THE GRENVILLE ADMINISTRATION.The king appears to have received Bute's resignation without regret; indeed it was remarked that the day before it was announced he was in unusually good spirits, "like a person just emancipated".[65] Bute had done all that he could do for him as prime minister; he had cleared the ground for the establishment of the king's system of government; the whig oligarchy was disorganised and overthrown, and the war was at an end. George could not have wished to keep a minister in office who was hated by his people; that would have been contrary to the idea of a patriot king, and would in time have made him unpopular. Nor was he perhaps altogether satisfied with Bute's conduct in office; for in later life he observed that he was "deficient in political firmness".[66] Bute was to continue to be useful to him in another capacity in which political firmness was not so important; he was to be the king's private adviser, and help him to select and manage his responsible ministers. Through his instrumentality, George had already secured a set of ministers who would, they both believed, be content to carry out the king's will. Grenville, though he had opposed Bute in the cabinet with reference to the negotiations with France, professed that as prime minister he would try to win his complete approval, and with only one exception allowed Bute to form his administration for him. Bute and his master thought they had secured a useful tool, a subservient and hard-working drudge. They were mistaken in their man; Grenville was independent and self-confident. He took the two offices of first lord of the treasury and chancellor of the exchequer. Dashwood retired with Bute and the barony of Despencer was called out of abeyance in his favour. Halifax and Egremont remained secretaries of state and Henley lord chancellor. Bedford distrusted Bute and refused to take office. The new administration promised to exercise economy, and Grenville took care that the pledge should be redeemed. Its frugality did not make it popular; it did not command the confidence of the nation, and was generally considered a feeble continuation of its predecessor.The king prorogued parliament on April 19, 1763; his speech described the peace as honourable to his crown, and claimed, or at least implied, that it had induced the enemies of the Prussian king "to agree to a peace which he had approved". On the 23rd appeared No. 45 of the North Briton with a violent denunciation of the speech. It declared that the king had given "the sanction of his sacred name to the most odious measures and to the most unjustifiable public declarations from a throne ever renowned for truth, honour, and unsullied virtue". That the ministers were responsible for the king's speech was well understood, and was clearly recognised in the article. George took the article as conveying an accusation of falsehood against himself personally, and there was some excuse for this interpretation of it. Other numbers of the paper had been violent, and had been passed by without notice. His present ministers were not deficient in political firmness; he ordered them to prosecute the writer. Halifax thereupon issued a general warrant, that is a warrant directed against persons not named, ordering the king's messengers to search for the authors, printers, and publishers of the North Briton, arrest them and seize their papers. Warrants of this kind to be executed on persons not named, without evidence of their identity or guilt, had hitherto been held lawful, but they were subversive of the liberty of the subject and contrary to the spirit of the constitution. During three days forty-nine persons were arrested under this warrant. Among them were the avowed publisher of the North Briton, the printer, and his workmen. They declared that Wilkes was the author.
PROCEEDINGS IN WILKES'S CASE.
Wilkes was arrested under the general warrant on the 30th, and carried before the secretaries of state; his house was searched and his papers seized. He was committed to the Tower. He hoped, he said, that he might have the room in which Egremont's father had been confined as a rebel, and, referring to the popular belief as to the consequences of the dirty habits of Bute's fellow-countrymen, in any case, one which had not been tenanted by a Scot. Temple at once applied on his behalf for a writ of habeas corpus, which was granted by Pratt, chief justice of the common pleas, but as Wilkes was no longer in the custody of the messengers, they could not produce him. He was kept in close confinement; Temple and the Duke of Grafton who went to see him were not admitted, and even his solicitor was denied access to him. A new writ was issued, and on May 3 he was brought before the court of common pleas. He pleaded his privilege as a member of parliament. Pratt delivered judgment on the 6th and decided that he was entitled to the privilege of parliament, which extended to all offences save treason, felony, and breach of the peace. The other judges concurred, and he was set at liberty. The crowd which had collected in Westminster Hall received the result of the trial with loud applause, and escorted Wilkes to his house in Great George Street. Meanwhile Egremont had in the king's name ordered Temple, the lord lieutenant of Buckinghamshire, to deprive Wilkes of his commission as colonel of the Bucks militia. In forwarding this order to Wilkes, Temple added some complimentary expressions, and on the 7th the earl was dismissed both from his lieutenancy and the privy council.
