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YALE UNIVERSITY
LIBRARY

THE FOUNDING OF
THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC
VOLUME I
THE CAUSES OF
THE WAR OF INDEPENDENCE

THE
CAUSES OF THE WAR
OF INDEPENDENCE
BEING THE FIRST VOLUME OF
A HISTORY OF THE FOUNDING
OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC

BY
CLAUDE H. VAN TYNE
PBOrESSOB OP HISTORY IN
THE tTNIVERSITT OF MICHIGAN

BOSTON AND NEW YORK
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY

COPYRIGHT, 1922, BY CLAUDE H. VAN TYNB
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED INCLUDING THE RIGHT TO REPRODUCE
THIS BOOK OR PARTS THEREOF IN ANY FORM

tli:iie fiftitteitie 9tes<
CAMBRIDGE . MASSACHUSETTS
PRINTED IN THE U,S.A.

PREFACE
It is my purpose here to relate those outstanding
facts and movements in American history which best
describe the founding of the American Republic. In
the first volume, the effort has been to explain the
growth of the spirit of independence which made
Americans discontented with their subordinate posi
tion in the British Empire. The^ second volume I
plan shall tell the story of the war for independence,
and the effort of Americans to set up new political
institutions in their several provinces and to solve
the problem of imperial organization which England
had failed to solve in tircfe to preserve the loyalty of
her colonies. The third volume will be concerned
with the failure of the first American experiment in
organizing an effective union and the story of the
successful attempt which wrought the Constitution
of the United States. |
The unity of the three volumes lies in the under
taking, failure, and final solution of a problem of
imperial organization for a large body of people set
tled in an area of continental extent. Besides this
common theme and the particular subjects of the
individual volumes, one should note three salient
features of the years 1763-89. One of these was
the successful struggle of thirteen English colonies
in America for independence. The second was the
revolution of political institutions which was brought
about in the process of creating the new American
Republic. The third, necessary for the success of

vi PREFACE
the first, and more spectacular, was the effort of an
envious world to destroy the prestige of England, to
take from her the rule of the sea, while she strove to
prevent the dismemberment of her empire.
During the last twenty years the industry of a
number of historians in the field covered by this
work has greatly changed the old way of viewing its
problems. Dr. George L. Beer's studies of the British
colonial and commercial policy have softened the
earlier judgments as to its character. Professor C. M.
Andrews, with his guides to the British Archives and
his illuminating books on various phases of colonial
history and British methods of government, has
brought new light to the whole subject. Professor
C. W. Alvord's scholarly study of British politics as
they touched the problems of the American West in
the pre-Revolutionary days has rendered a great
service to the general historian. Professor A. M.
Schlesinger has thrown a flood of light upon the
economic causes of the Revolution by his study of
the merchants' attitude toward it. Professor A. C.
McLaughlin has rendered a splendid service to those
who would understand the growth of political ideals
and constitutional principles. Though dealing with
the whole field of American history on a scale hith
erto unattempted. Professor Channing found time
in his volume covering the period to make contribu
tions for which all who come after must be indebted.
Sir George O. Trevelyan has given us in charming
literary form a more intimate acquaintance with the
social and personal history of the time. Local studies
by Becker, Lingley, Eckenrode, Lincoln, Wallace,

PREFACE vii
and others have greatly smoothed the road for the
historian who would traverse the whole territory.
There is danger, I know, in selecting for mention
these few workers in the field, for many others have
put us under obligations with magazine articles,
biographical studies and monographs, which can only
be recognized in the footnotes throughout this work.
Great as would be my pleasure in acknowledging
my many obligations to librarians and archivists
in London, Paris, Washington, Philadelphia, New
York, and Boston, I must forego it, and speak only
of my great obligation to Waldo G. Leland foi the
assistance rendered in Paris by placing all of his rich
knowledge of the archives at my disposal. .>To the
Honorable William L. Clements I wish to express
my gratitude for the pains he has taken during recent
years to add to his splendid collection of Americana,
already rich in the discovery and colonial period, an
almost unrivaled collection in my special field. Fi
nally, my chiefest obligation is to my friends and
colleagues. Professor Arthur L. Cross, Professor
Edward R. Turner, and Dean Henry M. Bates, who
have carefully read my manuscript, saving me many
errors, and some misunderstandings which their
larger knowledge in their special fields corrected.
Dr. O. W. Stephenson also rendered the great service
of checking up all quotations and references. My
wife, like all patient wives of needy authors, has
borne the wearisomeness of the comparison of writ
ten and type-written manuscripts and the fiery or
deal of proof-reading. C. H. V.
August, 1921

CONTENTS
I. Conditions which formed the American
Spirit 1
n. Conditions of Colonial Government which
bred Independence 22
III. British Expansion creates Imperial Prob
lems 55
IV. The World's Colonial Experiences which
might guide British Statesmen 87
V. Groping for Solutions of the Imperial Prob
lems 106
VI. The Stamp Act reveals Weakness in the
Imperial Fabric 137
VII. The Repeal of the Stamp Act 173
VIII. Conflicting Theories of Representation and
Imperial Organization 198
IX. American versus English Ideas of the British
Constitution 224
X. The "Genius" of Townshend threatens to
wreck the Empire 239
XI. Measures that raised Rebellion but did not
QUELL IT 274
XII. The Social and Intellectual Gulf between
the Parts of the Empire 311
XIII. Religious and Sectarian Forces which threat
ened Imperial Unity 346
XrV. The Boston "Tea Party"

X CONTENTS
XV. Lord North's Effort to preserve Impebial
Dignity 391
XVI. Union FOR Resistance 411
XVII. The Continental Congress and the First
Bloodshed 482
XVIII. The Freest of Peoples were the First to
Rebel 456
Index 479

THE CAUSES OF
THE WAR OF INDEPENDENCE

THE CAUSES OF
THE WAE OF INDEPENDENCE
CHAPTER I
CONDITIONS WHICH FORMED THE
AMERICAN SPIRIT
John Adams lived to that ripe old age which delights
in philosophic reflection upon the activities that
absorb the prime of life. He never tired of corre
sponding with Thomas Jefferson or WiUiam Wirt or
some prospective historian of the revolutionary era
wherein he had been one of the heroic figures. In a
reminiscent letter, written in his declining years, he
declares that the history of the American Revolution
ought to be divided into four periods ranging from
1620 to 1781.1 "The Revolution," he asserted, "was
effected before the war commenced. The Revolu
tion was in the minds and hearts of the people."
The principles and feelings which led the Americans
to rebel ought, he added, " to be traced back for two
hundred years, and sought in the , history of the
countiy from the first plantation in America." '
John Adams had many quaint conceits which do not
carry conviction, but any student of the colonial
era would agree with this opinion. Back two hun
dred years, therefore, from the date (1818) of
> John Adams, Works, v. 492. ' Ibid., x, 282-84. 313.

2 CAUSES OF WAR OF INDEPENDENCE
Adams' letter, we must go in order to trace the
evolution of "the spirit of 1776," the will to be in
dependent, and the desire to set up new political
institutions which would secure the "rights of man."
In the very genesis of English settlement, the
leaders of the English colonists were liberal and even
radical when they first set foot on the shores of the
New World. Their early migrations had La the main
been caused by the political and religious conflicts
of the age.i This is true in spite of the contemporary
impression that England was over-populated, and
that migration was necessary to relieve her of her
surplus. The delusion arose from the fact that for
the first time, due to uneven distribution of the ris
ing prosperity. Dives and Lazarus were seen daily
side by side. While wealth increased, pauperism
became an established and little understood evil.
Though the delusion of over-population led the
State to approve of the movement to America, it
was true, in New England at least, that the bulk of
the people had left the homeland for religious and
political reasons, and not, as Winthrop declared,
because the homeland "grew weary of her inhab
itants," or, in another's quaint phrase, because
swarms of idle persons having no labor to relieve
their misery do swarm "in lewd and naughtie prac
tices." ' The company, which secured the charter
and financed the venture, might be greedy and
think only of its twenty per cent, but the people of
* Political Science Quarterly, xxm, 94. (Article by G. L. Beer.)
The Pilgrims did, it is true, leave Holland to better their condition.
> Ibid., 85.

THE AMERICAN SPIRIT S
the colony were more heavenly minded. Tell the
financiers of planning a church, of converting ten
thousand souls to God, and, we are told, they were
senseless as stones, and "stirred no more than as
if men spake of toys and trifles," but those themes
spoke trumpet-tongued to niunbers of the future
colonists. 1 The majority of those destined to people
New England insisted upon going to Heaven in their
own way, and from this chronic and incurable non
conformity in religion, developed political opposition
to rulers who would drive them along the Episco
palian road to salvation. The idea of sovereignty of
the people, the modern world's dominant ideal of
democratic rule, may be said to have originated, in
the days of Elizabeth and James, with those small
congregations of separatists who asserted their right
to meet and worship in their own way. They denied
the right of Government to "compell religion, to
plant churches by power, and to force a submission
to Ecclesiastical government by lawes and penalties."
It must be remembered also that the American
colonies were founded when Sir Edwin Sandys and
Richard Hooker were attacking the old political
faith from every quarter. Rebellious John Hampden
was intimately interested in the Puritan migration
to Massachusetts.^ Later, Algernon Sidney, doomed
to be an English martyr to the cause of freedom,
seems to have been consulted by William Penn in
* Crashaw, who seems to have been a disciple of Izaak Walton,
declared that you had only to tell them of twenty per cent gain and
"Oh, how they bite at it, oh, how it stirres them!" Brown, Genesis
of the United States, I, 360.
' A. P. Newton, Colonieing Activities of the English Puritans, 84.

4 CAUSES OF WAR OF INDEPENDENCE
preparing his first constitution. Harrington, another
prophet of political freedom, surely influenced Penn.'
Both Pym and Hampden planned at one time to go
to America.^ Few liberal leaders in England during
the early colonial period failed to lend mind and
energy to the furtherance of the growth of free in
stitutions in America. These men were preaching
the new poUtical faith which found, in the seven
teenth century, a refuge on the farther shore of the
Atlantic, there to grow in the seclusion and aloof
ness of the wilderness, imtU, in the latter half of
the eighteenth century, it was to confound the less
advanced government of the mother country.^ The
tenets of the new political phUosophy were boldly
set before the House of Commons in 1614 by Sir
Edwin Sandys.* The fragments wliich the unac
customed ears of the clerk could gather are "no
successive king, but first elected. Election double
of person and care; but both come in by consent of
people, and with reciprocal conditions between king
and people." With these words the "judicious"
Hooker, anticipating with "dove-like simplicity"
the social compact theory, later developed by Locke,
would have agreed. Years later, MUton was to make
this idea of "government by compact" even more
clear, asserting that "the power of kings and mag
istrates is nothing else but what is . . . committed
' R. Smith, Harrington, etc., 167-70.
» Newton, Colonizing Activities of the English Puritans, 71, 178.
Perhaps even Cromwell had like intent. Gardiner, x, 78.
• C. P. Gooch, English Democratic Ideas in the Seventeenth Century,
passim. * Journal of the Commons, i, 493.

THE AMERICAN SPIRIT 5
to them in trust from the people to the common
good of them all." Four years before Sandys had
given public expression to his principle which cut
at the very roots of the idea of the divine right
of kings. King James had declared to Parliament,
whom he had warned against "meddling with the
mysteries of state," that "kings are not only God's
lieutenants upon earth and sit upon God's throne,
but even by God himself they are called gods"; and,
' he concluded, "it is seditious in subjects to dispute
' what a king may do in the height of his power."
'¦ Again in a moment of kingly rapture, he asserted,
" I am the husband, the whole isle [England] is my
¦ lawful wife: I am the head and it is my body; I am
!the shepherd and it is my flock."' To this sharp
1) conflict of opinion had come the old faith and the
inew, and in the early days of migration to America
I there came to the shores of New England at least
tfew Englishmen capable of thinking who had not
;made the choice of the new.
IE When the British Government rendered life so
itiwretched for Dissenters that they felt moved to
idleave England and flee to America, it simply put off
ijfor one hundred and fifty years, and removed to
jtanother land, the final struggle between those who
^represented the Established Church, feudal practice,
itiand tradition, the king's prerogative, landed prop
erty, and privilege, on the one side, and their op
ponents on the other side, the radicals and liberals
' in Church and State, with antagonistic ideas as to
iChurch and secular government. The Pilgrims and
' Prothero, Statutes and Constitutional Documents, 283, 293, 400.

6 CAUSES OF WAR OF INDEPENDENCE
Puritans of Plymouth and Massachusetts Bay, pio
neers in the philosophy of Locke and the thinking
of Milton, did not bring to America the conservative
views of the divine right of kings, of monarchy, or
of ecclesiastical tradition. Had these radicals been
retained in England, and there lived in constant
touch with the old traditions, their views might have
been moderated in time. Across the seas, released
from all restraint, they pressed on to the logical con
clusion of their new faith.' It was a fateful day for
the British Empire when its government through
intolerance sent the Puritan away, a scapegoat into
the wilderness. Not only the pressure of the new
conditions, but the democratic bias of the Puritan
leaders gave them a push toward a simpler form of
social organization than the Old World had known.
The simple essentials of democracy could hardly
be stated with more wisdom than by John Robinson
in his parting letter to the Pilgrims. "Whereas,"
said he, "you are become a body politik, using
amongst yourselves civill governments, and are not
furnished with any persons of spetiall eminencie
above the rest, to be chosen by you into oflBce of
government, let your wisdome and godlines appeare,
not only in chusing such persons as doe entirely love
and will promote the commone good, but also in
yeelding unto them all due honour and obedience in
their lawfuU administrations; not behoulding in them
the ordinarinesse of their persons, but Gods ordi-
1 Chief Justice William Smith, of New York, declared after he, as
a Loyalist, had fled to Canada, "All America was at the very outset
of the plantations, abandoned to democracy." C. P. Lucas,
(4 Canada, 256,

THE AMERICAN SPIRIT 7
nance for your good, not being like the foolish mul-
titud who more honour the gay coate, than either
the vertuous minde of the man, or glorious ordinance
of the Lord. But you know better things, and that
the image of the Lords power and authoritie which
the magistrate beareth is honourable, in how meane
persons soever. And this dutie you both may the
more willingly and ought the more conscionably to
performe, because you are at least for the present
to have only them for your ordinarie governours,
which your selves shall make choyse of for that
worke." '
Thus spoke the "common father unto them," as
Bradford calls him, who not only excelled in divine
things, but "was also very able to give directions in
civil affairs." They were leaving a world ruled by
noblemen and gentlemen, where the common man
merely obeyed his betters, and, lacking the "bright
presence" of rulers provided by the gracious hand
of their king, they would choose "meane persons,"
perhaps, to "promote the commone good." To these
they must not be less obedient because of the "or
dinarinesse of their persons." Not only were many
of the first American colonists dissenters from the
established religion, leaving the English shores just
as the old political faith was being insistently ques-\/
tioned, but they were in a large majority poor men,
dissatisfied with the existing order and easily lured
by radical ideas. Although to some extent the plant
ers of the new colonies had heeded Sir Francis
' Jameson, The Arrinal of the Pilgrims (Brown University Imprint),
«8-24.

8 CAUSES OF WAR OF INDEPENDENCE
Bacon's advice that "the people wherewith you
plant ought to be gardeners, ploughmen, laborers,
smiths, carpenters, joiners, fishermen, fowlers, and
some few apothecaries, surgeons, cooks, and bakers,"
yet they had to some extent drawn his splenetic
denunciation that "it is a shameful and unblessed
thing to take the scum of the people and wicked
condemned men to be the people with whom you
plant." Whichever the colonists might be, men with
honest trades or "sturdy beggars," they were almost
to a man comparatively poor. The anticipated
hardships of the life in the American wilds barred
the way thither to the well-to-do, as to the neurotic
and the weak. The rude frontier conditions made
all hesitate who, like Homer's Phseacians, loved the
banquet and the harp and the dance and the warm
bath and love and sleep. The fear of hardships was
like the flaming sword that kept the way of the tree
of life. It deterred the rich and the well-born, but
the indigent and the land-hungry and those eager
to rise heeded it not and passed by unscathed. There
the poor, and even the improvident and criminal,
became — either they or their descendants — sober
and prosperous citizens, thus demonstrating St.
Augustine's thesis that "out of the children of the
night and of the darkness, children of the light and
of the day are made." ' But their prosperity was of
the modest sort, and, up to the time of the Ameri
can Revolution, there were no Americans of great
wealth as it was estimated in England and only a
moderate proportion with more than a mere com-
' Confessions of St. Augustine, book xin, chap. xiv.

THE AMERICAN SPIRIT 9
petence. Great numbers of the colonists either of
Virginia, Maryland, or Massachusetts were people
of good morals, law-abiding, and God-fearing, but
they were liberal in their political ideas partly be
cause they had no reason, based upon their pros
perity, to desire to conserve the old order of things.
In old civilizations like that of Europe, men of
radical or even liberal tendencies are held in check
by the enveloping conservative forces, by traditions,
by th,e fear of displeasing those in high social posi
tion, by the nearness of government itself; but on
the frontier, three thousand miles away, in the case
of these American colonies, these restraining forces
did not exist, and men moved forward rapidly, even
recklessly, on the path of political and social experi
ment. This liberation from the compulsion of estab
lished social relations was felt by all classes of
American colonists. This was true, either of the
Separatists, when their church was forced "to fly
to the wilderness," or of the forerunners of Malthus
¦ — who seemed to show belief in the doctrine that
bears his name by leaving their country for tlieir
country's good; it was true of those who went with
a desire to spread the gospel, or of the criminals who
were reprieved on the condition that they would go
to America. The colonist might be one who wished
to take up "the white man's burden," or one who
merely dislUied the English humdrum life of quiet
and ease; he might be an idealist who left the British
Isles when Sandys, Hooker, Locke, and Milton were
giving expression to the new political philosophy, or
he might be merely a poor debtor like Micawber

10 CAUSES OF WAR OF INDEPENDENCE
leaving the land that gave him birth, but which did
not give him employment. Whatever the cause of
quitting the homeland, he could not long remain
on the farther shore of the Atlantic before he felt
the trammels of the old social order fall away and
became a freer man. It took, perhaps, a century to
drive the colonists utterly away from the sentiments
and ideals and traditions which still bound men who
continued to live in England, but the divergence
began very early.
The thought of three thousand miles of tossing
seas had a most tranquillizing effect upon any fears
that the American colonist might entertain of ven
geance by the British Government for disobedience
to its will. It confirmed their belief that the Lord
had provided a shelter and a hiding-place for them.
Peter Oliver, a Chief Justice of Massachusetts just
before the Revolution, found there a prevailing
maxim that when Jove was distant the lightning was
not to be feared. Men who were three thousand
miles distant across an unfrequented ocean could
not get it into their heads, he wrote, " that an Eng
lish church or state scourge could be made of such
length as to reach them." ' The effect of this distance
was inevitably to weaken government, and as Burke
warned Parliament, it was of no use to "fret and
rage and bite the chains of Nature." They might
have "winged ministers of vengeance" to carry
» British Museum, Egerton MSS. 2671 F 13.
A famous example of the way the storms of the seas preserved the
colonists, at least temporarily, from the power of the English Govern
ment was in 1686 when Randolph with his quo warranto arrived too
late. See Channing, History of the United States, n, 164.

THE AMERICAN SPIRIT 11
their power "to the remotest verge of the seas," but
there distance steps in to limit arrogance. "Seas
roll, months pass, between the order and the execu
tion." Until 1755 there was no regular mail service
and the Government's instructions to colonial gov
ernors, as well as the latter's reports, were often
six months in transit on the merchant vessels, and
there were many cases where the delivery followed
several years after the sending."
A colonist who had crossed the sea under condi
tions that prevailed in the seventeenth and eight
eenth centuries had every reason to regard it as a
mighty barrier against the agents of despotism. A
passage in seven weeks was fairly common; but a
ship that left Rotterdam with one hundred and
fifty Germans from the Palatinate landed one third
of them twenty-four weeks later. In the great mi
gration of the Palatines in 1710, over six hundred,
or twenty per cent, died on the voyage, which lasted
from January to June.'' Those who landed were a
crushed, sick, and dispirited band of exiles. As high
as one hundred and thirty, out of one hundred and
fifty passengers, are recorded as dying on one trans-
Atlantic voyage. The ship which brought the Gov
ernor's wife to Virginia in 1639 was "so pestered
with people and goods . . . and so full of infection
that after a while they saw little but throwing people
over-board." Yet it may be presumed that a gover
nor's lady would enjoy the best transportation
available. Even Lord Carlisle, on a mission of vital
* Dickerson, American Colonial Government, 133-36.
' Jacobs, The German Migration to America, pt. m, 76-77.

12 CAUSES OF WAR OF INDEPENDENCE
interest to a whole empire, was six weeks in passage
from England to America.
The ships were small, the cabins close and crowded.
Not even the use of rue and wormwood, which Wil
liam Penn advised, nor the sprinkling of vinegar
about the cabin could preserve sanitary conditions.'
A medical commission, appointed by the legislature
of Pennsylvania, in 1754, to investigate the diseases
incident to ocean travel, reported that "the steam
of bilge water and the breath of great numbers of
people betwixt the decks of a ship make the air moist
and in some degree, putrid, and, like that of moist
and boggy places, will produce fevers on persons
that are a long time in them." ^ On immigrant sbips
the ravages of smallpox are often recorded, and the
stifling to death of children crammed in the hold.'
Mittelberger (1756) wrote that during a voyage
"there is on board these ships terrible misery,
stench, fumes, horror, vomiting, many kinds of
seasickness, fever, dysentery, . . . scurvy, cancer,
mouth-rot, and the like, all of which come from old
and sharply salted food and meat, also from very
bad and foul water, so that many die miserably." *
' Under such conditions in a small vessel the terrors of a storm can
be imagined. John Wesley was ashamed of his fear, but to him the
waves of the sea "rose up to the heavens above, and clave down to
hell beneath." Added to this fear was the danger from pirates who
were so common in that day that if a ship were sighted it was the
custom to make ready to fight it. Va. Mag. of Hist., xxiv, 12-15.
' Jacobs, The German Migration to America, pt. m, 65. The whole
report is a curious revelation of the crude colonial medical ideas. See
also Georgia Historical Society, Collections, rv ("Itinerant Observa
tions in America," 62).
' American Historical Review, vi, 66. (Diary of James Mill.)
* G. Mittelberger, Journey to Pennsylvania (1754) (translated by
C. T. Eben), 20.

THE AMERICAN SPIRIT 13
Little wonder that John Harrower heard between
decks such things as he had never heard before,
" some damning, some blasting their legs and thighs,
some their liver, lungs, lights, and eyes," and some,
to make the scene odder, "cursed Father, Mother,
Sister and Brother." ' After a voyage on which the
water had "tasted like ink," and the biscuit had to
be broken with an axe, and after men had been
fifteen weeks on the high seas, without sight of land,''
a lively sense of the breadth of the Atlantic was not
unnatural. The Government could not change this
fact. "The ocean remains," said Burke, "you can
not pump this dry; and so long as it continues in its
present bed, so long all the causes which weaken
authority by distance will continue." The fear of the
scourge of either King or Parliament was sure to be
greatly diminished at so great a distance.
Added to the fact of remoteness was the novelty
of life in the American wilderness. If the chains of
tradition were ever to be struck off, it must be in
this environment so utterly unlike that of England.
From a land of populous towns with highly complex
life, a land of open fields where the forest was the
exception, they had come to a continent bordered
with forests, and with more forests stretching across
its vast extent farther than the wildest imagination
of the most poetic colonist dared to dream. Virginia
was, as John Smith pictured, "all overgrowne with
' American Historical Review, vi, 74. (J. Harrower's Diary.)
• Narrative of J. C. Buethner, 22-24. It was only rhetorical exag
geration when an officer of the Guards summed up the voyage as "the
pox above board, the plague between decks, hell m the fore-castle,
and the devil at the helm."

14 CAUSES OF WAR OF INDEPENDENCE
trees and weedes, being a plaine wildernes as God
first made it." And that "Honorable gentleman,"
Master George Percy, saw "goodly tall Trees, with
such Fresh-waters running through the woods,"
that he was "almost ravished at the first sight
thereof." ' Indeed some of the early comers to the
American shores wrote of them as did Dr. Johnson
of the "Happy Valley," where dwelt Rasselas, the
Prince of Abyssinia. America seemed in their pages
a place where "the blessings of nature were collected
and its evils extracted and excluded." This idealized
wilderness was of vast extent. John Muir, the most
affectionate of the students of the American forests,
pictures them at the time of the coming of the white
man as composed of about five hundred species of
trees, covering the continent.'' "Wide-branching
oak, and elms in endless variety, walnut and maple,
chestnut and beech, ilex and locust, touching limb
to limb, spread a leafy translucent canopy along the
coast of the Atlantic, over the wrinkled folds and
ridges of the AUeghanies. . . . To the southward
stretched dark, level-topped cypresses in knobby,
tangled swamps, grassy savannas in the midst of
them like lakes of light, groves of gay, sparkling
spice-trees, magnolias and palms, glossy-leaved and
blooming and shining continually. To the north
ward, over Maine and Ottawa, rose hosts of spicy,
rosiny evergreens, white pine and spruce, hemlock
and cedar." Into this forest environment, on the
» Narratives of Early Virginia (Tyler, ed), 10, 83; William and
Mary College Quarterly, xix, 90-91, 103.
' J. Muir, Our National Parks, 332-33.

THE AMERICAN SPIRIT 16
shores of the great drowned-river vaUeys of Virginia
and Maryland, and of the bays of New England , came
city and town bred men and women, fated to be
forced by nature to change their mode of life, to
give up a life which emphasized the importance of
the community for one that put the stress, as popu
lation moved westward, on the importance of the
individual.' On the Atlantic seaboard, at Jamestown, Ply
mouth, and Massachusetts Bay, the English race
was to have a rebirth, the first of these destined to
occur perennially as the race marched westward
toward the setting sun. The next was to be beyond
the fall-line, a second beyond the Appalachians, and
more to follow as the frontiersmen pressed on to the
Pacific. In the first settlements on the Atlantic sea
board, the frontier of Europe, the early colonists
experienced many of the influences of life on the
outer edge of civilization which the foremost student
of the westward movement attributes to the purely
American frontiers beyond the falls, beyond the
mountains, or beyond the "Father of Waters."^
The colonist came to the Atlantic coast clothed
in European habit, and moved in all matters by
European traditions. The Virginia planters paid to
exacting Nature one thousand men to learn the
' This tendency was modified at first somewhat in New England
by the custom of moving to new settlements in groups, the whole
congregation of a church.
' See articles by F. J. Turner in Wisconsin Historical Society, Pro-
ceedings, 1893, pp. 79-112; Atlantic Monthly, lixxviii, 289; Bullock,
Select Readings in Economics; American Historical Association,
Report, 1893, p. 199; F. J. Turner, The Frontier in American History,
passim.

16 CAUSES OF WAR OF INDEPENDENCE
lesson of the wilderness and to unlearn the customs
of their native land.' So unprepared were they that
one of the first settlers wrote, "Our drinke was
water, our lodgings, castles in the aire." The ad
justment to the forest life with which they were
forced to "bukle and incounter" cost the Puritan
fathers of New England many deaths and much
suffering from cold and hunger and disease. The
Puritan antipathy to sport nearly led to their ex
tinction during the first few years in America.''
Knowing nothing of hunting and fishing, they
nearly starved when their crops failed them, though
there was plentiful game in the woods and fish in
the sea. Before Nature would let them prosper, they
gave up the food of their fathers and learned to
enjoy the food of the Indians. The newcomers to
America could not reproduce the cottage of the
English countryside, but they built the log cabin of
the Indian.* Emulating the aborigines, they sought
the openings of the forest in which to raise their
grain. The wilderness itself appealed to their im
aginations. "Oh, how sweet," wrote WUUam Penn
from his principality in the American wilds, "is the
quiet of these parts, freed from the troubles and
perplexities of woeful Europe." And John Pory
found that "among these Christall rivers and oder-
eferous woods, I doe escape muche expense, envye,
contempte, vanity and vexation of mind." ^ The
world of the forest was new, untouched by tradi-
» Channing, Hist, of the U.S., i, 189.
' Magazine of American History, xiii, 477.
• Parkman, Frontenac (Boston, 1848), 390.
* Narratives of Early Virginia, 286.

THE AMERICAN SPIRIT 17
tion; it had no society held rigid in the cake of
custom. Not since the dawn of civilization had such
possibilities for the trial of new ideas, and for the
advancement of democratic principles opened to
the sons of man. This potential American democracy
was not, in Harrington's phrase, an oak planted in a
flower pot, but had "the Earth for her Root, and
Heaven for her Branches." Resources lay all about
the new settlers, and more lands full of them
stretched away to the westward horizon. It was but
natural that "God's people" should turn with eyes
of longing to these "free and open spaces of the
New World, whither they might flee to be at peace."
Here was a chance to start over again, to fashion in
a better pattern that social fabric, so sadly warped
by man's failures in the past. Penn's "Holy Experi-^,'
ment in Government" simply expressed substan
tially what in other minds was only of such stuff as
Utopias are made. Many colonial leaders had their
visions of a new order, and if their plans for a
changed society were not clear, at least they gloried
in their escape from the bonds of the old. "There
never was," declared Increase Mather (1677), "a
generation that did so perfectly shake off the dust
of Babylon both as to ecclesiastical and civil con
stitution, as the first generation of Christians that
came into this land for the gospel's sake." '
Everything in their new environment tended to
make the settlers forget the power or even the
need of the British Government. The fundamentals
of political organization remained the same, but a
* Thornton, The Pulpit of the Revolution, xviii.

18 CAUSES OF WAR OF INDEPENDENCE
thousand laws, needed to keep order in the highly
complex English society, became irrelevant and
useless in the sparsely settled forest. New laws of
the colonists' own making took the place of those
discarded. America did not exactly realize the
poet's dream of "happy shores without a law," but
men felt government less frequently. The very
service which the British Government had been
wont to render to the citizen seemed in large part
to vanish. In England when an enemy threatened,
the subject had looked to the King or Parliament to
organize the national force to meet the attack, but
in Virginia or Massachusetts, a John Smith or a
Miles Standish took the enterprise into his own
hands and led his fellows forth to repel the invader.'
Having little cause to fear and often able to dis
pense with government, the colonist became indi
vidualistic; he expected to look out for himself; he
developed hatred of restraint. Frontiersmen were
"inclined to doe when and how they please or not
at aU." *
As time went on and he conquered the wilderness,
he might be pardoned a spirit of independence and
of confidence. Certain that there could be no harder
worlds to conquer, he had a fine enthusiasm about
the future. If the undrained swamp and the ugly
tree stumps, and the general air of the rude frontier
seem to belie his praise of his new home, the pioneer
replied to criticism, with the sublime optimism of
Mark Tapley, that his Eden was not all built yet.
* I do not here refer to cases like that of Nathanial Bacon who went
forth to repel the Indians in spite of the colony's governor.
* Mass. Hist. Soc, Proceedings, xun, 506.

THE AMERICAN SPIRIT 19
He idealized the barren wilderness; he found its soil
fertile, its air healing. The Puritan fathers, though
they "felt the pinch harshly" at first, refused to
long for the city they had left, but "lifted up their
eyes to the heavens, their dearest country, and
quieted their spirits." And this they did in spite of
the grinding toil, the long, cold siege of winter, and
the ever-present fear of the lurking Indians. If New
England got into a "peevish and touchy humor,"
as John Evelyn wrote in 1671, it was not from want
of strength to meet its hardships, but because its
somber temper would not brook interference.
There were a number of conditions and facts of
colonial Ufe which began early to make differences''
between English and colonial political experiences,
differences fated in the course of time to make them
view great questions of imperial organization at
such conflicting angles as to imperil the unity of the^
British Empire. The peopling of America began at
a time when in England local administrative bodies
of a popular character, like the county, town, and
parish, still kept some of their original vigor.' It was
from parts of England where control in local matters
was still with the people that most of the colonists
of New England came. The landed gentry, in Eng
land, who were engaged in a struggle with James and
Charles, for the mastery of the central government,
were still strong in the counties, towns, and parishes,/
and those like Winthrop who removed to New
England reproduced oversea the local government
forms which were flickering out at home, while those
> Channing, Hist, ofthe U.S., i, 421-26.

20 CAUSES OF WAR OF INDEPENDENCE
who remained and who were interested in Virginia,
secured for it the county organization and the set
tlers' representation in the colonial legislature. The
troubles of the Stuarts and Cromwell left them
so preoccupied that the American colonists enjoyed
fifty years of freedom in which to develop on lines
divergent from English tendencies. When these
popular political institutions had once been set
going in America, they went on evolving along the
lines originally laid down, but in England, after the
Restoration (1660), political methods and forms
were set back as far as possible on the wonted ways
of the times before CromweU.' For a hundred years,
thereafter, England seemed, as far as the freedom
of local government from control by the central
was concerned, positively to walk backward with
averted face, while the American colonies passed
("on to even more independent local government and
I liberal political forms suited to a people pushing
ever onward into the wilderness. This historical
course of development in local government con
stantly widened the breach between England and
her colonies in the matter of political ideals.
We have here reviewed certain basic conditions
and facts which affected American life and institu
tions from the outset. All of them tended to bring
about such differences between home-staying and
emigrating Englishmen, and such variations in
their political institutions, that if the time ever came
when their interests pulled in opposite directions, a
rupture of their political relations would be Ukely.
1 Channmg, Hist, of the U.S., n, 2-3.

THE AMERICAN SPIRIT 21
Political and religious conflicts of the age were
dominant causes of the early migrations. The first
colonies were founded when Hooker, Sandys, Locke,
Milton, and Harrington were assailing the old
political faith. A major part of the settlers were
men very reasonably discontented with the existing
order of society. In America, these discontented
men found themselves in a novel environment which
lacked the restraining forces found in the old com
plex European society. Class chains fell away at
least in part. The very distance from England, the
three thousand miles of storm-vexed sea, lessened
the fear of the home government and left the colonist
more free to develop his own local government.
Town-bred men became, on the new continent,
denizens of the wilds. Life there had an absorbing
novelty which broke the shackles of tradition, and
they shook off "the dust of Babylon, both as to
ecclesiastical and civil" customs. As the years went
on, they came to depend less and less on the home
government. Their pride in the conquest of the
wUderness and their triumph in overcoming their
difficulties gave them confidence and nourished a
spirit of independence. Successful experience in local
government — a system carried over from England
just as the relation between the center and the local
units was changing there — gave them confidence in
their ability to care intelligently for their own affairs.
Between the decks of the Susan Constant and the
Mayflower voyaged men whose present convictions
and whose destined experiences boded ill for any
statesmen who should ever try to gainsay their wiU.

CHAPTER II
CONDITIONS OF COLONIAL GOVERNMENT
WHICH BRED INDEPENDENCE
The political unrest in England, contemporary with
the early migrations, the character of the colonists,
and the conditions which influenced their lives in the
American environment, all gave to colonial political
life a trend in a direction leading whither Providence
only knew. If the genius imagined by Burke had
drawn aside for John Winthrop the curtain which
concealed the future, he might truthfully have de
clared that " Whatever England has been growing to
by a progressive increase of improvement, brought
in by varieties of people, by succession of civilizing
conquests and civilizing settlements of seventeen
hundred years," your children's children in their
old age shall have seen added to America in the
brief span of three generations.' And it was the in
genious political methods by which the colonists
attained this end, in spite of British imperial designs,
which drew from Burke the admiring declaration
that when he reflected on these effects, he "felt all
pride of power sink, and all presumption in the wis
dom of human contrivances melt and die away"
within him.
From the first the American colonists profited by
the fact that they not only inherited the traditions
of England's long struggle for political liberty, but
» Burke, Works (ed. 1871), n, 114-15.

COLONM.L GOVERNMENT 23
that, in a formal fashion in Virginia's first charter,
it was fixed that English colonists were to enjoy
there all liberties, franchises, and immunities "as if
they had been abiding and born within this our
Realm of England," ' — to them were to belong the
Magna Charta and the common law. That provision
set up a new colonial policy, not like that of Spain
or France or the nations of antiquity. When Eng
lishmen migrated they went out "with all the first
great privileges of Englishmen on their backs." "
Aside from this concession in the charter the colo
nists were always to insist, and the Crown's legal
advisers to grant, that Magna Charta, the great
constitutional statutes, and the common law were
the birthright of all Englishmen on English soil in
whatever clime or place. Let an Englishman go
where he would in lands claimed by England, he
carried as much of law and liberty with him as
the nature of things would bear,' but Frenchmen,
Spaniards, Greeks, or Romans who became settlers
in new lands had never had the same rights as home-
dwellers. As a foundation principle of a new colonial
policy this provision of the charter was most sig
nificant, but the colonists were to learn that only
eternal vigilance would secure to them the rights
of Englishmen. They insisted upon that principle
under any and all circumstances as the whole colo-
* Macdonald, Documentary Source Book of American History, 7
(clause xv).
^ Hansard Debates, XVT, 196.
' The words of Richard West, legal adviser to the Board of Trade,
1720. George Chalmers, Opinions, I, 194. It would seem that the
colonists had this right whether the King willed it or not.

24 CAUSES OF WAR OF INDEPENDENCE
nial history bears witness,' and by this insistence
they entered fully upon their inheritance of aU the
preceding ages of English constitutional history.
In the early days, when their powers of resistance
were weak, they were aided in holding fast to their
heritage by an arbitrary assumption of the English
King. James II took the stand that Virginia and
New England were got by conquest and were not
subject to control by Parliament. By the King's
prerogative, therefore, they were to be governed, by
the powers which the King could exercise of his own
initiative without the sanction of Parliament. The
colonies were to profit greatly by this temporary
elimination of parliamentary interference, for the
kings of England for years to come were too weak
and preoccupied to enforce their will, and meanwhile
the colonies waxed strong and grew in their own way,
before Parliament could bring its greater strength
to the task of moulding them to its imperial policy.
The result was that after a half of a century, one
group of them at least could say with a full heart,
" We have long drunk of the cup of as great liberties
as any people that we can hear of under the whole
heaven." *
Almost from the moment of setting foot upon the
new continent, the colonists began to rear the fabric
of the English laws and constitution — a law-making
^ An interesting case was that of the settlers on Long Island, who,
after the overthrow of the Dutch power, at once claimed the rights
of Englishmen when Nicholls undertook to set up a government there
which assumed that they were conquered people. See also Wells,
Life of Samuel Adams, i, 96.
2 Letter to Sir Harry Vane, 1654. Rhode Island Colonial Records,
I, 288.

COLONIAL GOVERNMENT 25
assembly, a representative system of government,
and recognition of the common-law guarantees of
personal liberty.' The liberal faction of the Virginia
Company in London, having got the upper hand,
proceeded in November of 1618 to ratify the "great
charter of privileges, orders, and lawes." Bearing
the Company's commission, which provided for set
ting up in Virginia a governor, council, and general
assembly,^ Sir George Yeardley arrived at James
town in April of the next year. The several settle
ments, on Sir George's invitation, sent two delegates
each to meet with their new governor and six coun
cillors in the choir of the church at Jamestown.'
Here was planted in the New World the first seed
of the English Parliament. Although this elected
House of Burgesses with power to govern the colony
did not arise out of demands by the colonists, yet
they took to it as birds to the free air. On the first
day, apparently within an hour, the new assembly
began to exercise a privilege which the House of
Commons had wrung from the King. The Speaker,
though sickly and not able "to pass through long
harangues," took exception to the qualifications of
Captain Warde and Captain Martin. The assembly,
in imitation of the English Commons, proceeded to
^ Royal Historical Society, Magna Charta Commemoration Essays,
185. ^ Pownall ascribed the preservation to American colonists of the
essential rights of Englishmen to the fact that the Island of Jersey
had, by its constitution, "a shadow and semblance of an English
parliament," a meeting of the three orders or estates of the island
whenever money was to be raised to supply public occasions. This
precedent, he claimed, made it easy to put the idea in early AmericaB
charters. Snow, Administration of Dependencies, in.
* See proceedings in Narratives of Early Virginia, 249 et aeq.

26 CAUSES OF WAR OF INDEPENDENCE
exercise the right to judge of the qualifications of its
own members. In due time, they began to make
such laws "as may issue out of every man's private
conceipte," ' or, in different phrase, such laws as
were so peculiar to their new home that no Enghsh
law of the kind had ever been enacted. They passed
a law, for example, that no man could sell or give to
the Indians any hoe or any dog "of the Englishe
race," ^ neither could he sell arms or powder and
shot "upon paine of being held a Traytour to the
colony" and of being hanged without redemption.
Already the legal enactments of this little England
across the sea were beginning to diverge, though
slightly and harmlessly enough at first, from those
of the British ParUament. It was but the thin point
of the wedge which in time was to help split the
British Empire.
Like institutions with like tendencies were set
up in New England. Though the terms of their
charter seemed to permit the Massachusetts Bay
Company to give John Winthrop and twelve as
sistants — the only members of the Company re
siding in Massachusetts — the power to govern
some two thousand subjects,^ the iron logic of the
new conditions ruled otherwise. When in October,
1630, some persons, to the number of one hundred
and nine, appUed to Winthrop and the others to be
made members or "freemen" of the corporation,
' They had already passed "the lawes drawen out of the Instruc
tions given by his Ma''^' Counsell of Virginia in England," selecting
those suited to their enviromnent.
' Narratives of Early Virginia (Jameson, general editor), 270.
' Macdonald, Documentary Source Book, 24-25.

COLONLS.L GOVERNMENT 27
the little aristocracy was confronted by a dilemma.
If they refused the demand, the petitioners, whose
numbers and labor were much needed, would go to
the free lands beckoning them either to the north or
south, to Maine or to New Plymouth. If the demand
were granted, the tenfold increase in the resident
members of the company would swamp the oli
garchy and hasten the rule of the people. Winthrop,
a modern Pharaoh, unwilling to let his people go,
tried the haffway course of admitting them, but
concealing some of the privileges which their mem
bership conferred. For a time they were allowed
only the privilege of electing the assistants who ruled
and taxed them. This device, though it caused some
grumbling,' succeeded for a little over three years,
when in April, 1634, the "freemen" desired a sight
of the patent and there saw plain as the way to the
parish church that all of their laws should be made
at the general court wherein the freemen had acted
hitherto only as electors." This right they now de
manded of the Governor, and he with some shift-
irigs granted what they claimed. This was a per
fectly logical outcome of the political convictions
of the New England settlers who had left their old
home in part because of their belief in the right of
the people to govern themselves.
The next step was the evolving of a representa
tive system. Those colonists, living in towns some
distance from Boston and exposed to Indian attack
1 For the Watertown protest see Original Narratives, Winthrop
Journal, i, 74.
' Original Narratives, Winthrop Journal, 122.

28 CAUSES OF WAR OF INDEPENDENCE
if the settlers should leave in any considerable num
ber, could not all come to the meetings of the General
Court. It was arranged that they might send dep
uties. As new settlements grew up, it became the
custom here as elsewhere in America to demand as a
right the admission of a representative in the pro
vincial assembly. Thus it came about that repre
sentation in America developed under the care of
the communities represented, and not, as in England
during the formative period, a matter guided by the
King's necessities and fixed in the cake of custom so
that it did not change with changing conditions.
Thus in the growth of yet another institution, Eng
land and her colonies were drifting apart.
Even with the changes which gave poUtical in
fluence to more people, Massachusetts had become
not a democracy but an aristocratic republic, gov
erned only by the representatives of those who
were members of the colony's churches. As the
law-making body built up the code of laws for
governing the colony, the Word of God was as much
in evidence as Magna Charta and the English com
mon law. Here again, as in Virginia, the driving
force of the wilderness needs brought new laws into
being, laws unknown in the statutes of Parliament.
Sometimes these enactments were quite contrary
to the EngUsh laws, even violating the terms of the
charter under which the legislators held their lands.
The methods of administration also wandered from
the ways that custom had established in the home«
land. It was not unusual for Winthrop and his
fellow magistrates in this "Bible Commonwealth"

COLONM.L GOVERNMENT 29
to detain or even set behind the bars men who
disputed their methods of rule, and who wished to
appeal to the tribunals of England.' Here, too, in
this "Nation of God," divergence was beginning
and would go on until, all unaware of the widening
breach. Englishmen and Americans would discover,
in the latter half of the eighteenth century, that
they differed irreconcilably in certain basic political
principles. As new colonies one after another were founded
in America, there evolved in various ways similar
institutions, given to like divergences from the Eng
lish legal and constitutional development. There
were interesting variations in the historical experi
ences of the several colonies, but all were subject to
the same forest influence, all had the same sense
of safety from effective interference by the home
government. In Providence, an extreme example
of this variety of political experience, there was set
up the nearest approach to a real democracy that
the English-speaking world had seen. At first the
wanderers from the older settlements in Massa
chusetts had only squatted on land to which they
had no right except a title from the natives. The
English King had not given Roger Williams license
to govern, but he and his fellows shifted for them
selves until the royal will could be known." WiUiams
sought equality and freedom in religious matters,
' Channing, Hist, of the U.S., I, 350; Political Science Quarterly,
XIII, no. 1, p. 53 (Osgood article).
^ It was not untU 1663 that a charter secured their lands and right
to govern English subjects. Macdonald, Documentary Source Book,
67-72.

30 CAUSES OF WAR OF INDEPENDENCE
but his fellow settlers somewhat alarmed him by the
extent to which they demanded like principles in
civil affairs. Yet they did not propose that their
democracy should "prove an anarchic, and so a
common tirannie," for, as their records declare,
they were "exceeding desirous to preserve every
man safe in his person, name and estate." ' To Sir
Harry Vane they expressed their delight in the free
dom of their forest Ufe. "We have . . . been long
free . . . from the iron yokes of wolfish bishops; . . .
we have sitten quiet and dry from the streams of
blood spilt by the war in our native country. We
have not felt the new chains of the Presbyterian
tyrants, nor (in this colony) have we been consumed
with the over zealous fire of the (so-called) Godly
and Christian magistrates. . . . We have not known
what an excise means. We have almost forgotten
what titles are."" Holding fast to the memory of
such blessings, men could forget the fear of the
Indian and the rigor of a New England winter.
Moreover, the very absence from their lives of
bishops, civil war, excises, and titles wrought changes
in their attitude toward government, and altered
their concept of it from that which still held with
Englishmen who did not migrate.
Among the many instruments of government in
which the colonists embodied their new-fashioned
methods of political activity, with their frontier
variations from the English type, none is more
1 1647.
' Rhode Island Colonial Records, i, 288 (spellmg slightly modern
ized).

COLONIAL GOVERNMENT 81
marked than that known as the Fundamental Orders
of Connecticut. The makers did little more than
to write on paper (January, 1638-39) the political
forms which had grown out of the governmental
experience in Massachusetts Bay, yet these "Or
ders" deserve to be characterized as "the first writ
ten constitution known to history, that created a
government." A church community of Massachu
setts Bay, seeking the cheap and fertile lands of the
Connecticut valley, had gone thither with their
children, cattle, and household goods. "Knowing
that where a people are gathered together the Word
of God requires that to mayntayne the peace and
union of such people there should be an orderly and
decent Government," they associated themselves
"to be as one PubUc State or Commonwealth."'
They drew up no mere social compact or Church
covenant, but a true frame of government, describ
ing its form, its officers, and its powers. It is in
teresting to speculate whether this "land of steady
habits" was more so politically because it had civil
forms fixed in writing to which succeeding genera
tions might refer. At least the "Orders" gave to the
men living under them a sense of political self-
control which could not make them easier to bend
to any future imperial plan.
Written fundamental law like the Connecticut
"Orders" " and Pennsylvania's "Charter of Privi-
* Macdonald, Documentary Source Book, 36.
' The New York "Charter of Liberties" was merely an act of the
assembly, but while it lasted had much the same authority as the
"Orders." The Pennsylvania "Charter of Privileges" (1701) had
many features common to all written constitutions. It remained in
force until 1776.

32 CAUSES OF WAR OF INDEPENDENCE
leges," or else documents in the form of the charters
which each colony received from the English Govern
ment, had a profound influence upon American
political ideals. This fundamental law, as written
in charters, took several forms, fancied in varying
degrees by the colonists. There were charters given
by the British Crown to companies like the Massa
chusetts Bay Company, to individual proprietors
like Penn, to joint proprietors as in the Carolinas,
or to trustees as in the case of Georgia. Although
Governor Bernard thought such charters all too
liberal, amounting as he declared "to an alienation
of the dominions of Great Britain" and "in effect,
acts dismembering the British Empire," ' yet the
colonists often found the charters weak bulwarks
for their rights, and learned that theoretical defense
based upon them made Uttle impression upon King
or ParUament if actual conditions argued otherwise.
The seventeenth-century colonial era was marked
by the rise and decline of this system of chartered
colonies, either Uke the corporate colonies of New
England, or the proprietary colonies such as Mary
land and Pennsylvania. By the close of the century-
all of these colonial systems had suffered temporary
ecUpse and some had wholly disappeared." Royal
provinces had been substituted. Inhabitants of cor
porate colonies, like Massachusetts, had always re
sisted this change, because under their charters, by
hook or crook, they had enjoyed for nearly a half-
' Sir Francis Bernard, Select Letters on Government.
' Political Science Quarterly, xvii, no. 2, p. 206 (Osgood article).
The Penns and the Calverts lost their colonies for a time, but both
regained and held them up to the American Revolution.

COLONIAL GOVERNMENT 33
century de facto self-government, but the proprietary
governments, as South Carolina was at first, were
not so satisfactory to the colonists, and they rather
welcomed government by the Crown.' In either
case government was foisted upon them from the
outside, and the colonial spirit rose against it in
tuitively. One of the first cases of colonial defiance of the
English Government was (1664) when Charles II
sent commissioners to "regulate" New England. At
the mere hint that Massachusetts was to be asked
to permit the substitution of a new charter estab
lishing a royal colony in place of their corporate
charter with its self-rule, the Puritan rulers put their
charter in safe hands, manned the harbor fort, set
new guns on its ramparts, and petitioned the King
to let their "laws and liberties live." Fearing lest
they were to lose their charter, they spoke humbly
of being in that case ready to perish or at least to
seek new habitations. When the royal commis
sioners tried to assert their authority by summon
ing the Governor and company to appear before
them at the house of Captain Breedon, a trumpeter
was ordered to warn all persons loyal to the King and
dutiful to God not to heed their summons." The
last sounding of the trumpet was under the very
window of Captain Breedon 's house, upon which
the commissioners gave up. How the magistrates
reconciled loyalty to the King with disobedience to
^ Life and Writings of Benjamin Franklin (Smyth, ed.), rv, 314.
(Petition asking the King to resume control of Pennsylvania.)
" New York Historical Society, Collections, 1869, pp. 62-68.

34 CAUSES OF WAR OF INDEPENDENCE
his commissioners, Puritan logic does not explain.
Their diplomacy is more easily understood than
their logic, for they sent the King a shipload of
masts, and provisions to His Majesty's ships in the
West Indies.
The next serious attempt to take the Massa
chusetts charter was in 1681 when Randolph ap
peared with a legal demand that the corporation
appear in London before the Court of the King's
Bench to defend their right to their charter. Un
decided what to do, the magistrates and deputies
"sought the face of the [Lord," which meant con
sulting the ministers of the colony. Their unanimous
advice was that it was the undoubted duty of the
authorities of Massachusetts Bay "to abide by
what rights and privileges the Lord our God in his
merciful providence hath bestowed upon us." They
argued that it was better to obey the God of their
fathers than to put their trust in princes.' To sin
by giving away the inheritance of their fathers
" would be to incurr the high displeasure of the King
of Kings." It being persistently argued that they
had legally forfeited their charter, they made reply
that "though, according to some corrupt and im-
righteous laws, they might have done so, yet ac
cording to the laws of righteousness and equity they
had not done so."" This appeal to natural law was
prophetic of the days of England's trial when James
Otis and Samuel Adams would forge this theory
' Mass. Hist. Soc, Collections (3d ser.), i, 78.
2 Ihid., 80. This was not an isolated case of their disobedience
to the King's will. See Calendar of State Papers {America and West
Indies, 1681-85), 236-39.

COLONIAL GOVERNMENT 85
into a flaming sword for the colonial defense.
Neither the appeals to the King, nor to Providence,
nor to natural laws saved the charter on this occa
sion, and in 1684 it was withdrawn. A few years
later, 1691, a new and modified charter was granted,
wherein Massachusetts was obliged to accept a
governor appointed by the King. In all cases, and
there were others like this, when a colony had en
joyed a liberal charter and then was robbed of it —
to become a royal province in which the governor's
commission took the place of the charter — the
colony felt aggrieved and never ceased to pine for
its liberties. They felt the loss as Englishmen might
have mourned the loss of Magna Charta.
Such conflicts with the King as that of Massa
chusetts Bay over the possession of her charter were
rare, at least only occasional, but the whole colonial
history abounds in struggles between the assemblies
elected by the people and the governors, the ap
pointed agents of King or Parliament.' Though the
governors were in the main men without any natural
bent toward tyranny, and were merely commonplace
Englishmen anxious to carry out instructions and
draw their salaries, yet they represented to the
colonist the dangerous spirit of prerogative, an ever-
present menace to their liberties. The King's use
of prerogative, of those powers which he could ex
ercise of his own will and initiative, continued, in
theory at least, without diminution, in the American
provinces, and governors there were expected to do
' Except in Connecticut and Rhode Island where the people chose
their own governors.

36 CAUSES OF WAR OF INDEPENDENCE
the royal will. As a result ink was not black enough
to paint them in their proper colors. Even the
benign Franklin overdrew his picture of them.
"Their office," he wrote, "makes them insolent;
tlieir insolence makes them odious; and, being con
scious that they are hated, they become malicious.
Their malice urges them to continual abuse of the
inhabitants in their letters to Administration, rep
resenting them as disaffected and rebellious, and
(to encourage the use of severity) , as weak, divided,
timid, and cowardly. Government believes all;
thinks it necessary to support and countenance its
officers. Their quarreling with the people is deemed
a mark and consequence of their fidelity. They are
therefore more highly rewarded, and this makes
their conduct still more insolent and provoking." '
This was written on the eve of the Revolution, and
is indicative of critical spirit at its height, but
descriptions nearly as bitter are to be found in all
colonial records.
Needy politicians and adventurers there were, no
doubt, and at times, as Junius expressed it, "It was
not Virginia that wanted a governor but a court
favorite that wanted a salary." Lord Cornbury,
Governor of New York, was a spendthrift, immoral
and dishonest, but he was cousin-german to Queen
Mary and Queen Anne, he was burdened with debt,
and the court had to find him a place. The poor
relatives of high officials must be cared for," and the
' Trevelyan, The American Revolution, I, 16. See also Hotblack,
Chatham's Colonial Policy, 173.
2 N. C. Colonial Records, u, 154-58; m, 80.

COLONLVL GOVERNMENT 37
Ministry could not have it said that "the hungry
sheep look up and are not fed." A writer who
observed this process in another part of the empire
made the acrid comment that the Ministry acted
"as if justice and pubUc virtue were best admin
istered and promoted by men most distinguished
for ignorance and profligacy, and that they would
prove the best protectors of other people's fortunes
who by vice and profusion had dissipated their
own!" ' Rawdon Crawley, in "Vanity Fair," Gov
ernor of "Coventry Island," was a character in
fiction, but his counterpart might have been found
in the actual history of any eighteenth-century
colonial empire. A few men of ability were made
governors, but they seem to have been little more
successful from the British Government point of
view than those who were inefficient or lacking in
experience. The colonists opposed them whether
good or bad. If governors were not Stuart kings,
yet one could make the most of their tyrannous
attributes. If they had no crowns that made their
heads uneasy, their official robes reminded the
colonist of the source of their power and made them
seem natural political enemies. It was the duty of
the colonial governor to assume royal prerogatives,
and that too with attributes of the royal power
which Parliament in the days of Charles I and
James II had wrested from the King. Things the
monarch could no longer do in England his repre
sentative in the colony could do. A governor could
summon, prorogue, and dissolve a colonial assembly,
* B. Edwards, West Indies, n, 390 (bk. \i, chap. 1).

