 1766 Parliament went to the country, and, as was naturally to be expected, the new election returned a body more determined than ever to remodel the colonies, It is difficult for any nation to endure a dependency where its sovereignty is not recognized. The colonists had compelled England to repeal an important law, and had brought about this repeal by violence, by withholding trade, by starving English merchants and workingmen. Could this be endured ? could it be possible that a set of inferior people in a dependency had such power as that?
Observing the temper the house was in, Charles Townsend, Chancellor of the Exchequer, a whig, and a most brilliant but uncertain member of the patch-work Chatham ministry, announced, on January 26, 1767, that the administration was prepared to solve the American problem. This solution would render the colonies self 'sustaining, and relieve Great Britain of the expense of securing, defending, and protecting them. He knew, he said, a mode by which revenue could be drawn from America for this purpose without causing the heat and turmoil of the Stamp Act ; and for this hopeful announcement he was vigorously applauded on all sides.
His plan was nothing more than taking the colonists at their word on the distinction between external and internal taxes. They had said that they were willing to pay external taxes, so a bill was introduced laying a duty on paint, paper, glass, and tea imported into the colonies, and to be paid at their seaports in the exact manner which they had said was lawful and constitutional.
It was also at this time that other bills were introduced creating commissioners of customs to reside in Boston, strengthening the jurisdiction of the admiralty courts, and taking other vigorous measures to suppress American smuggling, as already described in a previous chapter. This patch-work Whig ministry felt as strongly as the Tories the necessity for remodeling and reforming the colonies.
The paint, paper, and glass act was a great landmark in the Revolution, and wrought a great change of opinion. The colonists were fairly caught in their own argument. These new taxes were external, and, therefore, constitutional. At the same time they were laid on articles of such universal use, imported in such large quantities from England, that they would be paid in the enhanced price of the articles by all the people all over the country just like the stamp tax, and so were as much an internal taxation as the stamp tax. The colonists could only weakly argue against them that they were purely for raising revenue, and not for the regulation of the commerce of the empire.
But although they were as internal in their effect as the stamp tax, they could not be resisted, as the stamp tax had been resisted, by simply not using the stamps. These taxes were collected at the seaports by the authority and force of the British, navy and army and a host of new revenue officers. If the articles were imported, the taxes would usually be paid, and the articles were of such universal use that it was difficult not to import them.
Petitions, resolves, and remonstrances were again sent to England, and the associations for suspending importations were renewed ; but it is noticeable that there was no rioting. In fact, the colonists were acting in a rather subdued manner. They hardly knew what to think. The next step was a serious one. They must adopt new political principles. Their leaders were holding them in check. A town meeting was held in Boston to discountenance rioting, and Otis urged caution and advised that no opposition should be made to the new duties. On the 20th of November, 1767, when the taxes went into effect, the people were remarkably quiet.*
* Barry, " History of Massachusetts," vol. ii. pp. 340, 341
Their petitions, letters, and public documents are full of the most elaborate expressions of loyalty and devotion. The famous petition which Massachusetts sent to the king in January, 1768, is apparently the perfection of simple hearted unquestioning loyalty. Knowing what was in their hearts, it is most amusing to read the long-drawn-out humble submissiveness of their words. There is no bold arguing against the right to tax. They merely beg and beseech to be relieved from these new taxes. If they cannot be relieved from them, then they can only " regret their unhappy fate." They repeat the old unfortunate admission of the Stamp Act Congress that Parliament has superintending authority over them, but instead of adding the exception of internal taxation, they have a new exception, which they state by saying that this supremo authority extends to "all cases that can consist with the fundamental rights of nature and the constitution." Those words," fundamental rights of nature," were a new way of limiting the authority of Parliament and significant of what was soon to happen.
Glancing at the documents sent out by the other, colonies, we find another idea obtruding itself. They ask for a return of the conditions and privileges they had enjoyed before the French War closed in 1763; the old days when the French in Canada prevented any remodeling or reform by England. This request for a return to that happy golden age became a watchword in the patriot party.