Several persons who were arrested on the general warrant brought actions against the messengers. In the first of these suits Pratt, setting aside evil precedents, declared general warrants to be illegal. A master-printer obtained £400 damages, one journeyman £300, and others £200. Wilkes sued Wood, the under-secretary of state, for ransacking his house, and the jury awarded him £1,000 damages. He also began actions for false imprisonment against the two secretaries of state. His suit against Egremont was cut short by the earl's death on August 20. Halifax took advantage of various legal devices to delay the hearing of the suit against himself, and it was not decided until six years later. Temple, who had paid Wilkes's law expenses, wished him to avoid giving further cause of offence. Wilkes, however, set up a press in his own house, reprinted the North Briton in volumes, and printed other matter also. The arbitrary proceedings of the government in this case excited much adverse feeling, especially in London, and gave a fresh impetus to the discontent in the cider districts. They were attributed to Bute's influence. In some western villages a man in Scottish dress led about an ass decorated with a blue ribbon and wearing a paper crown; and at Exeter an effigy of Bute remained hanging on a gibbet for a fortnight, no one daring to remove it.
MINISTERIAL CHANGES.
George, though at first well pleased with the new administration, soon saw that it lacked strength. He made an attempt to enlist Hardwicke and Newcastle, but they would not take office without their party. Bute advised an offer to Bedford, who declared that he would not join the government unless Bute would undertake to retire, not only from the court, but from London. Negotiations were also carried on with Pitt, whom Bute was most anxious to secure for the king. Pitt made it clearly understood that he would not take office with Bedford, the man most responsible for the peace, nor would he come in alone. In spite of Pitt's objection to him, Bedford, who did not care for office, advised the king to take him. George was dissatisfied with his ministers; he was annoyed by their unpopularity and by the growth of a spirit of turbulence among the lower classes, and personally was wearied by the constant interviews and the long harangues which Grenville inflicted upon him. Bute, too, was not finding Grenville so anxious to win his approval as he expected, and on Egremont's death had an interview with Pitt. The result was satisfactory; and George, much to Grenville's disgust, told him that he meant to ask Pitt to enter the administration, and would "do it as cheap as he could," with as few changes as possible. Pitt had an interview with the king on August 27. Both evidently thought that there was nothing to prevent him from taking office, and he communicated with Devonshire, Newcastle, and Rockingham. The next day George seems to have changed his mind; he told Grenville that Pitt's terms were too hard. Bute is said to have instigated this change, and it is probable that both he and the king were disappointed at finding that Pitt meant to bring in with him several of the whig leaders. Pitt had a second interview with the king on the 29th, and George is said to have closed it with the words: "Well, Mr. Pitt, I see this will not do. My honour is concerned and I must support it." Pitt's proposals were probably exaggerated by the ministerial party. It is certain that he proposed several changes, and the admission of some of the leading whigs, and that either he or the king suggested Temple for the treasury. George had made up his mind before the interview that it would probably be useless. Both he and Bute would gladly have secured Pitt's support, but they wanted him to take office alone, or at least not with a party. George had no mind for another whig administration with Pitt as its master-spirit.He again turned to Bedford and told him that Pitt had stipulated that he was to have no office, even about the court, at that time, though in future years he might be permitted to hold a court appointment, and that no favour should be shown to any one concerned in the peace. George may well have believed that this was the meaning of Pitt's words. Even so, he should not have divulged anything which took place in his closet, specially if it was likely to make mischief; he was, however, in serious difficulties. His device succeeded. Though Bedford was already aware that Pitt would not act with him, he was piqued at this fresh declaration of hostility; he agreed to take office, and, on September 9, was appointed president of the council in succession to Lord Granville who died in the previous January. He was considered head of the administration. The Earl of Sandwich became secretary of state and took the northern department, and Lord Hillsborough succeeded Lord Shelburne as president of the board of trade. Sandwich had official experience, and was neither idle nor incapable, though unprincipled and extremely profligate; Hillsborough was deficient in tact and judgment. Shelburne had been one of Bute's followers, and arranged his bargains with Fox, who accused him of having deceived him. He was employed in the late negotiations with Pitt, resigned office on their failure, and attached himself to Pitt. The king was completely in the hands of Bedford and Grenville, his only defence against an administration composed of whig magnates. They used their power to force him to send Bute out of London. This insolent conduct was specially reprehensible in the case of Grenville, who owed his advancement to Bute's recommendation. Grenville continued to weary the king with interviews; he worried him with his disputes with his colleagues, and irritated him beyond endurance by suggestions, which were not ill-founded, that he was still under Bute's influence. "Good