88 CAUSES OF WAR OF INDEPENDENCE
but the King, at least in practice, dared not so treat
Parliament.' The colonists naturally strove to re
duce the governor's power with reference to their
assemblies within the same limits as the King's
power with reference to Parliament. Mere pro
vincial tendency to imitate the homeland would lead
them to do that." They never forgot or forgave
that "haughty bashaw," as Samuel Adams dubbed
Governor Dudley, when he bitterly asserted (1702)
that "the King's subjects in New England did not
differ much from slaves, and that the only difference
was, that they were not bought and sold." * He had
taunted them too with the sneer that they "must
not expect their liberties would follow them to the
ends of the earth." But they did expect that very
thing, and they would follow to the ends of the earth
any provincial leader who would boldly demand
those English-born liberties.
In spite of the colonial fear of the royal governor,
there were conditions controlling his] relations with
the colonists which as a rule rendered him powerless
enough to cope with them. Though the governors
were at first instructed to give profitable offices and
to make grants of land to influential provincials and
in this way secure their aid in controUing the colony,^
time was to prove that, when the climbers had
' Channing, Hist, ofthe U.S., n, 246; E. B. Greene, The Provincial
Governor, 229 (Bernard's Commission), 92-93.
' Minutes of the Council of Pennsylvania, i, 494; W. R. Anson, Law
and Custom of the Constitution.
' Andros Tracts, i, 82; Palfrey, New England, m, 526. WeUs, Sain-
uel Adams, i, 96.
* Becker. The History of Political Parties in the Province of Nea
York, 8, 12.

COLONML GOVERNMENT 39
secured their titles to land grants or been enriched
with their sinecures, they were apt to scorn the
ladder by which they had ascended and to seek
provincial popularity by embracing the cause of the
assembly rather than that of the governor.' In later
days, as Sir Guy Carleton discovered in his Canadian
province, "the governor having Uttle or nothing to
give away can have but little influence." Moreover,
as he pointed out, it was "impossible for the dignity
of the throne or peerage to be represented in the
American forest," and for that reason the British
form of government transplanted to America could
never produce "the same fruits as at home." ^ The
governor was unfortunate, Carleton said, in having
the duty of keeping all the colonial officers in proper
subordination and of restraining those officers who
live by fees "from running them up to extortion."
All such officers, "finding themselves checked in
their views of profit," are "disposed to look on the
person who disappoints them as their enemy."
Another source of gubernatorial weakness in most
of the provinces was dwelt upon by Cadwallader
Golden of New York. "The proper Ballance of
power essential to the English Constitution is
destroy'd in the Colonies . . . owing to the Gover
nours having no subsistence but from the Assembly."
They may resist for a time, he admitted, but after
all are obliged to comply "or starve or be sunk in
debt." One governor complained bitterly that while
' Robert Livingston was a good example. See Becker, Political
Parties in the Province of New York, 12.
' Andrews, The Colonial Period, 151.

40 CAUSES OF WAR OF INDEPENDENCE
trying to carry out the instructions of the British
Government, "I was left to begg my daily bread
from a hard-hearted Assembly here."' Franklin
thought the proprietary governor was "the most
wretched thing alive." Having two masters, he was
"certain to live in perpetual broils" and "uncertain
whether he shall be able to live at all." " Sir WUliam
Keith, we are told, was of a philosophical mind and
in his first address to the assembly made hints, that
could not be misunderstood, "that in case they
would pay him well he would serve them well."
The assembly, Franklin dryly remarks, were sensible
enough to see "that this was all that could be re
quired of a Man who had a Family to maintain with
some degree of Splendor, and who was no richer
than Plantation Governors usually are. In short
they believed in him, and the Returns he annually
made them were suitable to the Confidence they
plac'd in him."
Most of the colonies refused to grant a permanent
civil list out of which the British Government might
pay the governors' salaries, and Parliament paid no
attention to the recommendation of the Board of
Trade that the salaries be paid out of the royal
treasury.^ Franklin struck a chord to which the
colonial heart responded when he declared, in his
"Gazette," that there ought to be mutual depend-
' Keys, Cadwallader Colden, 235; New York Colonial Documents,
V, 451 ; D. D. Wallace, Life of Henry Laurens, 112; Dickerson, American
Colonial Government, 155.
' Franklin, Works (Sparks, ed), in, 187.
' There were repeated threats to do this. Beer, British Cohrmd
Policy, 176^-1766, 37-38; Spencer, Constitutional Conflict in Masia-
chusetts, 70-88; E. B. Greene, The Provincial Governor, chap. ix.

COLONIAL GOVERNMENT 41
ence between governor and governed.' If there were
a governor, wrote Samuel Adams, "independent of
the people for his support, as well as of his political
Being," he would be in fact a master and soon a
tyrant." Nevertheless, there were nearly independ
ent governors, who in spite of the fact made little
progress on the royal road to tyranny. In Virginia
the governor was able to pay himself out of quit-
rents and fees received for various functions, and
these, with the permanent grant by the House of
Burgesses of two shillings on each hogshead of to
bacco sent out of the province, left him almost inde
pendent of the legislature. Only in times of war
or poor harvests could he be coerced by his need of
money.' The colonist knew how to make the most
of all English precedents as to modes of coercing an
executive. Most of the colonists, like the Massa
chusetts settlers, retained the tradition of their
struggle as Englishmen with King Charles I and
Archbishop Laud, and they never forgot how to
starve an executive into obedience. Neither Massa
chusetts Bay nor the other plantations of New
England ever made the mistake of leaving the
governor independent in money matters. They dis
tinctly favored the arrangement, quite contrary to
scriptural wisdom, by which the governor had two
masters, one who gave him his commission, and one
' Franklin, Works (Temple Franklin, ed), i, 66. For another de
fense of the colonial view see Franklin, Writings (Smyth, ed.), v, 83.
* Samuel Adams, Writings, n, 248.
' Channing, Hist, ofthe U.S., i, 520-21 ; n, 80; Andrews, The Colonial'
Period, 170. In the Carolinas also the governors were paid out of
export dues, quit-rents, and small duties. E. B. Greene, The Pro-
nncial Governor, 60-63.

42 CAUSES OF WAR OF INDEPENDENCE
who gave him his pay. When, on the eve of the
Revolution, an act of Parliament provided funds for
a governor's salary which he would not have to beg
from the hard-hearted assembly, Samuel Adams'
wrath knew no bounds.' He wanted to know if it
was not an indignity "to have a Governor, an
avowed advocate for ministerial measures, and a
most assiduous instrument in carrying them on,
modelled, shaped, controlled, and directed totally
independent of the people over whom he is com
missioned to govern, and yet absolutely dependent
upon the Crown; pensioned by those on whom his
existence depends, and paid out of a revenue estab
lished by those who have no authority to estabhsh
it, and extorted from the people in a manner most
odious, insulting and oppressive." Though Adams
"required the gall of the dragon" to express his bit
terness, he only voiced the colonial view, but the
governors looked at the problem from a different
angle. One declared that the colonies would be
governed as they ought to be when governors were
made independent of their assemblies, and then
hanged up when they failed to do their duty. They
had not advanced beyond the seventeenth-century
wisdom of Francis Bacon, who, taking all knowledge
to be his province, had declared, with an air of
finality, "For government [of colonies] let it be in
the hands of one, assisted with some council." " The
American colonial governors were witnessing the
dawn of true democracy, but autocratic tradition
' Wells, Samuel Adams, i, 486.
* Bacon, Essays (1893 ed.), 174.

COLONL\.L GOVERNMENT 43
had dulled the coordinating nerves so that what the
eye saw the mind did not comprehend.
An important cause of friction between governor
and provincial legislator was an unconscious tend
ency of the colonials to ape the great parliamentary
figures of "Old England." They could not resist
trying to fancy themselves at Westminster, or writ
ing under the name of Pym or Hampden when they
were not imitating those heroes in the modest legis
lative halls of the colony. The colonial Solons,
therefore, drew no small satisfaction from virtuous
conflict with the governor. Even if these vice-regal
officers did not try "to bashaw it over Englishmen,"
but were only able and efficient, as in the case of
Nicholls, Lovelace, and Dongan in New York, the
colonists were, nevertheless, discontented, and clam
ored for seff -control. Not even the appointment of
their fellow colonists to the governor's seat gave
them satisfaction.' The colonial politicians rather
enjoyed clothing themselves in the Roman toga of
Brutus, and thinking of their governor as another
Csesar. It made the small affairs of colonial politics
swell with importance. John Adams classed himself
with that "mighty line of heroes and confessors and
martyrs who since the beginning of history have
done battle for the dignity and happiness of human
nature against the leagued assailants of both."
To strut for an hour on the colonial stage in the
part of an heroic defender of the people's liberties
was not without pleasing sensations. For such
heroics the governor was the inevitable victim.
1 E. B. Greene, The Provincial Governor, 48-49.

44 CAUSES OF WAR OF INDEPENDENCE
One of them swore that he proceeded with as much
caution in everything as if he were walking between
red-hot irons, and acted with the same sincerity as
if he were to die to-morrow, but all to no purpose.
Peter Oliver, a Loyalist, tells how the New Eng-
landers played the devil with all the governors sent
there — "Governor Burnet they worried into his
grave. . . . They were continually adding fuel to the
flame of contention which like the Vestal Fire —
they made it a part of their religion to keep alive."
The "demagoges," he said, "boasted that they
could, when they pleased, remove any governor from
his post." ' If a governor made trouble by trying to
carry out his instructions, he might be replaced by
another who created the illusion of success through
clever concessions to the assembly." On the whole,
however, it must be said that the British Govern
ment supported the governors against colonial com
plaints, especially if the officers incurred criticism
only because they tried to carry out instructions.'
There were exceptions, however, even to this, and
Codrington, Governor of Barbados, a wrathful vic
tim of colonial contumacy, declared that "if an
English gentleman was to be perjured, clamoured,
and voted out of his reputation without being al
lowed a hearing, then a Frenchman or even a Turk
had no reason to envy an Englishman." His ex
perience made him long for a furlough rather than
a new commission. But it was not merely the
» British Museum, Egerton MSS., 2671 F 16.
* Becker, The Beginnings of the American People, 164; Andrews,
The Colonial Period, 169, 181.
• But see Dickerson. American Colonial Government, 156-57.

COLONIAL GOVERNMENT 45
governor's activities in obeying his royal master
that estranged him from the people of his colony.
Even his sectarian preferences usually made him
odious. All governors, lieutenant-governors, secretaries,
councillors, attorneys-general, chief justices, cus
toms officers — all colonial officers, in fact, who were
appointed by the British Government — were "ruf-
fle-shirted Episcopalians," and attended the Angli
can Church.' This fact, especially in the northern
colonies where an opposing sect was established,
served to keep the British officials aloof religiously
and to make the Dissenters less wiUing to yield
obedience to them. Moreover, these officers, thus
isolated at this important point of social contact,
lost that opportunity of understanding and sym
pathizing with the people. If they took religion at
all seriously, they were sure to give offense by merely
encouraging Anglican Church practices.
It was the Episcopalian zeal of Andros, in the
last years of the seventeenth century, that so much
aroused the wrath of the Puritans. In spite of their
laws penalizing every observance of Christmas,
Andros attended Anglican service on that day, "a
red-coat ... on his right hand and Captain George
on his left," and sixty red-coated soldiers in the rear.
In the spring, as if again to flout the "immodest
* For nearly one hundred years before the Revolution, royal
governors were instructed to see that the Book of Common Prayer
was read "each Sunday and Holy Day" and "the Blessed Sacrament
administered according to the rules of the Church of England."
Documents Relating to the Colonial History of New York, vii, 362.
Note a cinious result recorded in Literary Diary of Ezra Stiles, I,
294-95.

46 CAUSES OF WAR OF INDEPENDENCE
godliness " of the Puritans, he even caused a Maypole
to be set up, and thereupon Increase Mather sol
emnly wrote that "the Devil had begun his march
of triumph." When the governor, in his Anglican
zeal, established an Episcopal minister in Boston,
Puritan intolerance could see in him only "Baal's
priest," and his prayers were "leeks, garlic, and
trash," whUe his church was "Egypt's Babylon." '
When he, finaUy, compeUed the Puritans to share
the south meeting-house, and ordered them to close
their shops on the anniversary of the "martyrdom
of Charles I," their indignation knew no bounds.
The ever-recurring clash between the provincial
governor, symbol of the monarchical principle in
government, and the assembly, symbol of the demo
cratic principle, worked increasingly to awake the
colonial sense of a divergence between American in
terests and those of England. No cause of the final
rebellion is more profound, perhaps, than this nag
ging conflict. As time went on, the assemblies by
fair means or foul, took over the functions of the
governor, and even of his council which he had
carefully selected from among such colonists as
promised to be docUe supporters of the royal power.
Even the chief law officers of the colonies grew
subservient as they became dependent upon the
assembly for their salaries. The whole center of
gravity of the colonial administration shifted grad-
1 Mass. Hist. Soc, Collections (7th ser.), vii, 133; Oliver, The
Puritan Commonwealth, 446-50; Mass. Hist. Soc, Proceedings (2d
ser.), xin, 410-11; Hutchinson, Collectionof Papers relative lo Massa-
chusetts Bay, 525-76; Osgood, The American Colonies in ihe Seven
teenth Century, m, 390.

COLONLVL GOVERNMENT 47
ually from London to the capitals of the American
provinces. "Thus, little by little," wrote Governor
Glen of South Carolina (1743), "the people have got
the whole administration in their hands and the
crown is by various laws despoiled of its principal
flowers and brightest jewels." ' " The whole frame of
government was unhinged," he wrote, "and the
governor divested of his power."
What flowers and jewels Governor Glen had in
mind we can in part determine from his own com
plaints. In defiance of the King's instructions, the
assembly, and not the governor, elected the holders
of all Church preferments. This might seem a small
matter, but at least it was a feather plucked from
Caesar's wing. So independent were the clergy, as a
result, that the governor was not even prayed for,
he lamented, though the assembly did enjoy their
benediction. Almost all officers owed their places
to the truculent assembly. The treasurer, the Indian
commissioner, the comptroller of duties, the powder
receiver, were responsible to and removable only by
the assembly. It was the old English struggle over
again to win for the representatives of the people a
voice in the appointment of ministers of government.
All executive power was parceled out among com
missioners — appointees of the Commons House of
Assembly — so that they had the sole direction
of everything. If the governor merely asserted that
all forts and castles belonged to the King, he would
not be listened to by the assembly. Glen declared.
In a word, by controlling the raising and spending of
' Wallace, Henry Laurens, 35, 37, 40.

48 CAUSES OF WAR OF INDEPENDENCE
taxes, and by choosing their own auditors, the Com
mons House of Assembly, as the lower house was
called, were the real arbiters of the use of all pub
lic monies.' The very smallness of the affairs with
which this "Parliament in miniature" dealt made it
meticulous. No use of power was too small to be
magnified into tyranny, if the governor tried to ex
ercise it. Finding their power to be in "holding the
purse-strings of the people," the members of the
assembly never ceased their vigilance in that respect.
They kept the same tight hold upon the public wal
let that marked the early days of the British Parlia
ment, even to learning to ape that ancient body in
the trick of putting off the voting of suppUes until
the last day of the session.
Other colonies gained the same power over the
governor. In Virginia, the burgesses supervised most
expenditures, aside from the salary of the governor,
by insisting on their right to appoint their own
treasurers. To demand this right and gain it was
but to repeat in an American province the exercise
of a right which Parliament first successfully as
serted over Henry IV, two centuries before. Some
colonial assemblies in the British Empire had the
brazen effrontery to appoint their own officer to
receive and issue the public money even though a
Crown officer was actually commissioned for that
duty." In New York the assembly persisted in elect-
' Wallace, Henry Laurens, 165. In England, Parliament had com
pelled Edward III to permit auditing of his accounts by their
commissioners (1341), though the custom had not become definitely
established until after the Restoration.
' Royal Hist. Soc, Transactions (4th ser.), i, 204.

COLONIAL GOVERNMENT 49
ing its own treasurer, limiting all appropriations to
one year, making money bills specific, both as to
the purpose and as to the agent who should spend
the money.' By this constant, 'even excessive, use
of specific grants of money, governors were made
mere figureheads. Not only in New York and the
Carolinas, but in Massachusetts, New Jersey, and
Pennsylvania, the assemblies, repeating the ancient
methods and victories of Parliament, gained in time
full power over the finances. The victory was so
complete in New York (1754) that the Privy Coun
cil informed King George II, "The Assembly have
taken to themselves not only the management
and disposal of such publick money, but have also
wrested from your Majesty's Governor the nomina
tion of all offices of Government, the custody and
direction of the publick military stores, the muster
ing and direction of troops . . . and in short, almost
every other executive part of government." " By
the middle of the eighteenth century the lower house
in nearly all colonies had affected, in practice at
least, the powers and privileges of the British House
of Commons, and, protest as they would, the Eng
lish authorities seemed unable to curb them.
The opposition of the assembly was by no means
always personal and directed against an unpopular
governor. It was more fundamental than that, for
it extended to any representative of the Imperial
Government. All appointees of the Crown, chief
' Becker, Political Parties in the Province of New York, 7; E. P.
Tanner, The Province of New Jersey (Columbia University Studies),
chap. xxii.
' Documents Relating to the Colonicd History of New York, vi, 831-82.

50 CAUSES OF WAR OF INDEPENDENCE
justices, attorneys-general, customs officials, secre
taries, deputy auditors, and receivers-general, had
to expect trouble with the assembly, if by hook or
crook that body could reach them.' The judiciary
was a special object of the assembly's solicitude,
and with reason in some cases, for, as Colonel Barre
charged, men had been "promoted to the highest
seats of justice" in the colonies, who to his knowl
edge " were glad by going to a foreign country to
escape being brought to a bar of a court of justice
in their own." The chief justice and the attorney-
general sent to North Carolina by His Grace, the
Duke of Newcastle, were declared not to know
enough law to be "clerkes to a justice of the peace." '
In New York where the governors won the technical
points as to tenure and salary of judges, the assem
bly through an organized colonial bar was able,
nevertheless, to control the judiciary.* Especially,
the members of the governor's council appointed by
him, and meant to act as an upper house in the
colonial legislature, met with continual hostility.
When the two houses in South Carolina clashed over
the question of control of money bills, the Commons
accused the Council of "seditious doctrine" for
claiming such a control.^ The Commons regarded
the Council as representing an outside power, and
believed that the principle of constitutional self-
* The South Carolina Assembly's effort to punish Chief Justice
Wright illustrates the spirit of rancor. Wallace, Henry Laurens, 39.
* Dickerson, American Colonial Government, 144.
" Becker, Political Parties in the Province of New York, 7.
* Wallace, Henry Laurens, 38, 39, 40, 112, 115, 169; Channing,
Hist, of the U.S., i, 513.

COLONIAL GOVERNMENT 51
government was at stake. The New York Assembly
also asserted its supremacy as a legislature, and
refused to allow the Council to amend money biUs.'
Again an American assembly was merely insisting
upon the fruits of the victory of the British House of
Commons (1678) won in conflict with the House
of Lords over this same question in the reign of
Charles II. The assemblies were not at all abashed by
the rebuke of the Board of Trade declaring that
"No assembly in the plantations ought to pretend to
all the privileges of the House of Commons in Eng
land, which will no more be allowed them than it
would to the council, if they should pretend to all the
privileges of the House of Lords here." " In South
Carolina, the Council and Commons quarreled over
the matter of correspondence with the colonial agent
in London and the Commons vindicated its power
to control his election.' It was a matter of some
moment whether this agent represented the popular
element in the colony or those who supported royal
prerogative. Neither Virginia nor Maryland was
ever able to get its agents wholly under the control
of the lower house.* As a result of the large measure
of success which the lower houses of the colonial
legislatures won, they came, like the Commons in
South Carolina, to measure their privileges by those
of the British House of Commons. Unmoved by the
' Becker, Political Parties in the Province of New York, 6; Chan
ning, Hist, of ihe U.S., n, 310.
^ New York Colonial Documents, iv, 1171-72.
' Wallace, Henry Laurens, 96. See A. G. Waldo, in Americana,
February, 1912.
* Political Science Quarterly, xxxv, 373-392 (B. Bond, art. on "The
Colonial Agent").

52 CAUSES OF WAR OF INDEPENDENCE
adverse decisions of ministers and imperial law ofii
cers, they never ceased to claim the distinctive
powers of their more ancient model. Throughout
America the colonial lower houses of assembly,
through various stages of evolution strangely like
those experienced by the House of Commons in
England, attained a position of supremacy.' There
were, it is true, some of the battles which Parliament
had fought and won, which the provincial legislatures
did not have to fight over again — freedom of debate
for example; but on the other hand there was at
least one parliamentary victory which the American
assemblies desired, but never won — the exemption
from the royal veto upon their laws.
The assemblies, though often justified in their
attitude of opposition, were on many occasions
merely factious and unreasonable. They prevented,
or hindered till useless, measures both wise and for
their good. Never did they appear at worse advan
tage than in their opposition, during the French and
Indian War, to the imperial efforts to get them to
prepare for their own defense." Their views were
often narrow, prejudiced, and unstatesmanlike.
Slowly and surely they inevitably encroached upon
the executive. Sometimes their motives for this
encroachment were even sinister, as when the mem
bers of the South Carolina Commons strove for a
large share of political power to save themselves
from loss after taking part in an Ulegal land-grabbing
* Dickerson, American Colonial Government, chap. v.
' University of California Publications, i, no. 1, pp. 1-98 (McCormac
article), "Colonial Opposition to Imperial Authority." Political Sci
ence Quarterly, xra, no. 1, 55. (H. L. Osgood article,)

COLONIAL GOVERNMENT 53
scheme.' But this was unusual, and, in general, they
were merely narrow-minded, provincial politicians,
watching with Argus eyes the petty interests which,
after all, were their own. It is easy to give wise
counsel after the event, but the opinion of Chief
Justice William Smith is not unworthy of considera
tion. That distinguished Loyalist found Canada a
more congenial land than New York when he had
fled from the wrath of the patriots of that province,
and after the Revolutionary War, he wrote re
flectively: " "I trace the late revolt ... to a remoter
cause than those to which it is ordinarily ascribed.
The truth is the country had outgrown its govern
ment and wanted the true remedy for more than
half a century before the rupture commenced. . . .
To expect wisdom and moderation from near a score
of petty parliaments consisting in effect of only one
of the three necessary branches of a parliament,
must . . . appear to have been a very extravagant
expectation. An American Assembly, quiet in the
weakness of their infancy, could not but discover
in their elevation to prosperity, that themselves were
the substance, and the governor and Board of
Counsel were shadows in their political frame. . . .
It belonged to the administrations of the days of our
fathers to have found the cure in the erection of a
power upon the continent itself to control all its own
little republics and create a partner in the legislation
of the empire capable of consulting their own safety
and the common welfare.'y' Exile seemed to have
• Wallace, Henry Laurens, 42.
• C. P. Lucas, History of Canada, 256 (see 259).

54 CAUSES OF WAR OF INDEPENDENCE
given the banished Loyalist a prophetic vision of that
Commonwealth of Nations which bitter experience
was in the course of time to form out of Imperial
Britain.

CHAPTER III
BRITISH EXPANSION CREATES IMPERIAL
PROBLEMS
In 1763 British imperial attainment had reached
the crest of the wave upon which it had been rising
since the days of Raleigh. Not even the most dismal
Cassandra would then have prophesied an approach
ing loss of half the empire which had been growing so
rapidly for one hundred and fifty years. It had been
two centuries and a half since Columbus's discovery
had profoundly changed England's strategic position
among the commercial nations. The Mediterranean
was no longer the heart of the trading world. The
change did not come at once, but with the growing
use of the Atlantic and the firing of men's imagina
tion with dreams of a Northwest Passage to India,
England was awakened to her advantage. The
Cabots, voyaging to Newfoundland and Labrador,
seemed to have accomplished little toward stirring
the English mind to grasp the opportunities, but at
least their discoveries laid foundations for later
claims to the North American coast.' Children who
might have heard of Cabot were in the vale of years
before England made further notable efforts to enter
upon her heritage of the sea. Then came Drake and
Hawkins and the piratical raids on Spanish settle
ments, duringwhich the English "sea-dogs "acquired
' American Historical Review, iv, 60-61 (H. Harrisse, "The Out
come of the Cabot Quarter-Centenary").

56 CAUSES OF WAR OF INDEPENDENCE
the seamanship which in 1588 with the aid of fortune
overthrew "the Invincible Armada." After that
victory began the decline of Spanish sea-power and
the rise of England's. With the growing sense of
power. Englishmen began'to have visions of a domin
ion beyond the sea which would rival if not destroy
that of Spain. Essex, Gilbert, and Raleigh dreamed
these dreams, and early in the seventeenth century,
Sir Edwin Sandys, John Smith, George Calvert,
John Winthrop, and many others gave them a real
ity on the Chesapeake and on Massachusetts Bay.
From this time on, Venice was not more wedded to
the Adriatic than England to the Atlantic. Thinking
Englishmen came more and more to endorse the
words of Sir John Boroughs in his "Sovereignty of
the British Seas," "And therefore, the Sovereignty
of our seas being the most precious Jewell of his
Majesty's Crowne and (next under God) the prin-
cipall meanes of our Wealth and Safetie, all true
English hearts and hands are bounded by all possible
meanes and diligence to preserve and maintaine the
same, even with the uttermost hazzard of their lives,
their goods and fortunes."
The extension of the British Empire beyond the
seas was further secured by the strong Puritan navy
fostered by CromweU to fight at sea those who would
overthrow the Protestant power.' This was the
beginning of England's sea dominion. The English
were forced as never before to comprehend their
manifest destiny to rule the sea, to understand the
' See F. Strong, "Causes of Cromwell's West India Expedition,"
in American Historical Review, iv, 228, 245.

IMPERL\.L PROBLEMS 57'
advantage that geography had placed in their grasp.
The destiny was not to be wholly won without the
duel with Holland which we follow in such absorbing
detail in Pepys' immortal diary. Holland at least
saved herself from destruction in 1674, when the
combined attack of England and France seemed to
fail. But the Dutch strength had been overstrained,
and thereafter her sea-power waned as England's
forged ahead. Holland's merchant marine suffered
from the British Navigation Laws, and her tenuous
hold on the American coast at the mouth of the
Hudson was lost during the reign of Charles II, when
England's colonies became an unbroken series of
settlements along the Atlantic coast. Aside from her
waning sea-power, Holland had not the surplus
population to people the Atlantic seaboard. The
population of the English colonies doubled every
twenty-five years, for, in addition to constant im
migration from Europe, the exuberant economic
promise of America did not tend to cause the most
prudent colonist to reflect upon the deterrent
theories of Malthus. English fecundity, as well as
English sea-power, assured British hold upon the
western shore of the Northern Atlantic.
The next phase of England's imperial expansion
was initiated when she, with Holland, began to resist
the efforts of Frenchmen, under Colbert's inspira
tion, to build a greater France in North America.
Though France had begun early the competition for
a place under the sun in America, she had been re
tarded by strife at home. The French Cartier had
preceded the English Drake or Frobisher; Coligny

58 CAUSES OF WAR OF INDEPENDENCE
ventured earlier than Raleigh or Gilbert; and the
Pilgrims were but the contemporaries of the French
founders of Acadia and Quebec; yet France, supreme
in Europe, at the close of the Thirty Years' War had,
because of the European struggle, fallen behind in
the colonial race. Her prolonged struggle with Eng
land and Holland, which seemed at first a religious
conflict. Catholic against Protestant, became in the
days of Queen Anne the most commercial of wars.
The American and Indian trade of the English and
Dutch traders was imperiled. A union of the French
and Spanish powers would probably close the Amer
ican world to the English and the Dutch, so that
in its wider aspects the War of the Spanish Succes
sion was a competition for the New World. At the
Treaty of Utrecht (1713), England for the moment
won the race for America, and became, if not the
dominant authority in the world, at least super
lative in maritime power. France was still to be
a dangerous rival in America and India, but for
the time England gained Acadia, Nova Scotia, and
Newfoundland, and the control of the lucrative
slave-trade with the Spanish West Indies. British
possessions in America were still small as compared
with the empire of Spain, or the vast claims of France
in Canada and the Mississippi Valley, but they were
compact and peopled with Europeans. The conflict
with France was not yet at an end, but dragged on
until the great victory in the Seven Years' War,
when Boscawen "made the Indies echo with his
thunder" and the full might of English sea-power
was revealed. The strategic genius of Hawke and

IMPERIAL PROBLEMS 59
"Old Dreadnaught" had given England the com
mand of the sea. That and the European war re
strained the armies of France within her low-water
mark, left her brave soldiers at Quebec and Montreal
dependent on inadequate resources, and gave the
English colonies the full support of the mother
country. At the Treaty of Paris (1763), France, as
the price of "a Christian, universal, and perpetual
peace," gave up the remainder of her American
empire — Canada and her claims east of the Mis
sissippi to England, and Louisiana to Spain as com-;
pensation for the loss of Florida.' With that con-'
summation, England became an object of jealousy
for all Europe, and was everywhere denounced as
the "tyrant of the seas." It was not strange that
Horace Walpole talked of burning all day his Greek
and Latin books, those "histories of little people."
It had taken the Romans three hundred years to
conquer the world, while his England, he boasted,
had subdued the globe in three campaigns, a globe
"as big again" as it was in the Roman's day. Yet
the truth was that little by little the British, con
quering and peopling half the world without any
ambitious plan, had taken up the burdens of empire,
forced by a fate whose decrees they could not honor
ably refuse to obey.
Though Great Britain roused the jealousy of the
world by the rapidity with which she had added
cubits to her imperial stature, yet had her enemies
realized the magnitude of the problems of organiza
tion which accompanied that growth, all emotions
,* Revue des questions historiques, xun, 420, Ixxi, 1.

60 CAUSES OF WAR OF INDEPENDENCE
of envy would have died within them. At the dawn
of the era of expansion the problems of empire had
seemed easy of solution. All were answered by the
simple formula of the mercantile theory as to colo
nies. Every governmental act which concerned the
American colonies was determined by the political,
and economic theory that colonies were not worth
while unless they could be so managed as to bring/
gold into the home country. No other motive waa
thinkable in that age. The aim was not to transplant
English men and women to new homes across the
sea where they might create a greater Britain, but
to transport some laborers to a plantation in a
distant land whose natural products were such as
England could not raise herseff . Swift's satire causes
Gulliver to explain to the Houyhnhnms the kind of
lands which his countrymen think worthy of coloni
zation. As to those which "do not abound either in
gold, silver, sugar or tobacco, I did humbly conceive
that they were by no means proper objects of our
zeal, our valor or our interests."
In their eagerness to force the American colonies
to produce what England could not, the directors of
colonial affairs flew in the face of nature. A new
China and a new India were to be created by govern
mental magic on the American shores. Drugs and
spices and silks were ordered grown where Nature
had decreed that only tobacco or rice and indigo
would grow. Since there were not mines of the
precious metal in England, colonists were ordered to
search for gold in Virginia. In order to escape de
pendence on the Dutch and Portuguese spice islands,

IMPERIAL PROBLEMS 61
the West Indies and Florida were to raise nutmegs,
cloves, and ginger. Virginians must plant vines and
raise sUkworms, in order that wines and silks might
no longer be the monopoly of France.'
The natural sequence of such ideas was that in
the seventeenth century British statesmen had an
attitude of positive dislike toward New England.
These northern colonies were not serviceable as were
the West Indies to the commercial system. Sand
wich told Charles II to "hinder their growth" as
much as possible. The goods they produced too
nearly resembled those of England. As late as 1763
that idea still had advocates, and Parliament was
urged to encourage growth in the South and check
it in the North." Only one use was conceived for
them. In the New England pine forests the British
Government caused to be marked with the King's
broad arrow all trees of a size and kind to make good
masts for the royal navy; the colonists north of
Pennsylvania were ordered to produce tar and pitch
and turpentine. But the New Englanders preferred
the West Indian lumber trade in planks, beams, and
clapboards for building of houses there, and for a
half- century they defied the Government agents,
sued or drove them off when on their, lawful business.
New England maintained its economic independence
for a generation before it ventured to assert political
independence. Some part of the foundation for that
assertion may be found in the irritation of these New
* Andrews, The Colonial Period, 110-11.
' Alvord, The Mississippi Valley in British Politics, I, 53; Beer,
The Old Colonial System, n. 233-34.

62 CAUSES OF WAR OF INDEPENDENCE
England woodmen, determined to earn their living
in their own way.'
By 1760, however, manufactures were increasing
by leaps and bounds, and progressive statesmen, of
whom WiUiam Pitt was the leader, began to grasp a
new theory of the place of colonies in an empire. New
Englands might profitably be set up beyond the seas,
whose citizens would wear English clothes, adorn
their houses with English furniture, and eat their
food on English plates and with English cutlery.
In a word, dependencies might be useful merely as
market-places, even though they produced no raw
materials not grown in England. Men began to
argue that a proper aim in planting or acquiring
a colony might be "to increase the strength of the
mother country by providing room for an increase
of people."" Settlers on American soil, it was au-
gered, would multiply the English seed as the stars
of heaven. It was these new conceptions of the
purpose of colonies that made Pitt decide, during
the negotiations leading to the Treaty of Paris, to
take Canada from France rather than Guadeloupe
as one of the spoils of war. Even after that date,
however, the city merchants of England seem still
to have clung to the old preferences for tropical
colonies, while the manufacturers and farmers
leaned toward the new theory. Dominated during
the formative period by ideas springing from the
mercantile theory, England had a commercial and
not a colonial policy. England became the "Mother
• E. L. Lord, Industrial Experiments, 56, 87, 123.
' Alvord, The Mississippi Valley in British Politics, I, 52, 54.

IMPERIAL PROBLEMS 63
of Nations" in spite of the purpose of her Govern
ment, whose remotest wish, perhaps, was to beget
"children of Kingdoms," to use Bacon's homely
phrase. "Colonies are only settlements made in
different parts of the world for the improvement of
trade," wrote (1765) one who fully understood the
Government's aim. It was not, from the modern
viewpoint, an enlightened statesmanlike policy,
aiming at the welfare of the colonies, but a policy
grown in the market-place, rooted in the idea of gain
for the mother country. Nevertheless, it worked
very well in an age utterly impervious to any "other
idea, and perhaps was the only practical way in that
stage of human experience.
It was tobacco, the natural product of Virginia's
soil, that first determined the British policy.' In
1621 orders came to Virginia to ship all tobacco to
England and to trade with no foreign merchants.
That policy continued unchanged to the opening of
the Revolution. Washington and Richard Henry
Lee, as their fathers before them, were compelled
by law to send all of their tobacco, that "scurvy"
but most profitable weed, to England. Though King
James had written his " Counterblaste to Tobacco,"
and reputable writers had declared that men "grew
mad and crazed in the brain" if they "sucked the
smoke of this weed," yet so great was the number
who ventured their wits that tobacco came to be the
only colonial product that brought profit to both
planter and merchant and which brought satisfaction
* Andrews, The Colonial Period, 114; Beer, Origins of the British
Colonial System, 1678-1660, chap. it.

64 CAUSES OF WAR OF INDEPENDENCE
to the British exchequer. In Cromwell's time (1651)
an ordinance reaffirmed the earlier trade restrictions
and required all trade to be in English or colonial
built ships,' but it was not until the return of
Charles II, ruined in purse and bent on exploiting
the colonies to recoup his fortunes, that the full
logical development of England's restrictive policy
began. The restrictive system fully entered upon at that
time found expression ultimately in three types of
laws. The first sort were acts of navigation which
protected British shipowners against Dutch and
French and Spanish owners and indeed all foreign
competition." A second group were acts of trade
which aimed to secure a monopoly for English
merchants of colonial commerce. A third class
sought to secure English manufacturers against the
development of rival industry in the colonies, and
to put in their hands a monopoly of the colonial
markets.' Some laws combined two or more of these
aims. AU three look, to our modern eyes, like class
legislation, devised to put gold, not only into th^
> Beer, Origins of the British Colonial System, 1678-1660, 374, 385.
' While working together in the Public Records Office in London,
R. G. Usher called my attention to a document in P. C. Register, 28,
Fol. 95, which shows that as early as 1615 the principle of the Naviga
tion Acts was announced by the Privy Council in the matter of ship
ping fish in foreign bottoms. And, of course, there had been Naviga
tion Acts even earlier, in the time of Richard H, for example. Cross,
England and Greater Britain, 213.
' The important Trade and Navigation Acts in the series can most
conveniently be studied in Macdonald, Documentary Source Book,
55, 72, 78, 90, 105. By the end of the seventeenth century England
had, by the improvement of her customs administration, shown her
fixed purpose to limit the trade of her colonies to the bounds of the
empire within which it could be controlled.

IMPERM.L PROBLEMS 65
King's depleted treasury, but into the purses of
EngUsh shipowners, merchants, and manufacturers.
The Navigation Acts, it is true, covered under their
beneficent aegis the shipowners of the colonies as
well as of England, and the building of ships so
prospered that it was said of New England that the
world "never saw a more amphibious population."
What the Government did was not for any despotic
purpose, but because in that age nobody saw a
reason for colonies except for business ends. It was
the only natural thing to do at that time, and con
temporary statesmen of any other nation in the
world would have thought the British ministers
shallow-pated, indeed, had they done otherwise.
The American colonies were regarded as great enter
prises to be directed by those who would profit by
the business. The colonists must not manufacture
lest they rival that industry in England. Even
William Pitt, "friend of America," declared with a
grand gesture that "if the Americans should manu
facture a lock of wool or a horse shoe," he would
"fill their ports with ships and their towns with
troops." ' These prohibitions, which only affected
manufactures on a large scale, did little harm to
colonial prosperity, for the want of capital, the high
price of labor, the counter-temptation of abundant
fertile land made manufacturing the least alluring
industry. Men turned rather to commerce and
agriculture, and only in the homes were articles made
* Knox, Extra Official State Papers, n. Appendix xv. Laws against
colonial manufacturing were (1699) aimed against woolen industry;
(1732), beaver hats; (1750) rolled iron. See 10 and 11 Wm. HI, chap.
X, 19; 5 Geo. H, chap, xxin, 23 Geo. II, chap. xxix.

66 CAUSES OF WAR OF INDEPENDENCE
for domestic consumption. What commercial under
takings the colonists had must be for the profit of
Englishmen, not of colonists. The colonial planter
or New England trader must sell only to England,
and buy only over British counters. Henry Laurens,
of South Carolina, must sell his rice and indigo and
deer skins to English merchants, and buy his India
goods, his furniture, and his hats and gloves from a
London or Bristol merchant. Free of British con
trol, he might have sold his goods at greater profit
in France or Spain, and bought his clothing and
finery cheaper there, but that must not be, since he
was a colonist. All of this system was the result of
no peculiar selfishness or tyrannous attributes of
English business men and their Government, but
was in full accord with the dominant theory of the
age which ruled at Madrid and Paris as completely
as in London. Perhaps Englishmen were more push
ing than Frenchmen and Spaniards. Some may have
deserved Franklin's slur that "Britain would if she
could manufacture & trade for all the World; Eng
land for all Britain; — London for all England; —
and every Londoner for all London." "Nature," he
sneered, "has put Bounds to your Abilities, tho'
none to your Desires."' But Addison painted the
British merchant more charitably. "Our English
merchant converts the tin of his own country into
gold, and exchanges his wool for rubies. The Ma
hometans are clothed in our British manufacture,
and the inhabitants of the frozen zone are warmed
with the fleeces of our sheep." The British merchant,
> Franklin, Writings (Smyth, ed.), iv, 245.

IMPERIAL PROBLEMS 67
Addison contended, knits "mankind together in a
mutual intercourse of good offices, distributes the
gifts of Nature, finds work for the poor, adds wealth
to the rich, and magnificence to the great." Surely
such services must be rewarded, the admiring states
man would urge, and moreover, he might have added
Britain was only carrying out logically an idea that
swayed every statesman of that age. Moreover, the
British Government defended the justice of regulat
ing trade in the interests of the Crown by pointing
out that the royal navy, in both peace and war, pro
tected the colonies and all their trade, in an age of
real peril from powerful enemies. "These restrictive
laws," declared a believer in them, "founded upon
principles of the most solid policy, fiung a great
weight of naval force into the hands of the mother
country, which was to protect the colonies, and
without an union with which the colonies must have
been entirely weak and defenceless." ' It was hard,
nevertheless, for a colonist to realize that British
guardianship which the royal navy exercised. That
power which kept the enemy from the American
shores, and prevented it bringing stores and am
munition to its nationals in Canada, was a power
little appreciated by the colonist. When he spoke of
fighting his own battles, he thought of repeUing
Indian attacks and French invasions from the north,
but little of that British fleet which by long and
weary vigils out at sea kept the French Government
from sending aid to its subjects in Canada. Its work
was not spectacular, not done in the view of the
* Hansard, Parliamentary History, xvi, 201.

68 CAUSES OF WAR OF INDEPENDENCE
colonists, rarely obviously performed for their good,
and they easily forgot it as one of the obligations to
England. Even the colonists, however, would not
have disputed the soundness of the mercantile
theory, though the logic of their interests forced
them to oppose its practical results.
In consequence of this guiding idea, England's
administrative system for her colonies had no other
object than the regulation of commerce. With such
an aim there seemed no reason for developing a de
partment concerned with the colonies alone. One
great reason for the failure of the British Govern
ment to solve successfully the problem of keeping
its colonies loyal to itself, was the fact that in its
governmental system there was no organ with in
dependent power to act and evolve colonial policies.
The Board of Trade and Plantations could advise,
but not do things. All other officers or governmental
bodies had in the main to look after the business of
the kingdom, and attended to colonial matters only
as a subordinate duty to which they turned aside at
convenience.' The King and his Privy Council
might give a little time to the affairs of Virginia or
of New York, but affairs of the kingdom would loom
larger and seem vastly more important. ParUament,
as it grew in power, and took into its hands all mo
mentous business of the empire, would lightly touch
colonial problems, but it could spare little time to
consider relevant facts which assiduous Boards might
have gathered. As Richard Bland pointed out, in his
1 Andrews, The Colonial Period, 138, 140; Dickerson, American
Colonial Government, chaps, ii, m.

IMPERIAL PROBLEMS 69
famous pamphlet (1763), "The ministers in England
see nothing with their own eyes that is passing
amongst us, and know nothing upon their own
Knowledge; and therefore are very improper Legis
lators to give Laws to the Colony." ' The Secretary
of State was a busy man who might initiate policies,
but he would be likely to know all other things
before the peculiar needs of American provinces.
The Treasury and the Admiralty had certain func
tions to perform in the colonies — functions con
nected with the customs duties and the trade laws,
but a policy in those matters was not their affair.
The same was true of the War Office which had
charge of the army in America. Finally, the Board
of Trade and Plantations, founded in 1696, which,
alone of all the governmental organs, was especially
concerned with colonial affairs, could, out of its mass
of records and reports, merely advise the Privy
Council, or Secretary of State or Parliament, but
had no power of its own to carry out a policy." More
over, great as was the attention they gave the
colonies, and full as was their information, trade
was its single aim, and all that they did was to the
end of making the colonies profitable to the Crown.
Among all of these offices there was little coopera
tion or responsibility, and their methods were
clumsy and dilatory. Their agents in the colonies
were in some cases allowed to serve by deputy.
Captain Phipps claimed to have known a person
in Virginia who held eleven offices, the emoluments
' William and Mary College Quarterly, xrx, 39.
• Channing, Hist, ofthe U.S.. u, 231-37 (especially page 235).

70 CAUSES OF WAR OF INDEPENDENCE
of which were appropriated to the support of men
of bad description in England.' Patents of office
were farmed out, and plural holdings allowed. Sine
cures were common, and with them and the other
loaves and fishes of public life Ministers bought
political subservience. Methods of appointment were
bad, and the appointees were often not above brib
ery and corruption. A colonial [administration with
no higher aim than regulation of commerce, having
no special organ of government responsible for it,
and a lack of cooperation among the many organs
that dabbled in it, did not need to be hampered by
low political morals to end in failure. Nevertheless,
England was not behind but rather ahead, perhaps,
of her contemporaries in her colonial efficiency.
The art of governing colonies so that they would
remain loyal to the mother country was as yet un
known. In the interest of plans for enriching and strength
ening the kingdom, the early free-and-easy ways of
leaving proprietors and chartered companies to rule
the American plantations gave way to a plan to
develop a more uniform and centralized system of
control. During the early eighteenth century re
peated efforts were made to bring under the Crown
all colonial governments not hitherto dependent on
it. The heads of the Anglican Church and the Board
of Trade gave hearty support, but the Whig party
opposed it. Though the Board long clung to the idea,
it could never get Parliamentary sanction. The
only measure of success they had^was that within
* Almon, Debates of Parliament^ ix. 144.

IMPERM.L PROBLEMS 71
sixty years they increased the number of royal
provinces from three to seven. Moreover, as a result
of their efforts to unify the empire, colonial laws
were, after 1700, more regularly sent back to Eng
land for approval by the Crown, and royal governors
got fuller and more precise instructions. It should
not be forgotten, either, that in spite of the run
ning fight between royal governor and provincial
assembly, the extent to which the rod of empire
was wielded in American affairs, and on the whole
obeyed, was vast, and caused a drift toward unity.
Finally, the very system of trade control, wrong as
it was, probably tended to give greater cohesion to
the empire, though British statesmen had aimed
toward a self-sufficient economic empire, rather than
one closely knit politically.'
Influences and tendencies were not wanting,
therefore, to bring about imperial unity, but it was
a unity which bound each integral part to the center.
As far as there was conscious effort by British states
men, it was directed to creating ties that bound
Massachusetts to England, New Jersey to England,
and Virginia and North Carolina to the same impe
rial center. The maxims of the commercial system
argued the wisdom of keeping the colonies weakened
by their divisions, and dependent on the strength of
the British Government. Even Burke (1769) wrote
of the great empire which "we have to rule, com
posed of a vast mass of heterogeneous governments
... all to be kept in peace, and kept out of conspir
acy, with one another, all to be held in subordination
' Beer, British Colonial Policy, 176^-65, 210.

72 CAUSES OF WAR OF INDEPENDENCE
to this country." ' The inexorable mercantUe theory
would permit the growth of governments able to
manage American local affairs, but not an American
general government competent to deal with the
affairs of America as a whole. Samuel Adams, Pat
rick Henry, and Christopher Gadsden were so bound
up in the petty concerns of their respective provinces
that the imperial interests touched them not at aU."
Could they have sat in an American parliament,
such as, indeed, was proposed in 1754 by the Albany
(Congress, which was responsible for all inter-colo
nial affairs, they must have developed loyalty to the
American portion of the British imperial domain,
and the assumption of that responsibility would
have saved the necessity of the ill-fated interference
by the English ParUament. As can be seen to-day.
Great Britian was so nearly in sight of the promised
land that one wonders why she did not enter in and
possess it. Franklin wrote long after ' "that if the
Albany plan of union had been adapted and made
effective, the subsequent separation of the colonies
from the Mother Country might not so soon have
happened. . . . For the Colonies, if so united, would
have really been . . . sufficient to their own Defence,
and being trusted with it ... an Army from Britain,
for that purpose would have been unnecessary; the
Pretences for framing the Stamp Act would then not
have existed, nor the other Projects . . . which were
the causes of the Breach and attended with such
1 Burke, Works (ed. 1869), I, 396.
' Note attitude in New York. Becker, Political Parties in the
Province of New York, 6.
' Franklin, Writings (Smyth, ed), iii, 226-27.

IMPERLIL PROBLEMS 73
terrible Expense of Blood and Treasure." Franklin
was probably quite right in this, for it was because
of the manifest incapacity of the separate colonial
assemblies to handle the domestic affairs of America,
such as military defense and Indian affairs, that
the British Government undertook those measures
which led to the final break and American independ
ence. The colonies feared the plan because of the
taxing power to be given the Grand Council,' yet
that was exactly the power which, after years of bit
ter experience under the Articles of Confederation,
it was found necessary in 1787 to grant to the new
Federal Government. The Albany plan was feared
by the British Ministry lest it should weaken central
control and make America too strong, and yet it
seems the only device which would have made the
colonies able to cope with the larger problems of
America, and thus have saved Parliament the neces
sity of stepping in to assume the care themselves.
It is, perhaps, a statesman's greatest task to breed
a devotion in those they govern which will make
them forget their interests and themselves. It was
in that direction that the rulers of the British Empire
had failed in America. They did not seem to know
how that emotion was engendered ; their only study
of the question had been in the market. Loyalty to
the empire was sadly lacking in the average Ameri
can colonist. He clamored for the rights of English
men, but was unconcerned about the duties. The
average colonists felt no sense of duty to maintain
' For example, see Mass. Hist. Soc, Collections (1st Ser.), vn,
808-09.

74 CAUSES OF WAR OF INDEPENDENCE
the empire as a whole. That sense seemed atrophied
through lack of exercise. They had only a petty
provincial interest, material interest for which their
legislatures fought.'
Besides the inability of statesmen to anticipate
the solutions of the problems of preserving a united
empire — a solution which only time could unfold^ — ¦
there are certain physical facts in the American
situation which help to explain the dominant partic
ularism of the colonies. The very forces of physical
geography would seem to have conspired far back
in geologic ages to make the colonies self-centered,
individualistic, and disunited. The rivers of the
American coast which faced Europe did not form a
system like those of the basin of the Mississippi, but
flowed each one more or less directly to the sea.
South of New England each flowed in what the
geologist calls a drowned river valley. The old bed
of the river had been submerged as the sea flowed in
upon the edge of the continent, when, as the result
of some vast geological change or convulsion, the
Atlantic coast had subsided. The lower courses "of
all the seaboard rivers were much deeper in con
sequence. The Hudson was navigable to the sea
faring vessels of the day as far as Albany; the Dela
ware as far as Trenton. Chesapeake Bay, with its
far-stretching arms, formed by the inrushing sea,
gave watery highways to numerous settlements.
All the lower courses of the rivers of Maryland
and Virginia were overflooded, and deepened. The
' Yet not all were wanting in that larger loyalty, as the many
thousand Loyalists of the Revolution proved.

IMPERIAL PROBLEMS 75
Potomac was open to ocean-going ships as far as
the present site of Washington, the James as far
as Richmond, and each accommodated, along its
easily accessible banks, a narrow, isolated border of
settlements, hugging closely to the rivers which
kept them in touch with the sea and thus with
Europe. Joshua Gee argued in 1738 against the
theory that in time the colonies would grow rich
and set up for themselves and cast off the British
government. The fear was groundless, he said, be
cause the colonists nearly all lived on the navigable
rivers and bays of America where the British navy
could easily reach and subdue them.' Behind the
settlements in the early days stretched a tangled,
often pathless forest through which even bridle
paths but slowly penetrated. Each settlement was
a little world by itself, physically isolated, and com
municating with its neighbors by river and sea
routes. Months went by with no news of the out
side world, and the colonists, having no thoughts but
of themselves, were absorbed in their own petty
problems. Few ventured to pass by land from one
colony to another. Trade, that powerful agent for
binding people together, was so hampered by the
British Navigation Laws that it did but little to
knit the colonies together. It was easier for law-
abiding merchants to do their trading with England
across the sea than with most American colonies.
The news, too, that came to most colonies was from
the West Indies or England rather than from an
American neighbor. Maryland and Virginia were,
' Joshua Gee, Trade and Navigation of Great Britain (6th ed.), 71.

76 CAUSES OF WAR OF INDEPENDENCE
of course, bound together by the watery highways
of the Chesapeake, and the Delaware preserved an
intercourse by means of sloops and shallops and
schooners which plied between Pennsylvania, Dela
ware, and New Jersey. The latter could trade also
with Long Island and New York by water routes.
New England settlements formed a group by them
selves which early coalesced along their borders.
South Carolina and Georgia lay isolated from them
all. Each of these groups was largely cut off from
the rest. In the absence of roads, which the early
colonists were too poor to build, the path of inter
colonial commerce must be down one river to the
sea, along the dangerous coast, unlighted and
without mariners' signals, and then up a second
river to the other colony. Taking into account the
distance, the dangers, and the fact that it was the
day of sailing vessels, it is easy to see that there
were needed few legal barriers to turn most of the
trade to England. The commercial intercourse,
therefore, which must have helped unite the colonies
was long prevented by Nature, and by statesmen
who saw fit to reenact the law of God. It was little
wonder that colonies long remained "as much di
vided in their interest and affection as Christian and
Turk." '
The results of the selfish provincialism engen
dered by decrees of Nature, by laws rooted in the
commercial policy, and by the failure of statesmen
to conjure the spirit of loyalty in American hearts,
were fully realized during the seven years' struggle
* Documents Relatiruj to the Colonial History of New York, rv, 13.

IMPERIAL PROBLEMS 77
with France for imperial expansiofti and commercial
existence. Though America may have been won in
Germany, or at least kept there, as Pitt's declara
tion may be interpreted, the phases of that conflict
(vhich affected the colonial relations with the British
Government were battles with Indians on all colonial
frontiers, and with French in the Ohio Valley and
about Quebec. When war began, the Crown urged
upon all its agents in America to get every grant
and service possible from the colonists to drive out
the French and repel the Indians leagued with them.
All schemes failed, however, to bring them "to a
sense of their duty to the king, to awaken them to
take care of their lives and fortunes." The attempt
to get united action failed at the Albany Congress,
and all that was left to hope was action by indi
vidual colonies. That was doomed from the first
because the larger motive was wanting. The colo
nists could see the war only as a struggle for empire
on the part of England and France, in which the
winning government would reap the spoils and
ought to pay. They felt no shame, therefore, that
the British Government was obliged to send to
America large numbers of regulars to wage the
colonial battles and that it was the "red-coats," and
not provincial troops, that won the war.' W'hen
(1765) Colonel Barre resented Townshend's asser
tion that the colonists had been protected by British
arms, and declared that on the contrary "they have
nobly taken up arms in your defence," he showed
* Beer, British Colonial Policy, 270. (The size of colonial levies of
troops is discussed m a note.)

78 CAUSES OF WAR OF INDEPENDENCE
that he knew more of feats of broil and battle than
of history. His oratory was capital, but the valor
which colonists exerted was for their own protec
tion, and in the French and Indian War, at least,
was lukewarm even when their frontiers were being
drenched in blood. The response to the Ministry's
request for provincial troops from the southern
colonies was feeble and of little avail. Georgia was
poor and weak, needing governmental support even
to protect her own frontiers.' South Carolina began
well and had tliree hundred men at Great Meadows,
but thereafter she was content with warding attacks
on her own border." North Carolina, rent with
party factions, and wrestling with a bad money
system, made plans which she only half executed,
and was satisfied with laying the odium on the
governor for their failure. The presence of the
French in western territory claimed by Virginia
might have aroused her interest, but her early
efforts were not heartening. No proper miUtary law
could be enacted, and all of Governor Dinwiddle's
efforts could enlist only such men as were described
by "Washington as "loose idle persons, that are quite
destitute of house and home . . . many of them with-
our shoes, others want stockings, some are witliout
shirts, and not a few have scarce a coat or ^ iist-
coat for their backs." ' The future "father" l his
* Colonial Records of Georgia, xm, 47, 61.
2 DiniMdie Papers, i, 249. South Carohna voted £6000 : )r the
Braddock expedition.
' Hening, Statutes, vi, 112, et seq.; Washington, Wriiiiin- Ford,
ed), I, 42. Many of these wretches seem to have been inrl. i.tured
servants. See Lady Edgar, A Colonial Governor, etc., 46.

IMPERIAL PROBLEMS 79
country found the officer's pay so small that he
"would rather dig for a maintenance . . . than serve
on such ignoble terms." The Virginia burgesses
worried the governor so much about the rights of
Englishmen, and did so little for the common cause,
that Dinwiddle denounced their pretensions. "I
hear you," he sneered, "declaring your knowledge
of your country's danger" and "professing the most
ardent Zeal for her Service; yet find these dec
larations only an unavailing Flourish of Words." '
Later, Virginians responded more freely, and made
amends for their early delays. The total contribu
tion, however, of the southern colonies was very
inconsiderable, and Braddock fell in 1755 largely
because that section and Pennsylvania had failed
in their duty not only to the empire but to them
selves. In both Pennsylvania and Maryland disputes
with the Penns and Calverts rendered the colonist
even more callous to the needs of the empire. In
the "City of Brotherly Love" seven years of con-
fiict between the proprietary governor and assembly
marked the war period, during which they went,
again and more exhaustively, over every subject of
controversy that had marked the whole colonial
period." The assembly, deaf to argument or reason,
would haggle over a theory of their rights under the
British Constitution while their border citizens were
* Colonial Records of North Carolina, v, 138; Journals of the House
of Burgesses, 1762-58, 205; Virginia Historical Collections, ni {Din-
vriddie Papers), i, 302, 328.
^ Root, Relations of Pennsylvania with the British Government,
chap. X.