In the next month, February, 1768, the Massachusetts Assembly sent to all the other colonial assemblies a circular letter, very cautiously worded, and arguing the subject in a quiet way. There is nothing about external and internal taxes ; but the recent duties on paint, paper, and glass are said to be infringements of their natural and constitutional rights, because such duties take away their property without their consent ; which is simply a roundabout way of saying that no taxation without representation, and the doctrine of consent, must now be applied to external as well as internal taxes.
It is to be observed that they say that the duties are infringements of their natural and constitutional rights. A year or two before it was only their constitutional rights ; now it is also their natural rights. They are broadening their position to meet the new conditions. Massachusetts also said in the circular letter that the doctrine of consent was an "unalterable right in nature ingrafted into the British Constitution." This was altogether a new way of looking at the British Constitution, to "ingraft" upon it a right of nature against the will of Parliament and the English people ; and these rights of nature will soon have to be considered in a separate chapter.
The Massachusetts circular letter, of course, insists strongly that it is impossible that the colonies should ever be represented in Parliament ; and it declares in all seriousness that the colonists are not seeking " to make themselves independent of the mother country." In short, they are just dear, good children, who are so devoted to mother England that they will show her how to remodel her constitution.
The British government, however, was not in the least deceived. They very naturally regarded this letter as " of a most dangerous and factious tendency, calculated to inflame the minds of good subjects in the colonies." The chief object of the letter had been to promote union among the colonies, unite them in opposition, and encourage a reciprocal expression of feeling. The government quickly saw this, and there was an unsuccessful attempt to have Massachusetts rescind the letter.* This caused an irritating controversy, which has been most voluminously described in many histories, but into the details of which we have not space to enter.[I have to say I am a bit troubled by this the author implies that this is a true history of our revolution, yet then says he does not have the space to go into detail about what he admits caused a controversy, so it just makes me more aware that the author has a bias and agenda to spin this 'true' history in a certain direction DC]
* Paul Bevere, patriot, silversmith, engraver, and lover of saddlehorses, celebrated the refusal of the legislature to rescind by making a handsome silver punch-bowl, inscribed, To the Memory of the Glorious Ninety-two Members of the Honorable House of Representatives of the Massachusetts Bay, who on the 30th of June, 1708, voted not to rescind.
It has been commonly said that the attempt of the government to have the letter rescinded was unwise because it was practically a denial of the right to petition, and made the colonies more rebellious than ever. But the ministry were in an awkward predicament. They saw that the colonies were evidently moving off. There was a powerful rebel party at work among them. Should the government stand still and let them go ?
The most serious provision of the paint, paper,and glass act remains yet to be mentioned. The colonists had objected to the Stamp Act because it was understood that the revenue from it was to be devoted to keeping an army among them. They were also unalterably opposed to any system by which revenue raised from them was to be turned generally into the English exchequer. The paint, paper, and glass act was intended to obviate both of these objections. The revenue raised from it was to be spent entirely on the colonies themselves in maintaining among them civil government and the administration of justice. There was to be a colonial civil list, as it was called, and hereafter all governors, judges, and other colonial executive officials were to receive fixed salaries paid by the crown out of the revenue raised by the duties on paint, paper, glass, and tea. The old system of the assemblies securing the passage of their favorite laws by withholding the governor's salary, and of controlling the judges in the same way, was to cease. There was to be no more bargain and sale legislation; but in place of it orderly, methodical, regular government.
This, as previously shown, struck at the root of what the colonists considered their system of freedom. If they could no longer control governors and executive officials through their salaries, they could no longer have their favorite laws. They would become mere colonies, compelled to take what was given to them and to do as they were told.
The first man to come forward with a popular and encouraging statement of the colonist side of the controversy was John Dickinson, a young man of thirty-five, a Quaker, and a lawyer of considerable practice in Philadelphia. He had been for some years more or less concerned in politics ; had been a member of the Stamp Act Congress, and had drafted several of its documents.