God, Mr. Grenville," the poor king exclaimed, "am I to be suspected after all I have done?"Parliament met on November 15, and the government at once made an attack on Wilkes. In the lords, Sandwich complained of two profane and obscene pieces printed in his private press, An Essay on Woman and a paraphrase of the Veni Creator. There was no evidence of publication; a few copies only were printed, evidently for private circulation, and one of them was obtained by tampering with a workman. Even if publication had been proved, there would still have been no reason for the lords' interference; for obscene and profane publications were punishable by law. But the ministers were anxious to obtain support for their measures of revenge. The name of Bishop Warburton of Gloucester was attached in mockery to notes in the Essay on Woman, and with his concurrence the case was brought before the house as a breach of privilege. The lords lent themselves to this transparent device; they petitioned the king to command the prosecution of Wilkes and, later, when he was out of their reach, ordered that he should be confined for his offence against themselves. Their proceedings excited public ridicule. That Sandwich should complain of obscenity and profanity, and should censure Wilkes, a fellow-monk of Dashwood's debauched fraternity, for indulging in them was, indeed, a case of Satan rebuking sin. At a performance of the "Beggar's Opera" at Covent Garden theatre the audience caught up with delight Macheath's words, "That Jemmy Twitcher should peach me I own surprised me," and Sandwich became generally known as Jemmy Twitcher.
WILKES EXPELLED FROM PARLIAMENT.
On the same day as the proceedings in the lords, Grenville brought a message from the king to the commons informing them of what had been done in Wilkes's case. They voted, 273 to 111, that the North Briton, No. 45, was a false and seditious libel, and ordered that it should be burnt by the common hangman. In the course of the debate, Martin, who had lately been secretary to the treasury, called Wilkes a cowardly and malignant scoundrel. The next day, the 16th, they fought a duel with pistols in the ring in Hyde Park; they had no seconds and each fired twice. Martin's second shot wounded Wilkes dangerously. In his absence the commons discussed his plea of privilege. Pitt strongly urged the house to maintain its privileges. Parliament, he said, had no right to surrender them; if it did so it would endanger its own freedom and infringe upon the rights of the people. As for Wilkes personally, Pitt was anxious to show that he did not approve of Temple's support of him, and called him "the blasphemer of his God and the libeller of his king". The house voted by 258 to 133 that privilege of parliament does not extend to seditious libels, and ought not to obstruct the ordinary course of the law in such cases. In itself this was an excellent decision. Parliamentary privileges had increased to a mischievous extent. By the abandonment of many of them, such as certain invidious exemptions from the course of law which it claimed for its members, the exclusion of strangers from its debates, and the prohibition of reporting, parliament has gained in dignity and purity, and has confirmed the liberties of the people. Nevertheless, though the abandonment of privilege was in itself a step in a right direction, it was reprehensible in Wilkes's case, because it was an ex post facto measure, designed to meet a special case, and vindictive in its intention.
The lords agreed in the decision of the commons, though a protest against the surrender of privilege was signed by seventeen peers. On December 3, the day fixed for the burning of No. 45 in front of the Royal Exchange, a large mob broke the windows of the sheriff's coach and pelted the constables. Encouraged by gentlemen at the windows of neighbouring houses, they tore a large part of the paper from the executioner with shouts of "Wilkes and liberty," carried it in triumph outside Temple Bar, the boundary of the city, and there made a bonfire into which they threw a jack-boot and a petticoat, the popular emblems of Bute and the Princess of Wales. Yet Wilkes was in an unpleasant position. A Scot went to his house intending to murder him; was arrested and found insane. A summons was sent to him to appear at the bar of the house of commons; his surgeons stated that he was too ill to attend, and a later day was fixed. Before it came he went off secretly to Paris, and while there excused himself from obedience to the order of the house by sending a medical certificate. The commons refused to give any weight to it, declared him in contempt, and guilty of a seditious libel, and on January 19, 1764, expelled him the house. An information was laid against him in the court of king's bench for reprinting and publishing No. 45; he was convicted and, as he did not appear to receive sentence, was outlawed.While little sympathy seems to have been felt for Wilkes personally, except among the lower classes, the attack upon him was widely resented because it was regarded as an encroachment on national liberty. Parliament was not in accord with public feeling. A strong effort was made to induce the commons to declare that general warrants were illegal. Pitt acknowledged that he had issued them during the war, when it was necessary to find out and remove suspected persons; but no such necessity existed at present, and he urged the house to do justice to the nation, the constitution, and the law, by condemning them. The ministers managed to shelve the question, but carried the adjournment only by 234 to 218. Though on other matters they commanded a large majority, several members from whom they expected support voted against them in the debates arising out of Wilkes's arrest. Among these were General Conway and Colonel BarrÉ. Conway, the brother of the