80 CAUSES OF WAR OF INDEPENDENCE
being butchered. Besides the question of rights,
the Quaker statesmen would rather die than resist
the Indians or French with "carnal weapons."
When asked to give to the common cause they re
fused to dip their money in blood. At one time, they
voted five hundred dollars to buy the Indians off,
but not to fight them. During the long quarrel with
the governor, the assembly accused the Penns of
reaping where they had not sown, of trying to make
free tenants abject vassals. They agreed to raise
money by taxation, if the vast estates of the Penns
might be taxed too. While they dallied and made
the excuse that they were not obliged to defend the
Penns' estate at their own expense, they seemed to
forget that it was not a question of estates, but of
human beings left to the horrors of tomahawk and
firebrand. Both the Penns and the assembly were
stubborn, and their "obstinacy invincible" left the
colony defenseless. Such troops as were voted were
raised under a wretched law, which made them an
extremely bad collection "of broken Innkeepers,
Horse Jockeys, and Indian traders ... a gathering
from the scum of the worst of people in every
Country," who were in a panic at the very name of
Indians.' In Maryland, Baltimore was more gener
ous than the Penns and gave to the cause some
fines and licenses which were wont to yield him
revenue. Aside from this action, the controversies
with the assembly ran the same course as in Penn
sylvania. The chief desire of the colonial represent
atives seemed to be to discredit the proprietor with
* Kimball, Pitt's Correspondence, i, 342.

IMPERIAL PROBLEMS 81
the British Government. "Throwing out a sop . . .
to these noisy animals," as Calvert suggested, was
not tried. Maryland's assembly, too, would grant
no compulsory military law, and, like most of the
other colonies, was "parsimonious even to prodi
gality." In New York the law-givers granted money, but
insisted upon choosing their own committee to spend
it, so that the governor, burdened with the colony's
defense, must run to the committee with every little
item of expense. Moreover, the assembly did not
make good even what it voted. New Jersey, on good
terms with its governor, and more charitable toward
its neighbors than was common in colonial days,
was peculiarly alive to the interests of the " King
and Country." New England responded more freely
than the other sections. Connecticut and Rhode
Island are especially noteworthy. They had no ex
isting quarrel with the British Government, and,
having governors of their own choosing and charters
so liberal as to leave them secure in practical inde
pendence, they were conspicuously loyal. It seems
strange that no statesman of the time noted the sig
nificance of that loyalty, and the conditions that
begot it. In Massachusetts Governor Shirley had
the wit to know how to go with his people as far as
he could without worrying and putting them out of
temper.- He opened the hearts, and even the pocket-
books of his "wise, free, jealous and moral people,"
by telling them of Pitt's promise that the money
they voted would be repaid. New Hampshire was
' Hutchinson, History of Massachusetts Bay, m, 17.

82 CAUSES OF WAR OF INDEPENDENCE
the most reluctant colony of her section, and what
she did she delayed too long to be of service.
A conspectus of the conduct of all the thirteen
colonies during the French and Indian War reveals
individual colonies waiting, watching, furtively ad
vancing, or halting until another colony should act.
Burnaby, who traveled there during the war, de
clared: "Fire and water are not more heterogene
ous than the different colonies in North America.
Nothing can exceed the jealousy and emulation
which they possess in regard to each other." ' "The
Want of Union among the Colonies must ever occa
sion Delay in their military Operations," wrote
William Franklin." "The first that happens to be
called upon postpones coming to any Determination
till 'tis known what other colonies will do; and each
of those others think they have an equal Right to
act in the same Manner. This procrastinating Con
duct, owing to the Jealousies and Apprehensions
each Colony has lest it should happen to contribute
Somewhat more than its Share, is the Reason why
the American Levies are sometimes delayed till the
Season for Action is nearly elapsed." Such a system
which allowed New York or South Carolina or any
colony to evade its duty as part of the empire was
plainly bad. It made the action of the least zealous
become the standard for all; it penalized the active
and public-spirited. It was not strange that the
royal governors thought them "sunk in profound
»Bumaby's Travels (Wilson, ed., 1904), 152-53.
* Wm. Franklm to Board of Trade, March 6, 1764, in New Jersey,
Archives (1st Series), ix, 429.

TMPERML PROBLEMS 83
lethergy, and resigned to stupidity and slumbering."
The French counted upon this lack of team-work,
and even the Indians looked askance at the want
of union. Indeed, the colonial lack of uniform and
just dealings with the Indians, especially in trade
matters, made them lukewarm to the English cause,
and caused them to lean to the French in their
sympathies during the war.'
It was plain, long before the end, that the Seven
Years' War had forced to the fore imperial problems,
which, though strictly American, were yet too large
for any of the autonomous colonies to handle alone.
It was, moreover, the strain which the Seven Years'
War put upon the relations between Great Britain
and her American colonies which forced into prom
inence every subject of controversy which for a
hundred years had been setting by the ears the
royal governor and the provincial assembly. Amer
icans had never so clarified their ideas on consti
tutional questions, and, aided by the stress of war,
had demanded everything nominated in the bond.
What assistance had been secured by Pitt from the
American colonies had been bought at an alarming
price — concessions which deprived the governors
of all but their pomp, and left the assemblies with
every real power. Moreover, the utter want of any
sense of loyalty to the empire on the part of indi
vidual colonists was shown in the extent to which
Ulicit trade was carried on with the enemy. Not all
the British naval activity could prevent colonial
* Wraxall's Abridgment of Indian Affairs (H. C. Mcllvaine's ed.)
is an exceUent survey of Indian affairs up to 1756.

84 CAUSES OF WAR OF INDEPENDENCE
merchants from supplying French colonies with the
provisions for want of which they must have ca
pitulated. Fortunes were made in the trade, and so
demoralized was public opinion that convictions on
clear proof were not to be gotten from colonial
juries. William Pitt gave strictest orders to enforce
the laws of trade, but all to no purpose.' The con
viction was forced upon the British Government
that the American portion of its empire must be
made to assume its duties. No better device oc
curred to them than compulsion by action of the
British Parliament. Even good friends of the colo
nies believed that such a procedure would be for
their good. Governor Hutchinson wrote: "I never
think of the measures necessary for the peace and
good order of the Colonies without pain. There
must be an abridgment of what are called English
liberties. I relieve myself by considering that in a
remove from a state of nature to the most perfect
state of government there must be a great restraint
of natural liberty. I doubt whether it is possible to
project a system of government in which a Colony,
3000 miles distant from the parent state shall enjoy
all the liberty of the parent state. I am certain that
I have never yet seen the projection. I wish the good
of the Colony when I wish to see some further re
straint of liberty, rather than the connection with
the parent State should be broken." "
1 Beer, British Colonial Policy, 176^-1765, chap. vi. Rhode Island
and Pennsylvania were especially guilty. Governor Denny of Penn-
sylvjinia openly sold passes which aided the traders to escape de
tection. ' Belcher, First American Civil War, i. 105.

IMPERIAL PROBLEMS 85
There was a good vein of common sense in
Hutchinson's philosophy, if strong rule from the cen
ter were the only alternative to feeble and inefficient
rule by thirteen separate assemblies. The obvious
weakness of the plan of the British Ministry was the
purpose to use compulsion with this grown child of
the empire rather than persuasion. The Ministers
did not understand, as Pitt begged them to do, that
the colonies had become " too great an object to be
grasped but in the arms of affection." ' The gods,
bent on the destruction of the empire, seemed to
have made its rulers mad. The pride and haughti
ness engendered in the English rulers by their
successes in the Seven Years' War, ending in the
triumphant peace of 1763, made them impatient of
colonial resistance to their wUl. Horace Walpole
described his contemporaries of the English ruling
class as "born with Roman insolence" and behav
ing with "more haughtiness than an Asiatic mon
arch." "
It was in this spirit that the English rulers under
took to set bounds to the independence already won,
to establish a system of real British control in Amer
ica. This aim might have succeeded a century before
when America was "of mean Beginnings" as "was
Rome," but now Pitt warned them that the "scanty
fountain" had become "a large Stream, covered with
Sails and floated with a commerce." ' It was too
late; "England, victorious in four parts of the
' American Historical Review, xvn, 573.
» Walpole, Letters (Toynbee, ed), vii, 365.
* American Historical Review, xvu, 573.

86 CAUSES OF WAR OF INDEPENDENCE
world," could not conjure back into its prison the
free spirit of American independence. Stubborn
efforts to that end led through ten fateful years to
the severing of the empire.

CHAPTER IV
THE WORLD'S COLONIAL EXPERIENCES WHICH
MIGHT GUIDE BRITISH STATESMEN
Having traced the rapid growth of the British
Empire to the year 1763, we have seen what appears
from our point of view the attempt to govern the
new Englands overseas as if they were mere estates
to be exploited for gain, or market-places wherein to
enrich English merchants. We have seen statesmen
guided, by what we in our greater wisdom might
call an economic friar's-lantern, the mercantile
theory, to the building up of a restrictive system
that seems to unsympathetic modern eyes coolly
planned with no other aim than to enrich England
at the expense of the colonies. It is easy now to
criticize it all, to ridicule such a policy and hold it
up to scorn, but that was the way the age did things
and from their point of view there was no better
way. We have observed, too, the development of an
administrative system which, in addition to its
crudity and lack of efficient organization, had only
a commercial and not a colonial end in view. It
rather vaguely and slowly endeavored to attain
a more unified system of control. Its failure was
demonstrated during the Seven Years' W^ar, and as
a result we shall see a [firm though ill-judged effort
to centralize imperial control, an effort which the
colonies met with resistance and rebellion.! These
facts, and the natural interpretation of them taken

88 CAUSES OF WAR OF INDEPENDENCE
by themselves, have tended to give the students of
history a rather low opinion of the British statesmen
of the period preceding and during the American
Revolution. No proper estimate of the praise or
blame which readers of history must accord them
can be reached without an examination of the ac
cumulated political wisdom of the age in colonial
matters and an effort to ascertain the bounds which
the experience of mankind placed upon all statesmen
confronted with such problems. Pitt, Grenville, and
Townshend were met with a new imperial problem
to solve ; we who are wiser than they have our minds
illumined by seven or eight additional generations
of human experience.
First of all it must be comprehended that superior
as were England's political attainments to those of
any country in continental Europe, greater still were
the political advances of her American colonists,
beyond the colonial subjects of any other contem
porary government. The very fullness of their
political freedom made them sensitive to the least
interference, and fierce to resent it. While in Har
rington's quaint phrase, they were "yet babes,"
and could "not live without sucking the breasts of
their mother cities," they endured occasional re
straint, but when they came of age they fuffiUed his
prophecy that they would seek to "wean them
selves." One of the deepest reasons for their turning
away from the mother state was the training in
poUtical liberty which England had permitted them
from their earliest days. Either by example from
the political struggles at home, or in the harsh school

THE WORLD'S COLONIAL EXPERIENCES 89
of frontier experience, they had learned the sweet
ness of liberty. The degree of their freedom can be
understood only by comparing the English colonial
system with that of her great European rivals. With
these contrasts clearly in mind, the truth will appear
that the freest of colonists were the first to rebel.
Whatever might have been the original condition
of English colonies in America, or whatever from
time to time the imperial purpose of the British
Government, the political fact had come to be, by
1760, that the colonies were self-governing. They
possessed assemblies which enjoyed political su
premacy within their own boundaries. Through
their own laws and committees the colonial legis
latures controlled to a large extent the policy of the
colonies. Within its own little realm, a colonial
legislature was hardly less mighty than the British
Parliament. It was but impatient exaggeration
when a colonial official declared that "Rhode Island
was no more a part of the British Empire than
the Bahamas when they were inhabited by Bucca
neers." ' Parliament might pass laws to regulate
her commerce, but there were smugglers to set the
laws at naught, and as for the great majority of her
domestic concerns. Parliament never heard of them.
English emigrants to America seemed to see no
other way to manage their political affairs than
by an imitation of the methods of England. The
English colonies started with the great advantage
that the home country understood parliamentary
government. The time of conflict between the royal
' Josiah Quincy, Reports of Massachusetts Courts, 4, 36-37.

90 CAUSES OF WAR OP INDEPENDENCE
claims of the Stuarts and the demands of the more
progressive members of Parliament was identical
with the era of England's first colonial efforts.
Those who strove for the supremacy of Parliament
were not always successful in England, but the idea
of government by representatives of the people was
familiar enough to be very early taken account of
in the colonial charters. The earliest of them were
meant to be liberal,' but at best the first Virginian
charters left the colonizing company at the mercy
of the King and the colonists at the mercy of the
Company. But a dozen years had not gone by before
the charter was so changed that the people living
in the colony chose representatives to make the laws
of the colony." A little later the colonists of Massa
chusetts, taking heart at the victories of Parliament
and thinking complacently of the three thousand
miles between their charter and the English au
thorities, boldly ignored royal orders, and acted
pretty much as if they recognized no sovereign but
their own legislature.
Though, in royal colonies at least, governors were
sent to America to uphold royal authority, and
councillors were selected who might be expected to
aid their pretension, yet the whole colonial history
is a story of the success of popular assemblies in
shearing both governor and council of their author
ity. Brief as is this review of the nature of British
rule in colonial America, it will suffice for the purpose
of contrast with that of Spain and France and the
^ Macdonald, Documentary Source Book, nos. 1 and 2.
' Ibid., no. 5 (Ordinance for Virginia).

THE WORLD'S COLONIAL EXPERIENCES 91
nations of antiquity. In setting them one against
another, we must remember that the comparison
of unlike or contrasting social and political institu
tions is often misleading and even unfair unless the
whole background and aim of each are fully known.
It must be clearly appreciated, too, that the purpose
here is to show that EngUsh statesmen were not
behind their rivals in that age and that English
colonists controlled their own destinies more than
any other colonists of the eighteenth century.'
Spanish colonies in America had been estabUshed
a century before John Smith lent color and heroics
to England's first successful venture. From first to
last, in Peru or Mexico or in the islands of the sea,
all Spanish colonists were in theory dependencies of
the Crown. Leaders of Spanish expeditions, Cortes
or Pizarro, viceroys and governors, justice or min
isters of religion, all were appointed by the King
and removed at his will. The government was
monarchical first of all." In New Spain or Peru the
viceroy was the representative of the person of the
King. His duty, said one of them,' was to be father
of the people, patron of the monasteries, and pro
tector of the poor and of the widows and the orphans.
Conquerors in new regions might set up govern
ments, but the long arm of the Spanish Government
soon reached them. The Spaniards ruled their Amer
ican colonies from Madrid and from Seville with
minute care, with much and often wise legislation.
' Indeed, one must go back to the Greeks to find freer colonists.
' E. G. Bourne, Spain in America, 228.
' H. H. Bancroft, Mexico, ii, 661.

92 CAUSES OF WAR OF INDEPENDENCE
From the Council of the Indies, with its group of
"Godfearing men, noble of birth and of pure line
age," radiated supreme legislative and judicial
control, under the King, of aU Spanish America.'
Another of the King's instruments was the India
House, or Casa de Contratacion, which had larger
executive functions, more immediate activity in
administration. It was the agent of the Spanish
King in carrying out the laws relating to the Indies."
In theory the English Board of Trade might be said
to have had the same dominion over the English
colonies, but it was in practice that the two sys
tems differed utterly. During two long centuries of
Spanish rule in America, there occurs no instance
of a colony's success in gaining control of its affairs,
while English colonial history bristles with such
examples. Spanish colonies were equipped from the
outset with ample legal machinery, and the lever
that put it all in motion was manipulated at Seville.
Governors, audiencias, presidents, viceroys, cap
tains-general, and municipal officers, all drew every
political power and direction from the Council of
the Indies.' All this was not in vain, Spanish ad
ministration was a long way from being a failure,
but, from the iron rule of this hierarchy, the vast
majority of inhabitants of the Spanish colonies
gleaned no political lesson but that of obedience.
They learned only to follow, not to initiate progress
' The Council sat in Seville in Spain. Cunningham, The Audienda
in the Spanish Colonies, 14-17; Moses, Spanish Rule in America, 19.
^ Moses, Spanish Ride in America, 21; Cunningham, The Audienda
in the Spanish Colonies, 13.
' Leroy-Beaulieu, De la colonisation chez let peuples modemes. 20.

THE WORLD'S COLONIAL EXPERIENCES 93
in one direction or another. All experience in mat
ters of public concern was denied them. The small
power exercised by elected magistrates in the Peru
vian or Mexican towns was limited to sanitary and
humane legislation and to some regulation of their
own interior commerce.' The English settlement,
independent and feeble in the early days, but
gathering strength through struggle, had a chance
for more healthy social growth than Spanish colonies,
bitted and curbed by the rigid rule of the royal
officials. Peru and Mexico, being colonized when the
ancient popular liberty of the homeland had been
beaten down and subdued to a regime of absolutism,
were not likely to fight for political liberty as were
Virginia and Massachusetts tvhich imbibed from the
England of the seventeenth century a spirit of
liberty and local independence." As a general rule,
it may be assumed that a colonist's ideas as to
the way he ought to be governed will depend in the
main upon the nature of the government under
which he had lived at home. For that reason,
Spanish-American colonists were fairly content
under governmental absolutism which would have
roused English-American colonists to fierce rebellion.
Quite as interesting in its contrast with the Eng-
' Nevertheless, what experience they got in rfgulating their own
affairs was derived from this source. American Political Science Re
view, viii, 205-06 (Moses, "Government in Spanish America")-
* Spain, with her Council and Cortes kept on political exhibition,
was nevertheless an absolute monarchy, and her colonists carried
across the seas the habit ot accepting that form of government. The
stress was laid on the royal source of political power. England,
holding to the King and Lords, was coming, nevertheless, to empha
size the people's representatives in her Commons, and the supiemacy
of that element her colonists reproduced in America.

94 CAUSES OF WAR OF INDEPENDENCE
lish regime was the French colony in America along
the St. Lawrence and other waterways of Canada.
It enjoyed less care, but endured quite as much
absolutism as Peru or Mexico. French colonial
administration centered in the Bourbon monarch.
"In the fulness of our power and our certain knowl
edge," the King directed all. He chose governors,
intendants, and judges, and set the limits of their
power.' Louis XIV actually read many of the end
less letters from Canadian governors and signed the
replies with the royal hand." He attempted to direct
everything from the statesman's comprehensive
plan to the petty edict forbidding the least of the
"habitants" to liberate his feelings in the form of
profanity.' In order to symbolize the royal character of the
colonial rule, the far-away American wilds were
invaded by a royal representative surrounded by
young nobles "gorgeous in lace and ribands and
majestic in leonine wigs." Twenty-four guards in
royal livery, four pages and six valets swelled the
pageant.* The Canadian governor- general and in
tendant were the instruments of a powerful cen
tralization. Only the fact that the King and Minis
ter, their sole masters, were three thousand miles
away left them any initiative whatever. Even the
little left to each was jealously guarded, for intend-
1 A. H. Snow, Administration of Dependencies, 17.
* Parkman, The Old Regime in Canada, 349. I am indebted to this
work for a large part of the following description of the French colonial
government. ' Nevertheless, the King's supremacy in colonial affairs was only
theoretical, and many agencies besides his will decided such matters.
* Parkman, The Old RSgime in Canada, 238.

THE WORLD'S COLONIAL EXPERIENCES 95
ant and governor-general watched each other like
cat and mouse — natural enemies as they were
meant to be.
There was no suggestion of a colonial legislature
like those in the English colonies.' The Canadians
were trained to subjection and dependence. The
ordinance of the intendant entered every cranny
of colonial life. That officer settled a question of
boundaries or fixed the pay of a chimney sweep.
His decree fixed the number of horses that a colonist
might keep. He forbade farmers to live in the cities
or the denizens of cities to rent houses to farmers."
The very color of bread was prescribed — all with
a degree of absolutism that would have become
the intendant's royal master, a French Bourbon.
Colonists were children in perpetuity. One intendant
solemnly declared, "It is of great consequence that
the people should not be left at liberty to speak
their minds." ' There could be no public meeting
for any purpose except with special license from the
intendant. Such meetings were jealously watched,
lest a shred of self-government appear. There seems
to have been little resentment of this, for the French
colonist, accustomed to a paternal rule at home,
was peculiarly devoid of initiative. No man's fate
was left to himself, and politically none seemed to
' The governor, intendant, and bishop, with resident councillors
(five at first, later twelve), formed a superior council, which exercised
legislative, judicial, and executive functions, but all were appointed
by the Crown.
' Parkman, The Old Regime in Canada, 342.
' No colonist could return to France without permission. There
were cruel punishments for speaking ill of the King, or using profanity.
Servants who left their masters were set in the pillory.

96 CAUSES OF WAR OF INDEPENDENCE
wish it so. Unlike the English colonist, he had no
traditions of self-government. An executive without
a legislature would have seemed to an English
colonist as fanciful as one of Murillo's winged heads,
but the French colonist made no complaint on that
score. Like the Spanish colonist, the French "habi
tant" did not mind autocracy while it was kind and
meant well.
Under oppression the French colonists clamored
for a change of masters, not for a change of the form
of government. The people seemed to feel them
selves incapable of accomplishing any amelioration
on their own account. When the colony weakened
because of official folly or corruption, political
stimulants were sent, but freedom was denied. Too
often, the remedy was merely new officials, hench
men and relatives of the ministers of state, who came
like those before them only to return to Paris to
spend ill-gotten gains, while the colony was dying
of anaemia. As Parkman says, lesser offices were
multiplied to care for impecunious retainers so that
"lean and starving Canada was covered with
official leeches, sucking in famished desperation at
her bloodless veins." ' In the English colonies, if a
governor were inefficient, incompetent, or worse, he
was faced by a determined body of representatives
which was skilled in every parliamentary device
to tear away his powers, but the Canadian "ha
bitant" had no escape except to that domain of
savage freedom, the vast interior wilderness, whither
the lure of the fur-trade drew so many venturous
' Parkman, The Old RSgime in Canada, 348-49.

THE WORLD'S COLONIAL EXPERIENCES 97
youths. There they could defy the threats of the
far-off Bourbon. There alone could they escape the
"official jackals" who preyed without fear upon
the sedate farmer and colonist on the banks of the
St. Lawrence. Nearly one third of the "habitants"
took this method of escape, but the remainder only
cried out for new masters instead of seeking some
form of local control that would better their con
dition. If the French Government failed in its
paternalism as compared with the Spanish Govern
ment, it was because it did not devise a system for
keeping in close contact with its distant colonies.
France never developed the naval power, nor any
counterpart of the Spanish convoyed "Indian fleet,"
to control the ocean connection. In a centralized
system colonies needed constant support of a power
that kept always in touch with them. In the ad
ministration of justice in Canada we have an ex
ample of the tardiness of intercommunication. If
justice went awry in the "Superior Council," ' it
was a year and a half or two years before an answer
came from France to a complaint. It was little
consolation, even if La Hontan's satirical compli
ment to Canadian judicial methods were true, that
Justice was more chaste and disinterested there than
in France. "At least," he said, "if she is sold, she
is sold cheaper. We do not pass through the clutches
of advocates, the talons of attorneys and the claws
of clerks. . . . Our Themis is prompt and she does
not bristle with fees, costs, and charges." But
' The Superior Council, besides issuing edicts and registering laws,
judged in all civil and criminal cases.

98 CAUSES OF WAR OF INDEPENDENCE
Themis was prompt only if she did not have to cross
the seas. Delay in that case was merely of the same
nature as all the other governmental dallying sure
to result from attempted control of local matters at
a distance of a thousand leagues.
Though black by contrast with England's almost
self-governing colonies, the Spanish and French
colonial governments were given every attention
that a benevolent despot could lavish. The vast
body of Spanish laws applying to the Indies shows
a broad humanity and deep regard for the welfare
of the Spanish subjects in America.' If viceroys and
governors had absolute power, there was endeavor
to keep them from tyranny. The Audienda " or
Supreme Court was a real check upon the personal
tyranny of the viceroy or governor. Moreover, at
the end of every viceroy's term there was an inquest.
Every man with a grievance could there complain
to the Spanish commissioners who then made a
report to the Council for the Indies. It was in their
power to correct abuses. Yet, as we are told, "Those
who know the seductive influence of Plutus over the
feeble and pliant Themis " may judge how successful
was this device. It could not, of course, have the
effectiveness of the ever alert colonial legislature in
the English colony. The Spanish inquest was aU
too Ukely to resemble a whirlwind in the street,
"which served only to raise the dust, chaff and
other refuse and set it on the colonist's head." *
' E. G. Bourne, Spain in America, 226.
• Cunningham, The Audienda in the Spanish Colonies, chap. VI.
• Helps, Spanish Conquest in America (new ed.), ui, 102-09.

THE WORLD'S COLONIAL EXPERIENCES 99
In the French colony in Canada the Bourbon
Government tried to guard the subject against
tyranny by the mutual check which governor-general
and intendant gave each other and also through
the deliberations of the Superior Council. Against
the complete success of either of these absolutist
devices worked the eternal truth that no man will
so well stand guard at the gates of the temple of
liberty as he who there protects his own welfare.
This brief comparison of English colonial govern
ment with that of other countries of that day might
be continued with examples from lesser aspirants
for colonial achievement, but there is little to learn
from such examination. The Dutch colonies were
never founded for motives other than commerce.
The whole control of a Dutch colony was placed in
the hands of a mercantile corporation. This gradu
ally became more and more centralized in power
and authority. Although the Commonwealth of the
United Provinces was a republic, the Dutch East
India Company grew into an aristocracy — haughty,
absolute, and unmerciful as any autocrat in Chris
tendom. It forged the chains of political slavery
upon millions of its subjects.' Tea and silk, pepper
and cinnamon, camphor, copper, ebony-wood, and
opium were the objects of the Company's deepest
concern. The souls of human beings, the rights of
man, the guardianship of liberty of fellow-citizens,
did not interest them. The Dutch, therefore, though
they enjoyed freedom at home, contributed nothing
toward solving the problem of imperial organization
* Morris, History of Colonization, i, 315-16.

100 CAUSES OF WAR OF INDEPENDENCE
in the interests of the liberty of the colonist. Nor did
Portugal lend aid in solving that problem. Though
its colonial system strongly resembled that of Spain,
it was much less fortunate in the character of its
viceroys who seem to have been utterly faithless to
the interests of the fatherland.
It wiU be seen, from this brief sketch of colonial
governments of the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries, that the English colonist of that age could
not reasonably compare his colonial government
unfavorably with the colonial regime of any other
contemporary nation. Chatham's figure was not
without truth when he declared (May 26, 1774),
"Had the British Colonies been planted by any other
Kingdom than our own, the inhabitants would have
carried with them the chains of slavery, the spirit
of despotism." Moreover, the statesmen at the
head of British imperial affairs could not learn wis
dom in liberal colonial management from any gov
ernment then in existence. Even if they turned to
historical sources of light, there was little to guide
their search for a colonial regime that would enable
them to breed democracies loyal to England.
Greek colonies, for example, had been free enough.
Whether it was Agrigentum, Pindar's "most beau
tiful abode of mortals," or Sybaris, with its ill-
repute for luxury and ease, the Greek colony had
been wont to set up for itself in the new land and
there enjoy absolute political freedom. Though the
Mediterranean, as Cicero put it, wore a Greek
fringe, each individual settlement had its own con
stitution. These were so varied that monarchies and

THE WORLD'S COLONIAL EXPERIENCES 101
republics, aristocracies and democracies, freedom
and tyranny all might be found among the many
colonies. Whether the emigrant was going to Cyprus
or the far-away land of "Thule," the home state
usually approved and encouraged the remove. It
relieved the homeland of discontented spirits and of
a surplus of laborers. If Greek genius spread to
distant lands; if Thales, Euclid, Lysias, Xenophon,
and Herodotus were colonists of Greece; if iEolians,
lonians, and Dorians carried her culture to colonies
in Asia Minor; if Pythagoras and Homer were re
puted citizens of the colony of Samos, the mother
country merely took pride in the fact that they were
her children, but it made no claim to political con
trol. Leaving home to shift for themselves on an
alien shore, they carried the blessing of the father
land, but no advantage was expected by the State;
no support by the colony. The only bond was com
merce, and a moral sentiment, the result of common
origin.' Had the English statesmen of the seven
teenth and eighteenth centuries chosen this method
of treating England's colonial children, the most
eloquent defenders of the rights of the colonies
would have declared them cruel and heartless to
leave Englishmen at the mercy of French and
Spanish enemies. Though Tucker, Dean of Glouces
ter, had actually proposed (1766) "a separation,
parting with the colonies entirely, and then making
leagues of friendship with them, as with so many
independent states," the suggestion got no favorable
response even from the most ardent advocates of
* Morris, History of Colonization, chap. rv.

102 CAUSES OF WAR OF INDEPENDENCE
colonial liberty. Indeed, imder American conditions,
and in the period of settlement, protection by Eng
land and a decree of dependence by the colonist
were the inevitable conditions of success in making
a permanent plantation.
If the perplexed statesman, studying the past for
help on the problems of the present, had turned from
Greek to Roman history,' he would have found only
precedents to avoid. Rome, indeed, had developed
to the utmost perfection that very centralization of
control which English statesmen were trying to
establish when the American colonists rebelled. The
end and aim of Rome's colonial undertaking was to
bring more of the earth under Roman dominion.
As a rule her colonies were towns conquered from
other people. The former inhabitants, in whole or
in part, were driven out, robbed of their lands, which
were then given to Romans, usually the poor."
Plutarch pictures these prospective Roman colonists
drawn up in mUitary fashion and the entire troop
herded by their commissioner, marching to the sound
of martial music, setting out for the distant lands
assigned them. Often, indeed, they were little more
than garrisons in conquered fortified places.' Rome
was master of her citizens; she selected for this pur
pose whom she pleased, chose their abode, gave
them leaders and a code of laws. In leaving Rome
colonists lost their Roman citizenship, and, there
fore, the rich and talented seldom chose to go out
' That British statesmen did do this is shown in F. W. Hirst,
Adam Smith, 147-49.
^ Sir G. C. Lewis, Government of Dependencies, 115-16.
• Niebuhr, History of Rome, n, 51.

THE WORLD'S COLONIAL EXPERIENCES 103
from the shadow of her walls. Greek architects
and artists, historians and poets, philosophers and
orators were to be found in all her far-flung colonies,
but Rome's genius and talent remained for the most
part within the circle that bound her seven hills.
Every stratum of society thought it a hardship and
a sacrifice to be forced to leave the imperial city.
In the Roman scheme there was little opportunity
for spontaneous emigration; nothing was left to
mere chance or individual caprice.' Rome exercised
supreme control. Hers was not a colonial system
that could be applied to a liberty -loving British
colonist. Though there is little doubt that Roman prov
inces, as her dependencies outside of Italy were
called, were governed less tyrannously than others
in the ancient world," yet the worst of tyrannies
could exist there. The conscience of a provincial
ruler like Cicero or Agricola might save their sub
jects from plunder, but without that moral restraint
the rapacity of a Verres was possible. "All Roman
provinces are mourning," cried his eloquent accuser.
"All free peoples are complaining; every kingdom
is protesting against our covetousness and our in
justice; there is no place on this side of the seas,
none so distant, so out of the way, that in these days,
the lust and iniquity of our citizens has not reached
it." ' And it is recorded by Dion Cassius that when
' Morris, History of Colonization, i, 129.
' Polybius teUs us that the Carthaginians admired and honored
the governors who levied the largest tribute and employed the harshest
ineasures for levying it. Sir G. C. Lewis, Government of Dependencies,
m. ' Cicero, Verres, n, Lib. m, c. 89.

104 CAUSES OF WAR OF INDEPENDENCE
Tiberius asked Cato why the Dalmatians revolted
from Rome, he replied that it was "because the
Romans sent not dogs or shepherds, but wolves to
guard their flocks." ' Until late in the empire the
governor of a province was supreme in all respects.
He combined both judicial and military functions.
Under such conditions, wolves like Verres were
possible, and after all allowance is made for Cicero's
rhetoric, it may safely be asserted that the worst of
English colonial governors had neither the power nor
the ambition to rival Verres.
If, therefore, we are to understand England's posi
tion and that of her colonies ready to "wean them
selves," we must place ourselves in the eighteenth
century, in a world not wholly unhappy under ab
solutism, and for which the curtain had not yet been
wholly lifted upon a stage where Democracy was to
take the leading part in the political drama. We
must see England, not yet fully prepared, compelled
to solve at once the problem of imperial organiza
tion, and with such dim light as the experience of
mankind then offered. It was not as if Wisdom cried
out in the street and no man regarded, for it was
only with generations more of experience that Eng
land could find the solution. Though she was then,
and continued to be, the greatest of colonizing na
tions, she had much to learn, which only bitter ex
perience could impart. Even imaginative minds
like those of William Pitt and Adam Smith could
soar only a little way above the solid ground of
human experience. The lessons of history, the lamp
' Dion Cassius, i, vi, c. 16.

THE WORLD'S COLONIAL EXPERIENCES 105
of reason, the observation of contemporary coloniz
ing nations were not sufficient guide to the upper
regions of imperial statesmanship. Unable to pene
trate the veil that hid Great Britain's own successful
future in Canada and Australia, and her other self-
governing dependencies, the choice seemed to her
statesmen to lie between letting the colonies set
up for themselves like Greek cities — a heartless
method from the colonists' point of view — or in
mild imitation of Rome and Spain to keep them in
a state of at least partial subordination. To make
them integral parts of the nation seemed imprac
ticable because of the distance. The plan actually
attempted, that of centralizing the control of the
colonies, was chosen with perfectly good intent on
the part of the British Government, but because of
the whole colonial experience in the freedom-giving
life of the American forest, it looked to the colonist
like a plot to establish tyranny. The leveling effects
of the primitive life on the frontier of the British
Empire had developed a spirit of individualism and
separatism. Isolation had made the colonists pro
vincial; they had shaped their institutions to their
own needs and not those of the empire. Every year
of colonial life advanced them toward independence.

CHAPTER V
GROPING FOR SOLUTIONS OF THE IMPERIAL
PROBLEMS
In a passage of the "Confessions" of St. Augustine,
that worthy post-Nicene father discourses on the
rashness of those who inquire what God did before
He created heaven and earth. It may appear a Uke
temerity to have gone back to the days of Edwin
Sandys, William Bradford, and John Winthrop to
seek the causes of American independence. One
would not need to be unduly disputatious to argue
that aU of the "fundamental causes" considered in
the preceding pages might have led merely to the
creation of a different variety of English-speaking
people than that produced by the environment and
experiences in Cornwall or Northumberland or
London. One might point to Canadians, Australians,
and the English colonists of Cape Town, as examples
of people radically changed by a new environment
into a race quite different from the English who
stayed at home, but a ra6e which, nevertheless, had
retained loyalty to the British Empire, '^The rebut
tal, however, would emphasize the fact that before
any of the other oversea colonies of England had
attained the strength that America had gained in
1775, the British Government had learned not to
allow its relations with them to become strained, but
to yield, if not gracefuUy, at least in time to keep

GROPING FOR SOLUTIONS 107
their allegiance.' Even that process has led to their
becoming self-ruling members of a commonwealth
of nations, loyal to the motherland, but hardly
less independent than the United States. In con
sidering the immediate causes of the American War
for Independence, in the period of 1763-1775, it will
be seen that trouble was brewed not at all because
of any cruel tyranny on the part of George III and
his ministers, but because their honest though mis
taken efforts to rule for the best interests of the
empire were misinterpreted by a people with a dif
ferent theory of what constituted political liberty.
All argument as to the true nature of the British
Constitution, all appeals to the "natural rights of
man," all clever deductions from the past history
of the English struggle for liberty, only rendered the
debaters more distrustful of each other, less ready
to be reconciled. Their differences lay in those ul
timate springs of conduct, their ideals of human
justice and the best interests of mankind.
After the Treaty of Paris (1763) British imperial
affairs seem, to one looking backwards, to have been
at the cross-roads where one turning would lead to
the political Delectable Mountains, and the other
to the Slough of Despond. The British Ministry
then met a great problem, and a new one, because
the vast domain in Canada and the Mississippi
Valley had been taken from France during the mo
mentary triumph of a new theory as to the value of
colonies. William Pitt, after wondering which he
' Cross, History of England, 930-32; Curry, British Colonial Policy,
passim.

108 CAUSES OF WAR OF INDEPENDENCE
should be " hanged for not keeping," decided to keep
Canada, rather than Guadeloupe, and his judgment
was accepted by the makers of the Peace of Paris.
That decision became the star which pointed out
the course of British colonial policy for a decade
thereafter.' Canada and Pitt's gorgeous dream of
a continental empire having been chosen, the
Ministry was pledged to a policy of western expan
sion, to some plan which would make of the Ohio
and the Mississippi Valleys an imperial possession
of more value than a West Indian island. They
must exploit the peltries and the fertile plains, and
found colonies so that England might in time clothe
"unnumbered nations" with her manufactures. Up
to this time, as Adam Smith phrased it, English
rulers had only amused their people with pictures of
their great empire to the west of the Atlantic. It
was, in fact, "not an empire, but the project of an
empire; not a gold mine, but the project of a gold
mine." The time had come to develop both the old
and the new territory and make them true parts of
the empire.
Any plans for Canada and the great region of the
" Western Waters " would be sure to meet with oppo
sition. The old theory of the reason for colonies still
had many adherents who refused to follow Pitt in
his flights of imagination about the real grandeur of
nations. His vision of new realms filled with Eng
lishmen, increasing British power and wealth with
' The excellent and exhaustive study of this whole subject is
C. W. Alvord's The Mississippi Valley in British Politics, 2 vols.
The following treatment of the matter is largely based on this work.

GROPING FOR SOLUTIONS 109
new populations and new markets, could not drive
out the old prepossession about the value of sugar
from Guadeloupe. To the sugar merchants Gold
smith's dream of "peopling the deserts of America
. . . with the waste of an exuberant nation " was a
poet's rhapsody, but not such stuff as trade is fed on.
Few Englishmen had imagination, and knowledge
about the transmontane spaces of America was even
rarer. The British mind had little acquaintance
with the classic books about Canada by Charlevoix,
Hennepin, or La Hontan. The Great Lakes, the
Falls of Niagara, the courses of the Ohio and the
Mississippi, the trading posts at the portages or nar
row waters, the open prairies of this vast inland
empire were as unknown to the intelligent Londoner
in 1763 as the physical features of the Philippine
Islands are a mystery to the New Yorker to-day.
An under-secretary for the colonies, thinking this
region as barren as the omniscient Dr. Johnson had
pictured it, declared that he expected the West to be
given up to barbarism for ages, "like the plains of
Asia, and that the population would be as unsettled
as the Scythians or Tartars." ' In Canada, Boswell's
hero saw only a "cold, uncomfortable, uninviting
region, . . . nothing but furs and fish," inhabited by
people "living in perpetual regret of . . . their native
land." "
The opponents of Pitt's choice of the spoils of
war argued that the conquest of Canada was glori
ous, dazzling, perhaps, but dangerous. "A neighbor
1 Knox, Extra Official State Papers, n, 49.
' Alvord, The Mississippi Valley in British Politics, i, 79.

110 CAUSES OF WAR OF INDEPENDENCE
that kept the colonies in awe, was not a bad neigh
bor." That awe preserved the colonial feeling of
dependence on England. "Give the American prov
inces continental extent," it was objected, and they
would have ten times the area of England. These
provinces had "richer soil in most places, all the
different climates you can fancy, all the lakes and
rivers for navigation one could wish, plenty of wood
for shipping, and as much iron, hemp, and naval
stores as any part of the world; such a country at
such a distance, could never remain long subject
to Britain." ' In fact, some eight years before the
Treaty of Paris, John Adams had written, "If we
can remove the troublesome Gallicks, our people
. . . will in another century become more numerous
than England itseff," and since we "have all the
naval stores in our hands, it will be easy to obtain
the mastery of the seas, then the united forces of aU
Europe will not be able to subdue us. The only way
to keep us from setting up for ourselves will be to
disunite us." " There were prophetic souls in those
days who saw clearly America's manifest destiny,
but who differed widely as to whether its fate would
be left to Providence, or an effort made to deflect
it by act of Parliament.
The British Ministry, seeking to determine a
policy for Canada and the Mississippi Valley, was
heading into a stormy sea. A score of clashing in
terests would buffet any government that tri;,d to
1 "Reasons for Keeping Guadeloupe ..." London, 1761. Quoted
by W. L. Grant, "Canada or Guadeloupe," in American Historical
Review, xvii, 740.
' John Adams, Works, i. 23.

GROPING FOR SOLUTIONS 111
compose them. Land speculators and fur-traders,
philanthropic friends of the "noble red man" and
cynical imperialists eager to take up the "white
man's burden," would shout their conflicting argu
ments. Colonies with western claims and those
without, statesmen of the old school, and their op
ponents of the new school in colonial affairs, military
men with opposing theories as to methods of control,
all would demand a hearing and be content with no
solution but their own. Greatest danger of all would
be in the oppugnancy of imperial rights to colonial
rights of domain. Almost until the outbreak of the
French and Indian War, the British Government
had permitted the colonies, each in its own selfish
way, to settle all questions arising in their hinter
land. Fur-trade problems, Indian policies, and land
company conflicts were all subjects of fierce inter
colonial rivalry, which left the "forest children"
at the mercy of the greedy traders and land specu
lators. The hit-or-miss control of these matters led
to deadly feuds between the colonies, and to an abuse
of the Indians through land frauds and trade that
was mere robbery. The success of the French in get
ting the support of the Indians in the struggle for
the possession of the Ohio Valley was due to their
better control of the fur-trade and resultant fairer
treatment of the aborigines. Nevertheless, the fail
ure of the colonies in these relations made them
no less opposed to any plan of imperial control.
Even their own vain efforts at Albany (1754) to
devise some plan for unity in these matters did not
alter their opposition.

112 CAUSES OF WAR OF INDEPENDENCE
There could never be peace in the western wilds
until a single strong power put the fear of the law
into the hearts of the rival factions. The differing
interests of the fur-trade and land companies created
deadly feuds. The trader wished to preserve the
wilds where the Indian might freely hunt the fur-
bearing animals, but "gentlemen adventurers" with
a project for a colony wished to hasten civilized
conditions as fast as possible. The trader did not
hesitate even to urge the Indians to attack new
western settlements in the hope of discouraging
and retarding the clearing of the forest. The verj-
methods of the unregulated traders created Indian
unrest and imperiled the lives of settlers. The fur-
buyers cynically boasted that better bargains were
made with the Indians if rum was used, and "certain
strength'ning drugs." The trader's scales were
honest, of course, they said with a leer, but a slip
would "turn three pounds to one." Indians who
were mad with drink did not notice slight errors.'
No wonder that Franklin called the traders "the
most vicious and abandoned wretches of our na
tion," " and General Amherst wrote that they used
every low trick and artifice to defraud the untutored
savage. In all this, each trader suffered no inter
ference by his own colony, and in the Hudson's Bay
Company he had a powerful friend at court if the
British Government threatened action.
But the trader's rival, the land companies, had
friends, too, for to their support came those states*
' Alvord, The Mississippi Valley in British Politics, i, 184i
• Franklm, Works, [Smythe, ed.] iv, 469-70.

GROPING FOR SOLUTIONS 113
men who advocated the new colonial principle that
growing populations meant growing markets for the
homeland. Nor were these statesmen always with
out financial interests in the cause, for often their
names stood high on the lists of members of land
companies whose stock would rise if the British
Government embraced their principles.'
The eighteenth century, also, had its "immoral
aUiance" between "big business and those in
political power." But even the tribe of land specu
lators and of politicians "who embraced the new
theory, that dependencies should be fostered for the
sake of their markets, were divided on the western
policy. Englishmen and colonials who had bought
large tracts in the region east of the Appalachians
looked with disfavor on plans of extensive land
grants in the West beyond the mountains, because
such grants would by competition lower the values
of their land." With them were joined men of con
science, who opposed, on principle, such plans as
made certain that hordes of settlers would rush over
the mountains and possess the ancient homes of the
Indians. They argued that these wards of the em
pire must be protected by imperial officers stationed
in the West. The trade with the Indians and the
purchase of their lands would then be under proper
control. The fate of the empire of the "western
waters" was to be wrangled out among these con
flicting factions and interests in London.
' Alvord, The Mississippi Valley in British Politics, I, 112, 213.
' Lord Dartmouth, Charles Townshend, and Richard Oswald had
twenty to forty thousand acres each. (Alvord, The Mississippi Valley
in British Politics, i, 112, 213.) Lord Holland and Grenville also had
investments in American land.

114 CAUSES OF WAR OF INDEPENDENCE
There were colonial interests also which would
have to be handled with the greatest delicacy,
Virginia had long been making land grants to com
panies of capitalists, not only in her territory east
of the AUeghenies, but beyond them in the region
where she recognized no bounds short of the "South
Sea." By 1757, she had ceded in that way two mU-
lion acres. Her soldiers of the French and Indian
War were rewarded with bounty lands which in
creased these grants.' Virginia felt greatly aggrieved
when in October, 1761, Colonel Bouquet, leader of
the British troops in Pennsylvania, issued a procla
mation, later approved by. General Amherst, Brit
ish Commander-in-Chief in America, and by the
Board of Trade, prohibiting all settlements west
of the mountains." Officers and soldiers of the Vir
ginia militia were injured and angered by this ac
tion of the Government, but members of the Ohio
Land Company were especially afflicted. Out in this
forested West was America's land of promise from
which many colonials expected riches, but uncon
trolled exploitation of the wealth of the "Great
VaUey" was contrary to the interests of the empire
as a whole. If the British Government could con
trol the sale of land, and gather the returns there
from, the imperial treasury might be filled with the
income. To realize this the Government must take
1 Alvord, The Mississippi Valley in British Politics, i, 88-89.
' The aim of this was to put an end to the irritation to the Indians,
due to new settlements which cleared the forest and frightened away
the game. Hitherto the Indian preference for the French had been a
mystery to the British Government officials. Bouquet's action en
lightened them.

GROPING FOR SOLUTIONS 115
from the colonies, and make a function of its own,
the purchase of Indian lands, and it must delimit
the western bounds of colonies whose charters gave
them grounds for vague claims far into the western
wilderness. Here, then, Virginia's interests, and,
indeed, those of other colonies, clashed with imperial
interests. Colonies like Pennsylvania with definite
western bounds could look with favor on imperial
istic plans which proposed to ignore ancient charter
grants of land in the West, but colonies like Virginia,
with vast charter claims in the West, resented this
threat to "vested rights." Indeed, some British
"imperialists" would not go that far. In spite of
the indication which Bouquet's proclamation gave
as to the new policy of the British Government,
there was, after the Treaty of Peace (1763), a veri
table land craze among the colonial speculators. In
the "Old Dominion," Colonel George Washington
pressed the claims of his companions in arms, the
Virginia militia. On June 3, 1763, gentlemen from
Maryland and Virginia founded the Mississippi
Company. New York land speculators planned the
colony of New Wales on the Upper Ohio. It was
plain that the hour had struck when the British
Government must decide and apply its policy to its
western dominion, or else resign that region forever
to the capricious wills of the several colonies.
Both the hour and the man were at hand.' When
Lord Bute resigned in 1763 as the head of the
' Professor Alvord declares that Lord Shelburne was the man who
exercised greater influence on the development of Western America
than any other British statesman. The Mississippi Valley in British
Politics, I, 140.

116 CAUSES OF WAR OF INDEPENDENCE
Ministry, and selected his own successors,' Lord
Shelburne was made President of the Board of Trade
and sat in the Cabinet, where he was entitled to
equal weight with the Secretary in colonial matters.
Indeed, he came to manage American affairs as an
independent department. Although he had a tend
ency to radicalism, and in later years saw "with
sincere delight" the beginnings of the French Revo
lution, yet he was on intimate and confidential
terms with Lord Bute, the King's favorite. His
theory that men of independent fortunes should be
"trustees between the king and the people . . . with
out being slaves to either," made such a relation
possible even for a radical. Though he was a believer
in the free-trade ideas of his friends, Adam Smith
and David Hume, yet his conception was a free
trade between colony and mother country so man
aged as to be of value to both. Thus modified,
his economic theory would not make him intolerable
to George Grenville and Lord Halifax, his colleagues
in the Ministry, both of whom he disliked and to
whose plans he was lukewarm. He was rather im
perious in temper and suspicious of men with whom
he dealt, both of which faults came, perhaps, from
his never having enjoyed strict mental discipline.
His friend, Jeremy Bentham, thought his "head
was not clear"; his mind was full to overflowing,
but not logical or just." He was original, all agreed,
but lacking in judgment; on the scrap of an idea
1 The so-called triumvirate, consisting of George GrenvUle, Lord
Halifax, and Lord Egremont.
2 The third Lord Holland agreed with Bentham. See Fitzmaurice,
Life of Shelburne, i, 487.

GROPING FOR SOLUTIONS 117
he would buUd a whole philosophical system. His
catholic taste and wide intellectual interest brought
him into friendly relation with the greatest minds of
his time. Dr. Johnson, Oliver Goldsmith, Price, and
Priestley, and from all he took his toll of ideas. Lord
Camden and Dunning were his political friends, and
William Pitt was his idol. He often consulted with
Benjamin Franklin. He had at Oxford listened to
the lectures of the famous Blackstone, and he had
been a deep student of modern history. Besides his
touch with men and books, he had enjoyed at least
one experience of life at high tension, when in a cam
paign under Woffe in Germany. From this range of
experience and intellectual contact he developed a
character for learning and boldness in speech, which
was neither polished nor coherent. He was not a
great orator, but a man to beware of in debate. If
he deserved Disraeli's epithet of "the ablest and
most accomplished minister of the eighteenth cen
tury," it was because of his imagination and in
dustry. His favorite mode of solving a government
problem was to make the most exhaustive research
in documentary and other sources. He even overdid
his research and made his colleagues impatient with
his assiduous study of " those silly manuscripts."
He was exasperatingly slow in making up his mind.
That was one of his weaknesses, and another that
limited his influence was a prevailing belief that he
was insincere. Walpole declared that "falsehood
was rather his profession than his instrument,"
though Priestley thought him "frank, plain and
open." Friends explained his unfortunate reputa-

118 CAUSES OF WAR OF INDEPENDENCE
tion by saying that he was not accustomed to explain
the full meaning of measures which he advocated,
so that when all was revealed he was reproached for
deceit. His own theory, that "men required to be
bribed into doing good," reveals a cynical spirit that
may easily have reflected back upon himself those
attributes which he so freely suspected in others.
He was one of those positive personalities which
either won wholly or repelled men. They were
either his warm friends or implacable enemies, and
they saw in him either a noble, generous idealist, or
a cunning betrayer of the cause of the people. This
man in his strength and his weakness was destined
to affect deeply the fate of America.'
On taking office, , Shelburne began with charac
teristic thoroughness to make a complete study of
the whole matter of the western policy. He sought
advice from every source and gathered quantities of
documents which would inform him upon what
seemed the three main questions: (1) the regulation
of Indian trade and relations; (2) whether an army
should be maintained in America; and (3) whether
there should be a contribution by the colonies for
the support of the imperial establishment. As a
result of his investigations and reports, the Ministry
planned to secure happy relations with the Indians
by making them sure that their hunting grounds,
those "immense wastes of savage country," would
not be encroached upon until an honest purchase
1 This attempt to portray the character of Shelburne is based upon
Fitzmaurice's Life of Shelburne, and upon the excellent account ol
him in Alvord's Mississippi Valley in British Politics, i, 140-52.

GROPING FOR SOLUTIONS 119
should open them to settlement. A boundary Une
between the Atlantic seaboard colonies and the
Indian country of the trans-Allegheny region was
considered, but Shelburne made clear that his idea
was a boundary which was to be slowly abolished
or moved westward as the lands were purchased.'
It was planned to send twenty battalions, or ten
thousand soldiers, to America, the expense to be
borne at first by England, but in time to be cared
for by the colonies. Such a contribution by the
colonies was to be as little "burthensome and aa
palatable to the colonies" as possible. Of this plan
even Edmund Burke, "friend of the colonies," and
later repealer of the Stamp Act, approved "when a
more calm and settled season comes." William Pitt,
too, seems to have approved." In fact, only the
question of the distribution of the troops — whether
in the eastern settlements or scattered among the
western posts — seems to have caused dispute be
tween political factions. This carefully conceived
plan of Shelburne's was prevented by factional poli
tics from ever coming to full fruition, but it had
great influence upon all later actions of the Govern
ment. By July, 1763, the Ministry was ready to issue
proclamations unfolding its plan to the governors
of the colonies. Then new and interesting tidings
from America, and later some important ministerial
' Alvord, The Mississippi Valley in British Politics, i, 172. It was
not part of Shelburne's plan, but proposed by Lord Egremont and
approved by others of the Ministry, that the western lands reserved
behind such a boundary line be controlled by the Government of
Quebec. There was no ulterior motive in this; certainly no wish to
offend the thirteen American colonies.
• Alvord, The Mississippi Valley in British Politics. 1, 130-60.

120 CAUSES OF WAR OF INDEPENDENCE
changes, delayed this promulgation until October,
which led to significant changes in the form of their
policy. The untoward news from oversea was that of the
outbreak of the Indian war called in Parkman's
fascinating volumes "The Conspiracy of Pontiac." '
Packet after packet from America brought news
of savage warfare on the unprotected settlements
throughout the West. The fraud and violence of
the fur-trader and the land speculator had roused
the vengeance of the Indians, and, led by an able
and ambitious warrior, Pontiac, they ravaged the
western posts and frontiers. The whole West was
lost in a few weeks; only Fort Pitt and Detroit sur
vived the onslaught. There were two immediate
occasions of the outbreak: one was the anger of the
Indians because, on Amherst's advice, the British
Government, in a fit of economy after the making of
peace, had ceased making gifts to the Indians; an
other was because the Indians, " with an uneasy and
jealous eye," saw the English settlers pouring out
of the Appalachian passes into the Great Valley,
and no doubt were warned by the French fur-traders
in words not very different from those of DuQuesne
to the Iroquois. "Are you ignorant," DuQuesne
asked, "of the difference between the King of Eng
land and the King of France.'' Go see the forts that
our king has established, and you will see that you
can still hunt under their very walls. They have
been placed for your advantage in places which you
1 There is an excellent short account ui L. S. Mayo, J^rey Amherst,
chap. XI.

GROPING FOR SOLUTIONS 121
frequent. The English, on the contrary, are no
sooner in possession of a place than the game is
driven away. The forest falls before them as they
advance, and the soil is laid bare so that you can
scarce find the wherewithal to erect a shelter for
the night." ' It is certain that the Indians were as
sured by the insidious French traders that the King
of France was sending an army to drive out the
English. Pontiac believed that he was only prepar
ing the way for the French hosts who would push
the English into the sea.
When the news of the Pontiac uprising reached
England, the members of the Board of Trade were
not wholly surprised, but they did realize that their
plan for the protection of the Indian, and thus the
settlers from his vengeance, had been delayed too
long. They at once proposed to the Ministry a proc
lamation of the boundary suggested by Shelburne,
which would allay the fears of the Indians and re
store peace in the West. Action was delayed, how
ever, by a whole summer's political uncertainty
in London. George III had determined to have a
change in the make-up of the Ministry, and had put
the negotiations in the hands of his favorite. Lord
Bute. An effort to secure the aid of William Pitt
and some of the Old Whigs failed, as did an endeavor
to bring Pitt and the Duke of Bedford's followers
together, both undertakings being based on the
King's wish for a " broad-bottomed " ministry which
would assure a strong and permanent government.
It seems a pity that Pitt's genius could not have
' F. J. Turner, The Frontier in American History. 14.