He seems to have understood that the arguments thus far published were too brief and general. There was not enough of detail in them. The aggressive or patriot party among the colonists needed more light and were not sufficiently aroused. He accordingly wrote for one of the newspapers a series of " Letters from a Farmer" which accomplished his purpose most admirably. They awoke the colonists with a bound. The title was also fortunate, for the farmers were by far the largest and most important class in the community.
His opening sentence was captivating. "I am a farmer," he said, "settled after a variety of fortunes near the banks of the Delaware in the province of Pennsylvania," His farm was small, his servants few and good ; he had a little money at interest ; he asked for no more.
There were twelve of these letters by Dickinson published in the Pennsylvania Chronicle between December 2, 1767, and February 15, 1768. They were quickly copied in most of the other colonial newspapers, reprinted in pamphlet form in numerous editions in America and England, and translated in France. They caused the greatest excitement among our people. Town meetings, societies, and grand juries sent votes of thanks to the author. They toasted him at public dinners, and wrote poems and eulogies in his honor. At the same time we must remember that these letters were also attacked as going entirely too far and " calculated to excite the passions of tiie unthinking." *
* "Life and Writings of Dickinson," vol. ii. p. 280.
They enlarged in detail on the danger of losing control of the salaries of the governors. They showed the full meaning of Parliament's suspension of the legislative power of New York. They showed that if Parliament could suspend the functions of a colonial legislature, it was omnipotent in its control of the colonies. Dickinson was bold enough to answer the argument that England was too powerful to be resisted. It is also significant that he describes as a warning to the colonists how Ireland had lost her liberties.
He took the new ground of rejecting all authority of Parliament, and at the same time tried to make it appear that there was no change from the old line of argument. He kept all the old arguments going, so as to conceal the new movement. He clung to the old absurdity of allowing Parliament to regulate the commerce of the colonies by duties which should not be for revenue. This effort to conceal the change of ground renders a great deal of his reasoning very obscure to a modern reader.* But the patriot party understood him- Englishmen also understood his purpose and saw what was coming,+
* Franklin, who was in England at the time, was puzzled by this obscurity. "I know not what bounds the farmer sets to the power he acknowledges in Parliament to regulate the trade of the colonies, it being difficult to draw lines between duties for regulating and those for revenue ; and, if Parliament is to be the judge, it seems to me that establishing such principles of distinction will amount to little. 33 "Life and Writings of Dickinson," vol. ii. p. 281.
+Critical Review, xxvi. 62; "Life and Writings of Dickinson," vol. ii. p. 282.
In this same year, 1768, more strenuous efforts than ever were made to suppress smuggling. On June 10 there was the riot over the seizure of the sloop "Liberty." In September men-of-war and transports loaded with troops arrived in Boston to keep order. The British officials in the colony had asked for these troops.# By September 30 Boston Common was covered with tents, and about fourteen men-of-war lay in the harbor, with springs on their cables, and their broadsides covering the town.
# The loyalists said that citizens also asked for them. " The Conduct of the Late Administration examined," p. 53, et passim.
The position was serious and very peculiar; for, as Franklin said in his criticism on Dickinson's Letters, the Boston people were in their resolutions and documents acknowledging subordination to Parliament and at the same time denying its power to make laws for them.
The year 1769 opened with Parliament declaring in both speeches and resolutions that the colonies were in a state of disobedience to law and government, adopting measures subversive of the constitution and disclosing an inclination to throw off all obedience to the mother-country. This was unquestionably a true description of the situation ; and I cannot see that any good purpose is served by obscuring or denying it by means of those passages in the documents of the colonists in which they declare their " heartfelt loyalty" to Great Britain, disclaim all intention of independence, and acknowledge the supreme authority of Parliament. Those fulsome expressions deceived no one at that time, and why should they be used to deceive the guileless modern reader ? The patriot party made many such prudent statements, which were merely the nets and mattresses stretched below the acrobat in case he should fall.