Earl of Hertford, had gained much credit in the war in Germany; he was a dashing officer and a respectable general, a man of refined tastes and high principles. As a politician he was thoroughly honest, of small ability and utterly wanting in decision of character. He was the dearest friend of Horace Walpole; and Walpole, who regarded politics in a personal light, exercised an unfortunate influence upon him. BarrÉ, who had served with distinction in Canada, was a coarse man, eloquent, and feared by his opponents on account of his remarkable power of invective. He sat for one of Shelburne's boroughs, and believing himself slighted by Pitt, attacked him vehemently in the house on his resignation of office. As a supporter of Bute he was appointed adjutant-general and governor of Stirling, posts worth £4,000 a year. George, who regarded a vote against the ministers in this matter as a personal affront to himself, was determined that all who held either military or civil appointments should clearly understand that they could not continue to serve him if they opposed his policy in parliament. With Bedford's approval, Conway, BarrÉ, and with them General A'Court, who had also voted in the minority, were deprived of their commands, and Shelburne, BarrÉ's patron, was dismissed from his office as aide-de-camp to the king. BarrÉ followed Shelburne's example in attaching himself to Pitt.
GRENVILLE'S ECONOMY.
These dismissals violated the most valuable of the privileges of parliament, freedom of speech and immunity from royal coercion. It was a well-established constitutional rule that the king should not take notice of anything which passed in parliament and that no member should suffer for his speeches or votes. This rule had been broken in the last reign when, in 1733, two officers lost their commands and, in 1735, Pitt his cornetcy for acting with the opposition. On the present occasion the responsibility for its violation rests on Grenville at least as much as on the king himself. Parliament took little notice of this infringement upon its privileges, though on the first day of the session, 1765, Granby pleased the army by some sharp remarks on the dismission of officers on account of their votes in parliament.[67] Encouraged by their success against Wilkes, the ministers waged war on political libels. A large number of ex officio informations, or accusations presented by the attorney-general on which the person accused was brought to trial without the previous finding of a grand jury, were laid against printers and others during the course of the year. As this looked like persecution, it excited popular anger. One bookseller who was sentenced to stand in the pillory in New-palace-yard, Westminster, drove thither in a hackney coach numbered 45, and was cheered by a crowd estimated at 10,000 persons. Two hundred guineas was collected for him, and the mob hung a jack-boot and a "Scotch bonnet" on a gibbet and then burnt them.
Grenville insisted on economy in the national expenditure; it was needful, for during the late war the public debt had risen from £72,500,000 to £132,700,000, and the country was heavily taxed. His budget stood in honourable contrast to the finance of the late administration; it did not propose lotteries or a private loan, and it included an advantageous bargain with the Bank of England for the renewal of its charter. Yet in some matters his economy was short-sighted and peddling. He starved the naval estimates. During the war many ships were built hastily of timber insufficiently seasoned, and had fallen into so bad a condition that half their original cost was needed for the repair of their hulls; there were too few workmen in the dockyards, and the stores were empty of sails, rigging, and cordage. Lord Egmont, the first lord of the admiralty, represented the necessity for a large expenditure on the navy, but Grenville would not hear of it. So, too, in less important matters, he grudged spending money on the police of London, and highway robbery and other crimes of violence were insufficiently checked, and he even refused so small a sum as £20,000 which the king wanted for the purchase of some land at the back of Buckingham House, the site of part of the present Grosvenor Place, in order that the garden which he was then making might not be overlooked.The expenditure on the American colonies and the irregularities by which they evaded their legal obligations, were offensive to his frugal and orderly temperament; he proposed to enforce their obligations, and to draw from the colonies some part of their cost to the mother-country. The colonies occupied a long and comparatively narrow tract of country stretching for seventeen hundred miles along the Atlantic. They differed in character. In the northern colonies the puritan element was strong, and the chief sources of wealth were commerce and farming. The southern colonies had cavalier traditions, and their wealth was chiefly derived from plantations which were cultivated by slave labour. Though puritanism as a religious force was well-nigh extinct in the New England provinces, it affected the temper of the people; they set a high value on speech-making and fine words, and were litigious and obstinate; lawyers were plentiful among them, and had much influence. As a whole the colonies were impatient of control and jealous of interference. Their constitutions differed in various points; in some the governor was appointed by the crown, in others by the proprietary. All alike enjoyed a large measure of personal and political freedom: they had the form and substance of the British constitution; they had representative assemblies in which they taxed themselves for their domestic purposes, chose most of their own magistrates, and paid them all; and it was seldom that their legislation was interfered with except with respect to commerce.