122 CAUSES OF WAR OF INDEPENDENCE
been summoned to his country's service at that
critical moment. That spirit, supported by fleets
and armies, which, in Barre's phrase, had "set Great
Britain at the head of the world," might have knit
its scattered provinces together. But few men of
spirit could work with Pitt. He was never a con
genial colleague. Men who worked with him must
obey without question, sign state papers without
reading them. He scorned Lilliputian statesmen and
their plans. He alone could save England, he cried,
and he did it. In his dramatic way, he loved to be
shrouded in mystery. Men felt that his mind had a
touch of the infinite, that his imagination roamed
the whole world. His career was fascinating to
watch, but no careful statesman wished to be tied
to the tail of a comet. Noble as were Pitt's ideas,
they often seemed beyond human attainment. Men
did not mind venturing step by step into the un
known, but to dive into the infinite at the command
of a ministerial colleague was both risky and undig
nified. All efforts to surround Pitt with obedient
colleagues failed. The King in desperation was
finally obliged to dismiss Lord Bute in order to gain
the Duke of Bedford's aid in forming a new ministry.
Thereupon George Grenville was enlisted, and the
Grenville-Bedford regime, with its fatal consequences
for the British Empire, began its course, vain of its
power, but soon distrusted by the King.' Before
its attention could be called to the American situa
tion, Shelburne resigned, and the Earl of Hillsbor-
1 An excellent account of these negotiations is in Alvord, Tht
Mississippi Valley in British Politics, i, 189-97.

GROPING FOR SOLUTIONS 123
ough took his place. Into Hillsborough's hands came
Shelburne's plan, ready, but delayed by the totter
ing ministry. Something must be done at once, but
Hillsborough had never held a position which dealt
with colonial affairs, and it was fortunate that most
of the work on the western policy had already been
done by Shelburne. Hillsborough had little to do
but to incorporate the decision of the recent ministry
in a proclamation, already urged by Shelburne, to
quiet the fears of the Indians. Precious months had
gone by, and it was already October. Within six
days, Hillsborough, with the aid of Lord Halifax,
prepared this important state paper, so fateful in
American affairs. The chief change, important to
note at this time, was in the location of the Indian
boundary line.' Something rough and ready was
needed to meet the emergency of the Pontiac war,
a natural boundary like the Appalachian divide,
rather than a carefully surveyed line to run in and
out and embrace villages already in the upper Ohio
Valley. This neglect to exempt settlements already
made west of the mountains, and the prohibition of
sale of Indian lands except to the Crown, gave great
offense to the powerful land interests, already de
scribed, in the colonies, as well as to political fac
tions in England." Moreover, much of the reserved
' For other changes and some imintended provisions in the proc
lamation see Alvord, The Mississippi Valley in British Politics, i,
202-10. The serious blunder in respect to the property laws of Quebec
will be taken up later.
' The proclamation may be found in Fitzmaurice's Life of Shel
burne, n, 439, and in Macdonald's Documentary Source Book, 113.
The territory ceded by France was divided into four governments,
Quebec, East Florida, West Florida, and Grenada. All the remaining

124 CAUSES OF WAR OF INDEPENDENCE
territory lay within regions long ago granted in
charters to the older colonies, regions in which those
colonies had plans of their own. Thither thousands
of their people were even then preparing to "swarm."
Neither the fur-traders nor the land companies liked
the imperial regulations, though Sir William John
son and John Stuart, the two men who knew most
about it, believed that the western chaotic condi
tions could be cured only by putting all Indian
affairs under imperial control. The proclamation of
1763 left the King's hand on October 7, and the
British Government was committed to a policy of
imperial control of its new western domain.
In addition to the nature of this imperial plan,
it is important to note that the British Government,
having acquired the West in the Treaty of Paris, felt
pledged to prove to the nation the value of this
acquisition. To do this, now that Shelburne's plan
was fairly entered upon, required money to support
the military establishment proposed for the western
posts, as well as to keep up government in the new
regions, and that, too, at a time when England was
laboring under a war debt of nearly £130,000,000.'
The new accretions to Great Britain's empire had
swelled the annual budget for naval and military
expenses alone from £70,000 to £350,000. Having
taken one step, the Grenville-Bedford Ministry was
pledged to the next, and that implied the acceptance
of Shelburne's plan to raise the money needed for
acquired territory was set aside as an Indian reservation by the
boundary line described in the text.
* Commons Journal, xxix, 760; Bowdoin and Temple Papers,
pt. I, 77.

GROPING FOR SOLUTIONS , 125
imperial expenses in America from the American
colonies themselves. Unfortunately this plan was
not to be carried out by Lord Shelburne, whose
liberal mind conceived of a system which would give
all of the colonies as much self-rule as was enjoyed
by Connecticut, but was to be jammed through by
the Bedford faction, which believed in the complete
subordination of the colonies. Their thought was
that the old charters had recklessly granted away
imperial rights, which ought now to be regained by
the mother country, even if vested rights had to be
attacked. Like their pensioned pamphleteer. Dr.
Johnson, they asked superciliously whether nothing
could be done toward "demolishing these pernicious
charter governments, and reducing them all to one
form in immediate dependence on the king." '
American colonial governors had advised them re
peatedly that the colonies must be organized upon
a new plan, that the old had failed. Governor
Bernard hoped (1763) that there would soon "be
only one common rule in all American parts." "
All circumstances, all advice urged them on to try,
now that "the East and West Indies were in their
hands," as Barre told them, whether their infant
fingers were "able to grasp the world." They had
conquered; could they organize their conquests?
The Molasses Act of 1733, which was about to
expire, had been devised to force New England dis
tillers and sellers of rum to buy their molasses and
sugar and rum from British sugar planters, and to
• Life of Samuel Johnson, 279.
» British Museum, King's MSS., 205 F 200.

126 CAUSES OF WAR OF INDEPENDENCE
keep colonial traders out of the French and Spanish
West Indies, confining their traffic to the British
Islands.' It seemed to the colonists a bad piece of
class legislation, seeking to enable "a few pamper'd
Creolians" to "roll in their gilded equipages thro'
the streets " of London, at the expense of two million
American subjects." Smuggling, on such a scale
that it was the rule rather than the exception in
colonial trade, had made the statute a dead-letter.
In addition to administrative reforms, Grenville
now turned (1764) to Parliament for legislation,
which properly enforced would bring a revenue into
the imperial treasury. He could no longer tolerate
a customs service which cost the Crown seven
thousand pounds to support, and which collected
only two thousand pounds revenue. Urged on by
the sugar planters of the British West Indies, whose
political influence was fairly proportioned to their
wealth, an act was passed which aimed to make
perpetual "the old Molasses Act" (1733) and to
prevent "the clandestine conveyance of goods to
and from the said colonies," so "happily enlarged
by the recent peace." ' The duty on French and
Spanish molasses was reduced from six pence to
three pence that the profits of evasion might not
offer so great temptation to the smuggler. New
duties, also, to be collected with the utmost rigor,
were imposed upon wine from the Azores and
Madeiras, and upon white sugar, coffee, pimento,
and indigo from the foreign islands of the West
1 For the act see Macdonald, Documentary Source Book, 103.
' Schlesinger, The Colonial Merchants, in the American Revolution,
42-43. 3 ibiii_^ in^

GROPING FOR SOLUTIONS 127
Indies.' The trial of indicted smugglers in colonial
courts having proved futile, the British admiralty
courts were given jurisdiction in such cases and
British naval officers given power to collect the cus
toms duties. The greatest burden of all, as colonial
agitators interpreted it, was a provision that all
duties and forfeitures were to be paid into the "Re
ceipt of His Majesty's Exchequer." " This was as
serted to mean silver and gold, which would thus
be drained from the colonies. In fact it was to be
used in America to buy supplies for the British troops
stationed there.' Finally, as if to exhibit at once his
knowledge of sound finance, and his ignorance of
colonial conditions, Grenville induced Parliament
later in the year to enact a law "to prevent paper
bills of credit hereafter issued in any of His Ma
jesty's colonies from being made legal tender." The
time set for sinking old issues of such money was not
to be extended.
Like many other clever epigrams, the assertion
that "Grenville lost America because he read the
American despatches" is untrue. However assidu
ous and precise his study of finance, his arid mind
had absorbed little knowledge of colonial life and
spirit. In no previous service of his in the Govern-
* There were certain provisions meant to help the colonial trade.
Some duties were repealed and bounties granted to that end.
' Clause XI of the Sugar Act. See also Annual Register, 1765, p. 22.
' Channing, Hist, of the U.S., m, 43-44. Franklin claimed, how
ever, during his examination at the bar of the House of Commons that
"it will be spent in the conquered colonies (Canada, Florida, etc.)
where the soldiers are, not in the colonies that pay it." Resolu
tion no. 17 of the measures proposed by Grenville on March 10,
1764, definitely stated that the duties were to be paid in "sterling
money." Hansard, Parliamentary Debates, xv, 1428.

128 CAUSES OF WAR OF INDEPENDENCE
ment had he dealt with colonial affairs. Only a year
earlier than the Sugar Act, Governor Bernard of
Massachusetts had reported to his Government:
"The inhabitants of the trading towns of New Eng
land, Men, Women, and Children, have their whole
supply of Clothing from Great Britain. Most of the
Women in all other towns have the principal part
of their clothing of British Manufactures, the Men
have more or less. The poor laboring people of the
country towns wear their common Cloaths princi
pally of coarse home spun Linnens and woollens.
Shoes are to be excepted . . . Furniture ... is Brit
ish . . . and Nails, Glass, lead, locks, and hinges."'
To pay for all these manufactures of Great Britain,
the New England provinces had long depended in
part for the requisite gold and silver upon an illicit
trade with the French and Spanish Islands." The
Puritan provinces had no staple like tobacco or rice
or indigo with which to pay for their English-made
glass and locks and hinges, or the manufactured
finery with which they were clothed. To take away
their molasses trade or to burden their slave trade,
in which rum was an essential item, was to take
away the balance in gold and silver or bank ex
change, with which they gave satisfaction to their
English creditors.' John Adams, years after, did
not blush to confess that molasses was an essential
» British Museum, King's MSS., 205 F 198.
' H. C. Bell, "West Indian Trade before the Revolution," in
American Historical Review, xxn, 274, an excellent detailed descrip
tion of trade with the West Indies.
^ See Wells, Samuel Adams, i, 81, for instructions to the colonial
•gent in London. John Adams, Works, x, 345.

GROPING FOR SOLUTIONS 129
ingredient in American independence. Governor
Bernard had assured his royal master that "even
iUegal trade, where the balance is in favor of these
British subjects, makes its final returns to Great
Britain." ' When so fundamental a source of the
medium of exchange was thus snatched away, there
would be little gratitude in New England because
to their fishermen, whom Burke pictured as "pur
suing the whales among the tumbling mountains
of arctic ice, or following them beneath the frozen
serpent of the South," were remitted the duty on
whale fins." It was too small a sop to mollify the
Puritan Cerberus.
Although the southern colonies, with bountiful
staple products to exchange for British goods, were
little injured by the Sugar Act, the middle colonies
felt its effect only less than those of New England.
They had enjoyed devious ways of getting hard
money with which to pay for English manufactures.
Their merchants carried their lumber, wheat, and
meat to the West Indies,' and exchanged them there
for cotton, indigo, and sugar, which were good as
gold for remittance to their English creditors. Rum
and molasses got in the Indies were by the alchemy
of trade turned into gold and silver to the same end.
The fur-trade, too, furnished exchange welcome to
the English merchant. To limit their trade, as the
Sugar Act intended, to the British sugar islands,
would woefully cut down their market for lumber
» British Museum, King's MSS., 205 F 198. ^ 4 Geo. Ill, c. 15.
• This was their chief market, for the importation of grain and
meat into England had been prohibited in a statute of the reign of
Charles H.

130 CAUSES OF WAR OF INDEPENDENCE
and foodstuffs. This would reduce greatly the sup
ply of silver needed to square accounts in London.
Finally, it was maddening to colonial vanity to have
the interests of a small coterie of West Indian sugar
planters made an object of greater concern to Par
liament than the interests of the thirteen colonies
of the Atlantic seaboard. All of the colonies north
of Virginia were suffering a real blow to their eco
nomic well-being. Though many laws in earlier
days might have been burdensome if enforced, their
ill-effects had been nullified by individual enterprise
joined with a moral obtuseness to the crime of
smuggling. Though illicit trade had always been
common, and though it was smuggling that lost
Massachusetts her charter as early as 1684, yet in
the general colonial import trade there had not been
a serious amount of contraband trade.' This was
due to no moral scruples of the colonists, for they
evaded any restrictions when it was profitable to do
so, but smuggling was not good business when better
bargains were to be obtained from England than
from France or the Netherlands. It was in this sense
that the Trade Acts were approved by James Otis.
"Very good," he said, "we have submitted to this.
The act of navigation is a good act, so are all that
exclude foreign manufactures from the plantations,
and every honest man will readily subscribe to
them." ^ It was the Molasses Act which had created
* That in colonial exports was very small also.
^ The Virginia Committee of Correspondence (1762) admitted
this, "provided the mother country supplies all the Colonies want."
Virginia Magazine of History, xi, 137. J. Otis, Rights of the British
Colonists, etc. (Boston, 1764), 54, 55.

GROPING FOR SOLUTIONS 131
the greatest incentive to illicit trade. The great
mass of contraband trade was in molasses, rum,
and sugar.' From the French and Spanish West
Indies, and therefore paying no duty, came 11,500
hogsheads of molasses out of the 14,000 hogsheads
imported into Rhode Island every year." Indeed,
the entire output of the British islands would not
furnish two thirds of the quantity imported into
Rhode Island, and, moreover, the British planters
asked a price more than twenty -five per cent higher
than the foreign islands.' It was estimated that the
loss each year to the English treasury, due to the
success of the New England smugglers, was not less
than £100,000.''
There is no doubt that this illicit trade maintained
the prosperity of the individual colonies, but its
effect on British national welfare was demoralizing.
This evil was at its worst during the Seven Years'
War, when the colonial smugglers, especially those
of Pennsylvania and New York, neutralized the
advantage of British naval supremacy by supplying
the French colonies with flour, beef, and pork, the
very articles of trade which the navy's activity
aimed to cut off. Flour concealed in claret kegs,
or carried under flags of truce — flags sold even by
colonial governors for twenty pounds sterling — •
"nourished and supported" the French enemies.^
Yet when the colonists were reproached for this
treasonable trade, they asked how they were to pay
' Schlesinger, The Colonial Merchants, 42.
' Ibid., quoting Rhode Island Colonial Records, vi, 378-83.
' Ibid., 43. ¦¦ Beer, The Old Colonial System, pt. I, vol. n, 269.
» Beer, British Colonial Policy, 1754-65, 87-88.

132 CAUSES OF WAR OF INDEPENDENCE
their share toward the support of the war without
money gained from commercial dealings with their
best customers, their good friends, the enemy.' The
Livingston family of New York were said to have
made a fortune out of this trade, and many fortunes
in New England and New York and Pennsylvania
were reputed greatly swollen by this illicit trade. In
the first Continental Congress, Lynch, of South
Carolina, blurted out, "Many gentlemen in this
room know how to bring in goods, sugars and others,
without paying duties." " The colonial conscience
omitted smuggling from the catalogue of crimes.
John Hancock was no less respectable because he
was suspected of smuggling. Indeed, this suspicion
was only an ornament of his respectability. So com
mon was the crime that all distinction between a
merchant and a smuggler was lost. Smuggling and
respectability went hand in hand in the market
place. Franklin, with homely philosophy, explained
that "there are those in the world who would not
wrong a neighbour, but make no scruple of cheating
the King. The reverse, however, does not hold; for
whoever scruples cheating the King will certainly
not wrong his neighbour." In the colonial mind, in
fact, "smuggling" was not a well-chosen word to
describe evasion of the trade laws, which was, after
aU, only a defiance of the British sovereignty by the
individual colonist. The acts of smugglers refusing
obedience to the trade and navigation laws, and
' HaU, "Chatham's Colonial Policy," in American Historical Re
view, V, 666.
2 Hansard, Parliamentary History, xvi, 125; John Adams, Work*:
n. 394.

GROPING POR SOLUTIONS 133
rhetorical defiance by Patrick Henry and James Otis,
were only preludes to ultimate defiance by all the
American colonists. Like any laws which do not
appeal to the understanding and sympathy of the
honest citizens of a state, the trade laws which
ran coimter to the interests of the colonial merchants
were not enforceable. James Otis only overstated
when in a moment of excitement he declared that
"if the King of Great Britain in person were en
camped on Boston Common, at the head of twenty
thousand men, with all his navy on our coast, he
would not be able to execute these laws." ' There
were many wily devices by which the law was
evaded, and the New England coast, with its creeks
and coves and rocky inlets, offered easy sanctuary
in fog or darkness to the Puritan smuggler. Yet such
daring methods were unnecessary, for we may read
to-day the solemn oaths of informers that collectors
of His Majesty's customs were known regularly to
receive from captains of vessels casks of wine or
boxes of fruit, portions of which went even to the
governor — on the condition that the collector's
eye pass charitably over prohibited cargoes of wine
and fruit." In the customs records the vessel was
set down as entering only with salt or ballast. The
fees of customs officers were so smaU that, it was
said, without bribery and corruption they must
starve. They could make the job lucrative only by
shutting their eyes or opening them no further than
' W. S. McClellan, Smuggling in American Colonies. 78.
' Boston^ Gazette, June 12, 1769; Palfrey, History of New England,
T, 40.

134 CAUSES OF WAR OF INDEPENDENCE
to see a bribe. Governor Bernard, who ought to
know, since there is sworn testimony that he shared
in the proceeds, declared (1764), "if conniving at
foreign sugars and molasses and Portugal wines and
fruits is to be reckoned Corruption, there never was,
I believe, an uncorrupt Customs House Officer in
America until within twelve months." ' If, per
chance, cargoes were seized for evasion of duties,
there was always the probability of rescue by rioters.
The fate of one who tried to aid the British Govern
ment in rooting out the trade evil is suggested by
the spirit of a colonial journal, which urged the
seizure of a customs spy. "AU lovers of Liberty will
make a diligent search, and having found this bird
of darkness, will produce him tarred and feathered
at the Coffee-House" to expiate his sins. Benedict
Arnold caused an informer to be tied to the public
whipping post and given forty lashes, for which
pleasure Arnold and his fellows paid a fine of fifty
shillings." Even if a smuggler were caught red-
handed, it was difficult to convict him, because, we
are told by one who knew, the jury was made up of
men "equally concerned in carrying on an illicit
trade, and its hardly to be expected that they will
find each other guilty." ' That they might free a
smuggler of Irish soap, a jury in Jamaica solemnly
decided that soap was a foodstuff upon which a man
could live for a month. It was therefore "provi
sions," which under the trade laws might be freely
imported from Ireland. Candles were put into a
' Josiah Quincy, Reports, etc., 423, 424.
' Barber, Historical Collections of Connecticut. 166.
• Hart, American History Told by Contemporaries, II, 87.

GROPING FOR SOLUTIONS 135
similar category for a like purpose by another jury.'
These facts exhibit the true nature of colonial ac
quiescence in the trade and navigation laws before
1764. Burke could have had little understanding
of these conditions when he declared, "The Acts of
Navigation attended the Colonies from their in
fancy, grew with their growth, and strengthened with
their strength. They were confirmed in obedience
to it, even more by usage than by law." " The only
element of truth in his assertion was that the colo
nists did not object to them, if they were not en
forced in such parts as opposed colonial interests.
In 1764 the new measures offered by "that two
penny monarch, George Grenville," were so planned
as greatly to increase the hazards of illicit trading,
and in addition to the reforms in the administration
of the trade laws, which Pitt had introduced during
the Seven Years' War, Grenville had instructed all
colonial governors to give insistent enforcement to
the trade laws, and, besides increasing the force of
revenue officers, had ordered all holders of sinecures
in customs offices to hie them from London to their
American posts. He had increased the number of
war vessels on the American coast, and authorized
the use of general writs to aid the searchers for
smuggled goods. Indeed, it is a fair question as to
whether American traders were more alarmed over
the new Sugar Act or over the new efficiency of the
customs administration. The strait-jacket of trade
seemed securely fastened upon the colonial victim,
» Beer, The Old Colonial System, pt. I, vol. I, 306-08.
' Burke, Speeches (ed. 1816), i, 202.

136 CAUSES OF WAR OF INDEPENDENCE
and his reactions were the more frantic because of
his feeling of impotence.
Nevertheless the effect in America of the Sugar
Act and of the new administrative measures was
not alarming to those accustomed to colonial protest
and bluster. Many individuals complained bitterly
of the burden to commerce, but there was no mass
reaction or rebellion.' Adam Smith expressed only
a truism when he declared that " to prohibit a great
people making the best of their resources was a viola
tion of the most sacred rights of mankind"; but to
go further and declare with Arthur Young that the
cause of the American War was "that baleful spirit
of commerce, that wished to govern great nations
on the maxims of the counter," is to express a small
part of the truth, and to ignore that long training in
self-government which had made the English col
onist utterly different from the French or the Span
ish inhabitants of the colonies of those empires.
Frenchman and Spaniard in America endured the
trade restraints fastened on them by the "baleful
spirit of commerce." These restraints were not
merely on the statute books, but were much more
rigorously enforced than in English provinces.
Moreover, even the colonists of England were not
to be aflame along a thousand miles of the Atlantic
seaboard, until another parliamentary enactment,
attacking more plainly a fundamental principle of
political liberty, should awake in the colonial mind
every memory of the long struggle by which they
had reached theiractual political independence.
* W. F. Ashley, Surveys, Historic and Economic. 309.

CHAPTER VI
THE STAMP ACT REVEALS WEAKNESS IN THE
IMPERIAL FABRIC
We have seen how the Seven Years' War had forced
into prominence problems which, though strictly
American, were yet too large for any one of the seff-
ruling colonies of America to handle. We have noted
how the British Ministry realized its lack of powers
and revenue to solve these problems, and how, in
stead of creating a suitable legislature in America,
they tried to get from America what they needed by
use of the agency of the existing legislature in Eng
land. It was not a new device, this use of the British
Parliament to give force to the royal prerogative in
America. Obstinate Massachusetts had been threat
ened (1729) with intervention by Parliament. In
deed, Americans had not denied before 1763 the
right of Parliament to succor the waning power of
the King's prerogative in matters of trade and
revenue acts and of other regulative measures.'
That to put such purely colonial matters in the
control of Parliament would, if successful, destroy
the American sense of responsibility, that it would
leave that sense "unexercized and unbreathed"
save in purely local affairs, seems to have been an
idea foreign to the minds of that age. Even Pitt,
whose penetrating mind opened up political vistas
imsuspected by duller men, did not suggest, untU
» Andrews, The Colonial Period, 241.

138 CAUSES OF WAR OF INDEPENDENCE
the Continental Congress actually sat in Philadel
phia, that the way to tax America was to let those
delegates from the thirteen colonies make "a free
grant to the King ... of a certain perpetual rev
enue," fixing themselves the quotas and propor
tions to be borne by each province. He alone saw
that this "mighty continental nation" had found
in its Congress an articulate voice.
Even if the implied imperial reorganization was
unthinkable in that age, one might conceive of de
vices to lessen expenses or increase revenue, to
which it might seem to our generation Grenville
could have turned. If the new ministerial plan for
America demanded money, why not cut off £400,000
of pensions by which the Government cared for
impecunious relatives and friends, or why not take
action against Rigby, paymaster of the forces, who
"put into his private wallet the interest on a million
pounds of public money in the Bank of England"? '
Such thoughts were beyond the reaches of eight
eenth-century souls. Grenville and his contempo
raries could no more imagine such reforms than
they could have imagined wireless communication
with America. The suggestion of them would have
been taken no more seriously than some of the
bizarre suggestions by angry colonists. A minister
of finance, as James Otis insinuated, might "go
nabob hunting on this occasion" or "the great
Mogul be obliged to contribute" to pay the national
debt. "He is a pagan, an East Indian, and of a
' 1 Grenville himself had profited by drawing the interest on the
nation's money while he was treasurer of the navy.

THE STAMP ACT REVEALS WEAKNESS 139
dark complexion," all quite as good as those offered
for taxing the American colonists. Or, as another
American radical might suggest, why not raise the
taxes on the land of country squires in order to
increase the revenue? The answer of Grenville to
such a query would have been that no ministry could
survive such temerity, and it was far easier to tax the
distant Americans. Moreover, there was some truth
in the blunt declaration of an eccentric Englishman
to Josiah Quincy. "Very true," he said, "Great
Britain has no right to tax you. The ministry know
it as well as you, but money must be had somewhere.
Everything is strained to the utmost at home."
"Why," he exclaimed in closing, "all the world are
slaves, and North America can't hope to be free." '
After all, except for the method of taxing, the logic
was not Ul, which held that Americans ought to pay
for their own defense and government. That logic,
whether good or bad, was all that might have been
expected of Grenville, whose pedantic mind was
absorbed in the details of his office, while he blindly
passed by the really great issues. He was one of
those dread individuals with "a fund of useful
knowledge." " The stiffness that was in his manner
was also in his mind, which always placed above
common sense the letter of the law in which he was
so deeply versed. To come, as Pitt scorned to do,
armed at all points, with law cases and acts of Par
liament, with the statute book "doubled down in
• Mass. Hist. Soc, Proceedings, xlix, 433.
* Historical MSS. Commission, Reports {Various Collections), vi
94-101.

140 CAUSES OF WAR OF INDEPENDENCE
dog's ears," exactly suited his genius and his charac
ter. It was not in him to arrive at the wisdom of Sir
Philip Francis, who declared that "the fate of na
tions must not be tried by forms." Sir Philip ad
mitted that he used to be able to reason most
logically against the Americans, but since he had
studied the book of wisdom he had dismissed logic
out of his library.
Grenville's efforts toward administrative efficiency
and his new measures, the Sugar Act and the Cur
rency Act, were but the few cautious steps in the
direction of his final purpose. As if he sensed danger,
he moved slowly. On March 10, 1764, in a series of
resolutions which outlined the terms of the Sugar
Act, a resolve was included that asserted the purpose
of charging "certain stamp duties" in the colonies.'
The warning was a whole year in advance of the
actual execution of the plan, allowing time, as
Burke later sarcastically pointed out, "for all the
discontents of that country to fester and come to a
head, and for all the arrangements which factious
men could make toward an opposition to the law."
The stamp tax idea was not original with Grenville;
Pitt later asserted that even when he was minister,
men had proposed to him to "burn his fingers with
an American Stamp Act." Such an act had been
recommended by several provincial officials of long
experience; it was now proposed, Grenville declared,
"from a real regard and tenderness" for the colo
nists, and it was to be imposed only if the colonial
1 Hansard, Parliamentary Debates, xv, 1427 no. 14; Grenville Pa
pers, II, 373-74.

THE STAMP ACT REVEALS WEAKNESS 141
agents could not tell him of a better. " If the colonies
prefer some other tax, let them signify," said Gren
ville. The only reply to his request for suggestions
was a proposal to try the old plan of requisitions on
the several colonies, but remembering its miserable
failure in the Seven Years' War, he asked, "Can
you agree on the proportions each colony should
raise?" Getting no answer except remonstrances
"carefully concealed from the eye of Parliament,"
he pressed on his financial plans regardless of their
political consequences. He was wont to say that
"the most important word to him, next to that of
Uberty, was revenue," but for the moment, at least,
liberty fell to the rear.
Before a Parliament more ill-informed than him
self Grenville brought his stamp measure. Such
knowledge as the members had of colonial conditions
came, second hand, strained through the reports of
the Board of Trade or the Secretary of State, colored
by the aims and purposes of these officials. Gren-
vUle's arguments only vexed the dull ear of either
friend or foe, for he was a poor debater, unaware of
the charms of brevity. It was enough that he as
sured them that the method was "easy," would faU
only on property, and be collected by few officers,
who would not give offense by entering and searching
houses. He could easily show them, with "delusive
geometrical accuracy," that the stamp duties were
lighter than those levied at that moment in Eng
land, and that a few English taxes like those on
marriage certificates and pardons had been omitted.' 1
» Mass. Hist. Soc, Collections (6th Ser.), rx, 49.

142 CAUSES OF WAR OF INDEPENDENCE
It was to fall chiefly on bonds, newspapers, legal and
commercial documents, and insurance policies.' Of
fenses against the law were to be tried in admiralty
courts in America or England. The proceeds were
to go wholly to defray the expense of governing and
defending the American colonies. It was all reason
able enough as a revenue measure, and had it been
passed by an American Congress would have pro
voked only the usual grumbling which has greeted
taxation in all ages. Grenville even tried to com
mend the poisoned chalice by selecting American
colonists as the stamp agents rather than sending
English officers. Franklin nominated his friend
Hughes for the office in Pennsylvania; Richard
Henry Lee sought the office in Virginia; and Jared
IngersoU, who, from the visitor's gallery had watched
Parliament enact the measure, accepted, on Frank
lin's advice, the office of distributor in his own
colony of Connecticut." When such men failed to
forecast the results of the measure it is little wonder
that when only two or three members spoke against
it, without force or apparent interest, Horace Wal
pole could write to his friend, the Earl of Hertford,
"There has been nothing of note in Parliament, but
one slight day on the American taxes, which Charles
Townshend supporting, received a pretty heavy
thump from Barre, who is the present Pitt." '
Barre had, indeed, disturbed the slumbers of many
members who were taking lightly this momentous
^ Macdonald, Documentary Source Book, no. 33.
2 British Museum, Egerton MSS., 2671 F 30. See C. M. Andrews,
Guide, etc., n, 102, for complete list of all colonial receivers.
' Hansard, Parliamentary History, xvi, 37.

THE STAMP ACT REVEALS WEAKNESS 143
bUl. This fiery young man of twenty-nine, the Irish-
born son of a French refugee, was unrivaled in politi
cal opposition. His massive, swarthy figure was, as
Walpole said, the "dread of all vociferous Norths
and Rigbys, on whose lungs depended so much of
Mr. Grenville's power." ' Barre had received a face
wound while he was fighting by Wolfe's side when
that hero fell on the Plains of Abraham, and it gave
an additional terror to the glare which went with the
invective so feared by his opponents." In his opposi
tion to the Stamp Act he was representing the views
of Pitt, as Walpole suggested, and of his patron.
Lord Shelburne, who was absent being married that
day, and who complimented him handsomely when
told of his defense of those "sons of Liberty," the
Americans.' Perhaps Barre was the more bitter
against Grenville, because that minister had dis
missed him but a year before from a post worth
£4000 a year. No doubt, too, his brilliant speech
influenced Pitt to restore him later to the lost post
when the "Great Commoner" was again in power.
Certainly, it made him loved and famous in Amer
ica, where his assertion that the men sent to rule
Americans, "sent to spy out their liberties, to mis
represent their actions, and to prey upon them," had
"caused the blood of these sons qf liberty to recoil
within them," was received with vast applause, and
' H. Walpole, Letters (Toynbee, ed). vi, 187-88.
" ' While in America he had passed through New York, New Jersey,
Pennsylvania and Massachusetts. Gordon, i, 438; Mass. Hist. Soc,
Proceedings, l, 452.
' Hansard, Parliamentary History, xvi, 39. Fitzmaurice, Life of
Shelburne. i, 225.

144 CAUSES OF WAR OF INDEPENDENCE
the epithet he had given them was adopted as the
name of numbers of patriotic clubs.
f Barre warned ParUament that the spirit of free
dom actuated Americans, that though loyal subjects,
they were jealous of their liberties and would "vindi
cate them if ever they should be violated." His
friend Jackson, dubbed by Dr. Johnson "the all-
knowing," also warned them that though Parliament
was undoubtedly "the universal, unlimited legisla
ture of the British dominions," yet it should volun
tarily set bounds to the exercise of that power.'
Otherwise, he added, "the liberties of America, I do
not say will be lost, but will be in danger, and they
cannot be injured without danger to the liberties of
Great Britain."
But aU these warnings could not take America's
fate from the knees of the gods. Members of Par
liament could not see what is so clear to-day, that
each new adventure of Grenville in the field of
colonial regulation only added to the offense given
by the last legislative foray. Sugar Act, Currency
Act, and now the Stamp Act; each new act seemed
cunningly devised to swell the burden laid upon
colonial shoulders by the last. The Sugar Act, by
its dislocation of colonial trade habits, was most
troublesome of all. Having by this measure blocked
the West Indian source which flowed with gold
and silver for trade with England, the blundering
minister fostered the Currency Bill, which acted
to cut down still further the available specie for
British trade. By the Stamp Act, then, he increased
1 Quoted by Bancroft, History ofthe United States, v, 238.

THE STAMP ACT REVEALS WEAKNESS 145
the yearly need for gold and silver by £60,000. All
this followed the Proclamation of 1763, seeming to
close the West to settlement, in the interest of the
very Indian tribes who had but yesterday wrought
such havoc in the border settlements, and this ex
clusion was proclaimed just as the desire to migrate
thither was likely to be increased, because the de
mand for laborers was reduced by the restrictions
on commerce. Finally, the time selected to add all
this burden was at the close of the Seven Years'
War, when local colonial taxes were high owing to
their own war debts, and the reason advanced was
that they were to be protected from foes whom they
now considered vanquished. Moreover, the "pro
tection" was to be given by a standing army of ten
thousand men to be maintained out of the proposed
revenues, and to be billeted upon American commu
nities.' Little wonder that the whole plan, benevo
lent as it doubtless was in purpose, looked to the
colonists like a dark design of a would-be tyrant.
Moreover, the Stamp Act itself, with its symbols of
tyranny, the stamped paper, brought to the fore the
whole question of colonial rights.
The warning which Grenville had given America
of his proposed Stamp Act had aroused the whole
hive of colonial legislators. They had denounced the
Sugar Act in memorials and addresses to which no
heed had been given, and to the mere threat of a
stamp duty the retort was made that it was contrary
to their rights as British citizens to be taxed by Par
liament. Though the Stamp Act was passed in the
' Macdonald, Documentary Source Book, 131.

146 CAUSES OF WAR OF INDEPENDENCE
spring, its actual going into force had been, at the
request of colonial agents, delayed until fall. In
the meanwhile restless discontent was fanned into
something dangerously like the flame of rebellion,
and, most alarming of all, it was no longer local,
but spread from north to south. One of the most
important effects of the Stamp Act was to enlist the
planting provinces of the South in swelling the pro
test already rising in volume from the northern com
mercial provinces because of their losses under the
Sugar Act.' The plane of the controversy was now
raised, and appeals to natural rights furnished com
mon ground for North and South. Indeed, it was
in Virginia that the first "trumpet of sedition" was
blown. It would be easy for Diderot's Rameau, believing
that the end of all man's effort is to "place some
thing between his teeth" and thus obey the laws of
mastication, or easy, indeed, for any disciple of the
"dismal science" to prove that the whole basis for
rebellion in Virginia was economic and due to the
desire of debtor tobacco planters to be rid of British
creditors, but deeper students of that history assign
other causes. Andrew Barnaby, traveling in Vir
ginia in 1759, found the public or political character
of the Virginians to correspond with their private
one; "they are haughty and jealous of their liber
ties," he said, "impatient of restraint and can
scarcely bear the thought of being controlled by any
superior power. Many of them consider the colonies
as independent states not connected with Great
' Schlesinger, The Colonial Merchants, 34-39, 65.

THE STAMP ACT REVEALS WEAKNESS 147
Britain otherwise than by having a common king
and being bound to her with natural affection." '
A successful Virginia tobacco planter enjoyed an
income great enough to give him — like the English
country gentleman whom he aped — leisure not only
for dicing and horse-racing, but for reading and
attention to public affairs. From a perusal of his
tory and English law the planters had imbibed ideas
which opened their minds to the liberal theories
which, in the middle of the eighteenth century,
seemed to radiate like electric waves throughout the
civilized world. Moreover, in the county courts, or
as members of the parish vestries and of the colo
nial legislature, they had become masters of the art
of self-government." Though there was a com
paratively liberal franchise ' the actual political
control in the dominant seaboard section was con
fined to a small group of planters who had great
interests at stake which hostile lawmaking might
imperil, and it behooved them to agree upon men
of ability to represent them. Members of certain
families, attaining their positions through wealth
and social standing, were returned to the House of
Burgesses, decade after decade, a Cabell from Am
herst, a Fleming from Cumberland, and a Randolph
from Williamsburg.* Nevertheless, factional rival
ries made ability necessary as well as family ties.
Besides this intensive training in the best school of
statecraft, it has been shown that twenty-seven out
' Andrew Barnaby in William and Mary College Quarterly, no. 18,
p. 15.
' Lingley, The Transition in Virginia, 112, 113.
• Ibid., 117. * Ibid., 111.

148 CAUSES OF WAR OF INDEPENDENCE
of the forty-one most influential burgesses in the
pre-Revolutionary period had been educated in
British educational institutions, or at William and
Mary in Virginia.' Moreover, these men and their
American ancestors had from the earliest time en
joyed the privilege of seff -taxation. This ruling
clique, silk-stockinged, socially exclusive, aristo
cratic in bearing and spirit, took an absorbing in
terest in seff -rule for Virginia, but cared not a straw
for the rights of the common man.
Ablest and foremost in defending this passion for
local seff -government was Richard Bland, of Prince
George County. Most of the remonstrances which
the House of Burgesses made against the new British
policy were the work of this genial, good-mannered,
classical scholar who was also both farmer and
lawyer." The study of history and law at William
and Mary and at the University of Edinburgh had
forged for him the weapons with which in 1760 he
defended the assembly's constitutional right to
enact needed laws without interference from Eng
land. \
Besides these planter lawgivers there was a group
of burgesses representing the upland counties, the
Piedmont and mountain sections of Virginia, men
not so endowed with the goods of this world nor so
cultivated in intellectual and spiritual matters, but
hostile to any government except their own. In the
Piedmont region were many dissenters and in the
Great Valley, beyond the first mountain range,
' Lingley, The Transition in Virginia, 114.
• H. J. Eckenrode, The Revolution in Virginia. 11, 12.

THE STAMP ACT REVEALS WEAKNESS 149
many Scotch-Irish and Germans, non-English peo
ple, little moved by English traditions, and ff not
dissenters, at least belonging to some sect not Epis
copalian, which was the church almost universally
attended by the tide-water planters. This sectarian
difference, and the greater social democracy of the
western region caused a lack of harmony between
the upland and the lowland representatives. Yet the
latter, weak in numbers and lacking in political ex
perience, had little influence until in the heat of the
quarrel with the British Government a leader was
vouchsafed them in the obscure young lawyer,
Patrick Henry.
This "forest born Demosthenes," in Byron's
phrase, was a natural tragedian to whom the rude
frontier had denied any stage but the county court
or the floor of the House of Burgesses. Two years
before the Stamp Act he had won local renown by
taking the popular side in the "Parsons' Cause." '
This case grew out of a long-standing dispute over
the method of paying the salaries of the clergy of
the Established Church — salaries once fixed at so
many pounds of tobacco, the Virginian accepted
medium of exchange. The "sublime" weed was a
bad form of money, fluctuating with every harvest,
yet Virginians had agreed to use it as a circulating
medium and had made legal enactments, equivalent
to contracts, providing for paying the Anglican
clergy in that lucre. When poor harvests caused the
' Excellent accounts of this case may be found in Eckenrode, The
Revolution in Virginia, 9-12; Lingley, The Transition in Virginia,
27-34; Tyler, Patrick Henry, i, 45; Wirt, Patrick Henry, 23.

150 CAUSES OF WAR OF INDEPENDENCE
price to rise, the burgesses proceeded in effect to
violate their contract by a new law the "Two Penny
Act," a legal nullification of the old law. The clergy
had suffered when the price was low, but were not
to gain when the price was high. WTien, therefore,
as a probable result of their appeal to the Bishop of
London, the "Two Penny Act" received the royal
veto, the clergy were encouraged to sue for their
salaries on the basis of the old act, which had been
approved by the King.
The question of the royal veto was a burning one,
and more than a dozen years later much was made
in the Declaration of Independence of the King's
tyranny in vetoing or disallowing laws held to be for
the good of the colonies. The colonial legislatures
had always watched and imitated Parliament in its
struggle for power, and they regarded the royal veto
as obsolete. The royal veto had, indeed, fallen into
disuse since 1707 so far as it affected the laws of
Parliament, and the advanced spirits in the colonial
legislatures demanded a like freedom for themselves.
Royal colonies were expected to send their laws at
once to England for approval or disallowance, while
charter and proprietary colonies had certain privi
leges which did not, however, wholly exempt them.
Since years might pass between the making of a law
and its disallowance, aU acts under the law were
valid untU the day of their disapproval.' The King
was usually blamed for this disallowance because
^ Dickerson, in American Colonial Government, 227, says that there
were over four hundred cases of disallowance of colonial laws between
1696 and 1765. This paragraph is based upon Dickerson's chapter v,
the best treatment to date. See also E. B. Russell.

THE STAMP ACT REVEALS WEAKNESS 151
the notification of such action stated that it was
done by "the King in CouncU"; but in fact the
King's part was a mere governmental fiction and
the Board of Trade was wholly responsible. The
reasons for their action were many. Colonial acts
that hampered the home government or trenched
on the royal prerogative were pretty sure to be nega
tived. The Bishop of London watched with a jeal
ous eye all ecclesiastical legislation and pressed the
Board for nullffication of all laws offensive to the
established Church's interests. Laws inconsistent
with the laws of England were annulled, and the
action in some cases was not unlike our national
custom which permits a court to declare null and
void laws contrary to the national constitution and
laws. English merchants could usually get the
Board of Trade to disallow colonial laws which laid
a burden on their commerce or placed trammels on
intercolonial trade or the Indian trade. Colonial
attempts to curb the slave-trade unduly were vetoed
by this power of the Board of Trade. It was obliged
at times to secure the repeal of unjust laws and those
laying legal obstacles in the way of collecting debts.
In the method of doing this work every due form
of legal procedure was observed by the Board. Less
ceremony is observed by our Supreme Court in
declaring state laws unconstitutional than this
Board employed in the disallowance of colonial acts.'
Moreover, they meant to cause as little trouble as
possible, and often refrained from the veto because
of the inconvenience it might occasion. It was irri-
• Dickerson, American Colonial Government, 271. ,

152 CAUSES OF WAR OF INDEPENDENCE
tating, of course, just as the invalidation of laws by
the courts to-day is so, but the purpose was good,
and the machinery on the whole worked better than
that of other parts of the British administration.
Though there was, doubtless, too much red tape, the
plan did effectively mould and shape certain colonial
institutions. Nevertheless, the interference was at
times maddening from the colonial point of view,
and in the case of the "Two Penny Act" the ma
jority of Virginians felt greatly aggrieved, especially
as the action touched their pockets.'
In a famous case in the Hanover County Court,
before a jury manned in part by Presbyterians,
Patrick Henry pleaded the popular cause. He made
an adroit appeal to the frontier disregard of law,
declaring that the King, in vetoing the assembly's
reasonable and beneficial enactments, had ceased
to be the father of his people and degenerated into
a tyrant, thus forfeiting all right to his subjects'
obedience. He pleaded with the jury not to rivet
the chains of bondage on their own necks, and with
innuendoes against the Church and clergy appealed
to some of the least admirable prejudices of ignorant
frontiersmen. The soundest part of his argument,
in which he held that the Virginian burgesses had
the constitutional right to pass, without interference
from the King, all legislation necessary to the colony,
was based upon Richard Bland's scholarly pamphlet
written three years earlier. In a passage, in which
Henry alluded to what he called "the original com-
• For American opinion on imperial review, see E. B. Greene's
article in American Historical Review, xxm, 104.

THE STAMP ACT REVEALS WEAKNESS 153
pact between king and people," we have good reason
to think that he was following Samuel Davies, the
eloquent Virginia preacher to whom Henry had
listened for more than a" decade, and who doubt
less influenced both his oratorical style and his
political philosophy. The jury, "bewildered" by his
eloquence and "thoughtless even of the admitted
rights" of the clergy, gave Maury, the plaintiff, a
verdict of one penny damages. In a highly cultured
community, an honorable lawyer, influenced by the
highest standards of the bar, and wishing an honest
legal basis for his argument, could hardly have taken
the case at all. It was easy for the unsympathetic
to hold that Henry abused the courts of justice for
political ends. The verdict secured was plainly an
injustice to the clergy, though the motives of the
assembly, which had to consider the whole com
munity, were probably just, and doubtless Henry,
"prophet of young freedom," was right in protesting
against a dangerous system of government. Unfor
tunately for Henry's reputation, it was not the only
time in his Iffe that he was on the side of injustice
and made it prevail.'
Though Henry's name rang through the Virginia
forests, and he became at once a hero of the lower
classes, he was not so highly rated by the contem
porary rulers of the colony, the clergy or the upper
classes in general. His work seemed to be to set the
masses against the high-born. The most flaming
figure, perhaps, in Virginian history, he stood as a
' See Hook case, Randolph murder case, and Jones vs. Walker in
Morgan's Henry.

154 CAUSES OF WAR OF INDEPENDENCE
rallying-point for revolutionists and dissenters, not
as a great leader toward solid reform. All agreed as
to his mastery of the art of oratory, but many dis
agreed as to his wisdom, depth of thought, or even
honesty of reasoning. One of his admiring con
temporaries declared that in religious matters he
was a "saint, but a very devil in politics — a son of
thunder"; ' but opponents classed him with political
demagogues who seek to strengthen their own power
by haranguing the masses, urging them to force
legislatures, courts, or executive officers to respond
at once to the impulse of the hour. They classed him
with those who reck not "what crimes it costs to be
a moment free and famous through all the ages."
Edmund Randolph, who knew him weU, fairly
estimated his mentality when he wrote of Henry
that: "In pure reasoning he encountered many suc
cessful competitors; in the wisdom of books many
superiors; but though he might be inconclusive he
was never frivolous, and arguments which at first
seemed strange, were afterwards discovered to be
select of their kind, because adapted to some pe
culiarity in his audience." It is certain that he had
real genius in selecting the arguments and phrases
which would appeal to the popular mind, voicing its
deepest convictions.
Before the Stamp Act was considered by the Vir
ginia Assembly, Henry had entered as a member
from Louisa County, and when the colony's attitude
toward that measure was being discussed in the com
mittee of the whole, May 29, 1765, he sprang to the
I' W. W. Henry, Patrick Henry, Life and Correspondence, i, 197.

THE STAMP ACT REVEALS WEAKNESS 155
fore with a set of resolutions written hurriedly on
the leaf of his copy of "Coke upon Littleton."'
The resolutions were afire with passion, but con
tained in substance an assertion of colonial rights
not new to the House of Burgesses. Against their
heat and virulence, however, there was bitter op
position by men like Peyton Randolph, Edmund
Pendleton, Richard Bland, and George Wythe, all
of whom were soon to lead open rebellion against
the British Government. These gentlemen of the
tide-water aristocracy were especially offended when
Henry, in the "torrent of his sublime eloquence,"
somewhat overstepped the Virginian conventions of
propriety. A French agent, seeking to sound the
colonial loyalty and find how deep it was, happened
to reach Williamsburg just in time to get invited to
visit the House of Burgesses in the very hour of
Henry's speech. "Shortly after I came in," the
agent reported to the French Government, "one of
the members stood up and said he had read that in
former times tarquin and Julus had their Brutus,
Charles had his Cromwell, and he Did not Doubt
that some good American would stand up in favor
of his Country, but (says he) in a more moderate
manner. And was going to continue, when the,.
Speaker of the house rose and said, he, the last that
stood up, had spoke traison and was sorey to see
that not one of the members of the house was loyal
Enough to Stop him, before he had gone so far.
Upon which, the Same member stood up again, (his
name is henery) and said that ff he had affronted
• Henry, Patrick Henry, i, 93.

156 CAUSES OF WAR OF INDEPENDENCE
the Speaker, or the house, he was ready to ask par
don, and he would show his loyalty to his majesty.
King G the third, at the Expense of the last Drop of
his blood, but what he had Said must be atributed
to the Interest of his Country's Dying liberty which
he had at heart, and the heat of passion might have
lead him to have said something more than he in
tended, but again, if he had Said anything wrong,
he beged the Speaker and the houses pardon; some
other members Stood up and backed him on which
that afaire was droped." '
This irreverent allusion to "the best of kings"
shocked men, who would have hesitated at nothing
to flaunt the will of their sovereign, but who had
real respect for his person. It was not the first time
Henry had been charged with treason, less dangerous
to one accused in the Virginia forest than in West
minster, a thousand leagues away. Moreover, Henry
was lawyer enough to come within a hair's breadth
of treason without being guilty of an overt act, to
use the words of the British Attorney -General, three
years later, speaking of American lawyers in general."
If the passage of the resolutions was to seem to give
approval to such sentiments as Henry's, it was not
strange that the excited Randolph rushed by Jeffer-
' This document was discovered by Monsieur Abel Doysie in the
Archives of the Hydrographic Service of the Ministry of the Marine
in Paris, in the course of an investigation which he was conducting
for the Carnegie Institution of Washington, imder the direction of
W. G. Leland. The report is in marked contrast to the conventional
story, which has Henry cry, "If that be treason make the most of it."
The spy's accoimt was an entry in a diary written up from day to day.
The old story is based on memory.
* Bancroft, Hist, of U.S.. epoch in, chap. 37.

THE STAMP ACT REVEALS WEAKNESS 157
son, hanging about the door, swearing that he would
give five hundred guineas for a single vote to help
defeat Henry. Contemporary accounts are confusing
as to how many of Henry's resolutions were finally
passed — supported, as Governor Fauquier informed
his King, by the "young, hot and giddy members" '
from the upland regions — but six, known as the
"Virginia Resolves," were published in newspapers
from SavannaK^to Boston, becoming, as Governor
Bernard of Massachusetts wrote, an "alarm bell to
the disaffected" everywhere. This much Henry
surely did, and his act spread the spirit of revolt
from the assembly to the people, but the claim,
made long after by Jefferson, that the eastern mem
bers, forming a sort of British faction, opposed re
sistance to Great Britain, and that Henry, backed
by the western members, took the lead in opposition,
is not borne out by the facts." There was no English
party in the House of Burgesses, and the up-country
men and the seaboard planters seem to have agreed
that the House of Burgesses alone could make laws
to regulate the internal affairs of Virginia, but the
seaboard planters wished to be moderate and tact
ful in asserting this claim, while the more robust
frontiersmen preferred a fighting attitude. Speed
and dash was their method. It was that which made
a sympathetic New Englander cry, "Those Vir
ginians are men, they are noble spirits." ' Henry
did not originate the spirit of resistance; he merely
' Journal of House of Burgesses, 1761-1765, preface, Ixviii.
' Lmgley, The Transition in Virginia, 123; Eckenrode, The Revo
lution in Virginia, 18.
» Bancroft. Hist, of U.S. (ed. 1884), m, 115.

158 CAUSES OF WAR OF INDEPENDENCE
made it reckless, demanding instant action, and that
suited the temper of a great number of Americans in
that trying hour. His work done, with better judg
ment than any other act of his brilliant career, Henry
was seen in the afternoon "clad in a pair of leather
breeches, his saddle bags on his arm, leading a lame
horse," passing down the street on his way home.'j
There was plenty of dry tinder in the colonies to
be fired by the spark of Henry's eloquence. "Be
hold, a whole continent awakened, alarmed, restless
and disaffected," cheerfully exclaimed an opponent
of the act. The merchants, lawyers, and newspaper
men were the most injured and the most aroused by
the menace of the Stamp Act. John Hancock, the
rich Boston merchant, declared that the act would
"stagnate trade." He feared he must shut up his
warehouse doors, since there was not cash enough
in New England to support such a tax. In his mind
and that of all merchants the Sugar Act, cutting
down the West Indian supply of ready money, and
the Currency Act, forbidding reckless issues of paper
money in the colonies, had reduced the ready cash
with which the stamps, now needed on all ship
papers, could be bought. "Unless we are allowed a
paper currency they need not send tax gatherers,"
wrote Daniel Coxe, "for they can gather nothing —
never was money so scarce as now." Indeed, that
was a general opinion voiced in nearly every colony,
some holding that in a few years the act would take
off all the cash." Moreover, under existing trade
* Grigsby, Virginia Convention of 1776, 150.
' Wells. Samuel Adams, i, 83. The Stamp Act Congress later endorsed

THE STAMP ACT REVEALS WEAKNESS 159
conditions John Dickinson doubted whether com
merce could bear the stamp taxes on policies, fees
with clerks, protests, notarial acts, letters, and even
advertisements.' The lawyers, too, foresaw great
inroads on their business, because the act assessed
duties on all legal documents, on letters of adminis
tration, deeds, bonds, licenses and leases. To John
Adams it seemed that, after thirty years of his life
passed in preparation for business, "this execrable
project was set on foot for my ruin as well as that
of America in general." " It was one of the most seri
ous errors of the British Government to arouse the
American lawyers. Burke a few years later did not
fail to point out this folly. The study of law, he
said, "renders men acute, inquisitive, dexterous,
prompt in attack, ready in defence, full of resources.
In other countries, the people, more simple, and of
a less mercurial cast, judge of an ill principle in
government only by an actual grievance; here
[America] they anticipate the evil, and judge of the
pressure of the grievance by the badness of the prin
ciple. They augur misgovernment at a distance, and
snuff the approach of tyranny in every tainted
breeze." ' Lieutenant-Governor Colden thought the
lawyers of New York more powerful than elsewhere,
and that nothing was "too wicked for them to at-
this idea; asserting that the act would render the colonists "unable
to purchase the manufactures of Great Britain." Macdonald, Select
Charters (1606-1775), 315.
1 John Dickinson, Writings (Ford, ed), 227-30. Merchants seem
not to have understood the modern device of putting the whole burden
on the consumer.
' John Adams, Works, ii, 156.
» Burke, Works (1869 ed.), ii, 125.

160 CAUSES OF WAR OF INDEPENDENCE
tempt," and he added the press was to them "what
the pulpit was in times of Popery." ' The press, in
deed, stirred by the tax levied on all newspapers and
pamphlets, was never so unanimous at any later
time in opposition to the Government. The thirty-
odd newspapers of America, "crammed with trea
son" and published defiantly for the most part with
out stamps, carried on a most effective propaganda
against the Stamp Act." Pamphleteers, too, were
never so united. Dulany, of Maryland, whose
famous pamphlet against this act the immortal
Pitt had held in his hand and eulogized before the
admiring House of Commons, was opposed to no
other later tax and in time became a Loyalist. The
clergy, too, was almost of one voice, and John
Adams was not unduly rhetorical, when he wrote in
his diary, "Our presses have groaned, our pulpits
have thundered, our legislatures have resolved, our
towns have voted; the crown officers have every
where trembled, and all their little tools and crea
tures been afraid to speak and ashamed to be seen." '
The opposition to the Stamp Act was almost
universal aside from actual Crown officials and their
lawyers. Joseph Galloway, who soon was to become
the leader of the King's American supporters,
Thomas Jones, Chief Justice in New York and
fated to be sympathetic historian of the Loyalist
cause, Colden and Hutchinson, the King's own
agents in America, and thousands of others who
* Letter Books qf Governor Colden, n, 71.
' Schlesinger, The Colonial Merchants, 70-71.
• John Adams, Worlcs, u, 154.

THE STAMP ACT REVEALS WEAKNESS 161
would within a decade be flying from the wrath of
their rebellious neighbors because of their loyalism,
were now at one with the Adamses, the Lees, Gads
den, James Otis, and Patrick Henry in their asser
tions of the injustice of the Stamp Act. The main
difference of opinion was as to the device for de
feating the purpose of this hateful act of Parliament.
Laurens, planter and merchant in South Carolina,
destined within fifteen years to be the president of a
Continental Congress, directing a war for independ
ence from Great Britain, defied "all the grumble-
tonians from Quebeck to West Florida" to point
out any other way but "graceful obedience" until
the act could be annihilated in a "constitutional
way" — unless they would "beat to arms." A mere
suspension of it would involve all in "ruin and
destruction." All would be on their knees within a
fortnight praying the governor to give Iffe to the
law.' Planters as a rule approved of dignffied pro
tests by legislative bodies, but, aside from them,
Laurens's plan of action was unusual, for most men
favored either nullffication or the giving up of all
business that required stamps. Was the act to^be
nuUffied or merely passively defeated? Should the
courts close that no stamps might be needed, or
should they do business as ff no Stamp Act existed?
Was commerce to cease and the customs houses
close, or were ships to go and come without stamps?
The temperament and interests of men determined
which horn of the dilemma they would seize. To the
disgust of John Adams, Massachusetts at first chose
* Wallace, Henry Laurens. 117.