We find Parliament in this year directing that the governor of Massachusetts obtain " the fullest information touching all treason or misprision of treason within his government since the 30th day of December, 1767, in order, as the instruction went on to say, that his Majesty might have such offences tried within the realm of England, according to the statute passed in the thirty-fifth year of the reign of Henry VIII."
The meaning of this, in plain English, was that a colonist suspected or accused of treason must not be tried in the colonies where any jury that could be called would probably acquit him as a matter of course. It seemed better to take him to England and try him there in the calm and impartial light of regular British administration. This measure filled the patriotic party in the colonies with the most violent indignation. They denounced it in every form of language ; and although no one was ever taken to England to be tried, it was enumerated in the Declaration of Independence as one of the causes of separation.
It was natural that our people, who, under the restraining power of France, had enjoyed so much liberty that they scarcely understood what a colony was, should be indignant at this suggestion of transporting them for trial. On the other hand, the ministry wished to establish British authority in the so-called colonies ; the law of Henry VIII. was on the statute-book ; it had been used several times ; the Scotch rebels had been tried out of the country in which their crimes were committed ; so, also, the Sussex smugglers and the murderers of Mr. Park, the governor of the "Windward Islands.
It afterwards also seemed necessary to prevent the colonists from trying in their courts British officials who might be accused by them of murder, when in their official capacity they were suppressing riots. They would be convicted as a matter of course. Provision was therefore made for taking such officials to England, or to another and more peaceable colony, for trial. This measure, like the other, was never enforced, but vigorously denounced by our people. There were no trials for treason in the Revolution, although England was on the verge of it several times.
Meantime, the non-importing associations were revived, in the hope that they would be as successful as they had been with the Stamp Act ; and we notice now for the first time that force and intimidation were used to compel merchants and others to join these associations and refrain from importing. Thus the year 1769 wore away until November, when, before the non-importation agreements had had any great effect, the extraordinary and unexpected news was received that the Tory ministry had of their own accord decided to repeal the duties on paint, paper, and glass and leave only the duty on tea.*
* Ramsay, " American Revolution," Trenton edition, 1811, p. 110 j Byerson, "American Loyalists,' 7 vol. i. p. 301; Hildreth, "United States," edition of 1880, vol. ii. p. 653; Bancroft, "United States," edition of 1883, vol. iii. p. 362,
In the spring they had been denouncing the colonial rebellion and preparing to punish traitors. In the autumn they had eaten their own words, and in effect complied with the request of the rebels. The small duty on tea was left standing merely to show that the right to tax remained, just as the Declaratory Act had been passed when the Stamp Act was repealed. This duty on tea would also, it was believed, be a test of the real sentiments of the colonists, and show whether or not they were bent on rebellion and independence under any pretext.
During the following winter this promise of repeal was promptly fulfilled. The duties on paint, paper, and glass were repealed, and the ministry even went farther and abandoned all attempt to compel the colonists to pay for their defense or to maintain the troops stationed among them. What could have been more gracious, more friendly, or more conciliatory than this ? I cannot agree with those writers, both American and English, who hold that a conciliatory policy would have saved the colonies to England.
We must remember that on this occasion Lord Hillsborough officially informed all the colonial governors that the ministry "entertained no design to propose to Parliament to lay any further taxes on America for the purpose of raising a revenue." This was in strict compliance with the colonial argument and with Dickinson's "Letters from a Farmer" that what America objected to was " taxation for the purpose of raising a revenue." The ministry had abandoned the revenue and abandoned the compulsory maintenance of the army. They could hardly have done more unless they had declared England the colony and America the mother-country. The colonies were put back very nearly into the old condition that prevailed before 1763.
Lord Hillsborough's promise that no more taxes should be laid on the colonies was faithfully kept. The British Parliament never passed another taxing act ; and, when five years later actual warfare began, no one could say that the promise had been broken, for there had not been even an attempt to pass such an act.