RESTRICTIONS ON COLONIAL TRADE.
The freedom which they enjoyed did not extend to commerce and manufactures. In those matters the policy of Great Britain was founded on the "mercantile theory," then universally accepted, and was directed towards securing a monopoly of trade. Other countries pursued a like policy towards their colonies, though they treated them with far less liberality. The restrictions placed by Great Britain on colonial trade were based on the Navigation acts of 1660 and later years, which were originally aimed at the maritime power of the Dutch. Briefly, they confined trade with the colonies to English or colonial ships; the Americans were debarred from exporting a number of the most important products of their country, their tobacco, grain, sugar, hides, and timber for masts, except to Great Britain; no foreign ship might enter their harbours, nor, with certain exceptions, could they import foreign merchandise, except in ships sailing directly from England. Various acts debarred them from manufactures which would have entered into competition with English goods; they depended on the mother-country for the commonest and most necessary things, for their cloth, hardware, and a host of manufactured articles. Port duties were imposed by England, and were collected by officers of the customs, whose business it was to prevent contraband trading. These duties were not imposed for the sake of revenue, but for the regulation of trade; and the whole system of restrictions was founded on the idea that colonies should be made to serve the interest of the mother-country by giving its merchants and manufacturers the monopoly of the colonial market.
The colonies received some compensations for the restrictions placed upon their industry and commerce. With certain exceptions their trade was free. While some of their products were confined to the British market, they had the monopoly of that market; no Englishman, for example, might buy tobacco which did not come from America or Bermuda. Their export trade to England was encouraged by bounties, and, though their foreign imports generally had to come to them through England, a system of drawbacks, by which the duties were remitted on exportation to America, enabled them to buy continental goods more cheaply than they could be bought in England. Nothing indeed can be further from the truth than the idea that England's treatment of her colonies was harsh or illiberal. Unfortunately the mercantile theory set up an opposition between the interests of a mother-country and her colonies. A far more important mitigation of the restrictions imposed on the colonies than any that came from English liberality, was derived from the constant violation of them. Few English statesmen knew or cared to know anything about colonial affairs. Left to themselves the American colonies grew rich. Their merchants, especially in New England, carried on a brisk and extremely profitable contraband trade. In exchange for lumber, fish, and cattle the New England merchants obtained sugar and molasses, and bullion from the French and Spanish colonies; and vast quantities of rum were distilled in Boston and exported to Africa to be used in the slave trade.
England was not altogether a loser by these transactions. The richer a Boston merchant became, the more British goods did he import, and as he had to pay for them in bullion, his contraband trade enabled him to meet his obligations. These advantages were indirect, the loss to the English West India merchants was obvious and heavy. In order to protect them an attempt was made in 1733 to stop this contraband trade by the imposition of heavy duties; but the profits of the trade were so large that the revenue officers found it to their interest to be careless or actually conniving, and scarcely any duties were paid. On an average the American customs cost England from £7,000 to £8,000 a year and did not bring in quite £2,000. During the war the contraband trade afforded the French useful supplies, and in 1760 Pitt ordered the colonial governors to punish those who traded with the enemy. More power was placed in the hands of the revenue officers by the issue of writs of assistance enabling them to search for dutiable articles in any place without alleging specific information. These writs were lawful and were specially justifiable in time of war. Their lawfulness was unsuccessfully disputed before the superior court of Massachusetts by a lawyer named Otis, an eloquent speaker, singularly devoid of moderation. His speech, in which rhetoric is more conspicuous than a knowledge of law, attacked the commercial legislation of parliament generally; it was much admired, and has been regarded by some Americans as the first step towards revolution.