162 CAUSES OF WAR OF INDEPENDENCE
the legal method of 'avoiding the tax. In his diary,
neglected for some busy months, he wrote discon
solately, December 18, 1765, "the probate office is
shut, the custom house is shut, the courts of justice
are shut, and all business seems at a stand ... I
have not drawn a writ since the first of November.
Debtors grow insolent, creditors grow angry."
"How long," he asked, "are we to have this passive
obedience to the Stamp Act?" It acknowledged the
authority of Parliament to tax. He thought it
cowardly. The bar behaves "like a lot of shot
pigeons," he wrote scornfully.' "Indolence and
idleness make a large chasm in my affairs," he con
fessed, thus revealing the personal interest that
moved his wrath. The radicals generally preferred
actual nullffication, doing all business without
stamps, and they declared that the stoppage of
business was a sly device of the friends of Govern
ment, intended in the end to lead to the necessity of
complying with the law." Even Edmund Pendleton,
who as a rule was conservative, preferred open nuUi-
fication, but his friend George Washington favored
the legal method of abstaining from all business
that required stamps.' With exceptions the northern
colonies closed the courts, while the southern prov
inces kept them open, ignoring the stamps. Both
methods defeated the Stamp Act.^ In general
merchants kept the ports open, while lawyers, at
* John Adams, Diary, in Works, n, 155; WeUs, Samuel Adams, I,
110. 2 Becker, Political Parties in the Province of New York, 37.
' Rives, James Madison, i, 70; Bancroft, Hist, of U.S., m, 146.
* R. H. Lee, Letters. 1. 15; Bancroft, Hist, of U.S.. m, 147.

THE STAMP ACT REVEALS WEAKNESS 163
first, with perhaps more reverence for the law, sus
pended all legal business. Shipowners induced gov
ernors to issue "let-passes" for their departing ships
or forced customs officers to write them statements
that stamped clearances could not be had.' By hook
or crook all classes contrived to convey to GrenviUe
the impression that they were a stiff-necked people
bent on ruling and taxing themselves.
The spirit of the colonists was too high to stop
with mere lying down in the political traces or even
with nullification, and an active campaign to force
Parliament to repeal the act was soon on. The pres
sure upon British merchants to that end was, per
haps, unconscious at first. Economic distress, result
ing from some one or all of the oppressive acts, had
forced economies which soon diminished the volume
of British commerce. Fashionable mourning was
simplified, domestic sage and sassafras took the
place of imported tea, spinning schools aimed to
supplant English textiles, societies arose, pledged
to the culture of flax and the making of linen,
hitherto purchased in the British Isles, and patriotic
maidens gathered in social groups to spin and weave.
" A garment of linsey-woolsey, when made the dis
tinction of real patriotism, is more honorable," de
clared Daniel Dulany, "than all the pageantry, and
the robes and the plumes and the diadem of an em
peror without it." " Soon it became the fashion to
* In South Carolina commerce seems to have suffered an embargo.
See Wallace, Henry Laurens, 121. If a British cruiser seized vessels
with such papers, the coloni'sts intimidated the captain so that he
released them. See R. D. W. Conner, Cornelius Harnett, 33.
2 D. Dulany, Considerations on the Propriety of Taxing the Colonies,
«4, 65.

164 CAUSES OF WAR OF INDEPENDENCE
wear homespun. It now dawned on the excited
colonial mind that these measures could be used as
political arguments, more convincing, perhaps, to
the members of Parliament than legislative ad
dresses and remonstrances filled with appeals to the
rights of Englishmen or to charter guarantees. The
colony of New York was first to take formal action
to boycott British manufactures. A few days before
the Stamp Act was to come into force, the merchants
met and two hundred of them agreed to make all
their orders for goods from England contingent on
the repeal of the obnoxious act. A week later, four
hundred Philadelphia merchants organized for a
like purpose, and circulated printed forms for coun
termanding orders already given. They united in
memorials to London merchants urging them to
bring pressure upon Parliament to repeal all offend
ing acts. Within a month Boston merchants agreed
upon non-unportation on like conditions. The loyal
ColdeSrl^ieutenant-Governor of New York, sneered
that this meant no sacrifice to the thrifty merchant
who had laid in a big stock, and that people only
"paid high prices for old, moth-eaten goods which
couldn't have been sold but for the patriotic fervor."
The London merchants felt the pinch, nevertheless,
and, indeed, three months before these agreements
they had noted a decline in American orders. Ships
sailed to the colonies not half laden, and summer
orders fell off £600,000, never so small "in the
memory of man." After the non-importation agree
ments, if goods did arrive at American ports, con
trary to the compact, a committee of merchants

THE STAMP ACT REVEALS WEAKNESS 165
ordered them locked up or put in the care of the
"Sons of Liberty" until the act should be repealed.'
In Virginia, Richard Henry Lee, quick to see which
way the wind blew, dropped his stamp collectorship
and swept into popular favor with a draft of "ar
ticles of Association" binding the citizens of West
moreland to import no goods from England and "at
every hazard, paying no regard to danger ... or
death," to prevent the execution of the Stamp Act.*
If the British merchant had an economic nerve, the
colonists were bent on torturing it untU he should
turn to Parliament for relief.
Not all of the colonial conduct was as decorous
as that hitherto recounted. Merchants, lawyers, and
planters might restrain themselves from physical
violence, but not so laborers, artisans, or the rougher
element in the port towns. All these classes were
possessed of the high-strung, nervous temper com
mon to frontier peoples, and when they were dis
tressed by the unemployment due to the suspension
of business, did not reason as to whether the fault
was that of the merchants who for the purpose of
coercion ceased trading or that of the Government
which laid the tax. Nor did they distinguish finely
between the responsible Ministry three thousand
miles away and its agents, governors, or customs
officers or stamp distributors in America, sworn to
do their duties. They wreaked their vengeance on
those whom their leaders designated as responsible.
' This paragraph is largely based on Schlesinger, The Colonial
Merchants, 76-79.
' R. H. Lee, Letters, i, 15; Virginia Historical Register, ii, 16.

166 CAUSES OF WAR OF INDEPENDENCE
Hutchinson in Massachusetts, who suffered severely
at their hands, explained to a friend how the busi
ness was managed. "The rabble of the town of
Boston" were employed, he wrote, "headed by one
Mackintosh ... a bold fellow, and as likely for a
Masaniello as you can well conceive." "When there
is occasion to burn or hang effigies or pull down
houses," these are the agents, but "they are some
what controlled by a superior set consisting of the
master-masons and carpenters, etc." WTien a cus
toms house is to be opened "these are under the
direction of a committee of merchants, Mr. Rowe at
their head, then, Molyneux Soloman Davis, etc." '
Toward the middle of August, nearly three months
before the Stamp Act would go into force, riots
began in Boston. An effigy of Andrew Oliver, the
nominated stamp distributor, later forced to resign
that office, was swung all day on the " Great Tree,"
and after dark an "amazing" multitude, shouting
"liberty, property and no stamps," bore the image
on a bier, through the State House and under the
very chamber where sat the Governor and Council.
With the debris of the demolished stamp office they
made a funeral pyre for the execrated effigy. Twelve
days later the mob sacked the home of the customs
officer, burned the vice-admiralty records, gutted the
mansion of Lieutenant-Governor Hutchinson, beat
ing down the very partition walls, wrecking the
furniture, and defacing family plate and portraits."
The greatest loss to posterity was the destruction of
* Hosmer, Life of Hutchinson, 103-04.
» Hansard, Parliamentary History, xvi, 12&-28, 130.

THE STAMP ACT REVEALS WEAKNESS 167
books and records of the colony gathered by Hutch
inson during thirty years. Only the manuscript of
his history, based on these records, was saved, and
that still bears on its edges the mud of Boston
streets. The Governor, Bernard, thought the prov
ince was "on the brink of a precipice," and John
Adams, though he confided twenty reasons to his
diary why the people committed such excesses, did
not approve these "atrocious violations of the
peace." ' Conservative patriots did not mind "a
little rioting," but it must be kept within bounds.
Jonathan Mayhew, the radical Boston divine, who
on August 25th before the last riot had excited the
people with his sermon from the text, "I would they
were even cut off which trouble you," wrote a letter
of regret to Hutchinson. Indeed, reaction was rapid,
and the Boston town meeting expressed "utter
detestation" of this " violent proceedings." * Never
theless, the Governor could write to the Board of
Trade his solemn conviction that the "real authority
of the government is at an end; some of the principal
ringleaders in the late riots walk the streets with
impunity; no officers dare attack them; no Attorney
General prosecute them; and no Judges sit upon
them." ' It was plain to all thinking men that the
mob's violence was but another crime committed
* John Adams, Works, n, 150-51.
' Boston Town Records (1758-69), 152. The rioters were never
punished, and compensation for the sufferers was obtained from the
Massachusetts legislature only after a bitter debate between the Gover
nor and the assembly as to whether the "respectable inhabitants had
suffered in the opinion of the world for having been tame spectators of
the violence committed." Massachusetts State Papers. 95-101.
* Force, American Archives, i, 14.

168 CAUSES OF WAR OF INDEPENDENCE
in the name of Liberty. Boston was not singular in
its riotous conduct. In the North there were notable
riots at Newport and in New York.' Southward, in
North Carolina, the people burned the effigy of
an offending "Honorable Gentleman," and forced
others, who would have preferred remaining quietly
at home, to drink toasts to Liberty and confusion
to the stamps. With drums and flying colors they
marched the stamp distributor to the court-house,
got his resignation, and bore him home in an arm
chair. A printer's Iffe was spared only on condition
that he issue a stampless paper. In Charleston,
South Carolina, Henry Laurens was awakened at
midnight by "a most violent thumping and con
fused noise at my western door and chamber win
dow, and soon distinguished the sounds of ' Liberty,
Liberty and stamped paper. Open your doors and let
us search your house and cellars.' I opened the
window, saw a crowd of men chiefly in disguise, and
heard the voices and thumping of many more on the
other side, assured them that I had no stamped
paper or any connection with stamps." In vain he
parleyed with them a few minutes, and finally the
desire to save his sick wffe prompted him "to open
the door which in two minutes more they would
have beat through: — a brace of cutlasses across
my breasts was the Salutation, and, 'Lights, Lights
and Search ' — was the cry. I presently knew
several of them under their thickest disguises of
soot, sailors habits, slouch hats, etc.; and to their
great surprise called no less than nine of them by
* Becker, Political Parties in the Province of New York, 32, 35, 46.

THE STAMP ACT REVEALS WEAKNESS 169
name." ' After searching his house, they desired
him to take a "Bible Oath" that he did not know
where the stamps were. "When they found this
attempt fruitless, a softer oath, as they thought,
was propounded — I must say, 'May God disin
herit me from the Kingdom of Heaven' ff I knew
where the stamped papers were." This, too, he
refused, even though they should "barbicu" him,
and at last they retired with "God bless your
Honor." "Is it not amazing," he asked, "that
such a number of men many of them heated with
liquor and all armed with cutlasses and clubs did not
do one penny damage to my garden not even to
walk over a bed and not 15/ damage to my fence,
gate or house." "
These "apings" of the "infamous, inglorious feats
of riot and disipation" to the northward, Laurens
believed, were engineered by the leader of the South
Carolina "Sons of Liberty," Christopher Gadsden,
who retorted by calling his conservative fellow citi
zen a "mercantile patriot" more concerned for his
property than for the rights of America. Though
in time both came to work for the same end, they
rarely agreed in method, but each worked according
to his own character and bent. The "Sons of Lib
erty" whom Gadsden led in South Carolina seem
to have been the same indefinite organization as
elsewhere in America. The term appears to have
been applied everywhere to groups of radicals who
gathered at times openly, but again secretly. They
held parades, burned effigies, attended dinners, en-
1 Wallace, Henry Laurens, 118. ' Ibid.. 119.

170 CAUSES OF WAR OF INDEPENDENCE
joyed punch, wine, pipes and tobacco, and sarig
together the liberty songs. In Massachusetts and
New York they were, perhaps, more active than in
all the other places in the colonies.' There seems
to have been no stable membership, but in any par
ticular place numbers waxed or waned as occasion
required. Messages were sent from a group in one
colony to the "Sons" in another, but the only
authentication was the signature, "Sons of Liberty."
From their meetings, which "sprang into being like
magic" and "usurped authority from the skies,"
they issued resolutions signed only "President" or
"Secretary." They sent out post bills, so intangible
as to time and place that the source of authority was
a complete mystery, yet their orders were in the
main obeyed. Their committees could maintain "a
sort of Holy Inquisition into the sales and purchases
of every man of business . . . and into the reported
opinions of individuals," and they would be obeyed.
Recruited from the poorer classes, they alienated
the better class, and seemed to prefer, said a critic,
"that the gentlemen of fortune did not join them." *
John Adams attended one meeting, where he men
tioned a brazier, a painter, a printer, a distiller, a
jeweler, and a master of a vessel. He heard there
"no plots, no machinations." When there was
work of violence to do, buildings burned or stamps
"purified," workingmen were used, though the
leaders in the "dirty matters" might be higher up.
' Becker {Political Parties in the Province of New York, 43-50) gives
an excellent account of them there, when they first are heard of in
New York at the time of the November riots.
' Montressor Journals, 348; American Historical Review, i. 247.

THE STAMP ACT REVEALS WEAKNESS 171
It was the opinion of governors that this "licentious
rabble" ought to be suppressed.' The heyday of
their existence was at the time of the Stamp Act, but
they were heard of in crises for years after.
Throughout the colonies the stamp collectors were
intimidated into resigning the office, and as a result
of this and various other modes of opposition to the
Stamp Act, no stamps were issued except in rare
instances, and Georgia won a dark notoriety as
the one continental colony where any number were
used." The reaction of the British Government to all this
rebellious conduct is worthy of consideration. If the
Ministry aimed at tyranny, it was of a very weak
and nerveless kind. It was only a braggart major of
artillery who boasted that he would "cram the
stamps down the throats of the people" with the
end of his sword.' When the London authorities
learned that the only safe place for stamps in Amer
ica was on the King's ships or in the forts under
His Majesty's guns, where they were surely not
revenue-producing, they issued a few brave orders.
"Let a sloop of war be off Annapolis until the stamps
are secure," wrote a secretary; "send the 'Viper'
to Boston until the tumults subside," commanded
another,* and General Gage was told in an order in
* Colonial History of New York, Documents, vn, 868; vin, 143.
' Governor Lyttelton, of Jamaica, wrote that the Stamp Act "has
been fully carried into execution here." Historical MSS. Commission,
Reports {Various Collections), vi, 92. It seems not to have been dis
puted in Quebec or Nova Scotia, and at least only passively resisted.
Coffin, The Province of Quebec, xx, 316-17.
' Bancroft, Hist, of U.S., m, 148.
? Calendar of Home Office Papers. 1766-69, nos. 4, 27, 41, 83, 84.

172 CAUSES OF WAR OF INDEPENDENCE
council that it was the King's pleasure that he issue
orders to all commanders in America to aid the civU
with military power, but only on requisition by the
civil magistrates, and even then not to "repel force
by force unless in case of necessity." ' Governor
Bernard was criticized because he had not "nipped
the spirit of sedition in the bud," but he was given
no orders to do anything but "hit soft." The true
tyrants of the world's history have not been wont to
deal so gently with their rebellious subjects.
1 War Office, Oct. 24, 1765; Public Record Office, W. 0. 4, 988,
F46.

CHAPTER Vll
THE REPEAL OF THE STAMP ACT •
Besides the universal activities of merchants, law
yers, and printers in opposition to the Stamp Act
and the ubiquitous riots of the rabble in the colonies,
nothing more clearly proved the unanimity of dis
taste for the Stamp Act than the response to a
circular letter sent out (June 8, 1765) by the Massa
chusetts House of Representatives urging the other
colonies to send committees to New York in Octo
ber to consult together on the evils of the late acts
and to implore relief from the King and Parliament.
A leader in bringing about this significant meeting
with its augury of future union was James Otis, who,
clogged with two conservative, unsympathetic col
leagues, was chosen a delegate to the proposed
Stamp Act Congress, a bearer of the sentiment of
the Massachusetts radicals. An enemy saw in Otis
"the first who broke down the barriers of govern
ment to let in the hydra of Rebellion," ' but it was
John Adams' solemn judgment that he had never
known a man whose love of his country was more
ardent or sincere, whose services were so important
and essential to the cause of his country. In one
of Otis' early pamphlets (1762) was concentrated,
Adams declared in after years, the Declaration of
Independence, the liberal writings of Price and
' P. Oliver in History of the Rebellion, British Museum, Egerton
MSS.. 2671 F 22.

174 CAUSES OF WAR OF INDEPENDENCE
Priestley, Thomas Paine's "Common Sense," and
the "Declaration of Rights" of the Congress of
1774. This pamphlet, though it was whimsical and
even uncouth at times, and like most of his work
hasty and unrevised, showing the impatience of a
strong, turbulent mind, was filled with phrases
prophetic of the ideas soon to dominate in American
political thinking. "God made all men naturally
equal," he asserted. ''5ings3£i£...j^._jQflileJorJ;he
good.j3f_thfi.^o^pie-and not the^people J^of them," he
stoutly held, and he found most governments ar
bitrary, and therefore the "curse and scandal of'
human nature." He believed that "jealousy of
political privilege is a godly jealousy," ' and he
gloried in it. The ideas were not new, but Otis gave
them new currency. In the "Sodalitas," a lawyers'
club in which he and Adams were colleagues, the
members read and discussed the great English law
writers, and we know that Otis was also fully ac
quainted with Pufendorf, Grotius, Burlamaqui,
and Vattel. The club members had great familiarity
with Locke and Coke, and, as early as 1765, even
dabbled in Rousseau." The free Iffe in America
created in its intelligent citizens a natural affinity
for the writings of the liberal political philosophers
of all ages. In knowledge of the history, common
law and statute laws of England, Adams believed
Otis had no superior — " at least in Boston," and he
thought him well versed in Greek and Roman his
tory, philosophy, and poetry. A treatise of his on
» Tudor, James Otis, 125, 132.
• John Adams, Works, x, 275; n, 148.

THE REPEAL OF THE STAMP ACT 175
Latin prosody is still in existence, and he was always
ready with classical allusions. It is, perhaps, not
wholly fanciful to attribute Otis' eloquence in part
to his passionate admiration for Homer.
Though Otis came of an old family of high rank
in Massachusetts, and though he was the head of
his profession, "designed by nature for a genius,"
as even an enemy admitted,' his great fame began
with his speech (1761) against "Writs of Assistance."
In the effort to enforce the Trade Acts the customs
officials had found themselves helpless in the face
of the almost universal sympathy with the smug
glers. Juries refused to convict on the plainest evi
dence, and the British Government resorted to ad
miralty courts where the trial was without jury, but
there stiff remained the difficulty of detecting the
smugglers, where every neighbor sheltered them and
informers feared for their lives. To overcome this
impediment to justice, "Writs of Assistance" were
issued authorizing the officers holding them to board
ships lying in port or to enter warehouses, cellars, or
garrets, by day or night, and search for dutiable
goods. No special writ of search, issued on sworn
testimony that the smuggled goods were concealed
in a definite place, was needed. These general writs
were offensive, because, as Pitt declared, they inter
fered with "the immunity of an English home where
the wind might blow through every cranny but the
King's writ could not enter." They had been used
in England since the days of Charles II, and the
colonists had sullenly submitted to them until six
> BritLsh Museum, Egerton MSS., 2671 F 17, 22.

176 CAUSES OF WAR OF INDEPENDENCE
months after the death of George II (1760) when
the validity of old writs would cease, according to
law, and new must be issued. In Massachusetts
the application for them would be before the supe
rior courts presided over by the new chief justice,
Thomas Hutchinson, recently commissioned in spite
of the fact that the father of James Otis had
been promised the place. James Otis, senior, pleaded
the merit of age and long legal practice, while
Hutchinson frankly admits in his diary that it was
"an eyesore to some of the bar" that he was not
bred to the law, but explains that after becoming
chief justice he "applied his intervals to reading"
it.' This was not quite so serious as though a
would-be physician should begin reading medicine
after he was in attendance upon a patient, but there
was a similitude. As Hutchinson already had three
other colonial offices, there might well have been
criticism. Peter Oliver asserts that James Otis
swore "ff his father was not appointed a justice of
the supreme court, he would set the province in a
flame ff he died in the attempt"; and Hutchinson
sadly reflects that at this point Otis "veered his
sails and steered into the troubled waters of repub
licanism." " Both charges are fancies of bitter ene
mies and rather dubious as the springs of actions
extending over at least a decade. Whatever his mo
tives, however, Otis, "the favorite lawyer of smug-
* Diary and Letters of Hutchinson, 66.
' Ibid., British Museum, Egerton MSS.. 2671 F 17. Oliver ."ays
of Otis, senior, that he was "originally a cordwainer," but "worked
himself into a pettifogger" with a "certain adroitness to captivate the
ear of country jurors," drovers, horse jockeys, etc.

THE REPEAL OF THE STAMP ACT 177
glers," as an enemy dubbed him, and Oxenbridge
Thatcher did appear before the court to represent
the Boston merchants in the hearing against the
writs. The court scene set in the CouncU Chamber of
the Town House is described by John Adams writing
more than haff a century after the event. "That
council chamber ' was as respectable an apartment
as the House of Commons or the House of Lords in
Great Britain, in proportion, or that in the State
House in Philadelphia. In this chamber, round a
great fire, were seated five judges, with Lieutenant
Governor Hutchinson at their head, as Chief Jus
tice, all arrayed in their new, fresh, rich robes of
scarlet English broadcloth; in their large cambric
bands, and immense judicial wigs. In this chamber
were seated at a long table all the barristers at law
of Boston, and of the neighboring county of Middle
sex, in gowns, bands, and tie wigs. They were not
seated on ivory chairs, but their dress was more
solemn and more pompous than that of the Roman
Senate, when the Gauls broke in upon them. Two
portraits, at more than full length, of King Charles
the Second and of King James the Second, in
splendid golden frames, were hung up on the most
conspicuous sides of the apartment. If my young
eyes or old memory have not deceived me, these
were as fine pictures as I ever saw; the colors of the
royal ermines and long flowing robes were the most
• John Adams, Works, x, 244-45. Uther contemporary pictures
of like scenes agree in the main with this memory picture of an old
man.

178 CAUSES OF WAR OF INDEPENDENCE
glowing, the figures the most noble and graceful,
the features the most distinct and characteristic,
far superior to those of the King and Queen of
France in the Senate Chamber of Congress — these
were worthy of the pencUs of Rubens and Vandyke.
There was no painter in England capable of them
at that time. They had been sent over without
frames in Governor Pownall's time, but he was no
admirer of Charles or James. The pictures were
stowed away in a garret, among rubbish, till Gover
nor Bernard came, who had them cleaned, superbly
framed, and placed in council for the admiration and
imitation of all men — no doubt with the advice and
concurrence of Hutchinson and all his nebula of
stars and satellites."
Before this august body James Otis, with "a
torrent of impetuous eloquence, hurried away every
thing before him." He had resigned the lucrative
office of advocate general in order to oppose the
Government, and he declared he took pleasure in
arguing the cause, because it was in "opposition
to a kind of power, the exercise of which, in former
periods of English history, cost one king of England
his head, and another his throne." If Patrick Henry
uttered treason in 1765, he at least had an excellent
model in this speech of 1761. Adams declares that
Otis on this occasion was "a flame of fire." His own
fever was contagious. Every hearer went away to
take up arms against the writs. Then and there he
sowed the seeds of patriots and heroes, and in that
hour John Adams believed "the child of Inde
pendence was born." This oration against the writs

THE REPEAL OF THE STAMP ACT 179
"breathed into this nation the breath of life," de
clared Adams,' and added that thereafter Otis was
forever dedicated to the cause of American liberty.
It was "like the oath of Hamilcar administered to
Hannibal." " Such a theory of individual respon
sibility for the Revolution is very pleasing to the
eulogist, but in the larger view it is plain thaJtJames
Otis was only the embodiment of New England's
indomitable will to have its own way; just as Patrick
Henry was only the frontier product of Virginia's
high-strung spirit of liberty.
Despite John Adams' Iffelong hero-worship of
Otis, one must accept as true some part of his eulogy.
His hero's articles, under the pseudonym of "Hamp
den," though in a style rugged and not elegant, are
courageous, telling arguments for civil liberty and
equality. There were curious seeming contradictions
in his thinking which brought him much criticism,
and even obloquy. Men thought him mad because
being a champion of the popular cause he did not go
the whole way. When in 1764 he held that it was the
colonial duty to submit to the Sugar Act, and in
1765 said that it was the duty of all humbly and
silently to acquiesce in all decisions of the supreme
legislature, and when he admitted the Parliament
' John Adams, Works, x, 247, 276; Memorial History of Boston.
m, 7. In a more extravagant moment Adams declared that "no
harangue of Demosthenes or Cicero ever had such effect." Works.
X, 233, 272. And again he declares him "Isaiah and Ezekiel united."
' Popular feeling ran so high as a result of Otis' speech that
Hutchinson did not dare issue the writs, but referred the matter to
England, where the law officers decided in favor of the issuing them.
They were used throughout the colonies up to the outbreak of war.
Gray, in Quincy, Reports, etc., 409-41, 540.

180 CAUSES OF WAR OF INDEPENDENCE
had the "right to levy internal taxes on the colo
nies," he was frowned upon even by his friends.
Yet, as the British Empire was then constituted, he
was right, for, as he said, "there would be an end
of all government ff one or a number of subjects or
subordinate provinces should take upon them so far
to judge of the justice of an act of Parliament as to
refuse obedience to it." ' That was but a forecast
ofthe logic of the later opponents of "nullffication."
Besides, loyal as Otis was to the American cause, he
was intelligent enough to realize the danger of oppo
sition to Great Britain. Perhaps he reflected that the
sword devours one as well as another. Moreover, he
saw America's lack of unity. Independent America
at that time (1765) would, he thought, become "a
mere shambles of blood and confusion," a scene of
mere "anarchy." Independence, he declared, "none
but rebels, fools, or madmen wiU contend for." He
was demanding justice, not revolution; he was urg
ing the Government not to abuse its vast powers.
If he believed that Parliament had "supreme, sover
eign power," it was a "perfect Parliament" in which
America would be represented. WTien his friends
put before hun the danger of such representation,
he made it clear that the only kind he would accept
implied "a thorough, beneficial union of these
colonies to the realm ... so that aU parts of the
empire may be compacted and consolidated," and
the representation was to be real, not virtual."
• Wells, Samuel Adams, i, 94. It is noteworthy that John Dickin
son was a great admirer of Otis, and like him moderate and constiti^
tional in his opposition. Warren-Adams Letters, i, 3-7.
• Tudor, James Otis. 195-99.

THE REPEAL OF THE STAMP ACT 181
In truth, he was thinking of the best interests of the
empire, not of a mere American province. It was a
noble idea, too vast to be conceived by the ordinary
mind, and not unlike that greater vision of a univer
sal confederation among civilized nations.
It was not alone these views, however, which ex
plain why his Iffe " seemed all eccentricity." His
rashness and excess of zeal made him enemies who
watched him maliciously. When he opposed the
Government, he estranged his aristocratic friends,
who ascribed his action to ambition, and said he had
adopted Satan's maxim, "better to reign in Hell
than serve in Heaven." ' Moreover, he was not
well balanced, but "fiery and feverous, . . . liable to
great inequalities of temper"; obstacles, either men
or facts, enraged him. The human vices of servil
ity or venality chafed him, made him indignant.
Though frank and arduous, he was irascible and
lacked a saving sense of humor. His passionate
spirit wore out his body, for, as a friend expressed it,
"his imagination flames, his passions blaze; some
times in despondency, sometimes in a rage." " After
the cowardly assault upon him (1769) in the British
coffee-house by John Robinson and other enemies,
his eccentricities greatly augmented.' John Adams,
who was much in his company, confided to his
diary that Otis "grows the most talkative man
1 British Museum, Egerton MSS., 2671 F 22.
' John Adams, Works, ii, 163-226.
' Otis sued Robinson for assault and got a verdict for £2000, which
he then generously forgave his opponent. Tudor, James Otis, 362-65.
Ten years later Robinson petitioned the British Government for
£236 which the suit cost hun. Public Records Office, Treasury Papers
{In-LetUrs). 549 F 88.

182 CAUSES OF WAR OF INDEPENDENCE
alive: no other gentleman in company can find a
space to put in a word." "He rambles and wanders
like a ship without a helm." He feared Otis would
"spoil the club." At the last, as an enemy wrote, he
"became so frantic that he was frequently under the
guardianship of the law." His noble mind, "over-
plied in libertys defense," had been overthrown.
His death by a stroke of lightning was as tragic as
his Iffe. No doubt John Adams and others exag
gerated his effect on the nascent revolution, but to
the extent that any individual furthered that spirit,
James Otis, second to none, fired New England with
the resolve to retain all of its liberties. It is signffi-
cant that in the Stamp Act debates in Parliament
both Lord Lyttleton and Lord Mansfield mention
Otis by name as the preeminent champion of the
American cause.
When the Stamp Act Congress, born in Otis' fer
tile mind, met (October, 1765) in the City Hall,
New York, it was found that "ministerial monkery"
had been practiced in New Hampshire, Virginia,
North Carolina, and Georgia to prevent them send
ing delegates.' A signfficant thing about the Con
gress is that the initiative came for the first time in
colonial history, not from Crown officers, but from
concerted action of provincial assemblies. Never
theless, it is a curious fact that there is scarcely any
mention of the Congress in the newspapers of that
day, not even in the city of New York where it met.
When differences began to appear among the twenty-
seven men from nine colonies with varying interests
' John Adams, Works, x, 190.

THE REPEAL OF THE STAMP ACT 183
and diverse charter rights, Christopher Gadsden
urged all sections to harmonize by protesting on
the broad common grounds of natural rights. As he
expressed the idea in a letter, " a confirmation of our
essential and common rights as Englishmen may be
pleaded from charters safely enough; but any further
dependence upon them may be fatal. We should
stand upon the broad common ground of those
natural rights that we all feel and know as men and
as descendants of Englishmen." ' In the course of
eleven days, the views and interests which jangled
out of tune were harmonized, and though the chair
man, Timothy Ruggles, of Massachusetts, would
not sign the moderate and loyal "Declarations of
Rights and Grievances" agreed upon, the delegates
as a whole were content. A few days more sufficed
to concur upon petitions to the King, the Lords and
the Commons." With conscious purpose the several
colonies had united for common interests and had
given the world a united expression of American
sentiment. It was the beginning of that union for
which Otis hoped, a union that "should knit and
work into the very blood and bones of the original
system every region, as fast as settled." American
conviction was expressed in the assertion that they
were entitled to all the inherent rights and liberties
of natural-born subjects, born within the realm, and
like them enjoyed the right to have no taxes imposed
upon them but by their own consent, which could
> Bancroft, Hist, of U.S. (ed. of 1884), m, 150.
' Niles, Principles and Acts of the Revolution, 155-68; Macdonald,
Documentary Source Book. 137.

184 CAUSES OF WAR OF INDEPENDENCE
be given only in their own legislatures wherein alone
they were or could be represented. Meaningless as
the pet colonial phrases about "rights of English
men" ^ and "taxation without representation"
might be to a British constitutional lawyer, they ex
pressed beliefs for which Americans would die. On
those phrases hung all the colonial law and the
prophets. In England, meanwhile, political changes, little
ff any affected by American truculence, were taking
place. Grenville's curtain lectures to George III
upon his duties were not welcome, nor did the King
relish his minister's habit of looking to Parliament
rather than to him as the source of authority. Con
flict over the Regency Bill, which aimed at excluding
the King's mother from the list of regents, brought
the climax. The King decided to be rid of GrenviUe
even at the price of submission to the Old WTiigs who
had put the yoke upon his grandfather, which it was
the Iffe aim of George III to shake off. Failing to
secure Pitt's leadership in forming a new ministry,
the King's agent, the Duke of Cumberland, turned
to the Marquis of Rockingham. English political
parties in that day seem to have deserved Soame
Jenyns' slur that principles did not divide them, but
factions, which under name of Whig or Tory were
ready to support the Government ff they enjoyed
the administration of it, or to subvert it ff they
were excluded. A faction must have all power
^ The English too talked of " rights of Englishmen," but the phrase
brought up in their minds Magna Charta and the Bill of Rights, while
the colonists not oidy thought of these, but certain "natural" rights
and colonial charter rights.

THE REPEAL OF THE STAMP ACT 185
or no power, all posts or no posts. They did not
worry about noble principles.' During the reign of
George III, true party government can hardly be
said to have existed. Rockingham was the new leader
of the Old WTiigs, lately headed by the crafty Duke
of Newcastle, whose aim was control of government
by the aristocratic Revolutionary families like those
of Robert Walpole's time. Pitt distrusted them, not
merely because of an intense personal dislike of
Newcastle, who was a member of the new ministry,
but because they wished to conserve existing condi
tions while he wished to destroy parties and factions,
shear special interests of their power, and keep no
man of ability out of office; but, with a united
country under "a patriot king," enter upon reform
in every direction. His vision was a world empire
on modern lines — an empire in all parts of the
world bringing peace and good rule to mankind.
To these effulgent visions Rockingham with his
small talents could not rise. Though he had what
Junius called "a mild but determined integrity,"
and had good ideals, he was a better horseman than
politician. He believed in a predominant Parlia
ment, but one guided by the Whig nobles. Lacking
Pitt's hearty support, he could not command the
best of WTiig talent. Two reputed friends of America
were inchided in the Ministry; one, General Conway,
was a young man of good ideals and generous im
pulses, but without originality enough to give up the
evil political practices of the past. Another was Lord
Dartmouth, pious, mild, and honest, but wanting
» S. Jenyns, Works, n. 251.

186 CAUSES OF WAR OF INDEPENDENCE
in force, "one who wears a coronet and prays," a
Methodist Sir Charles Grandison, as Richardson
dubbed him.' Though the Ministry lacked in abil
ity and cohesion, it was forced to carry out Pitt's
strong policies by its very eagerness to place him
at its head. Moreover, it was under pressure to re
peal the Stamp Act, because in ports and factory
towns, as a result of American non-importation
measures, thousands were idle, exports had fallen
to three fourths their normal values, and petitions
from the sufferers flooded Parliament." It was of
no use to denounce, as did some haughty members
of the House of Lords, the American non-importa
tion acts as "illegal and hostile combinations . . .
to distress and starve our manufacturers and to
withhold from our merchants the payment of their
just debts." It did not comfort the manufacturers
and traders that the former "measure had only been
practiced in open warfare between two states, and
the latter . . . not even in that situation . . . among
civilized nations" of Europe in "modem times."'
Ruin faced these men, and they demanded relief,
not moral precepts.
Early in 1766, Parliament took up the matter of
enforcement or repeal of the Stamp Act. The first
step was an examination of Benjamin Franklin be
fore the bar of the House of Commons. No one can
read in full that calm and dignified revelation of
the colonial spirit without reaching the conviction
that it must have profoundly moved aU who were
' Alvord, The Mississippi VaUey in British Politics, i, 231-35.
' Hansard, Parliamentary History, xvi, 133-35. ' Ibid.. 186.

THE REPEAL OF THE STAMP ACT 187
present.' With an art of argumentation which he
was pleased to think he had learned from Socrates,
he persuaded his hearers that even an army could
not enforce the act, though it might, he admitted,
cause a rebellion. Having answered with great sim
plicity and clarity a hundred questions about
American political views and economic life, he closed
with the subtle appeal to the English passion for
trade, declaring that the American pride used to be
"to indulge in the fashions and manufactures of
Great Britain," but now it was their pride "to wear
their old clothes over again, till they can make new
ones." Few more eloquent debates are recorded than that
which followed in both houses of Parliament. Pitt,
though feeling that he was "more fit for a lonely hill
in Somersetshire than for the affairs of state," took
up the American cause with spirit. He rejoiced that
the Americans had resisted. For the welfare of the
empire he would not have them so dead to the feel
ings of liberty as to become fit instruments to make
slaves of the rest. Grenville was enraged that re
bellion should be pronounced a virtue, that "even
in this house, in this sanctuary of laws, sedition had
found its defenders." He argued for the legal right
to tax Americans, that the nation had run itseff into
immense debt to give them protection, that pro
tection and obedience were reciprocal. Great Britain
had protected, America owed obedience." It was
this emphasis on legal right that did the mischief.
' Hansard, 137-60; also in any edition of Franklin's Writings.
* Hansard, Parliamentary History, xvi, 102.

188 CAUSES OF WAR OF INDEPENDENCE
England was in an age of strict legalism. Lawyers,
dominated by a rigid legalism, were most influential
in guiding the administration officers in their rule of
the colonies. It was they who passed on the form and
legality of the colonial charters and of instructions
to governors, and as to the propriety of laws made
in the American provinces.
Supporters of Grenville explained that the stamp
tax would not pay a third of the expense of the
troops stationed in America, but that "a pepper
corn in acknowledgment of right is of more value
than millions without." ' Against this abstract
right, which Burke later characterized as the "great
Serbonian bog" into which whole armies had sunk,
Pitt set himseff. Legal right the Government might
have, but a statesman would not use it. He inti
mated that Parliament might well take thought of
the words of St. Paul, "All things are lawful unto
me, but all things are not expedient." "The most
magnanimous Exertion of Power is often the Non-
Exertion of it." He meant to waive it by silence."
With a logic hard to follow, Pitt asserted British
sovereignty over Americans; "we may bind their
trade, confine their manufactures, and exercise every
power, except that of taking their money out of their
pockets without their consent." Having made that
distinction, which was at least antiquated, Pitt went
* C. M. Andrews, Guide, etc. (1914), n, 102, gives the Comptrol
ler General's Declaration showing the Amount received for the
stamped paper was £224,119. The Government paid out, salaries,
etc., £160,043. "Unaccounted for," probably destroyed, £64,155.
There is a list of colonial receivers and their arrears. J. liagersoll, 1909.
• American Historical Review (April, 1912), 573.

THE REPEAL OF THE STAMP ACT 189
on to declare that America was right in her con
tention, and "if she fell would fall like a strong man.
She would embrace the pillars of the state and pull
down the Constitution along with her." Pitt was,
as Grattan said, "very great and very odd," a moun
tebank, perhaps, but "a great mountebank, . . .
a man of great genius and great fiights of mind," but
his logic would have carried him into embarrassing
situations. In the House of Lords the American
cause did not fare so well, perhaps because they had
not heard Franklin's examination. Though opposed
to the repeal, Lord Mansfield, one of the greatest
lawyers of his age, who when he spoke was " dignity
and reason itseff," agreed that the colonial radicals
were not to be disregarded, for many persons, like
Otis, "who have entertained silly and mad ideas,
have led people to rebellion and overturned em
pires." ' He was most fervent in hoping that it
might "please God to open the understandings and
better inform the minds of this poor, innocent,
loyal, brave, but wickedly misled and deluded peo
ple." " Though he had for them only the " greatest
tenderness," he came "armed at all points" with
legal precedents to prove that there was no differ
ence between internal and external taxation,' that
there was no distinction between the authority of
Parliament within or without the realm, that ff it
now abdicated its supreme power in this matter,
the Government would be dissolved. In mere legal
1 Hansard, Parliamentary History, xvi, 172.
' The Francis Letters, i, 74.
• Franklin made the best point in favor of the contrary contention.
See Examination.

190 CAUSES OF WAR OF INDEPENDENCE
logic he was probably right. Precedent was with
him, but he seemed to forget that the Constitution
of England had come to its present state as the re
sult of yielding to the changing needs of the people
whose destinies it controlled. With him stood the
profligate Earl of Sandwich, the Duke of Bedford,
head of the "Bloomsbury Gang," and the Tory
aristocracy in general.
In support of the repeal. Lord Shelburne, Lord
Camden, and the Duke of Grafton bore the burden
and heat of the debate. Lord Rockingham sat by
"dumb and speechless." Though Rockingham was
the head of the Ministry, the effort at repeal was a
Pitt victory, for the eagerness of the Ministry to
place Pitt at their head led them to yield to his
policy.' Rockingham wanted repeal with a declara
tory act, but without Pitt's backing might not have
ventured even that, faced as he was by Grenville's
threat to regard any one who did that as " a criminal
and a betrayer of his country." "He was bullied
into it by Lord Chatham," his enemies declared, but
Burke brilliantly defended his patron against that
charge." None of the speakers in the Lords, ff we
may judge from the little that has come down to us
in the " Parliamentary History," were very positive,
but Camden, at least, did hold clearly that taxation
and representation were inseparable, and therefore
the British Parliament, as then constituted, had not
the right to tax the colonies.
When the matter of repeal came to a vote, it is
' Alvord, The Mississippi Valley in British Politics, i, 238-39.
» Burke, Works (ed. 1829), n, 60.

THE REPEAL OF THE STAMP ACT 191
dubious whether it would have carried but for the
Declaratory Act joined with it which asserted Par
liament's right to make laws to bind the colonies in
all cases whatsoever.' In fact, the Lords at first re
solved, fifty-nine to fifty-four, in favor of executing
the Stamp Act, but after two formal protests against
repeal they too joined the Commons, resolved to be
content with the "Declaration " — " the peppercorn
in acknowledgment of right." Pitt, ill with gout,
was barely able to remain through the debate and
"cry aye! to the repeal in no sickly voice." Though
opposed to the Declaratory Act, "that barren tree,
which cast a shade over the land but yielded no
fruit," he quieted the fears of some by his own in
sistence upon Parliament's right to subordinate the
colonists to all other legislation except that which
took "money out of their pockets without their
consent." The victory won, Pitt "hobbled out on
crutches, gaunt, alone." The crowds, at first hushed
and with hats in hand, then shouted in triumph.
As for the hero, the joy of thousands was his, as
Lady Chatham wrote. He found the scene of that
glorious morning happy "when the sun of liberty
shone once more upon a coimtry too long be
nighted." " He solemnly declared that he "never
had greater satisfaction than in the repeal of tliis
Act." In spite of Pitt's doubt that "there would have
been a minister to be found who would have dared
to dip the royal ermines in the blood of the Ameri-
* Macdonald, Documentary Source Book, 140.
• Basil Williams, William Pitt, n, 200-01.

192 CAUSES OF WAR OF INDEPENDENCE
cans," it was for military enforcement, ff necessary,
that Grenville and his followers had stood. There
were two strong reasons for their eager defense of
the act. The act had been originally approved by the
King, and a repeal would weaken his prestige which
it was Grenville's policy to build up. George III
had preferred a mere modffication of the act, but
when that was out of the question, and the only
issue was enforcement or repeal, he consented to
Rockingham's demand that he support the re
pealers. The King was even forced to put his ac
quiescence in writing.' Furthermore, an indirect
result of the repeal of the Stamp Act was that the
Imperial Government, by bending before the storm,
had given up the source of money proposed to be
expended in opening the Great Valley in America
to settlement. A revision of the whole Grenville-
Bedford imperial policy of expansion became neces
sary, and that faction, with whom the repeal went
down heavily, became the supporters of all meas
ures for subduing the colonists to obedience." Nat
urally, Rockingham did not wish to push a plan
cursed with the brand of the Grenville Ministry,
especially an expensive one for which they had not
the funds. They must retrench, and this meant
indifference to western expansion in the Mississippi
Valley. Moreover, they had never understood the
Proclamation of 1763, and thought it only a tem
porary measure to be followed by gradual opening
of the West, and therefore had no idea except en-
• Alvord, The Mississippi Valley in British Politics, i, 240.
» Ibid., 241.

THE REPEAL OF THE STAMP ACT 193
forcement of the law at face value. Led by Barring
ton, they substituted a plan for maintaining "for
ages" extensive Indian reservations in the heart of
America.' Such a programme, ff successful, would
stop settlement at the Appalachians.
To these ill-boding consequences America was
blind. The universal joy over the repeal "composed
every wave of popular disorder." America justified
Pitt's noble tribute. " This country, like a fine horse,
to use a beautiful expression of Job, whose neck is
clothed in thunder — ff you soothe and stroke it you
may do anything; but ff an unskifful rider takes it
in hand, he will find that, though not vicious, yet
it has tricks." " An address of the Massachusetts
House of Representatives attested the "general joy
diffused among all his Majestie's loyal and faithful
subjects throughout this extensive continent." They
found the repeal a striking instance of their "most
gracious sovereign's paternal regard," and because
his royal ear was always open to the distresses of his
people, they felt "the deepest sense of loyalty and
gratitude." All of this might have revealed to a keen
British statesman, that, though a colonist drank a
health to George III "five fathoms deep," the act
pledged him to nothing but loyalty as long as the
King was not a tyrant. The grateful colonists even
found in the repeal the proof that they were the
objects of the patronage and justice of Parliament.'
* Alvord, The Mississippi Valley in British Politics, i, 243, 248, 251.
> B. Williams, William Pitt, n, 201.
' Samuel Adams, Writings, i, 74, 81. True they went on to scold
the Governor for his manner of asking for compensation for recent
mob violence.

194 CAUSES OF WAR OF INDEPENDENCE
On a Day of Thanksgiving in Boston, Jonathan
Mayhew preached from the text, "As cold waters
to a thirsty soul, so is good news from a far country."
As late as 1774, the 18th of March, the anni
versary of the repeal of the Stamp Act, was being
celebrated by the ringing of bells, the discharge of
cannon, and the display of colors on the liberty tree,
but the next year (1775) it was " designedly neglected "
because the colonists had learned that the repeal
was not "done on generous fraternal principles." '
These celebrations were usually directed by the
"Sons of Liberty," who seemed to assume that the
repeal had been due to their activities. John Adams
describes their plans for "illuminations, bonfires,
pyramids, obelisks, such grand exhibitions and such
fireworks as were never before seen in America." "
One of the economic results of the repeal is sug
gested by Dr. Franklin's first letter from London to
his wife Deborah whom he never could persuade to
cross the sea. He was sending her " a fine Piece of
Pompadour Sattin ... A silk Negligee and Petticoat
of Brocaded Lutestring," which he had not sent
sooner, " as I knew you would not like to be finer
than your Neighbors, unless in a Gown of your own
spinning." It was a comfort to him to recollect, he
declared, " that I had once been cloth'd from Head
to Foot in Woollen and Linnen of my Wffe's Manu
facture." ' In general, commerce flowed again, non
importation ceased, plans for American manufac-
> Literary Diary of Ezra Stiles, i, 437, 527.
» John Adams, Works, n, 178, 179. The celebration itself is described
in The Boston Evening Post, May 26, 1766.
• Franklin, Writings (Smyth, td), rv, 449.

THE REPEAL OF THE STAMP ACT 195
tures vanished, the custom of expensive funerals
and lavish mourning was resumed, homespun was
given to the poor, and men once more wore suits
ordered in London. Yet the merchants were not
wholly content, and trade was not restored to the
old basis before the trade laws of 1764 and 1765.
Parliament proceeded, after the Declaratory Act
and the repeal of the Stamp Act, to take off the three
penny duty on foreign molasses, but replaced this
with a duty of one penny per gallon on all molasses
imported, British as well as foreign. It now gave
no protection to the British sugar planters and was
plainly a tariff for revenue, a taxation without rep
resentation, just as surely as was the Stamp Act.'
A new law arranged to collect the duty on foreign
textiles at the English port rather than the Ameri
can, but that was a mere disguising of the fact of
taxation. In all this, and more which undid the
concessions of the repeal, the followers of Rocking
ham and Pitt, believing fully in the legislative power
of Parliament, heartily joined. Moreover, to the
grievance of the paper money regulation, so warmly
protested as a reason why the colonists could not
pay the stamp tax. Parliament gave not the cold
respect of a passing glance.
Nevertheless, America rejoiced and gave herseff
up to generous enthusiasms for her friends in Par
liament. The Boston town meeting had already
thanked Conway and Barre for their "noble and
generous speeches," and ordered their portraits for
Faneuil Hall. A group of Virginians subscribed
* Schlesinger, The Colonial Merchants, 85-87.

196 CAUSES OF WAR OF INDEPENDENCE
nearly a hundred pounds to have Lord Camden's
picture "limned," at full length in judge's robes,
by either Reynolds or West, for a place of honor in
Westmoreland County Court-House.' New York
voted a statue to Pitt in a toga, while George III,
for no explicable reason except colonial ignorance,
was cast in lead and brass on horseback and gilded.
Lord Shelburne, too, was praised, and Lord Dart
mouth who, all his Iffe, was regarded as a friend of
the colonies. On the other hand, the colonial heart
hardened against Lord Mansfield, Lord Sandwich,
and the Duke of Bedford. The Earl of Halifax was
also in their bad graces, but among them all Gren
ville stood alone in his bad eminence. The whole
group were reputed to wish to take away every
charter and to unite all colonies under governors and
councils appointed by the King and burdened with
no assemblies." The ministerial mind was dumb
founded by the vast spaces of the earth which fate
obligated it to rule; to centralize and unffy seemed
the only hope. Against these aims, as, indeed,
against any loss of liberties already won, America
had shown her spirit to be fixed. No wise statesman
could thereafter ignore that fact, and yet some solu
tion of Great Britain's imperial problem must be
found. The truth now appeared that a constitution
for the empire as distinguished from the realm had
never been worked out. The imperial constitution
* Wells, Samuel Adams, 68. For a list of Virginian subscribers see
Ballagh, Letters of R. H. Lee, l, 23-24. James Monroe subscribed, but
"never paid." Camden promised to sit, and then apparently forgot
it. Ibid., 26.
• Trumbull, Jonathan Trumhuli. 74.

THE REPEAL OF THE STAMP ACT 197
was still a thing of shreds and patches. England had
her constitution and it provided for the supreme
power of Parliament. But, while this was being
evolved, the East and West Indies had been added,
continental American colonies founded, and finally
an empire conquered from France. For all these
world-wide dominions no settled constitution ex
isted; all was fluid. Pitt, the materials for whose
speeches were "great subjects, great empires, great
characters, effulgent ideas and classical illustra
tions," declared he wished "this to be an Empire of
Freemen; it will be stronger for it, and it wUl be the
more easily governed." A very noble idea it was,
but did he, did any one, in that trying hour have a
definite plan by which the splendid vision coiUd be
realized?

CHAPTER vm
CONFLICTING THEORIES OF REPRESENTATION
AND IMPERIAL ORGANIZATION
At the close of the struggle over the Stamp Act, any
traveler in America might, like Gulliver among the
immortals in Glubbdubdrib, have fed his eyes with
beholding men reputed to be the destroyers of
tyrants and usurpers, and the restorers of liberty
to an oppressed and injured nation. In that time
of stress America had acquired leaders as well as
convictions. James Otis, Patrick Henry, Christopher
Gadsden, and John Dickinson had gained more than
provincial fame, and their political ideas had been
burned into the souls of thousands who had never
before been profoundly moved. We are told that in
1765 "the principles, the objects and the ends of
government, became the topics of discussion in aU
companies and at the firesides of private families." '
Moreover, the colonists' controversies with their
provincial governments were no longer conceived as
bickerings with a royal governor abusing his little
brief authority, but as a great struggle with the
British Government over fundamental principles.
Between Parliament's "one slight day on the
American taxes," and that very momentous day
more than a decade later when the Continental Con
gress drew up a Declaration of Independence, there
was hardly a dispute between the British Govern-
• John Adams, Worlcs, x, 191.

CONFLICTING THEORIES 199
ment and its colonies which involved new issues, not
already fought over in each individual colony be
tween its royal governor and its assembly. On these
issues the colonial mind was made up, but now the
true magnitude of the involved principles was seen,
and the real menace to the enjoyment of perfect
liberty perceived. Furthermore, up to the time of
the Stamp Act it had been for the most part the
custom to abuse freely the governor and local offi
cers, under the pleasing fiction that they misrep
resented the benign and freedom-breathing spirit
of the King and his enlightened ministers. That
figment of the imagination was now laid aside, and
the luxury of open attack on the British Government
was a new sensation not easily forgotten once the
colonial animal had tasted. It was an appetite much
indulged as the tide of feeling rose. In the meager
colonial newspapers, or in pamphlets, which in that
day outrivaled the journal as a means of access to
the public mind, many writers strove to show just
how the times were out of joint. It was fairly easy
for some smart young lawyer to clamber up to the
judgment seat, and tell the British Ministry how to
solve the problems of the greatest empire since that
of the Romans.
In the great mass of polemical literature of the
period there was much mere abuse and ill-temper,
and many wrote in complete ignorance of the great
questions whose solution they offered so lightly. Yet
even the wisest and most sincere writers found
depths beyond the reaches of their logic or knowl
edge. Besides the fact that " an EngUshman is the

200 CAUSES OF WAR OF INDEPENDENCE
unfittest man on earth to argue another Englishman
into slavery," there were certain fundamental ques
tions upon which the average American and the
average Englishman could not argue to any good
result, because each soon came to doubt the honesty
of the other. In one sense the English orator's as
sertion was true that the Americans take up their
rights and liberties "from the same origin and
fountain, from whence they flow to all Englishmen,
from Magna Charta and the natural right of the
subject," ' but new experiences and different needs
had created divergences of which even the colonist
was unaware, and which led him to defend his pas
sion for seff-determination with arguments that
seemed to an Englishman silly or insincere. After
Pitt had expressed his doubt as to how many living
members of Parliament he could get to join him in
maintaining with their blood the American doc
trines, he asserted that "among the dead he could
raise an host innumerable," " he was betraying his
own ignorance of what doctrines the colonists really
held. John Adams, who was flattered and hypno
tized as most Americans were at the time of Pitt's
heroic stand against the Stamp Act, realized long
after that the "Great Commoner" was not so
wholly sympathetic with the colonies as contem
poraries thought him. Adams admitted even then
that Pitt was "a great national minister because
he always flattered and gratified the national passion
for war, victory and conquest but he was not a wise
• Hansard, Parliamentary History, xvi, 196.
' Gordon, The American Revolution, i. 444.

CONFLICTING THEORIES 201
minister. . . . He died a martyr to his idol. He fell
in the House of Lords with the sovereignty of par
liament in his mouth." ' It was thus that Adams
came at last to reject even the greatest friend of
America in Parliament.
When we analyze to-day the state papers,
speeches, and pamphlets on both sides of the con
troversy, we perceive that some of the terms they
used conveyed different ideas to the Englishman
than to the American. They could not discuss rep
resentation to any good end, because, regarding this
political institution, each had a different theory and
practice. They could not profitably debate the
proper extent and character of local seff-government
or agree as to the distribution of authority between
Parliament and the colonial legislatures, because
clashing interests led them to different conclusions.
If they entered upon a discussion as to the extent
to which government could constitutionally inter
fere with the liberty of the individual, as to whether
Parliament was in that respect all-powerful or was
limited by certain unchanging laws of right and
wrong, in this argument, too, they found the path
of logic set with obstacles due to different ideals,
varied experiences. From the colonist's conception
of these matters evolved in time those principles
which moulded the American governmental sys
tem. From the dominant English ideas sprang
that system which holds in the British Empire of
to-day. If one examines closely the meaning given to the
» John Adams, Works, x, 192, 193.