When we seek to discover why the Tory ministry made this sudden change, which was in effect an adoption of the Whig policy and Whig methods, we find that they had discovered that the new duties would not produce 16,000 per year, and that the military expenses in the colonies had increased to more than ten times that sum. The paint, paper, and glass duties being therefore a failure and an expense, causing great irritation, and England being already oppressed with debt, the ministry wished to compromise with the colonists and settle the dispute in a friendly way. They had been divided on the question, and, after long discussion of their differences, settled them in favor of the colonists.
If we seek still farther to explain this change of front, we may account for it, as a great deal of subsequent conciliation or vacillation may be accounted for, by the fear of France, Her shadow was appearing. She was again coming on the scene. The colonists were threatening to appeal to her ; and the Boston Gazette of September 20, 1768 ; had openly made the threat.* Even without the threat it was obviously France's policy to take advantage of any open rupture or difficulty that England might have with the colonies. France wished to revenge her humiliation in 1763 and cripple England's power as an empire. This fear paralyzed all of England's action. It was an underlying influence of debates in Parliament and consultations of ministers. England must avoid if possible the forcing of the dispute to that extremity.
* Holmes, Annals," vol. ii. pp. 177, 178.
But whatever may be the reasons, the important fact remains that in this year 1770 Great Britain withdrew the two great colonial grievances, taxation for revenue, and compulsory support of a standing army; and this event should not be obscured or placed in the background of historical narratives merely because it does not show sufficient tyranny or oppression on the part of England.
The first and most important consequence of this conciliation was that among the patriot or rebel party England's prestige was gone forever. She had lost much of her prestige and vastly encouraged that party when she repealed the Stamp Act at its dictation ; and now she had given the finishing stroke,+
+ " Letters of James Murray, Loyalist," p. 170.
England, of course, lost no prestige among the people afterwards called loyalists, people un-Americanized, inclining strongly towards England by taste and associations, and not inspired with the passion for ownership of the country in which they lived. These people accepted the repealing act in the spirit in which it was offered, as redressing grievances and tending to secure the colonies within the empire.
So very conciliatory was the repealing act and the promise of the ministry, that it had a quieting effect on all parties and put an end to excitement and turmoil for three or four years. The moderates in the patriot party were willing to let well enough alone, and the small duty on the one item of tea did not bother them any more than the old Declaratory Act. In truth, the extreme radicals of the Samuel Adams type had nothing with which to arouse the moderates. The agitation business was at a low ebb.
Within a few months, however, an accident occurred which could be used, and was used for a time, for purposes of excitement. It was one of those accidents which, in strained relations between independent nations, often precipitate a war.
The ministry had not thought it a necessary part of conciliation to withdraw the troops from Boston ; and it is difficult to see how they could properly have withdrawn them. The lives of the customs officials in that town had been threatened by the mobs, and were not safe ; and the troops and war-vessels had been asked for, and sent, for the purpose of protecting those officials as well as to assist them in enforcing the navigation laws.
The ministry could not very well abandon the enforcement of those laws. They had decided to stop smuggling, and had started to stop it. They could hardly draw back from that undertaking without surrendering completely to the colonists and abandoning the little that remained of British authority in America. Moreover, the colonists had admitted that such laws regulating trade were constitutional.
The contest and the strained relations were now confined to Boston. The rest of the colonies were quiet and had no particular grievance; and the contest itself had now returned to the old subject of smuggling.
The soldiers in Boston were extremely irritating; not only because they were swaggering and offensive after the British manner, but because Massachusetts was entirely unaccustomed to anything of that sort. If she had always been a real colony, accustomed to supervision, her people might have treated the military occupation as a small matter. British colonies often have considerable bodies of troops stationed in them. In our own time in Canada we have often seen the people quietly acquiescing in the presence of the red-coated regiments which caused such frenzy in Massachusetts. But Massachusetts had at one time enjoyed semi-independence, and the presence of troops to enforce laws which she had disobeyed for a hundred years, and grown rich through disobeying, was almost unbearable. Her people felt towards those troops very much as they would feel today if Boston were occupied by a foreign soldiery.