A system which cramped the trade and industry of a self-reliant people, growing in wealth and intent on gain, for the benefit of a country separated from them by 3,000 miles of ocean, then only crossed by sailing ships, must sooner or later have led to revolt. The Americans were impatient of control and apt to quarrel with their governors, who often found their office an unenviable one. "Such wrong-headed people," said one of them, "I thank God I had never to do with before." They were not a people patiently to submit to restrictions. Two causes had contributed to bind them to Great Britain. One of these was their fear of the French in Canada. So long as the French and their Indian allies threatened their homes, even the most turbulent of them knew that they gained by being subjects of the English king. The war with France called forth a feeling of loyalty. The triumph of England freed them from the fear of French aggression and their protestations of gratitude were exuberant. Yet there were many who saw that the conquest of Canada loosened the tie which bound the American colonies to the mother-country and would probably lead to an assertion of independence. Separation would, however, have been impossible without union. The jealousies between the colonies were so strong that revolt seemed improbable. Were they left to themselves, Otis declared in 1765, "America would be a mere shambles of blood and confusion". A common cause alone could bring about union, and such a cause was soon to be found. The termination of the war enabled the ministers to direct their attention to the contraband trade which had assisted the common enemy, defrauded the government, and annoyed the commercial class. During Bute's administration, in 1763, revenue cutters were sent to cruise off the American coast, the officers of the king's ships were sworn to act as revenue officers, and revenue cases were heard in the admiralty courts. Smuggling was more effectually checked, and the irritation caused by the loss of trade was aggravated by the roughness with which the seamen enforced the law.Grenville adopted a new policy apparently contemplated by Bute's ministry. Hitherto parliament had imposed customs duties on the colonies solely for the purpose of regulating trade; he designed to raise revenue from them. The idea was suggested to Walpole as a means of obtaining money on the failure of his excise scheme, and that wary statesman promptly rejected it. The money, however, which Grenville hoped to raise from the colonies was not to swell the revenues of England; it was to be applied to their own defence. His design was reasonable. The war had enormously increased the public debt. It is true that it was not undertaken only for the defence of the colonies; it is not less true that it was not a merely insular war. The war concerned the empire at large, and Great Britain's lavish sacrifices of blood and treasure delivered her children across the ocean from the fear of French conquest. Her expenditure on their defence could not end with the war; a small standing army had to be maintained for their protection. It seemed not unlikely that France would attempt to regain her lost dominions; it would have been fatal to leave the American colonies undefended. And another foe was always at hand, for the Indians regretted the overthrow of the French and were exasperated by the ill-treatment they received from the British colonists. In 1763 Pontiac, head-chief of the Ottawas, formed a confederation against the English. Along the borders of Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Maryland the Indians massacred outlying settlers, surprised many forts and slew their garrisons. Three provinces might have been overrun before the inhabitants had organised any defence, had not Sir Jeffrey (later Lord) Amherst, the commander-in-chief, had a small British force at his disposal, consisting mainly of companies of the 7th, 42nd, and 77th regiments of the line, and of the Royal American regiment (later the 60th Rifles), formed in 1755 for service in America. A little army composed largely of men of the 42nd Highlanders, and commanded by Colonel Bouquet, defeated the Indians at Bushy Run on August 5. Fort Pitt was relieved and, the victory having encouraged the provincials to make a stand, the war virtually ended in November, 1764.
THE STAMP ACT PROPOSED.