202 CAUSES OF WAR OF INDEPENDENCE
word " representation " in the two countries, one
finds the prevailing ideas in each to be very differ
ent. Omitting for the moment necessary qualifica
tions of a general statement, the variance may be
briefly stated. In England the representative of a
district might come from any part of the realm; in
America there was a strong prejudice in favor of a
representative resident in the district he represented.
In England the right to vote for a representative
was greatly limited by custom and precedent, while
in America the franchise had no limitations which
were not easily overcome. The English theory and
practice did not recognize the right of a district to
proportional representation, and there was little
contention for it. In America any deprivation of
proportional representation was hotly resented.
A multitude of varying conditions and of historical
developments caused these differences to emerge
out of the past of each people. Representation in
America grew under the care of the communities
represented, not, as in its infancy in England, guided
by the King's necessities, and so fixed in custom that
it did not change with the changing conditions.
Though the colonists had imitated England in
some of their institutions, they did not in others.
English local government was reproduced in Amer
ica, and the method of dealing with crime, but in
the matters of representation the colonists had
evolved a plan of their own. The American prefer
ence for a representative known and voted for by
the people of the district which he represented was
a natural development in a land whose people were

CONFLICTING THEORIES 203
pressing onward into new, unsettled regions. The
frontiersman always clamored for it, not only be
cause of his individualism, but because he felt that
the representatives of the older settled district could
not understand frontier needs. Yet the English cus
tom did not wholly die out, and it was possible for a
representative to live outside his district, as in the
case of Patrick Henry who sat for Louisa County
rather than his county of residence.' Indeed, the
theory that a member of the House of Burgesses
represented Virginia as a whole and not the county
electing him was not unpopular in colonial Virginia."
There is much to be said for that theory wherever
it is held, because it breeds statesmen more intent
upon the weffare of the whole state than upon se
curing by "log-rolling" the interest of some part
at the expense of the whole. It was the sense of that
freedom, in addition to their talent, that helped Pitt
and Burke and Barre to look beyond the petty con
cerns of their actual electors to the vast interests of
the empire. Burke, born and educated in Ireland,
dwelling thereafter mainly in London, could get his
seat in Parliament through the favor of the voters in
Wendover Borough or Bristol City,' but his splendid
mind was free to grapple with the problems of a
world dommion rather than keeping up his " fences "
by urging legislation that would put money in the
1 It was true that the London agent of a colony might also be the
agent of another colony, but that came about in the interest of
economy, and, moreover, the agent was not looked upon as a repre
sentative. ' Grigsby, Virginia Constitutional Convention. 67, 76.
• Members of Parliament, pt. ii, 137.

204 CAUSES OF WAR OF INDEPENDENCE
pockets of his constituents. William Pitt, returned
to Parliament as member of the most notorious of
"rotten boroughs," "Old Sarum," some sixty acres
of ploughed land on which no man lived and no
house stood, enjoyed a similar freedom. WTien Old
Sarum was no longer tenable, the ministerial
borough of Seaford returned him, then Oldborough
and again Okehampton, but however his constitu
ency might be hustled about the realm from place
to place, Pitt kept the "strength of his thunder and
the splendor of his lightning" for the great affairs
of the empire. Yet much as may be said for this Eng
lish custom, it differed from the prevailing Amer
ican ideas of representation, and helped to create
misunderstanding and suspicion when the meaning
of "taxation without representation "was in question.
The differing nature of the franchise in each coun
try also affected the real meaning of representation.
There had been from the first a natural adherence
by the colonists to those methods of granting suffrage
with which they were familiar in England. More
over, the English Government made every effort to
place colonial suffrage on the same basis as in the
mother country.' Yet with all the imitation by the
colonies and coercion by the British Government,
differences arose which had to do chiefiy with the
ease of acquiring the right to vote. In the colonies
there were qualifications which had to do with race
and nationality, with religion and good character,
with residence and property qualifications," but
* McKinley, The Suffrage Franchise in the English Colonies, 484.
• Ibid., chap. xv.

CONFLICTING THEORIES 205
except the race restriction all others were easily set
aside by complaisance in religion or morality, by
industry in the acquisition of property, or by taking
proper measures to attain residence. In England
these accessible terms did not suffice. In the counties
all forty-shilling freeholders could vote, but many
were mere puppets moved at the polls by the great
landholders. The inhabitants of some great cities
of recent growth could not vote for members to
represent them in Parliament. In the boroughs,
though resident householders had by common law
the right to vote, yet there were in places irregular
provisions which conferred suffrage upon a few per
sons who monopolized it. At Bath it was the privi
lege only of the mayor, twenty-four common coun
cillors, and ten aldermen; at Buckingham the bailiff
and twelve burgesses.' In some cases the franchise
could only be acquired by inheritance from a " free
man" ancestor. Yet there was little discontent with
this limited suffrage, and only a small minority as
serted with the contemporary reformer John Cart
wright, "I ought to have a vote because I am a
man." " In general, it may be said that franchise
in England was an historical accident; in America
it grew in accord with a system. In England one
must in many cases be born to it as to the purple;
in America the attainment was in the reach of all.
Colonial electors were not so much greater in num
bers, but were evenly distributed both as to region
1 May, Constitutional History cf England (ed. 1862), i, 366. See
excellent summary in Cross, England and Greater Britain, 910.
» Kent, The English Radicals, 70.

206 CAUSES OF WAR OF INDEPENDENCE
and social position.' Even the American colonists
were a long way from the liberal franchise Cart
wright demanded. In Virginia about nine per cent
of the white population voted, in Pennsylvania eight
per cent, while in Massachusetts and in Connecticut
only about one person in fifty took part in elections.
In Rhode Island nine per cent of the people were
potential voters.^ An English pamphleteer asserted
that in England not one person in twenty-five voted
for a representative.
It was in the theory and practice as to propor
tional representation that the greatest difference
lay. In England there had never been any attempt
to apportion representation to the number of inhab
itants; in America there was at least a predominant
belief in such an apportionment. Before there was
reform in England, it came to pass that ten counties
in the south with scarcely three million people had
nearly as many members in Parliament as thirty
counties to the north with over eight millions of
people. But the borough representation was "the
rotten part" of the Constitution, as Chatham said,
and just before the American Revolution four hun
dred and seventeen out of the five hundred and
fifty-eight members of Parliament were borough
members. Originally it had been the King's preroga
tive to select boroughs that might send burgesses
to Parliament, and various reasons good or bad had
been the grounds of his choice. Since the Restora-
* Hart, "Exercise of the Suflfrage," in Political Science Quarterly,
vn, 316.
' McKinley, The Suffrage Franchise in the English Colonies, 487;
Jameson in Nation. April 27, 1893.

CONFLICTmG THEORIES 207
tion no new boroughs had been chosen, but that
period had been one of vast industrial changes, re
ducing old borough towns to hamlets and raising
up great manufacturing centers like Birmingham,
Leeds, and Manchester, to whom the privilege of
representation had not been given. The boroughs
whose dwindling population no longer entitled them
on any equitable basis to representation, though
they still retained it, were known as "rotten bor
oughs." Cornwall was full of decayed boroughs,
sending forty-four representatives to Parliament,
though Middlesex and Westminster sent only eight.
Many boroughs of this type were not only bought
and sold, but advertised themselves for sale. Their
owners were members of the nobility who made them
a source of revenue. The King and his Ministry
did not hesitate to use the nation's money to buy
seats for men who would be obedient servants in the
House of Commons. Lord Lonsdale sent nine mem
bers, the Duke of Rutland six, and the Duke of Nor
folk eleven,' and all were for sale for a consideration,
either money or votes. The Ministry, the would-be
members of Parliament, and the noble owners hag
gled and chaffered like market-women over their
wares. The Prime Minister wrote to an agent: "Let
Cooper know whether you promised Masterman
two thousand five hundred pounds or three thousand
pounds for each of Lord Edgecombe's seats. I was
going to pay him twelve thousand five hundred
pounds, but he demanded fifteen thousand pounds."
Again he wrote: "Mr. Legge can only afford four
1 May. Const. Hist, of England (ed. 1862), i, 287.

208 CAUSES OF WAR OF INDEPENDENCE
hundred pounds. If he comes in for Lostwithiel he
will cost the public two thousand guineas. Gascoign
should have the refusal of Tregony [in the infamous
Cornwall district] ff he will pay a thousand pounds,
but I do not see why we should bring him in any
cheaper than any other servant of the Crown. If he
will not pay, he must give way to Mr. Best." '
Lord Sandwich sold John Robinson a seat, the
consideration being two thousand pounds loan,
three hundred pounds election costs, and the agree
ment to think and act " as I do in all American points
and supporting the present administration in all
matters." " In the picture which Thackeray draws,
in "The Newcomes," of the cold-blooded sale of a
seat in Parliament, the novelist does not dare give
the amazing details which history demands. In 1768
Lord Chesterfield, in one of his famous ethical
epistles to his son, wrote, "Elections here have been
carried to a degree of frenzy hitherto unheard of,
that for the town of Northampton has cost the con
tending parties at least thirty thousand pounds a
side, and George Selwyn has sold the borough of
Luggershall to two members for nine thousand
pounds." ' The return of the "nabobs," fabulously
enriched in India, and eager for political display,
had much increased the amounts bid for parlia
mentary seats. It was little wonder, as a contem
porary lamented,^ that "prudent and proper per
sons" were deterred from attempting to come to
' Trevelyan, The American Revolution, I, 202.
• Abergavenny MSS., 11 ; Channing, Hist, of the U.S., ui, 73.
' Chesterfield, Letters, 3, 1375-76.
* Winstanley, Lord Chatham. 213, note.

CONFLICTING THEORIES 209
parliament. As a result of this English system it
became true that a majority of all the members of
the House of Commons was elected by less than fif
teen thousand voters, most unevenly distributed
over Great Britain, and that one hundred and fifty
individuals, among whom were the Lords and the
King, named three hundred and seven members
of the Commons.' Toward this political iniquity of
"rotten boroughs" and unrepresented manufactur
ing towns with large populations the ignorant masses
were indifferent, and the only protest came from the
great manufacturers who were deprived of their
proper influence in the state. The evil was being
brought to notice, however, for there were English
men as well as critical colonists who saw that the
House of Commons did not in the American sense
represent the people of England, but only in a tech
nical, constitutional sense. Soon the evil was dis
cussed even in Parliament." There, however, the
plea for more adequate representation was answered
by humdrum Modes and Persians who solemnly
reiterated that the object of the prevaUing English
system was to secure representation of the com
mercial classes, the landed gentry, and the several
professional classes, lawyers, doctors, and other
middle-class Englishmen. ParUament represented
» Hansard, Parliamentary History, xxx, 787-925; May, Const.
Hist, of England, i, 288. See also Thomas Oldfield's published analy
sis of the electoral conditionof England (1794) in Trevelyan, George III
and C. J. Fox, ii, 178. He asserts that 99 peers, 104 commoners, and
the existing ministry returned 387 members. Only 171 represented
free and independent communities.
2 Ihid., XVIII, 1287. Americans were fully aware of it. Bancroft,
Hist, of U.S., IU, 114, 119.

210 CAUSES OF WAR OF INDEPENDENCE
not individuals, but estates. The people of Bristol
could as well elect representatives of commerce as
the people of Birmingham, could they not? Nothing
was gained, was there, by increasing the number of
voters or the number of commercial towns sending
representatives ?
The American theory and practice presented a
sharp contrast to this. In New England practically
every town was represented, to the south every
county.' WTien the British Government tried, by
vetoing grants of representation to new counties and
towns, to put a stop to the process of making colonial
legislatures more popular and more representative,
the very fact of opposition stiffened the colonial wiU
to have its own system, and it fixed the colonial
ideal." Nevertheless, apportionment in America
was not always fair nor in keeping with the ideal;
in fact, it was bad in Pennsylvania, New York, and
South Carolina, but there was no injustice equal to
that of the "rotten borough." ' Perhaps the worst
sufferers in the colonies were the Scotch-Irish in
the western part of Pennsylvania, who, deprived of
proper representation in that legislature, pushed up
the Great Valley and out into the Piedmont region
of western South Carolina, where again they were
deprived of proportional representation by the sea-
1 Of fifty-nine towns incorporated in Massachusetts (1691-1761)
only one was not given representation in the General Court. State
ment accredited to W. G. Leland by Channing, Hist, ofthe U.S., ni, 75.
2 H. A. Cushing, From Province to Commonwealth Government, 19-27.
' Like the British Government, that of Virginia was based on a
representation of local units and not a representation of numbers.
Grigsby, Virginia Constitutional Convention. 67, 76.

CONFLICTING THEORIES 211
board planters.' But the significant fact here and
in other cases is that the refusal of proportional rep
resentation was resented. " As freemen and English
subjects" the Scotch-Irish and Germans of the
interior protested against three Quaker counties of
Pennsylvania having twenty-four out of thirty-six
deputies in the colonial assembly, though they had
less than haff the population. They would admit
no divine right in the counties of Philadelphia,
Bucks, and Chester to enjoy such an unjust privilege.
An American was not content with the kind of rep
resentation which seemed to satisfy the people of
England. Yet the defenders of the Ministry made
the mistake of imputing to the whole empire, Amer
ica and all, that system of representation which
was of purely insular origin and adaptability. The
American, on the other hand, was asking more than
was enjoyed in England, and had no conception of
the limits of the "liberty" enjoyed by the mass
of Englishmen whose rights he coveted and claimed
as his own.
When John Adams defended his client John Han
cock against the charge of smuggling, he argued
that the Boston merchant had never consented to
the law which made his act a crime, "he never voted
for it himseff and he never voted for any man to
make such a law for him." * Adams was not express
ing a new idea; the New England fathers had held
that idea for four generations. As early as 1693, a
contemporary reported that the people of Hartford
* H.B. Grigsby, inWashingtonandLee,Hwtoric<rf/'ayer«,no.2,p.9.
' John Adams, Works, n, 215.

212 CAUSES OF-WAR OF INDEPENDENCE
"Have separated not only from the Church, But
Crowne of England, and allowe of noe appeale from
theire Courts nor the Lawes of England to have any
force amongst them, some of the wissest have saide,
wee are not permitted to vote for any member of
Parliam*, and therefore not lyable to theire lawes." '
Men like Adams, with ideas rooted so deep in the
past, listened with impatience to the words of even
a great legal authority like Lord Mansfield, when
he assured them, with perfect correctness as far as
the law was concerned, that they had "virtual
representation." Such an assertion, wrote Adams,
in a burst of rhetorical frenzy, takes one from truth
and fact into the " wild regions of imagination and
possibility where arbitrary power sits upon her
brazen throne, and governs with an iron sceptre." '
Pitt too found it the "most contemptible idea that
has ever entered into the head of man," and yet the
British argument, that Americans were as much
represented in Parliament as the greater part of the
people of England, seemed to find proof in the very
fact that Pitt there defended American rights, to
gether with Burke and Camden and Barre and Fox,
a group possessing the best political talent in Eng
land. On the other hand, the situation in England
was different where the interests of the electors and
non-electors were the same. Although, as was as
serted, among nine million inhabitants of Great
Britain there were eight million who had no votes
in electing members to Parliament,' the security
' Documents Relating to the Colonial History of New York, rv, 71.
' John Adams, Works, n, 215.
• Mansfield, in Hansard, Parliamentary History, xvi, 201.

CONFLICTING THEORIES 213
of the non-electors against oppression was, as Daniel
Dulany, of Maryland, explained, "that their op
pression would fall also upon the electors and the
representatives." ' Wearied by the comparison of
America's case with that of Manchester, Birming
ham, and Sheffield, Otis pointed out that "the coun
ties in which those respectable abodes of tinkers,
tinners and pedlars lie, return members; so do all the
neighboring cities and boroughs. In the choice of
the former, ff they have no vote, they must natu
rally and necessarily have a great influence. I believe
every gentleman of a landed estate near a flourish
ing manufactory will be careful enough of its in
terest." " Americans were not so secure, because
acts oppressive to them might be popular with the
English electors. "Should the British empire some
day be extended round the whole world," cried Otis,
"Would it be reasonable that all mankind should
have their concerns managed by the electors of Old
Sarum, and the occupants of the Cornish barns and
ale houses.''"' As for Sheffield and Manchester, ff
they were not represented, "they ought to be."
It was precisely in that expression " ought to be "
that the most dangerous difference in American and
EngUsh ideals was to be found. In England certain
constitutional principles had been dominant for
hundreds of years. Mansfield, of course, pointed out
that to change the representative system would be
to change the British Constitution, and he asked
' D. Dulany, Considerations on the Propriety of Taxing tlie Colonies,
ft-8. 2 lUd., 6-10, 51.
• Tudor, James Otis, 191.

214 CAUSES OF WAR OF INDEPENDENCE
with a sneer ff that "was to be new-modeled too."
There were other Englishmen like Pitt and Burke
who as a matter of expediency would let the Amer
icans have their own way, even in so grave a mat
ter as the interpretation of the Constitution, but
even they were not ready to reform Parliament in
order to make it morally defensible nor to concede
that it did not have sovereign powers if it chose to
exercise them. Soame Jenyns, the popular Eng
lish pamphleteer, waxed very facetious over the idea
of American representatives in Parliament. Having
seen specimens of colonial powers of speech, he
feared that "the sudden importation of so much
eloquence at once would greatly endanger the safety
of the government of this country." Adam Smith
had, however, favored having the colonies send
representatives as "a new and dazzling object of
ambition" to colonial leaders,' and even Grenville
had looked upon the plan favorably; but Burke
poured the vials of his scorn upon such a "visionary
union" whose author seemed to have "dropped
down from the moon without any knowledge of the
general nature of this globe." Through six pages of
almost boisterous ridicule Burke played with the
folly of such an idea." He pictured many fancied
difficulties, writs going astray, vessels lost, American
members delayed by storm and arriving too late, the
King's death and a new Parliament, voyages of six
thousand miles to no purpose, and finally the in-
• Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations, chapter on "Colonies," pt in,
290-91. » Burke, Works, u. 136-43.

CONFLICTING THEORIES 215
finite difficulty of settling that representation on a
fair balance of wealth and numbers through the
several provinces of America. It costs the author
of the idea nothing, Burke sneered, "to fight with
nature! and to conquer the order of Providence"
which plainly opposes such a union. "Has he well
considered what an immense operation any change
in our constitution is? How many discussions, par
ties and passions, it will necessarily excite? " When
one comes to the end of all his ridicule and objec
tions, we find that he might have put all in the sim
ple admission that he dreaded the reform of Parlia
ment, a reform which the younger Pitt barely missed
carrying before the end of the century.
Yet Burke might have saved his sarcasm, for, as
Samuel Adams declared, "there is nothing that the
colonies would more dread " than a representation in
Parliament. By that arrangement it was feared the
supreme power of Parliament over the colonies would
have been established, annihilating their provincial
assemblies, and destroying the power of their char
ters.' The idea was not made more popular iu
America, by the fact that it was favored by Gover
nor Bernard, of Massachusetts.^ Otis, who thought
in imperial terms, and not as a disgruntled colonist
who favored such a representation, wished all parts
of the empire "compacted and consolidated" so
that the national strength and power would shine
with greater splendor than had ever yet been seen
by the sons of man. He intended no mere return of
> Wells, Samuel Adams, i, 91-93.
* Barrington-Bemard Correspondence. 188, 139.

216 CAUSES OF WAR OF INDEPENDENCE
a half -score ignorant, worthless persons "who might
be induced to seU their country and their God for a
golden caff." This was his answer to the merchant
who offered to carry American representatives to
London for haff they would sell for when they got
there. Nevertheless, Otis admitted that the idea was
much disliked among his fellow countrymen. The
famous resolutions of the Massachusetts legislature
(October, 1765), which Hutchinson said seemed "to
be designed as a sort of Magna Charta, or rather a
declaration of the fundamentals of the Constitu
tion," expressed opposition to such a plan.' It was
because such a representation was impracticable,
the resolutions held, that the several legislatures in
America were constituted." The Stamp Act Con
gress, too, declared the colonies "are not" and
"cannot be" represented in Parliament. Franklin
had thought well of such a representation, but as
early as 1766 he had lost hope. "The Parliament
here do at present think too highly of themselves
to admit representatives from us, ff we should ask
it; and, when they will be desirous of granting it, we
shall think too highly of ourselves to accept it."
Representation ought to have been thought of
earlier; the project is now "in the situation of Friar
Bacon's project of making a brazen waU round Eng
land for its eternal security." The time was past.'
' Hutchuison, History of Massachusetts, ni, 133, 447.
= Ibid., 76, 92; Tudor, James Otis, 195, 197; Niles, Principles and
Acts of the Revolution, 163.
' Franklin, Writings (Smyth, ed), rv, 456. Lord Barrington
declared that "no Influence could make ten Members of either House
of Parliament agree to such a Remedy." Barrington-Bemard Cor
respondence, 140.

CONFLICTING THEORIES 217
One comes, therefore, at last to see that at a time
when the prevailing American and the English ideals
of representation differed radically, and when the
American refused to entertain the idea of sending
his own representatives to Parliament, there was
every element present to embitter the minds of
practical politicians who sought through argument
a solution of Great Britain's imperial problem. Lord
Camden asserted that "Taxation and representation
are inseparably united; God hath joined them, no
British parliament can separate them," but ff these
governmental attributes were so married there must
be an agreement as to what the union signified. In
England the only meaning attached to the phrase
"no taxation without representation," was that
neither the King nor his Ministers could lay a tax
without getting the consent of Parliament. In
America the theory was that none had power to tax
except an assembly containing representatives of
those taxed, men actually elected by the persons who
were to pay the tax. There was a great guff fixed
between the two principles, and nothing but the
magic of time could close the gap.
It might have been possible, nevertheless, for each
country to enjoy the practice and principle to
which it was bred but for another fundamental dff-
ferenoe of opinion concerning the nature of the
respective powers of Parliament and of the colonial
legislatures. "In Britain," wrote Governor Bernard
(1765), "the American Governments are considered
as Corporations empowered to make by-Laws, ex
isting only during the Pleasure of ParUament. . . .

218 CAUSES OF WAR OF INDEPENDENCE
In America they claim ... to be perfect States, no
otherwise dependent upon Great Britain than by
having the same King." ' Lord Mansfield declared
the American governments were "all on the same
footing as our great corporations in London," and
pointed out that such colonial governments had
been destroyed simply by a process in the Courts of
Chancery or King's Bench. How could such a legis
lature, at the mercy of the very courts of England,
have the sole power of laying taxes? " Burke en
dorsed this and added, " It is extremely absurd that
the Colonies should be subject to the judicial but
free from the legislative authority of their mother
country." The unity of legislation in the empire,
declared a member of Parliament, is "as essential
to the body politic as the Deity to religion." ' The
colonial legislatures, thought Mansfield, existed on
sufferance; they might be scolded, prorogued, or
dissolved at the whim of a governor directed by the
Ministry. But that was not the colonial conception
of their legislatures, not even in Pennsylvania in
whose charter the legislative supremacy of Parlia
ment was expressly recognized.* As early as 1700
Sir WiUiam Beeston wrote that the Jamaica as
sembly were "stirred up to believe that what the
House of Commons could do in England they could
1 Barrington-Bemard Correspondence, 96; Soame Jenyns, Works,
425. 2 Blansard, Parliamentary Debates, xvi, 175-76. The supremacy
of Parliament was best stated by Lord Mansfield in the case of Camp
bell vs. HaU. Thayer, Cases on Constitutional Law.
' Pownall, Thomas Pownall. 206; Almon, Debates of Commons, ix,
96. * Macdonald, Documentary Source Book, 81.

CONFLICTING THEORIES 219
do here, and that during their sitting, all power and
authority was only in their hands." ' And thirty-
five years later the Commons House of Assembly in
South Carolina resolved that they had "the same
Rights, Powers, and Privileges in regard to intro
ducing and passing Laws for the imposing of Taxes
on the People of this Province as the House of Com
mons of Great Britain have in introducing and pass
ing Laws on the People of England." ^ In 1771
Samuel Cooper, writing to Thomas Pownall from
Boston, declared "the greater Part [of the people]
have a settled persuasion . . . that our Parliament
here ought to come between the sovereign and the
American subject, just in the same Manner that the
British Parliament does with respect to the British
subject, and that whatever takes place contrary to
this is . . . the Meer effect of Pow'r and not the
result of reason or [of] the Constitution." ' To that
idea of their powers they were to cling until the day
when the empire was rent in twain. It was the pre
vailing colonial belief that each part of the empire
to which Englishmen had removed had the sole right
to tax itseff. In England the view dominated that
political power, sovereignty, resided at the center.
It gave a member of Parliament no little sense of
pride to regard himseff as an actor in "a senate
regulating the eastern and western worlds at once."
As Walpole expressed it, "The Romans were triflers
to us." As the empire grew, no other method of rule
• Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series {America and West
Indies, 1700), 424.
» Wallace, Henry Laurens. 89, 172.
* American Historical Review, vni, S2A.

220 CAUSES OF WAR OF INDEPENDENCE
than that so long used for the British Isles had been
even considered. Governor Bernard was perfectly
right when he wrote to Lord Barrington (1765) that
"all the Political Evils in America arise from the
Want of Ascertaining the Relations between Great
Britain and the American Colonies. . . . The Patch
work Government of America will last no longer." '
Some one must decide how to distribute the authority
between the center and the parts in that vast empire.
Britain, growing and expanding, had forced the
governing mind to dweU upon problems of empire;
provincial America, bound up in the interests of an
isolated community, became absorbed in intensive
seff-government. Had the men who held in their hands the fate of
the King's dominions looked less to theories of the
imperial law and more to what was actually going on
within the empire, a federal solution would have
been all but in their grasp." It had long been the
custom for the Crown, the active instrument of
imperial government, to control through instructed
officers many colonial affairs. Its charge through
out the empire of the navy and army, of war and
peace, of all foreign affairs was scarcely opposed.
The colonial post-office was in its charge, Indian
trade and affairs were being taken over, as was
the regulation of the back-lands and the building of
new colonies. Imperial trade and navigation laws
were enforced by the Crown, and though offensive
* Barrington-Bemard Correspondence, 96, 97.
' A. C. McLaughlin, "Background of American Federalism," in
American Political Science Review, xn, no. 2, 215-40.

CONFLICTING THEORIES 221
in a degree to the colonist the right was little ques
tioned. On the other hand, the colonies levied their
own local taxes and looked after their own internal
police. They even contributed in a niggardly way,
but of their own will, to the defense of the empire.
They managed a multitude of the concerns of the
colonists' daily life with only a little nagging from
the royal governor. Laws of Parliament like those
against the land bank and paper money, and a few
others that seemed to thwart local legislative ac
tivity, were after all imperial in their nature. Even
obnoxious trade acts were in keeping with the
theories which in that age dominated the thinking
of colonizing peoples, and a grumbling colonist him
seff would admit that the control of imperial trade
was one of the main duties of Parliament. Great
Britain had, in a word, by 1760, a working plan that
was federal, a political system in which the usual
powers of government, separated and distinguished,
were distributed between governments accustomed
to keep within their own spheres and to exercise only
their proper quotas of authority.' Except for the
disputed right of ParUament, the central authority,
to exact money directly from the colonists for im
perial use, the scheme of distribution of powers
which, a generation later, was to be embodied in
the American Federal Constitution was already the
practice of the British Empire. The men who
moulded British destinies — and there were great
and good men, too, with not the least disposition to
* A. C. McLaughlin, "Background of American Federalism," in
American Political Science Review, xn, no. 2, 215, 219.

222 CAUSES OF WAR OF INDEPENDENCE
tyranny — failed to see what time had wrought, and
that they needed only to furnish a working legal
basis for the empire they already had ff they would
solve their problem of imperial organization. Instead
of that, they insisted on the principle of centraliza
tion of power, the indivisible nature of Parliament's
sovereignty, and they ridiculed the idea of distri
bution of powers. Lord Mansfield, in an argument
which an admirer described as "so full, so learned,
so logical, and in every respect so true that not an
atom of doubt remained in the breasts of his hear
ers," proved by a "multitude of examples" that it
was impossible to suppose two supreme legislatures,
"impracticable to draw a line for bounding the
authority of the British legislature," and absurd to
attempt "to distinguish between one act of legis
lation and another, as ff a greater degree of power
were required to lay taxes than to make any other
kind of Law." '
Such a position left the colonists to accept sub
ordination to an absolute government, or to deny
the authority of Parliament altogether." As Burke
warned the Ministry in 1774, ff you "poison the very
source of government by urging subtle deductions
and consequences odious to those you govern, from
the unlimited and Ulimitable nature of supreme
sovereignty you will teach them by these means to
call that sovereignty itseff in question. . . . They
will cast your sovereignty in your face. Nobody wiU
be argued into slavery." ' That was the kernel of
» The Francis Letters, i, 74.
• American Political Sderux Review, xn, no. 2, 228.
• Burke, Works, u. 78.

CONFLICTING THEORIES 223
the difficulty in solving England's problem of em
pire. Logic and legal precedents would beat in vain
against the wall of American convictions, formed
as we have seen them formed by frontier experiences
in a new land a thousand leagues from Westminster
Hall, redolent with the sanctity of law and prece
dent.

CHAPTER rX
AMERICAN VERSUS ENGLISH IDEAS OF THE
BRITISH CONSTITUTION
Had it been possible to please both radical colonist
and conservative Englishman with some happy
solution of the proper extent and character of local
seff-government, and had that solution included
some mode of permitting each integral part of the
empire to enjoy what theory and practice of repre
sentation it preferred, harmony might have reigned
within the British dominions. But ff Parliament was
to exercise the supremacy to which it made claim,
there still remained between the colonial liberal and
the British conservative a differing conception of the
extent of Parliament's power over the individual
citizen which boded ill for any real restoration of
good understanding.
Whenever the colonial orator or pamphleteer
failed to sustain his argument against an offensive
act of Parliament by appeal to charter rights, or to
the rights of Englishmen as found in Magna Charta
and the Bill of Rights, he took refuge in natural
rights, or in his own conception of the British Con
stitution. It was this dangerous doctrine, "destruc
tive to all government," which the Lords, in their
protest against the repeal of the Stamp Act, de
clared "has spread itseff over all our North Amer
ican colonies, that the obedience of the subject is
not due to the laws and legislature of the realm

THE BRITISH CONSTITUTION 225
farther than he, in his private judgment, shall think
it conformable to the ideas he has formed of a free
constitution." ' Otis resorted to this doctrine in his
attack on "Writs of Assistance." That an act of
Parliament had made them legal did not pose him.
He declared, "no act of Parliament can establish
such a writ"; for "an act against the Constitution
is void," the courts must pass it into disuse. He
impUed that the Constitution as he conceived it con
tained pledges of protection to the rights of the in
dividual which even ParUament could not gainsay.
Those pledges were its bounds "which by God and
nature are fixed," he declared in his "Rights of the
British Colonies." "Hitherto have they a right to
come, and no farther." Some seven years later
Samuel Adams, expressing the ideas of the Massa
chusetts House of Representatives, wrote, "It is the
glory of the British Prince and the happiness of all
his subjects, that their constitution hath its founda
tions in the immutable laws of nature, and as the
supreme legislature as well as the supreme executive
derives its authority from that constitution, it
should seem that no laws can be made or executed
that are repugnant to any essential law in nature." "
To Adams's mind this "law in nature" was his own
idea of right and wrong. From the days when young
Alcibiades asked Pericles the meaning of the word
' Hansard, Parliamentary History, xvi, 186.
' Samuel Adams, Writings, i. 190 (writmg to Conway, Secretary
of State, who had resigned a month earlier, though the colonists did
not know it). John Adams wrote (1762), "an act of Parliament
against natural equity . . . would be void." John Adams, Works,
U. 139.

226 CAUSES OF WAR OF INDEPENDENCE
law, leamed men have disagreed as to its exact mean
ing, but Samuel Adams, always in intimate converse
with the Oracle of politics, never aUowed the shadow
of dubiety to rest upon his assumptions. He was
always sure that what seemed wrong to him could
not be sanctioned by the British Constitution. In
fact, he and other Americans were but imitating Pym
and Hampden of the older British revolution, in
claiming to be aheady vested with rights, which
in reality they were at that moment endeavoring to
achieve.' His idea of the limitations of Parliament
was the prevaiUng American view, but Lord Mans
field and conservative Englishmen in general re
jected it utterly. The British Constitution, they
informed him, was the Magna Charta and BiU of
Rights and the common law as the British courts
throughout the centuries had left it, but in addition
to all these elements it was the changing law of Par
liament. Even William Pitt, the greatest defender
of the colonists' cause, after holding that he thought
them "deprived of a right," added, "but by an
authority they ought not to question." * He merely
confessed his faith in the absolute power of Parlia
ment. "WTiat Parliament doth no power on earth
can undo" Blackstone had put it (1758) in his lec
tures at Oxford.' Any act of Parliament might
any day change even the Constitution of England.*
Such an idea seemed preposterous to one who drew
* McLaughlin, The Courts, the Constitution and Parties. 69, 72.
' American Historical Review (April, 1912), 573.
» Blackstone, Commentaries (1768 ed.), I, 91, 161.
? Perhaps the most striking example of that was the Act of 1911
which destroyed the power of the House of Lords.

THE BRITISH CONSTITUTION 227
his political phUosophy from colonial experience and
the political writers of the seventeenth century. Of
a pamphleteer who inferred that Parliament had a
right to tax because it resolved that it had, Samuel
Adams wrote, with a sneer, "I shall only say that
his reasoning is much like that of a late letter writer
from London, whose wonderful performance, ff I
mistake not, was inserted in all newspapers, who says
that ' when an Act of Parliament is once passed, it
becomes a part of the Constitution.' " ' The ac
ceptance in England of the supremacy of Parliament
was a political habit only lately acquired, while the
colonists, who had really broken their British ties
in the seventeenth century, were carrying on old
English doctrines still in favor when the "Fathers"
left the homeland and first set foot in America." As
Governor Hutchinson explained to the English agent
of his colony, "Our friends to liberty take advantage
of a maxim they find in Lord Coke that an act of
Parliament against Magna Charta or the peculiar
rights of Englishmen is ipso facto void." In a word,
they were depending on an obsolete law writer
whom the British Constitution had outgrown.
The colonial idea as expressed by Otis and Adams
was not new in America, for it wUl be recalled that,
when the Puritan magistrates of Massachusetts
Bay were asked (1683) to give up their charter which
it was argued they had legally forfeited, the ministers
who were consulted said that though according to
some corrupt and unrighteous laws they might have
¦ Wells. Samuel Adams, i, 59.
« McLaughlin, The Courts, the Constitution and Parties, 81, 91.

228 CAUSES OF WAR OF INDEPENDENCE
done so, yet according to laws of righteousness and
equity they had not done so.' These were the laws
to which Jonathan Mayhew had appealed when in
1750 he held that the King was limited, not merely
by acts of Parliament, "but by eternal laws of
truth, wisdom, and equity and the everlasting tables
of right reason — tables that cannot be repealed, or
thrown down and broken like those of Moses." "
Indeed, long before any American had appealed to
natural law, Sophocles expressed the idea in An
tigone's defense of her illegal burial of her brother.
She acted, she pleaded, in free obedience to the
"unwritten and unchanging laws of heaven — laws
that are not of to-day or yesterday but abide for
ever, and of their creation knoweth no man." The
colonists, however, had not drawn their ideas of
natural law directly from antiquity, but from writers
on political theory in the time of the Stuarts. Locke
had said, "A government is not free to do as it
pleases . . . the law of nature stands as an eternal
rule to all men, legislators as well as others." We
find in the debates in Parliament in the ten years
preceding the Revolution, nearly as much use of
Locke's philosophy as in America, but in England
the fixed traditions, the settled customs, the old
environment, the established classes determined to
resist change, prevented the practical appUcation
of the doctrines; while in America the frontier fa
vored experiment and the seed fell on good ground.
Contemporaries of Samuel Adams saw reason to
' Hutchinson Papers in Mass. Hist. Soc, Collections (3d Ser.), i,
80. ' Thornton, The Pulpit of the Revolution, 95.

THE BRITISH CONSTITUTION 229
lament the "evil Consequences arising from the
Propagation of Mr. Locke's democratical Princi
ples," ' but before Locke it had been held by Thomas
Edwards that, in spite of past laws and agreements,
men of the new age ought to enjoy "their natural
and just liberties agreeable to right reason." " And
these writers of the Stuart period were but elabo
rating the idea of Melanchthon a century earlier
who, in defending natural law, said that he relied
on the saying of St. Paul that the law is written in
the human heart.'
Though colonial political literature in the decade
before the Declaration of Independence abounds
with appeals to this natural law, it had its exponents
also in England. Even Blackstone, after declaring
that "ff Parliament will positively enact a thing to
be done which is unreasonable, I know of no power
that can control it," goes on to say that in a conflict
between legislation and natural law, the latter must
prevail. "This law of nature," he explains, "is of
course superior in obligation to any other. It is
binding all over the globe in all countries and at all
times, no human laws are of any validity, ff contrary
to this." "
Both the prevailing colonial mind and that of the
* Dean Tucker, Four Letters on Important National Subjects, 89.
' Thomas Edwards, The Third Part of Gangrwna, etc., 16-17.
' Hoffding, History of Philosophy, i, 40.
* Blackstone, Commentaries (ed., 1768), r, 41, 91. This seeming
contradiction Roscoe Pound {Ycde Law Review, Dec, 1912, pp. 17-19)
explains by the historical fact that although after the Revolution of
1688 the absolute supremacy of Parliament was established, yet in
fact the great bulk of English law was traditional (formed in theory
under the laws of nature), not made by Parliament.

230 CAUSES OF WAR OF INDEPENDENCE
English radicals drew from this idea of natural laws,
which put bounds to the power of Parliament, a
deduction which was to become a fundamental prin
ciple in American constitutional law. John Dickin
son, after propounding the question, "who are a
free people?" answered with assurance, "Not those
over whom Government is reasonably and equitably
exercised, but those, who live under Government, so
constitutionally checked and controlled that proper
provision is made against its being otherwise exer
cised." ' "There are," wrote Samuel Adams, "fun
damental rules of the Constitution, which it is hum
bly presumed neither the supreme legislature nor
the supreme executive can alter. In aU free states
the Constitution is fixed." " Adams here expressed
the idea which underlies a written constitution,
which can be changed solely by the people and only
with great difficulty, and which places definite
bounds to the power of the legislative and the
executive branch of government. It was an idea
which grew naturally out of the colonial experience
with written charters. They had been used for
generations to seeing their legislatures hedged about
by fixed law. Their experience was bolstered by the
philosophy of great political thinkers whom they
reverenced. Both Adams and Otis were acquainted
with Vattel, the latest and most popular of conti
nental writers. Indeed, Otis in his "Rights of the
Colonists" quotes from Vattel's "Law of Nature
* John Dickinson, Memoirs, Pa. Hist. Soc, xrv, 356; Macdonald,
Documentary Source Book, 148.
' The same idea in the "Circular Letter"; also in Samuel Adams,
Writings, i, 134, 156, 170, 176, 180, 185, 190, 196; n, 825, 360, 452.

THE BRITISH CONSTITUTION 231
and Nations " wherein he asserts that the authority
of the legislature does not extend so far as to change
the constitution of the state. "It is from the con
stitution that these legislators derive their power;
how can they change it without destroying the
foundation of their own authority?" asks Vattel.
"They ought to consider the fundamental laws as
sacred," he continues, "for the Constitution of the
state ought to be fixed." ' It was an idea full of
promise to men faced with a threat of absolute rule
by a parliament three thousand miles away in which
they had no voice. Against a conception that the
British Constitution was from day to day what
Parliament made it was now set the dictum that
every free government is bound by fixed law. If a
government is bound to regard the unchanging laws
of nature, reasoned the American mind, then it is
restrained by fixed law and is a free government,
and that was what the colonist insisted the British
Government would be ff not distorted by such
"enemies of liberty" as Lord Mansfield.
Americans were not unaware of their inheritance
from English history of traditions of freedom grow
ing from precedent to precedent, from Magna Charta
to and beyond the Bill of Rights, until English lib
erty was second to"' none in all the world. "Here
lies the difference between the British Constitution
and other forms of government," wrote John Adams
in 1766, "that liberty is its end, its use, its designa
tion, drfft and scope, as much as grinding com is the
' James Otis, Righis qf the Colonists, 109; Samuel Adams, Writings,
n,325.

232 CAUSES OF WAR OF INDEPENDENCE
use of a miU." ' Samuel Adams, too, had paid his
tribute (1750). "There is," he wrote, "no form of
civil government . . . appears to me so well calcu
lated to preserve this blessing [of liberty] or to se
cure to its subjects all the most valuable advantages
of civil society, as the English." " Otis found the
British "the most perfect form of government, that
in the present depraved state, human nature is
capable of." ' It was long before Otis or the "brace
of Adams" realized that what they loved was not
the British Government, but their idea of it.
American thought and English thought had come
to the parting of the ways. A section of the Anglo-
Saxon world was entering on a new stage of the
development of free government. Through the
efforts of courageous Englishmen the power of the
King to rule in an arbitrary manner (except by cor
ruption) had been destroyed, but it was still possible
for Parliament to govern in an arbitrary way, and
America was to lead in the struggle to establish, at
least in the Anglo-Saxon world, a government of
law and not of men, of written basic law and not of
men raised by their fellows to a little brief authority.
For the moment Americans had outstripped Eng
lishmen in the race for political freedom. The ab
solutism of Parliament was to Otis and Adams as
hateful as the absolutism of the King, but for the
ruling class in England there was no such fear.
From the days of Charles I, the English political
1 Lord Acton, Essays on the French Revolution. 23.
> Wells, Samuel Adams, i, 21.
• Tudor, James Otis, 106.

THE BRITISH CONSTITUTION 233
development had been in the direction of absorption
of power by Parliament, a tendency to concentrate
aU power legislative and executive in that body.
Once it was elected all sovereignty was vested in it,
and the English people, or merely that small part
which enjoyed the franchise, was sovereign only
during an election. Forms still obscured that con
centration of power to such a degree that even so
profound a student as Montesquieu thought the
English political system was a nicely balanced one
with the legislative branch carefully set over against
the executive and each checking the other. The
omnipotence of Parliament, its power to alter the
very Constitution of England through its changing
laws, was a fact not fully grasped even by English
men. However, there were some forward-looking
Englishmen who did see it, and who were demanding
reform. One must not miss the important fact that
the American Revolution was politically not merely
a clash between England and America, but a civil
war, a factional war within the British Empire. It
must be noted that not only were there Americans
who defended the views of the British official middle-
class mind, as typified in Mansfield,' and Englishmen
who were liberal enough, like Pitt and Burke, to let
the colonists have their own way because that was
expedient, but other Englishmen who truly looked
at the British Constitution as did Americans. Lord
Camden, appealing to "that consummate reasoner
* Like Martin Howard, of Rhode Island, in "A Letter from a
Gentleman at Halifax" (1765), who held that a colonist might ques
tion the justice of a measure of Parliament, but not its jurisdiction.

234 CAUSES OF WAR OF INDEPENDENCE
and pohtician Mr. Locke, whose principles were
drawn from the heart of our constitution," declared
*'as a lawyer" that the Constitution was against tax
ing the Americans, intimating that a mere act of
Parliament would not change the Constitution and
thus make such taxation legal. He asserted that the
British Constitution was "grounded on the eternal
and immutable laws of nature." It was a constitu
tion "whose foundation and centre is liberty which
sends liberty to every subject" within "its ample
circumference." ' Lord Camden took this kindly
view of the Constitution as it stood, but others,
radical reformers, like John Cartwright, recognized
Parliament's absolutism and demanded reform. He
held that the Constitution ought not to be easily
changed from day to day, but "should be written
and taught to children with the Lord's Prayer and
the ten commandments." " In that way the limits
of Parliament's power over the individual would
be known and every man could stoutly assert his
own rights.
Men who thought with Lord Camden and John
Cartwright were in the minority in England, whUe
those who agreed with Adams and Otis were in the
majority in America. Such a state of affairs men
aced the unity of the empire. Though America and
England had political principles and traditions
springing from a common source, though they were
wonderfully alike in their ideals of political liberty,
and though they used common measures of social
• Hansard, Parliamentary History, xn, 178.
• Kent, The English Radicals, 70.

THE BRITISH CONSTITUTION 235
justice, yet historical chance and varied environment
created differences in methods of attaining and en
joying political liberty which proved fatal to union.
The contrast cannot be too strongly insisted upon.
Samuel Adams and many of his fellow countrymen,
on the one hand, believed that the British Consti
tution was fixed by " the law of God and nature," and
founded in the principles of law and reason so that
Parliament could not alter it,' but Lord Mansfield
and his followers, on the other hand, asserted rightly
that " the constitution of this country has been
always in a moving state, either gaining or losing
something," and "there are things even in Magna
Charta which are not constitutional now " and others
which an act of Parliament might change." Between
two such conceptions of the powers of government
compromise was difficult to attain. It was best,
doubtless, for the highest good of free institutions
in the world that each idea should freely work out
its logical destiny. Both had splendid possibilities
in their ultimate forms. In these two concepts one
detects the main difference between English govern
mental ideas and those underlying principles which
furnish the basis of the Constitution of the United
States. In England all political power is in the hands
of government, though the ministry which wields
that power is easily overthrown by a dissatisfied
people. In America, with its written constitutions
and judicial review, all government is of limited
authority, though its agents are not so quickly or
1 Wells, Samuel Adams, i, 75-97.
• Hansard, Parliamentary Debates, xvi, 197.

236 CAUSES OF WAR OF INDEPENDENCE
easily displaced when not obedient to the will of the
people. Each system has its merits, each its dis
advantages. These were the ultimate ends to which
differing ideals were carrying two great peoples, but
the immediate result of these diverging opinions was
alienation and war. These fundamental differences
in political thinking made the colonists and the
rulers of the mother country impatient and suspi
cious of each other when they began to dispute over
questions like the Navigation Acts and the Stamp
Act. Men who believed that Parliament had suc
ceeded to the King's "divine right" could see only
hysterical nonsense in the Massachusetts confession
of faith of 1767. "The natural rights of the colo
nists," it ran, "we humbly conceive to be the same
with those of all other British subjects and indeed of
all mankind. The principal of these rights is to be
'free from any superior power on earth and not to
be under the will or legislative authority of man,
but to have only the law of nature for his rule.' In
general, freedom of men under government is to
have standing fundamental rules to live by, com
mon to every one of that society and made by the
legislative power erected in it, a liberty to follow
my own will in all things where that rule prescribes
not, and not to be subject to the inconstant, un
certain, unknown, arbitrary will of another man."
Such talk was a mere flight of fancy the legal ad
visers of the Crown would say, alarming even in a
speculative book, but fuU of menace ff indulged in
by men who were responsible for the government of
British subjects in an American province. And what

THE BRITISH CONSTITUTION 237
did Christopher Gadsden mean by allusion to those
"latent though inherent rights of society, which no
climate, no time, no constitution, no contract can
ever destroy or diminish"? To a mind that vener
ated the Constitution such ideas were poisonous,
and pointed plainly to anarchy. Colony and mother
country had drffted far apart when representative
men from Massachusetts and South Carolina could
give serious expression to ideas so shocking to typi
cal members of Parliament. Such differences in
ideals were as important causes of a breaking-up
of the empire as more concrete matters like oppres
sive taxation. Daniel Webster only exaggerated the
truth when he declared that the American colonists
took arms against a preamble and fought eight years
against a declaration. There was no ruinous material
damage to America in the attempted taxation, but
as John Dickinson said, "A free people can never be
too quick in observing nor too firm in opposing the
beginnings of alteration either in form or reality,
respecting institutions formed for their security.
The first kind of alteration leads to the last." ' The
Americans did not regard liberty as a mere com
parative release from tyranny; but possessed, as
Burke said, "a fierce spirit of liberty" stronger than
in any other people of the earth, and yet it was
a spirit that accorded with English principles and
English ideas. On that very subject of taxes — in
England too — the greatest spirits, Burke reminded
Parliament, had acted and suffered," and yet the
* Lord Acton, Essays on the French Revolution, 25.
« Burke, Works, ii, 120.

238 CAUSES OF WAR OF INDEPENDENCE
people of England had but gained the right to be
taxed only by Parliament, while James Otis implied
something more when he cried — " By the laws of
God and nature, government must not raise taxes
on the property of the people without the consent of
the people or their deputies. There can be no pre
scription old enough to supercede the law of Nature
and the grant of God Almighty, who has given all
men a right to be free." ' It was because British
statesmen could not grasp the true meaning of such
words that their colonists in America, who at one
time, in Franklin's words, "had been led by a thread*
governed at the expense of only a little pen, ink and
paper," were before long to be " kept in subjection
only by forts, citadels, garrisons and armies."
' Lord Acton, Essays an the French Revolution, 24.

CHAPTER X
THE "GENIUS" OF TOWNSHEND THREATENS
TO WRECK THE EMPIRE
When the news of the Stamp Act repeal came to
America, the populace would have extracted less
joy from the kegs of beer at the "King's Arms" or
from John Hancock's "pipe of Madeira," flowing
for all comers, ff it could have known how little the
ministerial heart had changed. The people might
have feasted on the ox roasted in the fields, and have
drunk the toasts to King George "of glorious mem
ory," but they would have been merry with res
ervations had they understood that not even their
friends in Parliament, not even Pitt and Burke, op
posed as they were to offensive taxation and the use
of force in America, were willing to consider seriously
any reform of the British Constitution, nor inclined
to change the commercial policy which aimed at
making the colonies profitable to England. Un
friendly to reform, the privileged class, which then
had aU political power in England, believed with
some reason that the British governmental system
was without a rival in the present or the past of the
world. Except for the quarrels of the factions aU
went smoothly, and the holders of political power
had a complacent sense that no reform was needed,
no change desirable. How far even the most en
hghtened were from sympathy with democratic
ideas of government is revealed in a letter of Ed-

240 CAUSES OF WAR OF INDEPENDENCE
mund Burke to the Duke of Richmond: "You, ff
you are what you ought to be, are in my eyes the
great oaks that shade a country and perpetuate
your benefits from generation to generation. The
immediate power of a Duke of Richmond, or a
Marquis of Rockingham, is not so much of moment;
but if their conduct and example hand down their
principles to their successors, then their houses
become the public repositories and offices of record
for the Constitution: not like the Tower or Rolls
Chapel, where it is searched for, and sometimes in
vain, in rotten parchments under dripping perishing
walls; but in full vigor, and acting with vital energy
and power, in the character of the leading men and
natural interests of the country." ' This was govern
ment under aristocratic leadership, but certainly
not by the will of the people.
The lower classes in England were helpless in the
grasp of this privileged class, which was made up
of lawyers, wealthy landholders, merchants, and a
nobility whose ranks the other privileged classes
strove to enter. The whole enfranchised body of
citizens was a small group, and, therefore, all the
more jealous of its monopoly of the places in Parlia
ment and the lucrative offices of the realm. How
little sympathy some of its more aristocratic mem
bers had with any democratic ideas is shown in the
comment of the Duchess of Buckingham upon the
doctrines of Methodism. She found them " most re
pulsive, and strongly tinctured with impertinence
and disrespect toward their superiors, in perpetually
1 Trevelyan, The American Revolution, i. 122.

THE GENIUS OF TOWNSHEND 241
endeavouring to level all ranks and do away with
all distinctions. It is monstrous to be told that you
have a heart as sinful as the common wretches that
crawl the earth." ' The lower class, " the common
wretches," was inarticulate except for a few radical
champions, and so little enlightened or politically
experienced as to be of no value in upholding the
American cause, had they understood it. The
colonists could, therefore, look for little helpful
sympathy from that British democracy which, in
after years, was to become America's chief ally in
the struggle for the dominance of free political in
stitutions in the world.
The leadership of the privileged class in English
politics fell, soon after the repeal of the Stamp Act,
into the hands of a brilliant trifler, Charles Towns
hend. This came about through one of those
strange series of events which have led the unskep-
tical of all ages to see the intervention of some Provi
dence in human affairs. The members of the Rock
ingham Ministry had realized from the flrst that
only ff they could include Pitt in their councils could
they hope to gain the confidence of the nation. As
the time went on, it became clear that this indispen
sable member would not come to their aid. From
the moment that was clear, the "administration was
dead, only lying in state." To expect the King's
hearty support was a castle in the air, since he had
turned to them only as the last hope of escape from
the assiduous moralizing of Grenville. Between them
and him, a great guff was fixed. George III founded
* Barbeau, Life and Letters at Bath. 164.

242 CAUSES OF WAR OF INDEPENDENCE
his reign on the principle that it was the King's duty
to lead rather than to follow. George II, having
discovered in bitterness that "ministers were kings
in this country," his grandson, George III, had
tried, from the first boyish days when he began to
rule, to remove that stigma from the British Con
stitution. He would no longer be the puppet of the
party dominating in Parliament.
At first he was successful in his efforts to over
throw the power of the Old WTiigs, who had so
plagued his revered grandsire. Parliament, once
utterly subservient to the WTiig nobility, became
for the moment the obedient servant of the court.
There was formed, however, an opposition party
to the court, founded by the Duke of Newcastle,
but known as the Rockingham WTiigs. In their con
ception, government ought to be the representative
of one political party in the State, not dominated
by the Crown, but upheld by its own adherents in
Parliament. They did, it is true, try to strip power
from the King, in order to secure it for themselves,
but in this process they were aiming at that system
of government which time has made the dominant
one in democratic countries, parliamentary govern
ment. This faction and George III were each fighting
for a principle, and William Pitt would not be
drawn into the Rockingham Ministry because he
sympathized with the King, and opposed strong
party organization. Pitt still hugged the delusive
phantom of a ministry from which no man of
abUity and integrity would be excluded, the mem-

THE GENIUS OF TOWNSHEND 243
bers of which would not be listed under any fac
tional banner. Fired again by his youthful reading
of Bolingbroke, he yearned for a united country
under a " Patriot King." These he would lead to the
fuffillment of noble plans at home and abroad.
When the King's loan of the votes of his hench
men to the Opposition had made the existence of
the Rockingham Ministry no longer possible, Pitt
joined with George III to put an end to party gov
ernment. He accepted the peerage, and set about
forming a ministry in which he held only the office
of Lord Privy Seal, and into which he brought a
motley group made up of members of several politi
cal factions. Among his own friends Lord Camden
became the Lord Chancellor, Lord Shelburne took
charge of the colonial affairs, and the Duke of Graf
ton became the nominal head of the Ministry,
though Chatham said in later years that he never
"thought of that boy as the first minister of a great
nation." Of Rockingham's followers, Conway re
tained his place as Secretary of State, and against
Chatham's judgment, Charles Townshend, who had
been constant to no faction, became Chancellor of
the Exchequer. The Secretary of War was Lord
Barrington, who also had no strong political ties.
This curious assembly drew Burke's best invective.
It was "an administration so checkered, ... so
crossly indented and so whimsically dovetailed . . ,
so variously inlaid, such a piece of diversified mosaic
. . . here a bit of black stone and there a bit of white,
patriots and courtiers, . . . WTiigs and Tories, treach
erous friends and open enemies, — that it was indeed

244 CAUSES OF WAR OF INDEPENDENCE
a very curious show, but utterly unsafe to touch and
unsafe to stand on." ' This Cabinet was actually
gathered at St. James's to kiss hands in token of
their loyalty, before they learned, to their consterna
tion, that their chief was now the Earl of Chatham.
It was a blow at his prestige with the English people,
and it took him from the House of Commons, where
his presence was absolutely necessary for the success
of the Ministry. He was Samson with his locks shorn,
wrote Choiseul; only the twilight of his popularity
seemed to remain. Men could not foresee that the
Earl of Chatham was to rival the people's idol, Pitt,
"the Great Commoner."
Hardly was this strange administrative contriv
ance created, when Chatham, haff of whose Iffe was
spent in sickness and seclusion, was seized with one
of the strange fits of despondency, the penalty
which his high-strung nervous system paid for occa
sional powers beyond the reach of common men.
That and gout, and a mediaeval medical adviser,
whose every remedy probably made his patient
worse, kept him in bed when the fate of an empire
was to be decided." Such a ministry as Chatham
had formed, even though made up of persons "whose
imaginations he had subjugated," could have unity
only in his presence. No one dared face him, and
when he was in any group he stood alone. Burke,
in a burst of raillery, described him as " one so im
measurably high ... a being before whom thrones,
» Burke, Works (ed. 1869), n, 620.
' Winstanley Lord Chatham and the Whig Opposition, chap, i;
B. Williams, WiUiam Pitt. u. 241-43.