On the 2nd of March, 1770, a soldier asking for employment at Gray's rope-walk was refused in. coarse language. He insisted on having a boxing-match with one of the workmen, and was beaten. He returned with some companions and was driven off, and a larger number coming to fight with clubs and cutlasses were also driven off. On the night of the 5th there was much disturbance in the streets ; the soldiers were swaggering and threatening, and the citizens and boys replying to them in language equally abusive. The mob, armed with clubs, balls of ice, and stones inside of snow-balls, finally pressed upon a picket guard of eight men, daring them to fire. The soldiers restrained themselves for some time, until one, receiving a blow, fired his musket, and immediately six of the others fired. Three citizens were killed and eight wounded.*
*John Adams, "Works, vol. ii. p. 229; Ramsay, "Colonial History," vol. i. pp. 364, 365 ; Holmes, " Annals," vol. ii. pp. 166, 167 ; Hildreth, u History of the United States," vol. ii. chap. xxix. pp. 554, 555
There was at once great excitement in the town. The bells were rung; the cry was spread, "The soldiers are rising," and many believed that a general attack by the citizens on the soldiery was narrowly averted. The next day a town meeting was called. A committee, of which Samuel Adams was chairman, urged Governor Hutchinson to remove all the soldiers from the town to preserve the peace and prevent an attack by the people, who would soon be swarming in from the country. After some hesitation Hutchinson agreed that the soldiers should be sent down the harbor to the castle. This was, from one point of view, a wise and creditable expedient to prevent violence. But we must also remember that it was a yielding on the part of England to the demands of the colonists, with the redoubtable rebel Sam Adams at their head.
The evidence taken at the trial has been published,* and contains all we really know about the event. It is worth reading as an astonishing revelation of the times, the anger and resentment of a large part of the people, the torrents of abuse and slang that were exchanged, the hatred of England and English control, and the readiness to destroy any symbol of that control. After reading the description by the witnesses of that night in Boston, one sees that the American communities could never be turned into modern colonies by the conciliatory policy, or any policy except some sort of extermination.
* "The Trial of the British Soldiers of the Twenty-ninth Regiment of Foot for the Murder," etc., Boston, 1807. It reveals a great deal of local color, and discloses to us the Boston street boy of that day.
The government had been most lenient in surrendering the guard to be tried by a jury of colonists and in removing the troops from Boston, so that the "massacre" could not at that time be worked up into rebellion. The government had certainly not acted harshly. On the contrary, there had been so much yielding that the two regiments that had been sent out of Boston were ever afterwards ridiculed in England as the " Sam Adams regiments."
The colonists quieted down. John Adams retired from politics and devoted himself to his profession. Except for the partially successful attempts to repress their smuggling, the people were very much in the same semi-independent condition as before the French War. The slight tax on tea, which had been left partly to show that Parliament was the supreme power and partly as a test to see how rebellious the colonists were, worked well enough, because the colonists did not mind it ; and continued to smuggle tea from Holland.
There were strong indications that possibly the American problem had been settled, and that the colonies would remain colonies of the old smuggling kind, disregarding such laws as failed to please them. Violent efforts were made by the more radical to keep up the non-importation associations, but without success. One by one the Southern colonies and then Pennsylvania and the New England colonies and New York began importing all English commodities except tea. The protest which the extreme patriots made against this is instructive as showing the condition of parties. They declared that the spirit of liberty was dead. The students at Princeton, among whom was James Madison, put on black gowns, and Lynch, of South Carolina, is said to have shed tears over what he deemed the lost cause.
This state of quietude lasted three years, to the great annoyance of men like Samuel Adams, who were bent on absolute independence. But most of the patriots were content that they could repeal acts of Parliament and order British troops out of a town.
to be continued...next...
THE TEA EPISODE
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