The provincials disliked the idea of a standing army, and would have preferred that their defence should have been left to themselves. That was impossible. They were largely farmers and traders, peaceful folk unwilling to leave their profitable pursuits. There was no central authority to dictate the proportion of troops which each of the colonies should contribute to a common force, and their selfishness and jealousies made them grudge help one to another. The Americans behaved shabbily to the troops sent to defend them, but Pontiac's war proved that in times of pressing danger their safety might depend upon the presence of a British force. Was it right or just that the colonies should be defended by England and should contribute nothing towards the cost of their defence? Grenville thought that it was not. On March 10, 1764, he laid before parliament a list of port dues; some of them were higher than before, and to counterbalance the increase he proposed to give several new advantages to colonial trade. Payment was no longer to be evaded so easily as in past times, and smuggling would be attended with greater risk. The money was to be paid into the English treasury and was to be used only for colonial defence. More would be wanted for that purpose, and he proposed to raise it by an act requiring that all legal documents should bear stamps. This measure he deferred for a year in order to ascertain the feeling of the colonies and to give them an opportunity of raising the money in some other way if they preferred it. The force to be kept in America was twenty regiments, or about 10,000 men, which, with the maintenance of fortifications, would cost £350,000 a year. Of this sum the proposed stamp act would, it was calculated, bring in about £100,000. The bill passed without remark.In an interview with the agents of the colonies Grenville pointed out that the tax was reasonable, and was an easy and equitable way of raising the required money, but promised that if the colonies disliked it, and would raise the money themselves in some other way, he would be content. Before the year was out they met him again and, acting on instructions from their colonies, tried to dissuade him from his purpose. Chief among them was Benjamin Franklin, then agent for Pennsylvania, a New Englander by birth, not a puritan either in religion or morals, a wise politician, shrewd, public-spirited, inventive, and full of schemes of practical usefulness. He proposed that the money should be voted by the provincial assemblies, but could not say that the colonies would agree as to the amount which each should contribute. On that of course the whole matter depended. When Grenville brought in his stamp bill the debate, Burke says, was extremely languid. Parliament had no idea that the act would lead to serious consequences. Nor were the American agents much better informed, for Franklin, who considered that a small standing army might be useful, believed that the colonies had no choice but to submit to the tax. Pitt was absent from parliament, suffering from gout. Conway and BarrÉ opposed the bill, and BarrÉ, in a speech of fervid eloquence, described the Americans as "sons of liberty," driven from their country by tyranny and treated by her with neglect. In the commons the bill was carried with only forty dissentients, and in the lords apparently without a division. It received the royal assent on March 22, 1765, and was to come into operation on November 1. In April the mutiny act was extended to America, binding the colonies to provide the king's troops with quarters and certain necessaries, such as fuel and candles.
AMERICAN RESISTANCE.
The stamp act raised a storm of indignation in the American colonies. Some of them, and especially the New England colonies, already had a substantial grievance in the heavy blow dealt to their prosperity by the repression of their contraband trade. Their discontent was increased by a suspicion that England was about to establish episcopacy among them at their expense, for Archbishop Secker and other English churchmen were anxious to introduce bishops into America. A more sentimental, though an efficient cause of irritation also existed in the affectation of superiority adopted by Englishmen towards their colonial fellow-subjects. The stamp tax brought their discontent to a head, and gave the party hostile to government an opportunity for stirring up opposition. During the year unwisely allowed by Grenville for considering the proposed tax, they busily agitated against it. While at that time the Americans allowed that parliament had a right to impose duties for the regulation of trade, they denied its right to levy an internal tax for the purpose of revenue, because they were not represented in parliament.
Opposition to the ministerial policy naturally began in Boston, where the repression of contraband trade weighed most heavily and where—though that was a smaller matter—the dislike to episcopacy was specially strong. The town-meeting promptly passed resolutions denying the right of parliament to tax the colonies without their consent. The meeting was led by Samuel Adams, a man of frugal life and austere character, who, after failing as a brewer and as a tax collector, adopted the career most congenial to his tastes and talents of political agitator. The resolutions were adopted by the provincial assembly, and on its invitation five other colonies joined with Massachusetts in sending memorials and petitions to England against the proposed tax. The assembly of Virginia was in session when the news came that the tax was enacted, and Patrick Henry, a lawyer, brought forward some defiant resolutions, of which four were carried, though only by a small majority. His speech, which contained an insolent reference to the king, was much admired. A general congress of the colonies was proposed by Massachusetts and met at New York on November 7. Representatives of nine colonies attended and others sent expressions of good-will. The members drew up a statement of their claims and grievances in moderate terms, and further expressed them in an address to the king, a memorial to the lords, and a petition to the commons.
These orderly proceedings were accompanied by outbursts of lawless violence. Societies for resistance were organised. The "sons of liberty," as they called themselves in reference to BarrÉ's speech, were active in Boston, and in August, 1765, a mob plundered the house of a man who was nominated as a distributor of stamps, destroyed a building on his land which they believed was to be used as a stamp-office, hanged him in effigy, and forced him to renounce his appointment. A sermon preached by Jonathan Mayhew, a popular unitarian minister, on the words "I would that they were even cut off which trouble you," was followed by a more serious riot. Public buildings were attacked, the records of the admiralty court were burnt, and the rioters forced their way into the custom-house and got at the liquor in the cellars. Maddened by drink they wrecked the stately mansion of Hutchinson, the lieutenant-governor, and destroyed his fine collection of books and manuscripts. Persons of good position more or less openly encouraged these excesses and no one was punished for them. Outbreaks of mob violence, though of a less riotous kind, took place in Rhode Island, Connecticut, and elsewhere. On November 1, the day on which the stamp act came into operation, copies of it were offered for sale headed, "The folly of England and the ruin of America," bells were tolled, and mock funerals passed through the streets.