THE GENIUS OF TOWNSHEND 245
dominations, princedoms, virtues, powers, [waving
his hand over the Ministry's bench] all veil their
faces with their wings." '
When illness had eliminated Chatham, the nom
inal leader of the Ministry was the Duke of Grafton,
who embraced Pitt's ideas with religious fervor.
His early political studies, based on "the sound
system of Mr. Locke" and his true friendliness
toward America, promised a sympathetic conduct
of their affairs. His own need of a leader, however,
was shown in his words when, lately, he resigned
from the Rockingham Ministry. Under Pitt, he
said, he was "ready to take up a mattock or a
spade." It was this man who should have shoul
dered the burden of responsibility; but when Lord
Chatham could no longer leave his room, indeed,
"before this splendid orb was entirely set," to bor
row Burke's imagery, and "while the western hori
zon was in a blaze with his descending glory, on
the opposite quarter of the heavens rose another
luminary," Charles Townshend, "who for his hour
became lord of the ascendant." This man, whom
Horace Walpole thought "inferior to no man in any
age" if his faults could have been moderated, whose
ready wit, "boundless facility of repartee" and a
gfft of mimicry, compared to that of Garrick,
caused him to be courted in every society, and to be
the "spoilt child" of the House of Commons; this
man who had neither consistency nor stability of
character, in whose assertions one could have no
faith, in his promises no trust, began to assume
* Pitt, Correspondence, m, 145 (note).

246 CAUSES OF WAR OF INDEPENDENCE
authority and to undo all of Chatham's work in
two great branches of the government — in America
and the East Indies.' Betraying his chief every
hour, opposing his stand in the effort to reform the
East India Company's affairs, he suddenly defied
the whole Ministry with a proposal, as Chancellor
of the Exchequer, of a "mode by which a revenue
may be drawn from America without offence."
He was, it is true, forced to do something to raise
more money, because Dowdeswell and GrenvUle
of the Opposition had pleased the country squires
by forcing a deduction of one shilling from the four
shilling land tax. The Ministry had opposed that
reduction, had been beaten," and ought to have
resigned, but did not, and Townshend, "warm in
the sunshine of majesty," seized the opportunity
to declare before a delighted house, "I laugh at the
absurd distinction between internal and external
taxes"; and, forgetting the ringing assertion of that
distinction by his absent chief, he declared the idea
ridiculous to everybody except an American. He
seemed to think that by overthrowing the logic of
the colonists he could conquer their passion for
freedom. He had estimated four hundred thousand
pounds as the amount necessary to care for the
colonial mihtary expenses in the coming year, and
* B. Williams, William Pitt, n, 230. One looks in vain for surviving
proofs of Townshend's brilliant wit. Neither the meager reports of
his famous "Champagne Speech" nor reported conversations with
him bear out in the least his repute as a superman. Historical MSS.
Commission, Reports {Various Collections), vi, 279-81.
' Four shillings on every pound of valuation, the total income from
that source being over two miUion poimds.

THE GENIUS OF TOWNSHEND 247
the Opposition had demanded that it be cut in two
and paid entire by America.
Being now "master of the revels," he recklessly
proposed a tax — an external one, of course, since
that pleased the meticulous Americans — and a
reorganization of the customs service to make it
effective; as the plan was worked out, the duties fell
on red and white lead, on certain varieties of glass
and paper, and on teas.' With the funds to be
gained by this device, estimated at forty thousand
pounds, Townshend proposed paying the salaries
of royal officers in the colonies, thus setting free
the colonial governors and judges from the control
of American legislatures. Troublesome assemblies
would thus become superfluous, and the administra
tion of the colonies be simplified and centralized.
WTiatever remained out of this revenue would be
used to pay for the defense of the colonies.
Besides the new duties, the regulations of the
long-established colonial system were to remain for
the protection of English manufacturers and mer
chants, but their high profits on what they sold in
the protected American markets would be tapped
for the benefit of the British treasury. All of this
programme was carried through, including a board
of commissioners to be stationed in America for the
more effective execution of the Trade Acts, and so
much more efficient were the new measures for en-
1 Macdonald, Select Charters, 1606-1775, p. 323. There was a three
penny duty on tea, but at the same time a remission of the duty paid
by the East India Company at the English port to which it was
brought before being shipped to America. Thus the dutied tea under
sold smuggled tea in American markets.

248 CAUSES OF WAR OF INDEPENDENCE
forcement of the long-established Navigation Laws
that the old colonial system was reestablished, and
Townshend might be said to have reenacted aU the
navigation and trade laws, which from 1660 on had
been endured, chiefly because they were not obeyed.'
Before the last of the acts necessary to carry out
these plans was actually enacted, Townshend died
(September, 1767), leaving the Duke of Grafton to
continue as best he could to ride the whirlwind which
had been conjured up by his reckless colleague.
Long afterwards, Lord Lyttleton pointed out in
the House of Lords (March 5, 1776) that it was
under Grafton's Ministry that the act giving the
first offense to the Americans was made; that his
own hands had fired America, and that he presided
over the treasury and urged Parliament to vote for
these offensive measures. " He forgets the grand
edifice which he has built and tries now to destroy
his own work." To this Grafton answered: "This
young lord was only yesterday admitted to the
mysteries of this chamber, and he does not know
the secrets of the cabinet. It was under my ad
ministration that the bill received the sanction of
Parliament. But it was deception, and fraud which
threw me blindly into this mistaken undertaking.
It was represented in the cabinet that this tax was
the least onerous for the Americans to make their
public contributions. It was their choice, and to
their taste. As soon as my eyes were opened, I urged
the king to revoke it; but the majority silenced me,
and stopped all my efforts to suppress this evU." *
1 Channing, Hist, ofthe U.S., ui, 91.
* Archives des Affaires Etrangdres, Angleterre. vol. 515, no. 4.

THE GENIUS OF TOWNSHEND 249
Nevertheless, it was, perhaps, now within Graf
ton's power to have reorganized the Ministry on
liberal lines, and to have reversed the fatal policy
left in Townshend's legacy. But he was too timid,
and so eager to please that he would do wrong
rather than offend. His frequent threats to resign
suggest, however, that he would gladly have run
away from political dangers. It was at this time,
too, that he began to "postpone the world" for his
hounds, a horse-race, or Nancy Parsons, whose at
tractions Gainsborough has made it quite possible
for posterity to understand. Instead of increasing
the Ministry's liberal character after it passed un
der his direction (September, 1767), he permitted
changes which constantly tended to weaken that
character. Lord North succeeded to Townshend's place, and
Shelburne's office was divided, leaving the fate of
colonial affairs to Lord Hillsborough. Before the
end of 1768, both Chatham and Shelburne had re
signed, leaving Grafton the nominal as weU as actual
head. All this tended to swell the influence of those who,
descanting "upon the folly and wickedness of the
American incendiaries," would force American sub
ordination to Parliament. Moreover, the turn of
affairs having revealed to George III the failure of
his experiment with a powerful prime minister, who
was expected to unite all factions under a " Patriot
King," he now tried seizing the reins of power him
seff. His personal following was growing, and with
its aid George III began to direct the march of poUt-

250 CAUSES OF WAR OF INDEPENDENCE
ical affairs until the influence of the Crown assumed
alarming proportions. George III and his minister,
using pensioners and placemen, bought with the
nation's money and offices, bent the House of Com
mons to the royal wUl for some ficfteen years. Given
an honest Parliament, whose vote was not deter
mined by "a band of hired men," paid to support
the King, the truckling ministers who stood by
George III might have found obedient majorities
hard to maintain.'
WTien the news of the Townshend Acts reached
America, it was revealed to the over-sanguine co
lonial mind that the repeal of the Stamp Act had
implied no concessions to American political phi
losophy, no acknowledgment of the principle that
taxation of the colonies was even inexpedient. It
had meant nothing else to the official British mind
but that the Stamp Act itseff was a mistake. The
accompanying modifications of the Sugar Act im
plied only a conviction that the Government had
gone a little too far into trade regulations. Of course
there would be new taxes not so objectionable, and
efforts would be made to render more effective the
old trade restrictions, so profitable to British traders
and manufacturers. It was now clear that the British
Parliament meant every word of its Declaratory
Act, which asserted Parliament's right to pass laws
to bind the colonies "in all cases whatsoever."
Not only was the American's purse touched, but
his pride and his passion for seff-government, now
' Hansard, Parliamentary History, xxx, 789. Grey's defense of a
petition to reform Representation. Pari. Reg., xxn, 147.

THE GENIUS OF TOWNSHEND 251
struggled for, and on the whole enjoyed, during
nearly one hundred and fifty years. John Dickin
son wrote to Mr. James Otis (December 5, 1767)
that "Massachusetts must first kindle the Sacred
Flame, that on such occasions must warm and illu
minate the Continent." The colonies, he urged,
"must instantly, vigorously and unanimously unite
themselves ... to maintain the Liberty with which
Heaven itseff hath made us free." ' Men in those
days wrote in exalted phrases that betokened their
high spirit.
Dickinson himseff, the first of whose famous
"Farmer's Letters" had appeared three days before
writing the above letter, did as much to kindle that
flame as any one individual in America. His legal
training in the Middle Temple, one of the Inns of
Court in London, had given him a firm foundation
in English common and statute law." It was there,
and not so much on natural law, that he and sim
ilarly trained Americans based their arguments
against the British right to tax without their con
sent.' Charles Cotesworth Pinckney, who though
constant for American liberty was a conservative,
Edward Rutledge, who opposed independence to
the last, and Daniel Dulany, who became a Loyalist
after being the greatest opponent of the Stamp Act,
' Warren-Adams Letters (Mass. Hist. Soc. Collections). Lxxn, 8-4.
* C. J. Stille, Life and Times of John Dickinson. 21-30.
• Ibid.. 26. There were between 1760 and the close of the Revolu
tion forty-seven from South Carolina, twenty-one from Virginia,
sixteen from Maryland, eleven from Pennsylvania, five from New
York, and only one or two from the New England States who wew
trained in the Middle Temple. "

252 CAUSES OF WAR OF INDEPENDENCE
were, like Dickinson, trained in the Middle Temple.
These men, while shy of revolution and of glitter
ing generalities about immutable laws of nature,
were vigorous advocates of constitutional resistance
within the lines of English law. Dickinson, having
written some able and convincing pamphlets at the
time of the Stamp Act, began now to issue a series
of "Letters from a Farmer." With an Arcadian sim
plicity, sure to appeal to a population which was
over ninety per cent rural in its character, he des
canted upon his modest prosperity, his library, his
two or three friends of "ability and learning," and
the knowledge of history and "the laws and con
stitution" of his country which he gained therefrom.
Assured that the "sacred cause" of liberty "ought
to be espoused by every man on every occasion, to
the utmost of his power," he submitted arguments,
not always consistent, at times even contradictory,
but based on English law and English traditions,
and always good enough to convince the colonial
mind that Parliament's imposition of duties, not
merely for the regulation of trade, but for raising
money for imperial purposes, was "an innovation"
and ought to be resisted. If Parliament could tax
American imports, he warned the colonists it could
overtax any colonial articles, which for selfish rea
sons England did not wish manufactured in Amer
ica, and that done "the tragedy of American lib
erty is finished." He reminded his fellow country
men that the colonies were "separated from the rest
of the world, and firmly bound together by the same
rights, interests and dangers. . . . They form one

THE GENIUS OF TOWNSHEND 253
political body of which each colony is a member."
This expressed an idea of which the colonists were
daily becoming more conscious, the inherent unity
of interest which distance from Europe, common
political institutions, contiguous territory, and not
wholly dissimilar conditions had created. Moreover,
he asserted, and was believed, "we are only as much
dependent on Great Britain as one perfectly free
people can be on another." These ideas were read
from Maine to Georgia and warmly approved by
nearly everybody except royal officers and their
henchmen. Legislative protest and literary argument there
was in plenty, but also actual measures taken to
awaken the British Ministry to a sense of the harm
they had done to American interests. Such action
against the Townshend measures appeared earliest
in New England where the cumulative effects of all
the trade restrictions and burdens on commerce
were first felt. New York was not far behind in re
taliatory measures; Philadelphia followed at the
Quaker City's well-known leisurely pace; while the
South did not give support until 1769. The planters
of that section were less seriously affected than the
northern merchants. It was these merchants who
were most vitaUy touched, and who were in a posi
tion to do something that would tell. As practical
men they did not stake much on appeals to British
reason. The best argument, they were sure from
past experience, was that of profit or loss. Take
away the money made in English trade with Amer
ica, and make it clear that the loss was the con-

254 CAUSES OF WAR OF INDEPENDENCE
sequence of unwise acts of Parliament, and true
penitence would follow. A hurt to English trade
was a spur to English reason. Non-importation of
British goods was a means of awakening the English
conscience. Power to starve meant power to con
vince. Therefore, the effort to use the boycott is the
big fact in the Revolutionary movement before the
Continental Congress.'
The first move to this end was not taken by the
merchants, but by the town meetings in Massa
chusetts. In the fall of 1767 hard times had come,
men talked of high war taxes and "unfavorable
balance of trade." "Deluges of bankruptcies";
"alarming scarcity of money"; "stagnation of
trade" which was loaded with restrictions, and
general distress called for efforts to reduce the cost
of living."
In the town meetings, Boston leading, agree
ments not to purchase stated lists of imported goods
were made and signed. Home manufactures, espe
ciaUy of glass and paper, were to be patronized by
the signers, and all agreed to be frugal as to mourn
ing. Though tea was not included, the ladies were
urged in the press to give up luxurious and en
ervating Bohea, which they were assured was the
source of many modem complaints; "tremblings,
apoplexies and consumptions." This they later
agreed to do, though the men, they hoped the public
would notice, did not give up their wine and rum
in the taverns.* Ultimately fifteen hundred families
• Schlesinger, The Colonial Merchants, 106.
» Ibid., 106. » Ibid.. 107-10.

THE GENIUS OF TOWNSHEND 255
in Boston had given up tea, and Harvard students
also gave up that form of stimulant. Soon the press
began to tell of the saving of rags and the making of
paper, and of theses at Harvard printed on the
domestic product. Efforts were made to revive the
linen industry, and the Boston town meeting sub
sidized free spinning schools to help the poor. Spin
ning became such a social diversion that Peter Oliver
sourly commented, "the female spinners kept on
spinning six days of the week, and on the seventh
the Parsons took their turns and spun out their
prayers and sermons to a long thread of Politics."
Some progress was actually made toward industrial
independence, but complete success could not be
reached because capital was shy, fearing lest such
enterprises should collapse when trade should be
renewed.' The Boston plan spread to Rhode Island
and Connecticut, but stopped there, and had no
vogue outside of New England, where, indeed, it
failed to relieve hard times.
The next effort was aimed more at coercing Eng
land than cutting the high cost of living. It was an
effort of the northern merchants at a non-importa
tion league. These merchants were concerned not
merely with the Townshend Acts, but they hoped
to restore the old conditions of trade before 1764.
This aim they never abandoned, until by 1770 they
became alarmed by the violence of the mob, an
awakened seff-conscious group of radicals, whose
fires of discontent had been fanned by the agitation
against the offensive acts of Parliament." Even
» Schlesinger, The Colonial Merchants. 122-23. • Ibid., 91.

256 CAUSES OF WAR OF INDEPENDENCE
strong men, ff they feared the tyranny of mob rule
more than the tyranny of Parliament, were soon
cured of disorderly methods. The gentle memorial
and the insinuating boycott would do, if it did not
lead to the riot; when that began, the merchants
realized that they had overreached themselves in
summoning up a genius of sedition, the unprivileged
classes, that could not be conjured back again. The
merchant differed from the other groups of malcon
tents, in that he valued the empire and did not desire
to disturb its foundations. Reform and not rebellion
was his aim.
At first, however, they did not foresee such an
outcome, and the Boston merchants hesitated about
a boycott of English goods only because they feared
that New York and Philadelphia would not join
them. Spurred by the " Letters of a Farmer, " who
reminded them of the success of non-importation in
the time of the Stamp Act, an effort was made
(March, 1768) to create a non-importation league.
At the "British Coffee House" in Boston, they drew
up, and a big majority signed, an agreement not to
import from England for one year, ff New York and
Philadelphia would make a like agreement.'
It was easier to get the merchants to sign such
promises, because they were made desperate by the
hardship to trade, legal or illegal, introduced by the
new "American Board of Commissioners of the
Customs" whose jurisdiction ranged from Florida
to Davis Straits. The whole customs service was
remodeled and furbished up with new and more
' Schlesinger, The Colonial Merchants, 114-15.

THE GENIUS OF TOWNSHEND 257
modem business methods. There was a horde of
new employees, mostly Britishers and not colonists,
who were looked upon as a swarm of office-holders
fattening upon the fruits of colonial toil. Peculation
and laziness were reduced and a unity brought into
the whole customs machine. Smuggling was much
reduvved, but at a cost of putting colonial commerce
to great expense and trouble. There were new fees,
new bonds, new certificates. Every master of a
vessel must have a list or "Cocket" accounting for
every item in the cargo. "Writs of Assistance"
were more generally used, the coast patrol was im
proved, and smaller vessels than were used in the
past pried into every creek or inlet. The burdens
were so increased that trade of certain kinds was
stopped altogether. By this pestiferous efficiency,
however, thirty thousand pounds yearly was col
lected for six years, at an annual cost of thirteen
thousand pounds.'
ImpeUed by like experiences, and by the recent
action of the Boston merchants, the traders of New
York met in AprU, 1768, and signed an agreement
not to import British goods after October 1st, ff
Boston would abide by its late action, and PhUa
delphia would join the league. Boston did not like
the delay of six months, but remained firm for non
importation. PhUadelphia merchants, however, not
suffering the trade embarrassments to a like extent,
and unmoved by the pleas of their fellow townsman,
Dickinson, did not take the proposed league seri
ously. From this indifference to the Continental
> Channing, Hist, of the U.S.. m. 90-91,

258 CAUSES OF WAR OF INDEPENDENCE
cause, they could not be moved and the projected
league coUapsed.'
The Boston merchants now took up the question
of independent action, not contingent on agreement
by other ports. A new covenant (August 1, 1768)
bound the signers, all but sixteen merchants, to
cease ordering goods, and to discontinue all imports
with certain needful exceptions for one year after
January 1, 1769." Other trading towns in Massa
chusetts emulated this action. The New York
merchants on August 27th signed a compact with
the same general aim, and the retailers signed a
separate agreement, neither to buy nor sell goods
brought in contrary to the merchants' covenant.
Even the smugglers promised not to bring in goods
from Hamburg or Holland.' On September 1st, the
New York merchants sent a copy of their agreements
to the Philadelphia importers. There the great
Quaker merchants were masters of the situation, and
were resolved not to suspend trade until petitions
and prayers to the King and Parliament, lately sent
by the provincial assembly, were proven vain.
WTien for their tameness they were denounced in
the public press as "selfish, dastardly merchants,"
a few of them were stung to action which, however,
came to nothing but a new and mild memorial to the
merchants and manufacturers of Great Britain,
merely warning them that importations must be
' Schlesinger, The Colonial Merchants. 116-19.
' Ibid., 120. Later changed to such a time as there should be a
repeal of the Townshend duties.
' Ibid.. 124; Becker, Politiccd Parties in the Province of New York,
163.

THE GENIUS OF TOWNSHEND 259
curtaUed if relief did not soon come.' Again they
waited, only to learn that the London merchants
could do nothing, and not untU February, 1769, did
pubhc opinion drive them to action. Then there
was merely a cancellation of orders under certain
conditions, but, March 10th, a great majority of the
merchants agreed to accept no goods shipped after
April 1st until the Townshend Acts should be re
pealed.* All who refused to sign were to be "dis-
coim tenanced by all lawful and prudent measures,"
a threat well within the proprieties in the " City of
Brotherly Lo ve . " Gathering spirit with momentum,
they later extended the principle of the boycott and
stigmatized all violators as "enemies of the Liberties
of America." By the spring of 1769, therefore, the
three great northern ports had non-importation
agreements, Philadelphia limping into the arrange
ment some six months later.
It would have been easy for these agreements to
become a mere "scrap of paper." So much de
pended upon good faith that opponents had only to
whisper suspicions, and rumor, with its thousand
tongues, would spread them. There was the sneer
that the plan only enabled the merchant to oblige
one "to take old moth-eaten clothes that had been
rotting in the shop for years, and to pay a monstrous
price for them." Was it not better to pay the
Townshend duties forever than to pay the shameful
prices thus exacted? The merchants with empty
' Schlesinger, The Colonial Merchants, 126-27.
• Ibid., 138. Some twenty-two articles were excepted for good
reasons.

260 CAUSES OF WAR OF INDEPENDENCE
warehouses questioned the honesty of those who stUl
had goods to sell. Boston suspected New York of
taking advantage by delay. New York retorted
that Boston was more active in "resolving what it
ought to do than in doing what it had resolved."
In Boston the Governor and customs officers were
suspected of exerting "every nerve to render
abortive the non-importation agreement." ^ They
certainly had in their service a veritable marplot in
the person of John Mein of the "Boston Chronicle."
Having access apparently to the customs records,
he published from time to time very meticulous
accounts of large quantities of goods imported by
signers of the agreements. Though the committee
appointed by the merchant body to inspect the
official cargo lists assured the public that Mein was
twisting the facts to suit his purpose, yet he created
an atmosphere of suspicion which was hard to dispel.
It did no good to call him a "conceited empty Nod
dle of a most profound Blockhead" if he made some
people believe that even John Hancock kept "a
number of vessels running to London and back, fuU
freighted, getting rich by receiving freight on goods
made contraband by the colonies." " The mer
chants' committees spread broadcast certain hand-
biUs urging all to boycott the stores of a smaU
group, including the sons of the Lieutenant-Gover
nor, who had refused to sign the agreements, but
John Mein published a list of signers, "a few grave,
well disposed Dons," whom he accused with great
• Schlesinger, The Colonial Merchants, 15T. * Ibid.. 168.

THE GENIUS OF TOWNSHEND 261
circumstance of clandestine importation of the very
goods they were sworn to boycott. His columns were
open also to foes of the merchants' committees.
Should we not blush to talk of liberty? cried one.
"Have we not established courts of inquisition in
the colonies unparalleled in any age or nation?
WTiere . . . was there ever an instance of men, free
men, being summoned by illegal and mock authority
to answer for actions as offences which are war
ranted by the laws of the land, the law of nations
and the law of God? " ^
Maddened by such opposition, it was finally voted
by the "patriotic" merchants that the offensive
editor, John Mein, and the merchants who refused
to join in the boycott of English merchants, "de
serve to be driven to the obscurity from which they
originated, and to the Hole of the Pit from whence
they were digged." This condemnation was printed
on handbills and pasted over mercantile chimney
places and sent far and wide through the province.*
Mein was at last mobbed and his Iffe endangered as
the best answer to his stubborn arguments.
WTien at last the whole body of Boston merchants,
more than a thousand persons, marched in solemn
and orderly array to the stores of those who refused
to join the boycott, the Lieutenant-Governor de
nounced their house-to-house marchings en masses
as conducive to terror, and dangerous in tendency.
His councU, by a bare majority agreed.' As a result
of the boycott, Hutchinson wrote that contraband
' Schlesmger, The Colonial Merchants. 170-71.
« Ibid., 177. • Ibid., 176-77.

262 CAUSES OF WAR OF INDEPENDENCE
tea from Holland may be lawfuUy sold, whUe "it's
a high crime to sell any from England." It was clear
that the merchants alone dominated public opinion.
In general, it may be said that they were earnest,
and against heavy odds got good results.'
Customs records do not differentiate prohibited
articles from those allowed, but available figures
show a decrease of British imports of almost fifty
per cent. They dropped from £430,806 to £223,694.
Hutchinson admitted that the boycott was well
enforced; Samuel Adams declared that the mer
chants "have punctually abode by their Agree
ment." "
Non-importation in New York differed little from
that in Boston, except that the merchants' commit
tee had the most trouble to prevent clandestine im
portation from Pennsylvania. The prohibition was
very weU enforced in New York. The radical ele
ment there was impatient with the deliberate meas
ures of the merchants. Mass meetings threatened
personal injury to violators, and one was made to
repent on a scaffold erected near Liberty Pole.
Though the merchants grew fearful of violence and
"mobbish proceedings," nevertheless mob action
made dubious traders beware.
In Philadelphia the opposition to non-importation,
when once adopted, was very mUd. Alexander
Mackrabie, a visitor there in 1769, amusingly de
scribes one effort to evade the vigilance of the com
mittee: "a discontented Gentleman made a Purchase
of a Cheshire Cheese last week; and another Mal-
» Schlesinger, The Colonial Merchants, 167, 178-79. » Ibid., 182-83.

THE GENIUS OF TOWNSHEND 263
content thought to drown his Resentments in a
Hogshead of EngUsh Entire Butt. These Delicacies
happened misfortunately to be shipt from Europe
after the Resolutions on this side had transpired, and
of consequence Messrs. of the Committee took the
liberty to interfere. The Purchasers made a gallant
stand in defence of their bellies, but their Opposition
was vain. Hard words and bad Names flew about
in support of Liberty. They cursed and swore,
kicked and cuffed and pulled Noses; but the Ca
tastrophe was, that the prisoners were regaled with
one and t'other — I mean the cheese and porter
— qualified with two doUars' worth of Bread. They
have sent away a ship loaded with Malt today.
Nobody would either buy or store it." ^ Besides
this and a few other serio-comic efforts at evasion,
there was little antagonism. Objection was made to
West Indian traders keeping up a profitable busi
ness, but the dissatisfaction took the form of efforts
to modify the boycott or repeal it. Though the
monthly Quaker meeting advised Friends to have
nothing to do with non-importation measures, many
prominent Quakers did not heed the advice.* There
was no mob violence in Philadelphia and none was
needed. British imports to Pennsylvania fell in
value from £441,829 in 1768 to £134,881 in 1770,
which is the best record in any of the continental
colonies.*
» The Francis Letters, 1. 107.
' Schlesinger, The Colonial Merchants. 187-88; 191-9*.
' Ibid.. 149-55; 193. The minor colonies. New Hampshire and
Rhode Island, observed the non-importation agreement indifferently,
but New Jersey, Delaware, and Connecticut did well in that matter.
Ibid., 194-96.

264 CAUSES OF WAR OF INDEPENDENCE
In the South the economic unrest was not so
plainly a result of the Townshend Acts, and non
importation movements were slower and different in
character. It was the planters there who were in
trouble. Their habit of ordering goods from Eng
land, through a merchant who gave credit and took
paper promises to pay with next year's crops, had
left them, in these times, deeply in debt. The
merchants, Scotchmen or Englishmen who marketed
at home these southern staples, tobacco, rice, or
indigo, had been little affected by the new duties,
and it was the planters who finally grew desperate
over their losing struggle to pay their debts. Their
non-importation associations, aimed at cutting
expenses and giving a blow to these creditors, came
tardily, in 1769, and were resisted by the merchant
class.' In Virginia the movement was initiated by
G^eorge Washington, and in May, 1769, he and other
members of the legislature, just dissolved by the
Governor for questioning Parliament's right to tax
them, met in a private house and formed an asso
ciation. They pledged themselves not to use the
dutied goods except cheap paper, and not to import
a long Ust of luxuries, nor to buy slaves brought in
after November 1st." It was estimated that Great
Britain lost not less than £300,000 by a like provi
sion as to slaves in South Carolina. This agreement
nearly aU but the merchant class signed. In Mary
land such a movement had already partly succeeded,
and shortly after was crowned with success.
* Schlesinger, The Colonial Merchants. 135.
' Ibid., 136-37, 207. C. R. Lingley, The Transition in Virginia,
J6-67; Rowland, Life of George Mason, i, 143.

THE GENIUS OF TOWNSHEND 265
In South Carolina the strong mercantile class,
with its face set against non-importation, was met
and vanquished by the workingmen led by Chris
topher Gadsden, a merchant and planter, but a born
radical. The associations in the northern provinces,
and urgent letters from the merchants there, plead
ing for united action, had not moved the merchants
of Charleston, but early in 1769, agitation for use
of economic pressure began in the local press.
Gadsden pointed out that the importers of European
goods were strangers in the provinces, many having
only a few years' residence. To expect them to act
was folly; let the freeholders and fixed settlers take
the lead.' A non-importation agreement was offered,
which the mechanics of Charleston approved at a
meeting under the Liberty Tree, July 4, 1769, and
it was signed by two hundred and thirty persons.
The body of merchants frowned on this affair, and
denounced the burden laid upon them as " more
grievous than ever was conceived by the most ar
bitrary minister of the most despotic King." At a
meeting they adopted less rigorous regulations,
hoping to moderate the mechanics' demands, but
class feeling rose daUy until the merchants agreed
to a joint committee, which arranged terms satis
factory to all, but which represented a victory for
Gadsden's followers.* The agreement was to remain
in force until aU the Parliamentary Acts of regula
tion were repealed. In Georgia, where there was a
like situation, the merchants made a determined
effort to head off the popular movement; but in
» Schlesmger, The Colonial Merchants, 141-43. ' Ibid., 144-46.

266 CAUSES OF WAR OF INDEPENDENCE
vain, for the terms finaUy agreed upon were Uttle
different from those adopted in South Carohna two
months earlier. North Carolina came at a snail's
pace behind them all, but at last under the leadership
of Cornelius Harnett the "Sons of Liberty" defied
Governor Tryon, and adopted a non-importation
association weU in keeping with that of her neigh
bors. In spite of the success on paper in the southern
colonies, imports from England actually increased
in the years 1769 and 1770, Virginia importing most
of all. There were no trading centers wherein prying
committees could discipline unfaithful merchants.
The dispersion of population in a planting province
made it impossible for even the eyes of Argus to
detect evasions of the covenants. Enforcement could
not be made a part of the daily routine, as in Boston,
New York, or Philadelphia. Even George Washing
ton was lax when it came to literal obedience.'
It was futile anywhere in the South unless merchants
and factors had their hearts in the undertaking.
Georgia's agreement, once made, was speedily
ignored. In North Carolina, too, it seems to have
been disregarded.* In South Carolina the greatest
opponent of non-importation was Henry Drayton
who later went over wholly to the revolutionary
cause. He opposed on legal and constitutional
grounds, denouncing the threats against non-signers
as "Popish methods of gaining converts to their
religion by fire and faggot. To stigmatize a man . . .
with the infamous name of an enemy to his country
* Schlesinger, The Colonial Merchants. 197-98. ' Ibid.. 208-09.

THE GENIUS OF TOWNSHEND 267
can be legally done," he declared, "by no authority
but by that of the voice of the Legislature." Gadsden,
who was denounced by Drayton as a "Cromwell,"
replied that whenever the people's rights are shame
fully invaded by a corrupt Parliament, mankind
exerts " those latent, though inherent rights of Society
whicli no climate, no time, no constitution, no contract
can ever destroy or diminish." Gadsden had the
backing of the community, and Drayton's opposi
tion came to naught.' Besides the fact that two
thirds of the committee of enforcement were me
chanics and planters,* the success of non-importa
tion in Charleston was assured by the bitter resent
ment aroused by the local agents of the British
Government, both in the customs house and in the
Court of Vice-Admiralty created by the Townshend
Acts. Henry Laurens, conservative as nature had
made him, was won to the side of opposition to
England by his maddening experiences (1767-68)
with these men, whom he likened to the "miscreants
who were driven out of the Temple by Jesus with
a scourge of small cords." One collector, Laurens
declared, "had caused more vexation to the mer
chants in six months . . . than all of the king's
officers since the beginning of the colony." Such
officers, he added, "are the most likely instruments
to affect disunion between the mother country and
her American offspring." * Unfortunately for the
' Schlesinger, The Colonial Merchants, 204-05.
' There were thirteen planters, thirteen merchants, and thirteen
mechanics on the committee to execute the non-importation associa
tion. Wallace, Henry Laurens, 124.
» Wallace, Henry Laurens, 138, 141. 143, 148, 149.

268 CAUSES OF WAR OF INDEPENDENCE
British Empire, there were too many such insects
stinging the colonists to madness. It is noteworthy
that South Carolina's boycott was to remain in force
until the customs board should be abolished and the
vice-admiralty jurisdiction in cases of violation of
the customs laws be annulled.
Hardly had the South swung into the non-impor
tation ranks when a number of conditions began
to threaten the whole organization. First of all, the
merchants who were warm enough for economic
reform when their pockets were touched, cooled
rapidly when they discovered that the "Sons of
Liberty" were looking upon them as standard-
bearers leading into battle for constitutional rights.'
Repeal of irritant trade acts was all very well, but
the rights of man and a reform of the imperial sys
tem, won by mob action or even, perhaps, at the
camion's mouth, did not make so great an appeal
to men of property. Moreover, the real burden of
non-importation, after the first advantage reaped
in high prices, fell upon the merchants of the com
mercial provinces, who were nevertheless denounced
as "extortioners" ff they raised prices to offset de
clining business. Alexander Mackrabie wrote from
Philadelphia, in January of 1770, that the Americans
had overshot the mark. "The Stores are empty;
those Persons who have Goods lately imported, and
in the Possession of the Committees are discon
tented, and will soon grow clamorous. Rogues are
making their advantage, and the Quakers grow cold
and plead Conscience. Here are few Manufacturers
* Schlesmger, The Colonial Merchants, 210.

THE GENIUS OF TOWNSHEND 269
to supply the deficiency of Goods from Europe." '
They were further afflicted by a decrease in the ex
port trade to England which began to be felt in
1769.* Finally in May, 1770, came the news,
presaged nearly a year before, that Parliament had
repealed the Townshend duties except the tax on
tea, which was kept because George III held that
" there must always be one tax to keep up the right."
The Massachusetts merchants, with their prosper
ity bound up with unrestricted foreign commerce,
alone remained firm for the principle. They had,
indeed, been pushing (1769) for more radical
measures which should be aimed at the whole re
strictive system, but had received no encouragement
from New York or Philadelphia.'
Albany, Providence, Portsmouth, and Newport
now made a premature break from the agreement
into which they had been dragged "like an ox to the
slaughter." Threatened with boycott by the great
trading centers, they wavered back and forth for a
time, and the fate of non-importation was left with
Boston, New York, and Philadelphia. Boston stood
like a rock, but in the other great cities there were
conflicting views. The great merchants believed
half a loaf better than none, and would accept the
remedial act. The other classes, workingmen and
tradesmen, with little property to lose, and animated
by their radical leaders with visions of a new heaven
' The Francis Letters, i, 110.
' Schlesmger, The Colonial Merchants, 211-12. There is an excellent
table of statistics for the exports from the colonies in 1771 in Chan
ning, Hist, of the U.S., m, 116.
• Schlesinger, The Colonial Merchants, 132-33.

270 CAUSES OF WAR OF INDEPENDENCE
and a new earth in the poUtical world, were for in
sistence on principle and a complete repeal of the
Townshend duties.
PhUadelphia, supported by Franklin's advice to
hold on, might have stood firm, but New York, the
real pillar of the mercantile edifice, fell under the
assaults of Mammon, the interests of the great
merchants. The two factions struggling for mastery
there resorted at last to a house-to-house canvass
which on the face of the results seemed to indicate
a desire to resume trade with England. WTiile the
decision was still in doubt came the report that Par
liament, to relieve New York's money stringency,
had authorized the issue of £120,000 legal tender
paper money. Against that good news and the
rumor that Boston was importing on the sly, the
utmost efforts of Isaac Sears, the ultra-radical
leader of the mechanics, were in vain. Even his
rioting followers could not frighten the merchants,
and importation, except for tea, was resumed.'
It was of no use for James Madison and his feUow
students at Princeton to assemble in black gowns
and witness the burning by the hangman of the
letter that brought the news, or for the Philadelphia
mass meeting to condemn this "sordid and wanton
Defection," or for the meeting in Faneuil HaU to
declare "its abhorrence and detestation." The pa
triotic indignation of all the other provinces could
not change the fact that the great piUar of non
importation was prone. Even Boston could not
preserve the Spartan spirit. "Persons in trade,"
» Schlesmger, The Colonial Merchants, 222-27.

THE GENIUS OF TOWNSHEND 271
wrote Andrew Eliot, "were weary, and, as interest
is generally their god, began to be furious." A last
hope lay in an effort to get an inter-colonial congress
of merchants, but the Boston invitation to Phila
delphia arrived after the Quaker City merchants
had joined the general rout.' After that defection
in the commercial provinces the associations in the
southern provinces crumbled. In South Carolina,
the boycott had caused the price of rice to decline,
and this loss hastened the decision to follow the
North in resuming importations except tea and any
other dutied articles. In Virginia, too, the feeble
non-importation spirit flickered out.
Though the English merchants and manufacturers
suffered loss of trade, there was little real distress
caused by the American boycott. The Bishop of
St. Asaph must have exaggerated when he declared
that during the non-importation measures "We
suffered more by our loss of trade with them, than
the wealth flowing in from India was able to recom
pense." War in Europe, coincident with falling of
exports to the colonies, increased the demand for
wool goods in Germany. Bountiful crops in England
lowered the price of foodstuffs to the workingman.
Though the British merchants presented a petition to
Parliament to repeal the Townshend Acts, Franklin
thought they did it reluctantly, and their action
seems to have "furnished merely the occasion, not
the cause, for Lord North's motion to repeal all the
Townshend duties save the tea tax." * The partial
» Schlesinger, The Colonial Merchants, 228-32.
' Force, American Archives (4th Ser.), I, 99; Schlesinger, Tht
Colonial Merchants. 237-39.

272 CAUSES OF WAR OF INDEPENDENCE
repeal came only in consequence of a wish to correct
a law founded upon a principle which had proved
harmful to British commercial interests.
North had come to the head of the Ministry as a
result of the resignation of Lord Chatham late in
1768, and of the Duke of Grafton, early in 1770.
Chatham had slowly fought his way back to health,
while sadly watching his subordinates betray, as it
seemed to him, the trust he had put in them. Be
sides permitting the colonial dispute to be revived,
Grafton was in the act of intriguing to compel the
resignation from the Ministry of Lord Shelburne,
one of the only two men there who still possessed
Chatham's confidence, when that greatest and most
popular statesman of his generation resigned and
was accompanied by Lord Shelburne.' From that
moment Grafton's position was precarious; he never
knew when Chatham would use aU his splendid
powers to overthrow the strangely metamorphosed
ministry that had once been his own. Not untU
January of 1770 did the bolt strike, when Chatham,
who had not attended Parliamentary debates for
three years, rose to answer the Speech from the
Throne, and called upon the "descendants of the
Barons of Runnymede to emulate their predecessors
and right the wrongs of a distressed nation." *
Pointing out the evils of the time, and the universal
discontent, he moved a resolution which was an
indictment of the Ministry, and he was supported
' Alvord, The Mississippi Valley in British Politics, u, 14-16;
Winstanley, Chatham and the Whig Opposition, 235-36.
' Chatham and the Whig Opposition, 293-94.

THE GENIUS OF TOWNSHEND 273
by Lord Camden, who had reluctantly remained
with Grafton. That act doomed Camden, and the
effort to replace him ending in the tragedy which
closed the life of Charles Yorke, who had been
chosen for the place, Grafton himself resigned.
Drubbed as he had been for months by Junius, "the
Mars of Malcontents," about whom everybody was
asking with Mackrabie, "Who the devil can he be?"
Grafton slunk with relief out of the light that beats
upon a prime minister. With Grafton's fall, the
JNIinistry should have fallen and Parliament been
dissolved, but George III, in his hate of the men
who had sought to thwart his will, refusing to turn
to Chatham or Rockingham, upheld his Ministry
against the attacks of the Opposition and appealed
to Lord North to rescue him from his peril by be
coming the head of the Ministry. He did his mas
ter's bidding, not only then, but for a dozen years
thereafter, at the cost of dismembering the British
Empire, and the eternal blackening of his own repu
tation.

CHAPTER XI
MEASURES THAT RAISED REBELLION BUT DID
NOT QUELL IT
The Acts for which Townshend was responsible had
not been solely concerned with matters of commerce
nor was the reaction against them confined to a
merchants' boycott. One of the most offensive pro
visions of the Act which laid duties on certain ar
ticles was that the revenue derived was to defray
"the charge of the administration of justice, and
the support of civil government, in such provinces
where it shall be found necessary" and to pay the
expenses of defending the colonies.' So sure were the
Ministry of success of their plan for taxing America
to pay its own officers that PownaU, explaining the
Duke of Grafton's purpose, wrote Hutchinson, "It
is meant that you shall have a handsome salary
fixed as Chief Justice, as soon as the American re
venue shall create a fund." This purpose Governor
Bernard says became known to Otis and Adams who
informed the Massachusetts Legislature that Hutch
inson was a pensioner of Great Britain and that
he actually had a warrant from the Lords of the
Treasury for £200 a year out of the new duties."
There is, wrote a Loyalist, "no absurdity in politics
however gross or impossible to be true, but meets
with entire assent" as soon as published.' If judges,
* Pickering, Statutes at Large, xxvn, 605-12.
* Warren-Adams Letters, p. 7.
» British Museum, Egerton MSS., 2659 F 141.

MEASURES THAT RAISED REBELLION 275
and perhaps governors too, asked the radicals, were
to be paid out of funds extorted from the colonies
by ParUament, where was their self-government?
Josiah Quincy reminded his readers of the words of
that silly tyrant. King James, "Let me make the
judges, I care not who makes the laws" — and asked,
"Could Nero wish more?" The fear of thus being
robbed of the control of the officers appointed over
them aroused that eternal vigilance which had
marked the long colonial struggle to attain self-rule.
Having learned from the EngUsh Parliament how
to starve an executive into obedien.ce, they had no
mind to be deprived by Parliament of that useful
weapon. If a governor should come not to have to
"begg his daily bread from a hard hearted assem
bly," he might become a mere tool of the British
Ministry, and that, as Samuel Adams expressed it
in the Massachusetts " Circular Letter," would tend
to subvert the principles of equity, and endanger
the happiness and security of the subject.' In the
"Letters of a Farmer" John Dickinson pointed out
that the power to withdraw supplies was "one of
the foundations of liberty," and he quoted Hume,
"whose political reflections are so much admired,"
as to the use made of that power by Englishmen in
the past. Dry remonstrances are of no use with
kings and governors, he asserted, because "They
CANNOT understand the reasoning that opposes their
power and desires. But let it be made their interest
to understand such reasoning — and a wonderful
lighi is instantly thrown upon the matter; and then,
» Massachusetts, State Papers, 134-36.

276 CAUSES OP WAR OF INDEPENDENCE
rejected remonstrance becomes as clear as proofs of
holy writ." '
Another phrase which disturbed the serenity of
the colonial mind was the one explaining that the
proceeds of the tax were to pay the expense of pro
tecting "the British colonies and plantations in
America." Dickinson regarded that intent as " more
dreadful than the Stamp Act" because that measure
proposed to pay the expense of defending the thir
teen British colonies only, while this applied to
Florida and Canada, lately Spanish and French
colonies. "So that the British colonies are to be
drained of the rewards of their labor, to cherish the
scorching sands of Florida, and the icy rocks of
Canada and Nova Scotia, which never will return
to us one farthing that we send to them." * More
over, on the whole subject of the support of soldiers
for colonial defense the provincial mind was already
in a state of irritation. The Quartering Act, which
had been passed in April, 1765, at the solicitation
of General Gage, commander-in-chief of the British
armies in America, laid considerable burdens upon
any colonial community where a large proportion of
the proposed army of ten thousand men might be
stationed. New York was selected by Gage as his
headquarters not by reason of the need of troops
there, but because of its strategic advantages. As
a result a large part of the burden fell upon that
province, which did not at first object to the pres
ence of the troops, but did object to an act of Parlia
ment commanding them to do a thing which actuaUy
» John Dickinson, Politicd Writings, i, 226-26. » Ibid., i. 221.

MEASURES THAT RAISED REBELLION 277
laid a tax upon them because of the expense that
accrued in complying with the act. Two weeks
after the arrival of the troops, the New York As
sembly, pressed by the Governor, passed an act
complying in part, but omitting the salt, vinegar,
"beer or cyder" for which the Quartering Act pro
vided.' The conduct of New York in other respects
also was such as to draw from Chatham, the "great
advocate of the colonies," confessions of irritation.
"New York has drunk deepest of the baneful cup
of infatuation," he wrote to Shelburne. He admitted
that their disobedience to the Mutiny Act would
"justly create a great ferment" in Parliament, and
leave "no room to say any word in their defense."
As a result of the refractory conduct of the New
York Assembly, one of the Townshend Acts sus
pended the legislative privileges of that body until
complete provision in accord with the law was made
for the King's troops.* There was no difficulty in
getting such a law through Parliament, because
many had come to believe that the leniency at the
time of the Stamp Act was a blunder. The landed
aristocracy of England, unaffected by economic
loss, had thought all the time that the colonists were
rebels and ought to be quelled by military force.
It was an age of blood and iron in England among
the governing classes. The critics of the conciliatory
policy were confirmed by American observers Uke
Governor Bernard, who informed Lord Barrington
that, "since the Insurrections against the Stamp-
* Becker, Political Parties in the Province of New York, 54.
• Pickering, Statutes at Large, xxvn, 609, 610.

278 CAUSES OF WAR OF INDEPENDENCE
Act, The Americans have found the Governments
so contemptibly weak & the People so superior to the
Royal Authority that they are not a little elated
upon their Triumphs over the defenceless Officers
of the Crown. ... It wiU cost much time & Treasure
to bring America to that Degree of submission Par
liament would desire." ^ No doubt Shelburne's sec
retary was right when he wrote that by the Stamp
Act revolt the American habits of obedience were
broken. Even riots in England were attributed to
the "indulgence shown to America." They had
"imported rebellion from America," cried the
Tory Jeremiahs. There must be no more of that
"extraordinary indulgence" with which Parliament
had treated "these undutfful children." The re
straining act was passed, therefore, with little oppo
sition." A serious clash was avoided, however, by
the fact that the New York Assembly, even before
the news of the measure reached them, had voted
the money necessary to meet aU provisions of the
Quartering Act, saving its face by not itemizing the
"salt, vinegar, beer or cyder" which were in dispute.
Governor Moore interpreted that action as rendering
the restraining act of no effect and the assembly was
allowed to function as usual.* The principle involved
was not allowed to escape the colonial mind, how
ever, for the first of the "Letters of a Farmer," read
throughout America, made clear that New York had
' Barrington-Bemard Correspondence, 95.
* Pownall, Thomas Pownall, 194-98. Pownall, who had been
governor of Massachusetts and who understood the provincial mind,
opposed in a strong speech that went to the heart of the whole matter.
' Becker, Political Parties in the Province of New York, 57.

MEASURES THAT RAISED REBELLION 279
been "punished in a manner pernicious to American
freedom and justly alarming to all of the colonies." '
As all the people of England were interested in
Hampden's ship-money cause, so must aU give atten^
tion to this " dreadful stroke aimed at the liberties
of these colonies." He is "not a wise man who folds
his arms, and reposes himself at home, viewing with
unconcern the flames that have invaded his neigh
bors house." The Massachusetts House of Repre
sentatives wrote to Dennys De Berdt, its agent in
London^ urging him to protest against the restrain
ing act. "A legislative body," ran a passage of
the letter, "without the free exercise of the powers
of legislation, is to us incomprehensible. There can
be no material difference between such a legislative
and none at all." The New York Legislature has
no "free exercise of legislative power, while their
very existence is suspended upon their acting in con
formity to the will of another body. Such a restric
tion throughout the colonies, would be a short and
easy method of annihilating the legislative powers
of America." * The New York Legislature itself
sent to Parliament (December 17, 1767) a series of
resolutions one of which declared that the restrain
ing act (which in fact had never operated for a day)
was " destructive of the very end of representation." '
The same principle was involved when the House
' John Dickinson, Political Writings, i, 143-50.
' Samuel Adams, Writings, i, 147. Massachusetts had its own
quarrel with the royal governor (January, 1767), over the lodging of a
company of artillery and therefore felt strongly in the matter. Ibid.,
133. • Hansard, Parliamentary Debates, xvi, 604.

280 CAUSES OF WAR OF INDEPENDENCE
of Lords voted an address to His Majesty, "to be
presented by the Lords with the White Staves,"
that he should give instructions to the governors of
the colonies to "require the several assemblies to
vote a compensation for the owners of property
destroyed during the Stamp Act tumults." The
House of Commons used the expression "ought to
have" compensation,' and whatever the King's
Minister intended Samuel Adams declared that
"His Majesty's most gracious & mild Recommen
dation, a Term which his Lordship & our noble and
generous Patrons took so much Pains to use, was
construed by the Gov' of this Province into a Re
quisition precluding all Deliberation." * Such lan
guage Adams explained was "very displeasing" to
the representatives of a free people. After a long
wrangle with the Governor over the question as to
whether the granting of compensation was an act of
"justice" or of "generosity," and as to whether the
reputation of the town of Boston was impUcated or
not, the Massachusetts Assembly passed a com
pensation act (December, 1766) which was later
disallowed by the Privy CouncU because it also
granted an amnesty to the members of the mob.'
In New York there was a simUar reluctance, but an
ultimate partial obedience.
» Journals of the House of Lords, xxxi, 262 (February 10, 1766).
The word "recommend" was originally proposed, but by a vote of
63 to 60 was changed to "require." Grenville Papers, m, 358; Han-
•ard, Parliamentary History, xvi, 161-62.
' Samuel Adams, Writings, i, 97.
» Palfrey, History of New England, v, 366-67. The money had
been paid by the tune the veto was made known and the matter
ended there.

MEASURES THAT RAISED REBELLION 281
Governor Bernard of Massachusetts had the fatal
gifts of a wrangler, and his irritating disputations
with the colonial assembly led him and his govern
ment ever farther afield from the straight and nar
row path which might have been the guide to a state
of peace and harmony. He chopped logic with the
assembly over its choice of speaker, over his right to
negative its election of a council, and concerning
the use of the word "requisition" rather than "rec
ommendation." With such unseemly bickerings, he
lost his own influence and nagged his people into
a state of passion in spite of the best of intentions on
his part.' One of the great sources of friction be
tween England and her colonies was that which no
human ingenuity could prevent as long as the Gov
ernment of the country sent its citizens, imperfect
human beings, necessarily not the best, but only the
most available, to rule three thousand miles from
home a people whose inferior cultural development
the imported rulers were sure to misunderstand and
with whose love of self-government they would have
no sympathy. Bernard became at last (1769) so
plainly incapable of managing the situation in his
province that he was pensioned and recalled to
England. It was none too soon, for public opinion
of him, whether justifled or not, was shown in an
indictment against him by a grand jury of Suffolk
County which found that in many letters to the
British Ministry he had "maliciously, willfully
and falsely . . . libeled slandered and defamed "|the
Coimcil of Massachusetts Bay and tried to intro-
* Barrington-Bemard Correspondence, xvi-xxi.

282 CAUSES OF WAR OF INDEPENDENCE
duce an arbitrary government there.' There is an
eloquent entry in the diary of John Rowe (August 1,
1769), "the Rippon, Man of War — for England
and Gov'r. Bernard went home in him. The flag
hoisted on the Liberty Tree the Bells Ringing —
Great Joy to the People. A great Bonfire in King
St. and on Fort Hill." Such was Boston's dehght
in speeding the parting guest.
Long before the departure of this unpopular
governor, things were going from bad to worse, not
only in New England, but throughout the colonies,
owing to the gradual rise of the tempest over the
Townshend Acts. The efficient service of the new
customs commissioners broke the power of the
smugglers and made the evasion of the old trade
regulations or of the new Townshend duties very
difficult. The modification of the Sugar Act had
removed the incentive to smuggle the incredible
quantities of rum which were imbibed by the
mechanics of that bibulous age, but the heavy
duties — seven pounds sterling per tun on the rich
man's Madeira wines — offered a dazzling premium
to the successful smuggler. The passion of that
generation for alcoholic stimulation passed beyond
the imagination of this somber age, following the
Eighteenth Amendment. That reigning thirst had
to be satisfied and public sympathy was all with the
benevolent gentlemen who tried to import wine
without paying the duty. At Boston so ominous was
the conduct of the populace toward the commis
sioners who would enforce the law that those officers
* Palfrey. History of New England, v, 416.

MEASURES THAT RAISED REBELLION 283
repeatedly requested a public vessel to protect
them, and in the spring of 1768 secured the presence
of the man-of-war Romney. They were pressing
HUlsborough for a regiment of soldiers in addition
when events occurred which convinced the Ministry
of the wisdom of the request. John Adams wrote
that "a great uproar was raised in Boston on ac
count of the unlading in the night of a cargo of
wines from the sloop Liberty from Madeira, belong
ing to Mr. Hancock, without paying the customs."'
He did not explain that Kirk, the tidesman, was
" hoved down" into the cabin where for three hours
he listened to men "a-hoisting out of goods" some
of which were "good saleable Madeira." Later
when Kirk had informed the proper officers the
Liberty was seized and towed away under the guns
of the Romney. The mob that watched this action
flew into a passion, assaulted the customs officers,
broke the windows in their homes, and so frightened
the commissioners that they retired to Castle Wil
liam where they remained until the Ministry listened
to their prayers, and October, 1768, some four
months later, sent two regiments to protect the
King's officers in Boston." In other places informers
were tarred and feathered; the revenue sloop Liberty
was burnt at Newport; wine seized at Philadelphia
was stolen by the mob under the very noses of the
1 John Adams, Works, ii, 215. Adams goes on to say that "Mr.
Hancock was prosecuted on great number of libels for penalties upon
acts of Parliament amounting to 90 or 100 thousand pounds sterling."
Adams was his counsel and the case ended only with the battle of
Lexington. ' Hutchinson, History of Massachusetts Bay. m, 190-96.

284 CAUSES OF WAR OF INDEPENDENCE
King's officers, and one of them who was beaten
went away swearing he would not tarry among such
a "sett of People" whose greatest pleasure would
be the opportunity of burying him.' It was not
strange that Loyalists wrote of the existence of a
"strange infatuation" never paralleled, and that
"rebellion hath reared its head high above the dic
tates of reason, gratitude and interest." * There
was little popular response to John Dickinson's
pious exhortation, "Let us behave like dutfful
children who have received unmerited blows from a
beloved parent." The mob understood "turbulence
and tumult," better than "constitutional modes"
of protest.
We of this age, standing outside the turmoU of
rising rebellion, may smartly criticize the British
Government for sending soldiers to Boston. The
standing army which wise statesmanship had pro
vided to protect the empire had fallen to a mere
military police to enforce hated laws on unwilling
subjects. Yet what other device had the world
known or used for securing obedience from deluded
citizens? England was peculiarly blessed to have
among her statesmen a Pitt, a Burke, a Camden,
or a Barre, even a few enlightened men, apostles of
a new era, who could see that "It is not by votes
and angry resolutions of this house [of Commons]
but by a slow and steady conduct that the Americans
are to be reconciled to us." It was not the spirit of
* Rhode Island Colonial Records, vi, 693-96; Mass. Hist. Soc, C6U
lections (4th Ser.), x, 611-17.
' British Museum, Egerton MSS.. 2669 F 141.

MEASURES THAT RAISED REBELLION 285
the age to deal gently with far-away peoples, little
understood, and for whom, indeed, the ruling class
in England had a quiet contempt. It is plain to this
sophisticated age that Secretary Conway, writing
to Gage and to the colonial governors, talked too
much about "handling public violence with severity
and chastisement," about the "timely exertion of
force" and "the dreadful consequences that will
attend resistance to acts of Parliament." ' He was
perhaps too free with advice to "use the utmost
power after trying persuasive measures"; yet he
was the man, " his face as the face of an angel," in
Burke's words, who moved the repeal of the Stamp
Act and who always favored lenient measures
toward the Americans. This handsome, gracious,
" sweet- voiced " liberal, who was the friend of Hume,
and who secured a pension for the exiled Rousseau,
was famed as the advocate of the colonial cause,
yet when in a position of responsibility neither
history nor reason taught him any other mode of
dealing with rebellion than the threat of the use of
force. Therefore, he and his successors "put their
faith in pike and gun"; and when the validity of an
act of Parliament was denied, troops were sent to
make it valid.
When the soldiers arrived in Boston "to rescue
the Government out of the hands of a trained mob,
and to restore the Activity of the Civil Power," as
Bernard expressed it, the provincial council and the
eelectmen of Boston refused, in spite of the Quarter
ing Act renewed in 1767, to provide subsistence
* Hansard, Parliamentary Debates, xvi, 112-19.