Everywhere the new stamps were seized and destroyed. At New York the lieutenant-governor, encouraged by the presence of the king's troops, tried to secure the stamps sent to the town. A riot ensued. General Gage, the commander-in-chief, declined to interfere at the risk of beginning a civil war, and the stamps were surrendered and locked up in the town hall. Besides these not a parcel of stamps was left in the colonies. For a time this put an end to legal business, and the courts were closed. Then lawyers agreed to take no notice of the lack of stamps on documents, and at last the governors declared that the operation of the act was to be reckoned as suspended. Retaliatory measures were concerted. Merchants combined to stop all importation from England, cancelled their orders and delayed sending remittances. Associations were formed for abandoning the use of English goods, and the richest citizens either wore old clothes or rough material of colonial production. Manufactories of linen, cloth, and hardware were started, and in order to insure a supply of wool, butchers were forbidden by their customers to kill lambs.The distinction made by the party of resistance between external and internal taxation was in accordance with previous practice. Though parliament had frequently imposed port-duties on the colonies, it had abstained from imposing taxes within them. The stamp act was a new departure. English history afforded ground for the distinction, which was alleged in Bate's case, in the reign of James I., in support of the claim of the crown. Yet it is clearly artificial, for a division of taxes, such as into external and internal, only concerns their incidence; it is a matter which belongs to economics and does not affect political right. The colonists' claim of exemption from parliamentary taxation on the ground of non-representation appeals to the sympathy of Englishmen. Both in England and America there were some who desired that the colonies should be represented in parliament, but their distance from England and the ignorance of both peoples as regards the circumstances and needs of each other would have been fatal objections to any such scheme. The claim of the colonists seems to imply a misapprehension of the character of parliament; for parliament is not a mere meeting of delegates, it is an imperial assembly, and its sovereignty is neither derived from the perfection of its constitution nor lessened by its imperfection. Taxation is an attribute of sovereignty, and parliament had a right to tax the colonies because the sovereign power resided in it. Where else could it reside? To deny the right to tax and to admit the right to legislate was inconsistent. How could parliament, in virtue of its sovereign authority, have a right to pass a bill ensuring personal freedom in the colonies, and yet have no right to pass another bill imposing a tax on them? The logical outcome of the American contention was that all parliamentary legislation concerning the colonies was null, except so far as they chose to admit it. Under all their arguments lay the germ of independence, though as yet the leaders of the agitation loudly professed loyalty.
UNSTATESMANLIKE POLICY.
That the tax was reasonable in intention, equitable in incidence, and in itself tolerable, few probably will now deny. Nor will any one surely deny that the act was foolish and unstatesmanlike. Strict definitions of legal right are not safe guides in practical politics: sentiment and circumstances should be held to be of far greater account. The Americans maintained that there was an important difference between external and internal taxation, and, in common with all other Englishmen, they highly valued the right expressed in the maxim, "No taxation without representation". It was a fatal mistake to disregard their belief and, for the sake of avoiding a not very serious expenditure, to seem to deny what they claimed as their heritage as Englishmen. Heavy as its expenses were, Great Britain could have afforded to take upon itself the sum required for the defence of the colonies. Grenville could not see the matter in this light. Well-meaning and wishing to act fairly both towards England and the colonies, he brought trouble on both alike by his insistence on legal right. His administration was fruitful in evil. He permitted parliament to enter on a disastrous struggle with Wilkes in order to gratify the king; he raised up discord between England and her most important colonies; he allowed the strength of England to decay by grudging to spend the money needed for the maintenance of the navy, and its dignity to be impaired by neglecting to insist on the payment of the Manila ransom, though for that he was not individually responsible. One judicious act of his administration may be recorded here. The Isle of Man, though under the allegiance of the king, was not fully under the royal authority; the king had no courts and no officers there, and it was, as Burke said, "the very citadel of smuggling". In 1765 the crown bought the rights of the Duke and Duchess of Atholl over the island for £70,000, and it became thenceforward an integral part of the realm of England.