286 CAUSES OF WAR OF INDEPENDENCE
within the town of Boston. They argued that the
wording of the law made it clear that the troops
should go to the barracks on a distant island in the
harbor.' To lodge them there was to defeat the very
purpose for which they were sent, and Colonel Dal
rymple, the commander, lodged them in the town
house, in Faneuil Hall, and on Boston Common.
It was later asserted that many of the troops died
for want of proper barracks, but again that it was
from " too free use of rum." * Gage later hired
houses for them at the expense of the Government.
The Governor provided subsistence and risked
reimbursem ent.
It mattered not how justly Boston suffered this
ignominy of these unwelcome guests, their presence
was an "intolerable grievance." Into the drab
Puritan Sabbath came the red coats, the drum and
fife drill, the marching and counter-marching during
divine worship, all very disturbing to the selectmen
and the deacons as well as demoralizing to the people.
"Our City," wrote a group of citizens, among whom
were John and Samuel Adams, Otis and Hancock,
"is yet a Garrison filled with armed men, as our
harbor is with Cutters, Cruizers, and other armed
vessels." The Exchange is "turned into a guarded
den of — Revenue Officers to plunder our trade and
drain the country of its money." ' This was written
to "that intrepid patriot, John Wilkes," who,
though in many minds a vulgar demagogue, was
• Barrington-Bemard Correspondence. 167, 179; Hutchinson, Hit'
tory of Massachusetts Bay, m, 207-08.
2 British Museum, Egerton MSS., 2659 F 141.
' Palfrey, History of New England, v, 415.

MEASURES THAT RAISED REBELLION 287
at this moment a hero in American eyes. To the
colony's agent in London, Dennys De Berdt, the
House of Representatives wrote that "as English
men, as well as British subjects," the colonists "have
an aversion to an unnecessary standing army, which
they look upon as dangerous to their civU liberties;
and considering the examples of ancient times, it
seems a little surprising, that a mother state should
trust large bodies of mercenary troops in her colonies,
at so great a distance from her lest, in process of
time, when the spirits of the people shall be depressed
by the military power, another Csesar should arise
and usurp the authority of his master." ' Being
there, the troops behaved as well perhaps as troops
in a hostile city ever did, but there was a nagging
spirit in both citizens and soldiers which boded iU
for peace. Captain Dundas at the Coffee House
smartly upbraided the worthy merchant John Rowe
with " you are a Damn Incendiary and I shall see you
hanged in your shoes." The dignified Rowe mildly
protested, but looked about for witnesses, and noted
that "it was spoke about Twelve of Clock at Noon." *
When, however, sentries were "treated more like
dogs than men," pelted with oyster shells and snow
balls, and an informer, a sailor, was tarred and
feathered and carried through all the main streets,
we are justified in wondering where were the twelve
constables, the selectmen, John Hancock and his
Cadets, and the principal citizens who were so
instant in action at a fire or patriotic celebration.
• Samuel Adams, Writings (Cushing, ed), 1, 145-46.
2 Letters and Diary of John Rowe, 176.

288 CAUSES OF WAR OF INDEPENDENCE
If there was trouble, we are told it was the red-
coated soldiers, "Lobsters" and "Bloody Backs"
as the mob called them, who were thrown into jail
by some popular magistrate.' With such conditions
trouble would come without efforts by "certain
busy characters," whom John Adams suspected
of seeking "to kindle immortal hatred between the
inhabitants of the lower class and the soldiers" by
exciting " quarrels, rencounters and combats." * The
outcome of this state of affairs was an event which,
compared with the Cawnpore tragedy or the Sicilian
Vespers, seems trifling enough, but in the little
frontier town of Boston it took the dignity of a mas
sacre. John Rowe set down the essentials in his
diary: "March 5. This night the 29th Regim' on
Duty. A Quarrel between the soldiers & Inhab
itants. The Bells Rang — A Great Number As
sembled in King Street. A Party of the 29th under
the Command of Cap't. Preston fired on the People
— they killed five — wounded several others . . .
the inhabitants are greatly enraged & not without
Reason." ^ In spite of the hot passions of the time
and the bitter indignation, the soldiers were in due
time tried, with John Adams and Josiah Quincy as
counsel, and all found not guilty except two who
were punished by branding in the hand, the penalty
of manslaughter. It was shown clearly at the trial
' Letters and Diary of John Rowe. 60, 194; Maryland Historical
Magazine, rv, 284.
2 John Adams, Works, n, 229.
' Letters and Diary of John Rowe, 197-98. For good accounts see
Frothingham, Life and Times of Joseph Warren; American Anti
quarian Society, Proceedings, xrv, 40-51 ; Goodell, The Boston Mat'
sacre; Deacon Tudor't Diary (Wm. Tudor, ed).

MEASURES THAT RAISED REBELLION 289
that the soldiers had endured threats, gibes, insults,
and actual violence before they had fired in what
they believed was self-defense. Historical scholars
of distinction have not hesitated to say that some
of the rioters "died as the fool dieth," that to make
heroes of these undesirable citizens was to put the
martyr's crown on the brow of vulgar ruffians.'
There was futility in any argument either at the
time or since, because if one held that the citizens
were maddened by the soldiery, the answer was
that the soldiers were nagged to desperation by the
citizens. If against that rejoinder it was argued
that the soldiers never ought to have been sent there,
the reasonable reply was that the growing ascend
ancy of mob-law had made military force neces
sary. Following that chain one comes ultimately to
ethical questions of right and wrong upon which
none may speak with finality.
On the day following the "massacre" there was
a town-meeting in Faneuil Hall and a committee of
fifteen chosen to inform Hutchinson, the Lieutenant-
Governor, that the soldiers must be removed.
Samuel Adams headed this committee which in
timated to Hutchinson that the people of Boston
were in a dangerous mood, the soldiers must go.
The Governor warned them that an attack on the
King's troops was treason; that only General Gage
at New York could order their removal. One regi-
1 When in 1887 the Massachusetts Legislature proposed for polit
ical purposes to erect a monument to the victims of this affair the
Massachusetts Historical Society voted that it "heard with regret"
of this intent to give these victims "grateful recognition at the public
expense." Mass. Hist. Soc, Proceedings. (2d Ser.), ni, 314-18.

290 CAUSES OF WAR OF INDEPENDENCE
ment, the 29th, he would place in the Castle at once
because of its offense. The committee returned to
the people, now in such a throng that FaneuU HaU
coiUd not contain them and aU moved to the Old
South Meeting-House. Adams, "his gray locks
flowing in the wind," led the committee through
the masses of people and in their midst read the reply
of the Lieutenant-Governor, declaring it unsatis
factory, an opinion backed by three thousand eager
voices. A new committee, again headed by Adams,
was sent to confront Hutchinson with some mUitary
officers and his councU seated with aU the formaUty
and majesty of government in the CoimcU Chamber,
hoping their great white wigs and English scarlet-
cloth coats would overawe the committee. WTien
the former reply was repeated, Adams, stretching
his arm, "which slightly shook with the energy of
his soul," toward Hutchinson, said: "H you have
the power to remove one regiment you have power
to remove both. It is at your peril ff you refuse.
The meeting is composed of three thousand people.
They are become impatient. A thousand men are
already arrived from the neighborhood, and the
whole coimtry is in motion. Night is approaching.
An Immediate answer is expected. Both regiments
or none!" ' The hesitating Lieutenant-Governor and
CouncU saw the light and yielded to the demand,
believing that otherwise they would have been "in
a perfect convulsion." Lord North later referred
to the troops concerned as "Sam Adams' Regi
ments."
* WeUs, Samuel Adams, i, chap, xvl

MEASURES THAT RAISED REBELLION 291
Adams' leadership in Boston had begun long
before, but from this on it was supreme. An ad
miring biographer of Adams asserts that "the prin
ciples [that became fixed in his mind, as soon as
he was capable of understanding political subjects,
were never changed."' During forty years there
was no instance of inconsistency. No wonder the
twUight of dubiety never rested upon views so long
matured. It is significant that for his master's
thesis at Harvard (1743) he chose for his subject the
postulate "Whether it be lawful to resist the Su
preme Magistrate, if the Commonwealth cannot
otherwise be preserved." He took the affirmative,
being not at all abashed by the presence of the
Governor and CouncU in his audience.* Indeed, all
his life he would have "stood upright before the
Cham of Tartary." Over thirty years later he was
arguing the same theme, doubtless in much the same
way before the Continental Congress. With such
a beginning, and with his compass set for such a
course, it was not strange that his admiring kinsman
could write of him in 1765: "Adams, I believe, has
the most thorough understanding of liberty and her
resources in the temper and character of the people,
though not in law and constitution; as well as the
most habitual, radical love of it, of any of them, as
well as the most correct, genteel, and artful pen.
He is a man of refined policy, steadfast integrity,
exquisite humanity, genteel erudition, obliging, en
gaging manners, real as well as professed piety,
and a universal good character, unless it should be
> Wells. Samuel Adams, i, 18. » Ibid., 10-11.

292 CAUSES OF WAR OF INDEPENDENCE
admitted that he is too attentive to the public, and
not enough so to himself and his family." ' Indeed,
Adams was poor in the things of this world, and had
no talent for business, no desire for pecuniary gain,
He was therefore looked upon as thrfftless and want
ing in wisdom to estimate riches at their just value.
Loyalist enemies nevertheless attributed Adams'
political opposition to rancor because his father,
once rich, had been financially ruined by the inter
ference of Parliament with a paper-money venture
of his, known as a "Land Bank Scheme." Adams'
father, a deacon in the Old South Church, justice
of the peace, selectman, and a representative in the
Massachusetts Legislature, had been one of the prin
cipal shareholders in this enterprise, which, though
frowned upon in conservative money centers, was
considered highly respectable in this frontier com
munity ignorant of the principles of high finance.
As late as 1758 Samuel Adams' property was at
tached by the sheriff on account of the old "Land
Bank" affairs of his father. He successfully resisted
this effort to seize his property, and, no doubt,
thought of himself as a defender of colonial suprem
acy against an act of Parliament meant to over
rule the laws of the colony.* His failure as a tax
collector (1763-65) in very troublous times to force
the payment of all arrearages was twisted into a
"defalcation" by Governor Hutchinson and other
Loyalist enemies.' They, doubtless, honestly be-
> John Adams, Works, n, 163-64.
» Wells, Samuel Adams, I, 8-10, 13, 25-27.
' Ibid., 37-38; Hutchinson, History of Massachusetts Bay, m, 294-
96; Mass. Hist. Soc, Proceedings, xx, 216-23.

MEASURES THAT RAISED REBELLION 293
Ueved this, but were too prejudiced to see the truth.
Nor did they ever cease to twit him about the malt-
house business in which he was a partner with his
father. " Sam the Maltster " was the mildest of their
epithets. Peter Oliver, an exiled Loyalist, wrote
that if he "wished to draw the picture of a devil"
he would get Sam Adams to sit for him. "One view
of his countenance, showed the malignity of his
heart." He found Adams shrewd rather than solid
of judgment, one who understood human nature in
low life. He seduced Hancock, Oliver said, " as the
devil seduced Eve by whispering in his ear." He
had "a serpentine cunning" and "a religious mask
always ready for occasion." ' Another enemy speaks
of his unrivaled "talent for artfully and fallaciously
insinuating" malice into the public mind,* which
was only an ill-natured way of saying that he knew
how to touch every chord that would sway the
feelings of New England. He comprehended its
antipathies and its bigotry, its hatred of "Papists"
and its belief that all Episcopalians were "tools of
the British government." He had unparalleled skill
in gathering the discontented into the Cave of
Adullam. "Sam the Publican" could express the
common man's aspiration for liberty, and he knew
devices for arousing it.
John Adams describes a meeting of the "Sons of
Liberty," "three hundred to four hundred plates,
an awning of sail cloth overhead," the diners cul
tivating the sensations of freedom. Forty-five toasts
» British Museum, Egerton MSS., 2671 F 24.
* Hutchinson, History of Massachusetts Bay, in, 295.

294 CAUSES OF WAR OF INDEPENDENCE
were drunk, and it is a tribute to the mildness of the
beverages taken when Adams records that he "did
not see one person intoxicated during the festival."
The toasts called for the punishment of Governor
Bernard, "the speedy removal of all task-masters,
the redress of aU grievances," and "strong halters,
firm blocks, and sharp axes to all such as deserve
either." "Otis and Samuel Adams are politic," con
tinues the diarist, "in promoting these festivals;
for they tinge the minds of the people; they impreg
nate them with the sentiments of liberty; they ren
der the people fond of their leaders in the cause." '
Peter Oliver pictures Adams "a master of vocal
music," organizing "singing societies of mechanics
where he inculcated sedition." He was no parlor
radical, but like Socrates he had the benevolent
habit of pouring himself out to everybody, and he
thus became the natural leader of the fishermen and
shipmasters and roustabouts. Enemies called him
a demagogue, friends preferred to say "a master of
practical politics." Critics spoke of his intrigue,
friends called it "gift for organization." Being plain
of dress, of speech, and deportment, he was con
sidered a man of the people. His Harvard degree
was forgotten and his knowledge of history, politics,
and the phUosophy of Locke made his leadership
easily accepted. He was trusted by the people, if
not by the conservative few. In the canvass and
the caucus he was supreme. His short, pithy, pas
sionate speeches, and his skill, not to say cunning,
as moderator of the town meeting made him master
I John Adams, Works, u, 218.

MEASURES THAT RAISED REBELLION 295
there, where he was a "Colossus of debate," win
ning every one with "a nervous simplicity of reason
ing and eloquence." Though prematurely gray,
trembling in voice, and palsied in hand, his mental
and moral courage was beyond dispute. For the
good of his colony Adams would have been stretched
on a gridiron or stuck full of arrows like St. Sebas
tian. He was proud that he could " bear with equa
nimity alternate smiles and frowns." With little of
fire or ornament in his speech, he roused and forti
fied the people, who came to trust his unbending
wUl and cheerful, commanding spirit. He was nar
row-minded enough to be a perfect politician, never
torn between two opposing views, and therefore
utterly intolerant of opponents, who hated him ac
cordingly. " Damn that Adams," cried a foe, " every
dip of his pen stings like a horned snake." This
"Cromwell of New England" was drawn by an ad
versary as a "hypocrite in reUgion, a republican in
politics, of sufficient cunning to form a consummate
knave," and Adams retorted by calling his traducer
a "time server and tool of government," an "enemy
of Religion and Liberty." As for Adams' religion
it was doubtless sincere enough. Certainly he was
patient in attendance upon Puritan religious service,
ever reverential in speaking of divine matters, if
not of human institutions claiming to do with them.
He was always sure that the hand of God was in the
affairs of men. Even government — when it fol
lowed his precepts — he believed was "an ordinance
of Heaven, designed by an all-benevolent Creator
for the general happiness of his rational creature.

296 CAUSES OF WAR OF INDEPENDENCE
man." Boston he prayed might "become a Chris
tian Sparta." He hated all formalism, and reiterated
his belief in a life of Christian conduct rather than
dependence on creeds.^ His acquaintance with the
Scriptures he often proved by his likening of nota
ble figures among the Loyalists to Biblical charac
ters of ill repute. It was about the time of the
Stamp Act that Adams first became an outstanding
figure. With real literary power he wrote state
papers for the Massachusetts House of Representa
tives, letters to newspapers, letters to the colonial
agent, letters to great Englishmen who might aid
the cause.* American of Americans, he had no
thought of the good of the empire, but was a zealot
for the destiny of his native land. Through debates
and newspaper articles in a style cogent, clear, and
with imagery suited to the masses, he centered at
tention on colonial ills. Though too passionate and
too eager for advance, content only with perfection,
he was no statesman, but a master agitator. Single-
minded in his preference for the approval of the
masses, and delighting to think himself indifferent
to "the sunshine of power, and the flatteries of the
great," he came to stand supreme in Massachusetts
as the "man of the people." It was Samuel Adams,
who, after one failure, had induced the Massachu
setts House of Representatives (February, 1768),
two years before the "massacre," to send a circular
letter to the other colonial assemblies, urging the
need of harmony in asserting their natural and con-
1 Wells, Samuel Adams, i, 53, 269; n, 337-38.
* Samuel Adams, Writings (Cushing ed), i, passim.

MEASURES THAT RAISED REBELLION 297
stitutional rights.^ To this moderate paper over
half the other colonies returned a sympathetic
reply.* It became the classic example of the way to
secure unity of action and interchange of sentiments.
When Hillsborough, for the time in charge of
colonial affairs, learned of this effort to unify action,
he secured the backing of the British Cabinet to a
circular letter of his own, which went out to twelve
colonies, berating Massachusetts for seeking to
"create unwarrantable combinations" and "to
excite an unjustifiable opposition to the constitu
tional authority of Parliament." * All governors
were ordered to prevail upon their assemblies to
take no notice of this call to sedition. In the King's
name he required the Massachusetts Assembly also
to rescind that "rash and hasty proceeding," the
work of "a desperate faction." A dissolution was
to follow a possible refusal. This action was a reck
less challenge to a high-strung people. It furnished
the colonists with an argument that the right of
petition was being denied them, and helped to give
immense publicity in the newspapers to all the
colonial arguments and statements of grievances.*
By a vote of 92 to 17, the Massachusetts Assembly
refused to rescind the offending resolution, and said
in its address to the Governor: "If the votes of the
House are to be controlled by the direction of a
1 Samuel Adams, Writings, i, 184.
* New Jersey, Virginia, Connecticut, Maryland, Rhode Island,
and South Carolina were quick to act; the others more slow.
3 Almon, Prior Documents, 203, 204, 220.
< Manuscript study of Massachusetts Circular Letter, by Li G.
Van Der Velde. (In U. of M. Library.)

298 CAUSES OF WAR OF INDEPENDENCE
minister, we have left us but a vain semblance of
liberty." ^ Paul Revere made a sUver punch-bowl
"to the memory of the Glorious Ninety-Two
Members," and that mystic number became a
popular catchword recalling the courage of those
who refused to rescind. Friends in England, gath
ered with Colonel Barre at a festive board, drank
toasts to " the ninety -two patriots of Massachusetts
Bay." * During the debate, James Otis declared
that it was rather Parliament, which should recaU
its unwise acts. "Let Britain rescind her measures,
or the colonies are lost to her forever."
/Notwithstanding the thunderous threats of Hills
borough that he would dissolve any assembly which
did not treat the Massachusetts letter "with the con
tempt it deserves," every colony flew in the face of
authority and endorsed the idea of united action.jf
As the South Carolina Committee reported, the
House would certainly treat any letter or paper in
the least opposing the just authority of Parliament
or tending to inflame the minds of the colonists
against their sovereign with the contempt it de
served, but that no paper having the slightest tend
ency Ul this direction had come to their attention.
The circular letter was endorsed as "replete with
duty and loyalty to His Majesty, respect for the
Parliament of Great Britain, sincere affection for
our Mother Country, tender care for the preserva
tion of the rights of aU His Majesty's subjects, and
' Massachusetts State Papers, 150.
' Niles, Principles and Acts, 116.
, * Almon, Prior Documents, 213-20.

MEASURES THAT RAISED REBELLION 299
founded upon undeniable Constitutional Princi
ples." Addresses in this sense to the King, and
Massachusetts, and Virginia, were recommended,
whereupon the Governor indignantly dissolved the
assembly.' Hillsborough's folly had merely spread
the spirit of resistance to Government from one
colony to all. American public opinion as to the
Townshend measures became consolidated, and
members of Parliament, who had heard the words
of Nicholson Calvert, explaining his change of vote
during the stamp controversy, might well have had
chills of apprehension. "Sir," he had said, "it has
always been my opinion [that] to lay any taxes
upon a numerous people situated as the Americans
are, without their consent, is impossible. It is a
widely different thing. Sir, the quelling a paltry riot
in Moorfields, or Bloomsbury-Square, to that of
making two millions of people, distributed from one
corner of the American continent to the other, all
unanimous in the opinion of right on their side, sub
mit to your decisions. It matters little to the ques
tion, whether they are in the right or not, they
think themselves so." *
The Massachusetts Assembly, having been dis
solved, a town meeting in Boston (September 12,
1768) expressed bitter resentment that a standing
army was kept up in the province. The inhabitants
were urged to arm, because of an apprehension
"of an approaching war with France." WTien the
Governor refused to call the assembly, which the
• Wallace, Henry Laurens, 155.
* Hansard, Parliamentary History, xvi, 109-10.

300 CAUSES OF WAR OF INDEPENDENCE
meeting hoped might preserve their rights and
privileges, a convention of all the towns of the
province was called. The Governor warned the
delegates, gathered from ninety -six towns, that they
were usurping the King's sovereignty over the
province and would " repent their rashness." The
usurpation was denied by the convention, but,
having drawn up a list of grievances, it adjourned.
With the passions of New England at such a
pitch, the British Parliament, which met in Decem
ber, 1768, took another forward step in the policy of
coercion. One hundred years earlier, John Evelyn
wrote in his diary: "Some of our Council were for
sending them [Massachusetts] a menacing letter,
which those who better understood the peevish and
touchy humour of that colony were utterly against."
It was a pity that such counsel did not stay the
hand of Parliament on this occasion. Resolutions
and an address initiated by the Lords, and later
passed by the Commons, 169 to 65, supported the
King in the measures already taken for "inducing
a due obedience" to Government, and offered to
"stand by and support" him in further acts to main
tain the civil authority in Massachusetts.' The
"riots and tumults" in Boston were frowned upon
in the resolutions, and the circular letter was set
down as inflaming to the colonial mind and "sub
versive of the constitution." The use of military
force was defended, and the iUegal convention of
September, 1768, condemned as inciting sedition.
The calling of the convention manifested, it was
' Hansard, Parliamentary History, xvi, 476, 610.

MEASURES THAT RAISED REBELLION 301
held, a design to set up a new authority "inde
pendent of the crown of Great Britain," and to
elect deputies to it was a "daring in^sult" to the
King and an "audacious usurpation of the powers
of government." These were all expressions of the
rigid and uncompromising ideas of power, common
in that day to the English official class, which had
grown out of that Revolution of 1688, which had
left the Government, every organ of it, in the con
trol of the property-owning middle class. The Lords
and Commons simply voiced the divine right of
established authority. Resistance to it was solemnly
and withal conscientiously attributed to innate
wickedness and lack of gratitude to those who so
benignly governed. They did not understand or
sympathize with their own lower classes who lived
under their very eyes, and it was hardly likely that
their vision would be better for a people three
thousand miles distant. In this instance, the ma
jority of the Lords and Commons went on to advise
the violation of one of the principles of English law,
by proposing that the King's Ministers get the names
of the Boston leaders most active in committing trea
sons, and, reviving an old statute of Henry VIII,
bring them speedily to condign punishment. This
obsolete law passed "in one of the most cruel and
tyrannical reigns," and when England had not a
colony, enabled the King's officers to bring for
trial in England men accused of treason outside the
realm.' It is true, as Hansard says, that no meas
ures were ever opposed with more firmness. Even
' Hansard, Parliamentary History, xvi, 479-80, 491.

302 CAUSES OF WAR OF INDEPENDENCE
Richard GrenviUe doubted their wisdom. "Meas
ures such as this," cried Captain Phipps in the
Commons, "are more calculated to raise the rebel
lion they are pretended to be pointed at, than to
quell it, did it exist." Suppose, he asked, " the ac
cused Americans, after being torn from their country
and brought three thousand miles to London, are
given a trial by jury. Will it be anything but a
mockery, divested of all its advantages? How can
they avail themselves of the right to chaUenge jury
men, whose character and connections are unknown
to them ?y^ Will not they and their friends suspect
that the twelve men found here are of the devotion
of the Ministry and capable of perjury and murder?r
" How are they to avail themselves of counsel, whose
abUities and fame they are strangers to? By what
process are they to compel the appearance of wit
nesses from the other side of the Atlantic?" And
even suppose they are after all acquitted? "What
reparation can be made to men dragged from the
endearments of domestic life, brought from the land
of liberty, flowing with milk and honey, to drink at
the bitter fountain of oppression? WiU they return
less possessed of the confidence of their fellow sub
jects, and less inclined to abuse it?" WUl they be
less solicitous "to shake off the yoke from this new
outrage?" Will not their fellow-countrymen come
to think that "these men are brought over here to
be murdered," perhaps at the instigation of a gover
nor "heated by dispute, piqued by opposition"?
WiU they not think that those who support "the
rights of the people, are, like Tarquin's poppies, to

MEASURES THAT RAISED REBELLION 303
be cut off for overtopping the rest?" ' For all this
excellent logic, there were only deaf ears. As Wal
pole wrote on a like occasion, "Eloquence, reason,
and argument, avail little against a compact parlia
mentary majority."
This new measure assailing the personal rights of
the leaders in New England was quickly resented by
a people gifted with "a perpetual jealousy respect
ing liberty." It was Virginia that first voiced the
colonial protest. As if to separate her from Massa
chusetts, the Ministry had been more kind to Vir
ginia and had even adopted a conciliatory attitude.
It became necessary to provide for Lord Botetourt,
a member of the Berkeley family, famous in Vir
ginian annals. His bankruptcy and business dis
honor had forced his retirement from British polite
society; and the Ministry thought by making him
governor to give him an income and at the same time
through his attractive and amiable personality get
back into the graces of Virginia. He summoned the
legislature on May 8, 1769, and in a most gracious
manner granted a number of their petitions, one
against the use of writs of assistance and another
asking an extension of their jurisdiction toward the
west. But barely a week had flown by when the
assembly's committee of correspondence received
from Virginia's agent in London a copy of the "bane
ful resolutions" of Parliament. At once resolutions,
drawn up by George Mason and introduced by
George Washington, were adopted, declaring that
the sole right of imposing taxes on the people of
' Hansard, Parliamentary History, xvi, 508-10.

304 CAUSES OF WAR OF INDEPENDENCE
Virginia lay with the assembly: that they had a per
fect right to ask the concurrence of other colonies in
addresses to the King in behalf of their violated
rights; that trials for treason committed in Virginia
ought to be held in that colony. ' There was no oppo
sition. Along with Patrick Henry, Richard Henry
Lee, and Thomas Jefferson went Peyton Randolph
and Pendleton, who five years before had seemed
conservative. To the speakers of all colonial as
semblies were sent copies to which the approving
replies were most harmonious. On the following day,
an address to "His Majesty" informed George HI
that the House of Burgesses could not "without
Horror, think of the new, unusual, and permit us,
with all HumUity to add, unconstitutional and
Ulegal Mode" of trial proposed for those accused of
treason in America. " How truly deplorable must be
the Case of a wretched American, who, having in
curred the Displeasure of anyone in Power, is dragged
from his native Home . . . thrown into Prison . . .
Conveyed to a distant Land, where no Friend, no
Relation, wiU aUeviate his Distresses . . . where no
witness can be found to testify his Innocence." To
avert this, they prostrated themselves at the foot
of his "Royal Throne," and loyaUy wishing that
his reign might be long, they hoped that after death
His Majesty might "taste the fuUest Fruition of
eternal Bliss," and his heirs reign "untU Time shaU
be no more." * The Governor, under his instruc
tions, could do nothing else, after the resolutions
' Journals of the House qf Burgesses. 1766-69 (Kennedy, ed), 214.
» Ibid., 215-16.

MEASURES THAT RAISED REBELLION 305
denying the authority of Parliament, but dissolve
the assembly. As private citizens, the members at
once gathered in the house of Anthony Hay and
adopted resolutions for non-importation and an
association to uphold it.' The spirit of all, perhaps,
was that expressed by George Washington in a
letter written to Mason a month earlier, declaring
that " no man should scruple, or hesitate a moment,
to use a — ^ms in defense of so valuable a blessing"
as the liberty "which we have derived from our
ancestors." *
Such was the state of the public mind in Vir
ginia, and after the "Boston Massacre" Governor
Hutchinson wrote: "Boston people are run mad.
The frenzy was not higher when they banished my
pious great-grandmother [Anne Hutchinson], when
they hanged the Quakers, when they afterwards
hanged the poor innocent witches." ^ Already,
Henry Laurens had written from South Carolina:
"The cloud is gathering thick in the North and will
soon spread over America, if not dispelled by wise
measures in Britain. New England is in arms; New
York slumbers but will not sleep ff there shall be a
necessity for her appearance. Pennsylvania is di
vided, but the most powerful part is on the side of
liberty. . . . South Carolina and Georgia, weakest
sisters, will not subscribe to the right of a British
Parliament to lay internal taxes upon America, and
though feeble, have gathered strength among them-
• Lingley, The Transition in Virginia, 65-66.
» Writings of George Washington (Ford, ed). n, 263.
• Massachusetts Ai chives, xxvi, 540.

306 CAUSES OF WAR OF INDEPENDENCE
selves — wUl be keen in asserting their liberty, and
suUenJy and stubbornly resist against aU ministerial
mandates and admonitions. Men of war and troops
are actually arrived at Boston and a few days more
will inform us how they are received by the people
of Massachusetts." ' South Carolina itself was soon
engaged in the bitter struggle known as the "Wilkes
Fund Dispute." The lower house of the assembly
had (December, 1769) expressed its sympathy with
the English "Society of the Supporters of the BiU of
Rights " by voting a sum of £10,500 to be sent to that
Society in England "for the defense of British and
American liberty." The English Society which the
Commons sought to aid was formed to promote polit
ical changes of the most fundamental character, and
to assist John Wilkes in his struggle with George III
and his supporters. The right of the Commons thus
to vote money, without the consent of the Coun
cU and the Governor, was challenged, though there
were undoubtedly precedents for it in the long fight
which the Commons had made to gain control in
money affairs. The Ministry finaUy took a hand,
and even the King gave the matter attention^ and
threatened to make an example of the treasurers
who lent themselves to this plan.* The South Caro
lina Commons, however, refused to bow even before
the King, and the bitter controversy dragged on for
several years. Thus the American colonies were
in ferment from Penobscot Bay to St. Mary's River.
At this crisis occurred the partial repeal, already
briefly alluded to, of the Townshend duties. They
' Wallace, Henry Laurens, 152-53. ' Ibid., chap. Xin.

MEASURES THAT RAISED REBELLION 307
were denounced by Lord North, who had succeeded
Grafton as the head of the Ministry, as " preposter
ous," not merely because they had given birth to
dangerous combinations and dissatisfaction among
American merchants, but because they were "un
commercial." Like a high tariff they had stimu
lated manufactures in the colonies, and that affected
badly " the prosperity of this kingdom." He would
keep the old duties on wine, sugar, and molasses, and
the duty on tea, which made part of the Townshend
Act. Junius scored him for doing everything except
remove the offense, for "an odius, unprofitable
exertion of a speculative right, . . . fixing a badge
of slavery upon the Americans, without service to
their masters." ' It was necessary to keep the tea
tax. North declared, lest Americans set the abolition
down, not to goodness, but to fear. He would not
go as far as Hillsborough, granting the colonists
"nothing except what they may ask with a halter
round their necks," but America must not think Par
liament terrified into concessions. " The properest
time to exert our right to taxation is," declared Lord
North, "when the right is refused." He had before
told Parliament, "America must fear you before
she can love you." He would have the colonies
prostrate at his feet. He heartily wished to repeal
the whole law, he asserted, but that he could not
do, without giving up the just right to tax the
Americans.* So the duty on paints, glass, and paper
was removed, leaving the tea tax, to the end that, as
' Letters of Junius (London, 1799), n, 31.
* Hansard, Parliamentary History, xvi, 854.

308 CAUSES OF WAR OF INDEPENDENCE
Pownall sneered, "they might still keep the yoke
about the neck of the Americans." In the pompous
preamble of the Townshend Act, the purpose had
been stated to be the "defending, protecting, and
securing the said dominions" and "defraying the
charge of the administration of justice and support
of civil government." After the repeal, except for
the tax on tea, Burke taunted the Ministry with
the "precious Mockery" of such a performance —
"a preamble without an act." The revenue was
"five-sixths repealed, — abandoned, — sunk, — gone,
lost forever." "And this is," he sneered, "preserv
ing dignity in England." '
To this, at last, had come the measures of that
"delight and ornament" of the House, Charles
Townshend. In the memorable words of the Penn
sylvania Farmer, they had kindled "the sacred flame
that fused the continent." New England had first
been stirred to a boycott of English goods. Then, in
succession, the merchants of Boston, New York, and
Philadelphia had entered upon non-importations.
The South had followed, and though the effect upon
English manufacturers may have been smaU, the
colonies had leamed a lesson in united action. The
American provinces had shown hostUity to having
their judges and executives paid by a distant power
and thus rendered indifferent to the colonial wUl.
They had resented defense of the colonies by Eng
Ush soldiers, and had expressed their wiU to defend
themselves. WTien there was a reaction in Parlia
ment against the "extraordinary indulgence" shown
» Burke, Works (ed. 1869), n, 12.

MEASURES THAT RAISED REBELLION 309
in the Stamp Act repeal, and the restraining resolu
tion was passed to force New York to obey the
Quartering Act, there was a general challenge from
the colonial legislatures. Like unity of sentiment
was shown by the general approbation of the Mas
sachusetts circular letter, and Lord HiUsborough's
folly in commanding all provincial assemblies to
reject it merely swelled the chorus of approval.
When ParUament, too, took notice of the letter and
of the Massachusetts "Convention," and went so
far as to propose seizing the Boston "traitors" and
bringing them to London for trial, they only pro
voked the "Virginia Resolutions" and a universal
endorsement of them by the colonies. Minor clashes
also embittered the relations of colonies and parent
state. Massachusetts showed incensed pride and
high spirit at being "required" to vote compensa
tion for damage done by rioters. The officers of the
customs at Boston met with such opposition in per
forming their duties, that they summoned the fifty-
gun ship, the Romney, and needed every gun when
the seizure of John Hancock's sloop Liberty fired the
mob spirit in Boston. Riotous conduct there brought
the Ministry to a policy of military coercion, and
the city's irritation over the "Bloody Backs" in
their midst led straight to the "Boston Massacre."
Even before this climax the merchants and property-
owners in general had begun to falter. The mechan
ics and laborers and the "lower classes" in general
had joined all too vociferously the movement to re
form the imperial system and to secure the rights of
man. Therefore, the partial penitence in Parliament

310 CAUSES OF WAR OF INDEPENDENCE
resulted in wrecking the non-importation agreements
in America, and for a time put an end to this con
crete evidence of colonial unity. An era, ff not of
good-feeling, at least of indifference, seemed to have
come, but it was all on the surface of things, for cer
tain fundamental differences between England and
America were daily making their union hard to
preserve.

CHAPTER xn
THE SOCIAL AND INTELLECTUAL GULF BETWEEN
THE PARTS OF THE EMPIRE
Following upon the news of the partial repeal of
the Townshend Acts, there was an apparent era
of good-feeling. The spirit of loyalty grew. John
Adams saw a "subsidence of the patriotic spirit."
The people seemed to grow weary of contention
with Parliament. "The friends of the people," he
sighed, were "left in the lurch" by the people them
selves. Adams, having learned by experience, re
solved to become "more retired and cautious."
Even Hancock and Otis had cooled. But Samuel
Adams, in whom Hutchinson saw one of the "sons
of sedition," seized upon the least remaining griev
ance, the presence of soldiers in the Castle, or the
removal of the General Court to Cambridge, to ex
ercise his "black art" in the press and thus revive
the spirit of opposition. He reminded men that if
they tamely suffered a lawless attack upon their
liberties, millions yet unborn might be the sharers in
their slavery. In his Jacobin heart he believed
Thomas Hutchinson, the new Governor, to be an
"Egyptian tyrant," a restless adversary, "forming
the most dangerous Plans for the Ruin of the Repu
tation of the People," in order to build his own great
ness "upon the distruction of their Liberties."
Nothing was, perhaps, further from the truth, for
nobody can read Hutchinson's scholarly "History

312 CAUSES OF WAR OF INDEPENDENCE
of Massachusetts Bay" without being sure that
he loved the province as patriotically as Hancock
or the Adamses. Reflecting that the independent
spirit of Brutus, "to his immortal honor," had ex-
peUed the proud tyrant of Rome, Adams intimated
his readiness to serve Boston in the same heroic
maimer. It was understood that the Governor's
salary was now to be paid by the Crown, and
the "tragedy of American freedom " was, Adams
thought, nearly completed. Because of Adams' re
lentless efforts during the luU in the rising storm
of American opposition, his admiring biographers
have attributed to him the glory of driving New
England steadily on toward the goal of independ
ence. But we have traced certain fundamental
differences and more are to be noted, which would
have brought about the practical independence of
the colonies without any tutelary genius of the
Adams variety. Many things indicate that inde
pendence of England was foreordained before Pat
rick Henry scattered treason with his fiery allusions
to Tarquin and Csesar and Brutus; or Samuel Adams
spread the gospel that the sacred rights of man were
superior to acts of Parliament. Owing to forces
working during the whole colonial period to differ
entiate America from England, the two countries
had come to be unlike in character, ominously op
posed in interests. The French traveler, Mathieu
Dumas, observed that in spite of the American re
semblance to England " in language, m costume, m
customs, in religion, and in the principles of govern
ment, a distinct national character is forming itself."

THE SOCIAL AND INTELLECTUAL GULF 313
America's predominant concern was in the farm;
England's was rapidly coming to be manufacturing
and commerce. In America, the forest environment
formed the character of a large per cent of the peo
ple, making them individualistic and democratic.
In England, the city and town moulded the social
life, throwing emphasis on the community. When
Patrick Henry and Thomas Jefferson left their back-
country homes and went for the first time to the
capital of Virginia at Williamsburg, it is doubtful
whether either had before seen more than a dozen
houses together. Probably ninety per cent of the
colonists lived what might properly be called a rural
life. Of them, the "uncouth, huge monstrous"
wilderness made hunters, woodsmen, or even farm
ers, in its clearings, but not conscious, social units
of a vast community, the British Empire. Almost
the reverse was true in England where the progress
of the Industrial Revolution, following the invention
of the flying shuttle, the spinning jenney, and the
growth of the factory system, had changed towns
into cities and drawn the country people into the
great centers of population. In a society of this
kind, English statesmen gained their experience in
government. Such men living in great centers of
population, where order can be preserved only by
the stern enforcement of highly developed legal
regulations, could have little understanding or sym
pathy with a people in a sparsely settled frontier
province where laws were few and individual liberty
was easily confused with a happy state where there
was no government. The average London-bred

314 CAUSES OF WAR OF INDEPENDENCE
member of Parliament could not even imagine life
in the free spaces of America, much less legislate
wisely for it. Thus a difference in environment and
of methods of living worked changes in certain basic
conceptions of political order which threatened the
unity of two parts of the empire. Every social and
intellectual difference which diverse conditions cre
ated between England and America diminished the
understanding and sympathy which alone would
keep harmony in the empire. The wealth and cul
tivation of old, dignified, and conservative England
contrasted sharply with the rude American frontier
conditions, where the imitations of London fashions
in Philadelphia or Boston merely aroused the mirth
of English observers. An English " Lady of Quality "
describes a "grand ball" at Wilmington in North
Carolina at which "the dresses, dancing and cere
monies were laughable enough," but she confided to
her diary, nothing so ridiculous as her own figure
" dressed out in all my British airs, with a high
head and a hoop, and trudging through the unpaved
streets in embroidered shoes by the light of a Ian-
thorn carried by a black wench half naked. No
chair, no carriage." ' The traveler accustomed to
the elegance of London and of Bath became the
carping critic or condescending patron of the more
unsophisticated American life. The visiting colonist
in London, on the other hand, was more apt to see
the corruption than the refinements of the metropol
itan city. English writers betrayed their sense of
superiority to the colonists in careless language
• British Museum, Egerton MSS.. 2423 F 100.

THE SOCIAL AND INTELLECTUAL GULF 315
that nettled American readers. James Otis foimd
it maddening that "Every garreteer, from the en
virons of Grub Street to the purlieus of St. James,
has lately talked of his and my and our colonies, and
of rascally colonists, and of yoking and curbing the
cattle." Why, he asked, could not American peas
ants "with as much propriety speak of their cities
of London, and Westminster and of their isles of
Britain" and Ireland.' Franklin, too, was angered
that "Every man in England seems to consider him
self as a piece of a sovereign over America; seems
to jostle himself into the throne with the King and
talks of our subject in the Colonies." He objected
to the common talk in London about "the sover
eignty of this nation over the colonies." *
Nor did "the heir apparent of the Romans," as
Walpole dubbed his fellow-Britons, stop with as
sumption of political superiority. Lord North's
friends, said a London pamphleteer, were apt to ask,
"Shall we be bearded and scoffed at by a race of
dastardly cowards, sprung from our bastards, our
swindlers and our convicts; fellows who will fly
away and caw like crows at the smell of gunpow
der?" ^ Even the immortal James Wolfe had, upon
most inadequate grounds, and with no considera
tion for the lack of drill and discipline, declared the
colonial soldiers "The dirtiest, most contemptible
cowardly dogs that you can conceive. There is no
depending on them in action. They fall down dead
» Tudor, James Otis. 193.
' Franklin, Writings (Smyth, ed), v, 17, 21.
' Serious Considerations on the Political Condition of Lord North
(London, 1783), 54.

316 CAUSES OF WAR OF INDEPENDENCE
in their own dirt and desert by battalions, officers
and all." ' Such rash words were due simply to his
lack of knowledge of the backwoods method of
fighting. Henry Laurens heard on every side in
London, on the eve of the war, that "one British
soldier would beat six Yankees." *
Such loose talk embittered many a colonist, and
roused every rebellious sentiment in his provincial
soul. Lord Clare might hug and kiss Benjamin
Franklin, after they had had a bottle and a haff of
claret each, but the "Friend of the Human Race"
put down that, and his Lordship's protestation that
he had never met a man he was so much in love
with, as mere " flummery." He knew he was being
patronized.^ Both Briton and Yankee had his peculiar vanity.
Defoe's thrasonical brag in "The Compleat English
man," that "we are the greatest country in the
world; our climate is the most agreeable to live in;
our Englishmen are the stoutest and best men in the
world," was not shocking to the typical Englishman
of the time of George III.^ On the other hand, few
Americans would have rebuked Jonathan Mayhew
for his vanity when he complacently proclaimed in
his sermon on the repeal of the Stamp Act, "if any
miserable people on the continent or isles of Europe,
after being weakened by luxury, debauchery, venal
ity . . . should ... be driven in their extremity to
seek retreat from slavery, in some distant climate;
^X. S. Mayo, J. Amherst, 108. ^ Wallace, Henry Laurens, 197.
' Franklin, Writings (Smyth, ed), v, 147.
* Defoe, The Compleat Englishman, i, 369.

THE SOCIAL AND INTELLECTUAL GULF 317
let them . . . find one in America, under thy [Liber
ty's] brooding, sacred wings." ' It was quite the
fashion for Americans, like the Princes of Abyssinia,
to pity those "slaves of misery" whom fate had
excluded from their seat of tranquillity. Ten years
after the Revolution began, Jefferson wrote, urging
Monroe to come to France: "It will make you adore
your own country, its soil, its climate, its equality,
liberty, laws, people, and manners. My God, how
little do my countrymen know what precious bless
ings they are in possession of, and which no other
people on earth enjoy." * We shall see miUions come
to live in America, he prophesied, but very few
Americans come to live in Europe. "I always,"
wrote John Adams (1765), "consider the settlement
of America with reverence and wonder, as the open
ing of a grand scene, and design in Providence for
the illumination of the ignorant and the emancipa
tion of the slavish part of mankind all over the
earth." ^ Most Americans were sure that the west
ern continent was the fairest of created worlds, and
they glowed with confidence in its future and were
impatient in pursuit of its destiny. When two
peoples were each so sure that they alone were the
special recipients of the favor of Providence, neither
was likely to yield much, if their interests clashed.
In spite of Peter Kalm's observation that "the
English colonies in this part of the world have in
creased so much in their numbers of inhabitants, and
in their riches, that they almost vie with Old Eng-
1 Tudor, James Otis, 146. * Jefferson, Works (Bergh, ed) , vi, 21.
' John Adams, Works, I, 66.

318 CAUSES OF WAR OF INDEPENDENCE
land," there was a vast difference in the wealth of
the two countries and in its distribution. Mayhew
spoke the truth when he said, "There is scarce a man
in any of the colonies, certainly there is not in the
New England ones, that would be deemed worthy
of the name of a rich man in Great Britain." Here
and there, he admitted, there might be one worth
twenty to fifty thousand pounds sterling, but aU the
rest in a low condition or not greatly rising above
it.' True, America was at least dimly aware that it
possessed enormous resources; it dreamed of ex
ploiting millions of acres of potential cornfields and
mountains of iron ; but, for the moment, it was poor
as the European world measured wealth. As Frank
lin said, "America is a land of neither the very rich
nor the very poor, but one in which a general happy
mediocrity prevails." On returning (1772) from a
tour through Ireland and Scotland where he found
a small part of the society opulent landlords, gentle
men and great noblemen, living in affiuence and even
magnfficence, but the mass of the people, poor,
clothed in rags, and living wretchedly, in dirty
hovels of mud and straw, he reflected with content
ment upon the happiness of New England, " where
every Man is a Freeholder, has a Vote in public
Affairs, lives in a tidy, warm House, has plenty of
good Food and Fewel, with whole clothes from Head
to Foot, the Manufacture perhaps of his own
Family." *
In England the advance of the Industrial Re vol u-
• Thornton, The Pulpit of the Revolution, 126.
• Franklin, Writings (Smyth, ed), v, 362.

THE SOCIAL AND INTELLECTUAL GULF 319
tion had created greater concentration of capital in
the hands of a few; and Indian nabobs came home
to swell the ranks of the newly rich, and to spend in
arrogant display what was often gotten by pillage
and oppression. There was no outrageous exaggera
tion in Humphrey CUnker's "Letters from Bath,"
which Smollett published in 1771, describing the
"general tide of luxury, which hath overpowered the
nation, and swept away all even the dregs of the
people . . . clerks and factors from the East Indies,
loaded with the spoils of plundered provinces; plant
ers, negro drivers, and hucksters from our American
plantations, enriched they know not how; agents,
commissaries, and contractors, who have fattened
in two successive wars on the blood of the nation;
usurers, brokers and jobbers of every kind; men of
low birth and no breeding; have found themselves
suddenly translated to a state of affluence unknown
to former ages." ' Less imaginative and more sober
historians agreed with the novelist, Smollett. In
England there were extremes of wealth and poverty;
in America very moderate contrasts in income.
These variations in the amount and distribution
of wealth created a moral and social gulf between
Britain and her American colonies which sundered
them nearly as much as the seas that rolled between.
One must take with a grain of salt Franklin's com
parison of "extream Corruption among all orders of
Men in this old rotten State [England], and the
glorious public Virtue so predominant in our rising
1 Smollett, Humphrey Clinker (ed. 1899), i, 48; B. Saunders. Mac
pherson. 262.

320 CAUSES OF WAR OF INDEPENDENCE
Country," ^ but it is certain that there was a great
antithesis. That simple-hearted Loyalist and Puritan, Samuel
Curwen, driven from Boston by the intolerance of
his "Whig" neighbors in the first spasm of the
rising rebellion, was much shocked to find in London
a sharp contrast to the simple, sober manners of his
American home. "The dissipation, self -forgetf ul
ness, and vicious indulgence of every kind," he
wrote, "which characterize this metropolis, are not
to be wondered at. The temptations are too great
. . . The unbounded riches of many afford the means
of every species of luxury, which (thank God) our
part of America is ignorant of." * All this had come
in the train of Chatham's glorious triumphs which
had laid at England's feet the treasures of two con
tinents. Until the sounder part of her citizens should
restore the balance, the ruling class, flaunting its
frivolity and immorality before industrious, moral,
and intelligent colonists, were sure to force the con
viction upon them that it was absurd to accept rule
by men so plainly unfit, by methods they despised.
The Huguenot planter, Henry Laurens, whose
loyalty had stoutly withstood the strain of the fray
over the Stamp Act, cooled greatly toward the Eng
land which he had cherished, when, in 1772, he trav
eled there and was witness of the state of morals
among the ruling classes. "Oh, the wretched state
of female virtue in this kingdom," he exclaimed.
" Chastity is certainly out of fashion in England and
• Franklin, Writings (Smyth, ed). vi, 312.
* S. Curwen, Journal, 33.

THE SOCIAL AND INTELLECTUAL GULF 321
women talk another language than that in which
modesty was best understood twenty years ago." '
His puritanical soul revolted as he mingled with the
"best people" of England, and became aware of a
spiritual separation from England which he had not
known before. "The news whicli is now circulating,"
he wrote home, "relates to the marriage of the Duke
of Gloucester to Lady Waldgrave, which His High
ness has at length declared to his royal brother, in
consequence of which he is forbid the King's pres
ence. The marriage was celebrated six or seven
years ago, and it was notorious that the parties co-
habitated as man and wife, which gave his Majesty
no offense. This same King while his brothers
debauched men's wives and daughters throughout
the island winked at their amours, but as soon as
they have committed the impolitic honest act of
matrimony, or as soon as they respectively [respect
ably?] had declared the act, he disgraced them by
banishment from court. You know it is said some
where. Thou shalt not commit adultery, by our
King to his brothers. Thou shalt not commit matri
mony. Thus policy militates against religion; but
the latter will be the hold-fast when the former fails
and is of no use." * He might have added that the
Duke of Grafton, in spite of the fact that he followed
the races and cultivated the society of the notorious
Nancy Parsons, was thought none the less worthy,
except by the carping Junius, to be elected Chan
cellor of Cambridge University, nor as Prime Minis
ter to guide the destinies of the nation.
» Wallace. Henry Laurens, 185-86. » Ibid., 186.

322 CAUSES OF WAR OF INDEPENDENCE
Three years among such scenes deepened his* sad
conviction that the King and his Ministers and the
members of Parliament were unworthy to rule over
an honest and moral people, as he thought his f eUow-
citizens in America. Disillusionment changed his
erstwhile veneration to bitter sarcasm.' He also
came to a sound philosophy which put away any
envy for the gilded aristocracy about him. "You
learn from hence, good sir," he moralized to a cor
respondent, "that Kings and princes have troubles
and perplexities and passions and crosses to contend
withal as much as men have who move in a more
humble sphere. Good health, a tolerable share of
understanding, a sound conscience, with good rice
fields are preferable to the title of Sir Toby Tribble
procured by bribery, perjury and fraud." *
Laurens, of course, was seeing that side of life to
which travelers are most likely to give attention in
any great metropolis like Paris or London. In many
smaller cities and towns of England and on every
countryside simple and honest men with good morals
were keeping the heart of English life sound and
wholesome. From that stratum of society came
Watt and Howard and Arkwright and Brindley.
John Wesley, "that low and puny tadpole of
divmity," as the author of "Rock of Ages" called
him, gives in his famous diary a different view of the
English people from that of Laurens, but he traveled
among the middle and lower classes.
English high Iffe was for the moment at its worst.
Horace Walpole, the cultivated aristocrat with the
' Wallace, Henry Laurens, 185. » Ibid., 187.

THE SOCIAL AND INTELLECTUAL GULF 323
philosophy of a Jacobin, abandoned himself to rhe
torical extravagance about the morals of his time.
" WTiat is England now? — A sink of Indian wealth,
filled by nabobs and emptied by Maccaronis! A
senate sold and dispised ... A gaming, robbing,
wrangling, raUing nation, without genius, character
or aUies." ' On the eve of the war (1775) he be
moaned a condition which he but little magnified.
"We are given up to profusion, extravagance and
pleasure: heroism is not at all in fashion. Cincinna-
tus will be found at the hazard table, and CamUlus
at a ball." * "The gaming," he declared, " is worthy
the decline of our Empire . . . The young men of
the age, lose five, ten, fifteen thousand pounds in
an evening . . . Lord S., not one and twenty, lost
eleven thousand . . . last Tuesday but recovered it
by one great hand at hazard . . . his cousin, Charles
Fox, shines equally well (at hazard) and in the House
of Commons." '
Little wonder that the English Juvenals compared
London and Bath with Rome and Raise! In the
memoirs and letters of the time we find numerous
passages as filled with love and wine as a Bacchic
ode. "Port" and "Burgundy" and "Claret" dot
the pages, and fill the interstices between Ham-
borough beef and gooseberry tart which furnished
forth the midnight feasts. Fine gentlemen, used to
swaying the rod of empire, are found at three o'clock
in the night, "flown with insolence and wine," and
yet ready in the morning to grace a cock-fight. Such
• Horace Walpole, Letters (Toynbee, ed), vni, 308.
» Ibid., EX, 171. » Ibid., vn, 365-66.

324 CAUSES OF WAR OF INDEPENDENCE
methods of dissipation seemed to the fashionable
men of that generation to be the only way of attain
ing "a tolerable state of insensibility to the ills of
human life."
All this was not the England of the age of King
John, and of Cromwell, and of the Glorious Rev
olution, the "Old England" of which the colonist
dreamed. When on business or on pleasure bent like
Franklin or Laurens, or as an exile like Samuel Cur
wen, the sober provincial saw this passing phase of
English life, his dream was shattered, and a loyal
British subject was unconsciously made ready for a
step in the direction of rebellion. He was apt like
Franklin to use impatient exaggeration: "Had I
never been in the American Colonies," he wrote,
"but was to form my Judgment of Civil Society by
what I have lately seen, I should never advise a
Nation of Savages to admit of Civilization. Com
pared to these People every Indian is a Gentleman." '
WTien such a disgruntled colonist returned to Amer
ica, he led others away from their loyalty. Some
not so sturdy, nor with so enduring a fiber of charac
ter, abandoned the ways of their Puritan fathers,
and took up the fashions of London polite society.
Laurens confided to his brother, begging him "for
goodness' sake" to let it go no further, that an old
South Carolina neighbor had "learnt to play at
cards and makes Sunday subservient to visiting
Richmond and Kew" — places of pleasure and dis
sipation. Laurens could have found plenty of card-
playing in a few places in America which imitated
• Franklin, Writings (Smyth, ed.). v, 362.

THE SOCIAL AND INTELLECTUAL GULF 325
the London fashions, for at this time Alexander
Mackrabie, a visitor in New York, was writing the
famous Sir Philip Francis, "Here are no Diversions
at all at present ... I have gone dining about from
House to House, but meet with the same dull round
of Topics everywhere, — lands, Madeira-wine, fish
ing Parties, or Politics . . . They have a vile Practice
here ... of playing Back-Gammon (a Noise I de
test) which is going forward in the public Coffee-
House from Morning to Night, frequently ten or a
dozen Tables at a time." ' Nevertheless Laurens
knew that among God-fe'aring Puritans at home it
was not done.
John Adams expressed well the Puritan hatred
of card-playing. "It gratifies none of the senses,
neither sight, hearing, taste, smelling, nor feeling.
It can entertain the mind only by hushing its clam
ours, cards, backgammon, etc., are genteel antidotes
to reflection, to thinking — that cruel tyrant within
us. They choke the desire for knowledge," he
added.* In his early and inteUectuaUy priggish days,
he confided to his diary his amazement that men
could play cards, drink punch and wine, smoke to
bacco and swear "while a hundred of the best books
lie on the shelves, desks, and chairs in the same
room." ' In those callow years he coached himself
daily in the same demure diary to "study Seneca
and Cicero and all other good moral writers," pray
ing fervently meanwhUe that "foppery, folly, and
vice" in himself might be subdued. "WTio can
» The Francis Letters, i. 97.
« John Adams. Works, n, 62-63. • Ibid., 62.

326 CAUSES OF WAR OF INDEPENDENCE
study," he lamented, "in Boston streets ... I can
not raise my mind above this mob crowd of men,
women, beasts, and carriages, to think steadily.
My attention is solicited every moment by some new
object of sight, or some new sound. A coach, a cart,
a lady, or a priest, may at any time . . . disconcert
a whole page of excellent thoughts." ' He was ever
calculating, too, what company would be good for
him: castigating his tendency to waste time, and
exhorting himseff to read Milton, Shakespeare,
and Butler's " Analogy." In all this he was merely
revealing the New England conscience, a species of
that inward monitor found in aU lands, but in cer
tain peculiar manifestation more abounding in Mas
sachusetts, Connecticut, and Rhode Island than any
other corner of the earth. The pulpits of those
colonies thundered against the theaters which scan
dalously advertised those worldly pageants, "Ham
let" and "Othello." Laws against Sunday travel
were stiU enforced in Massachusetts and Connecti
cut, and though men mourned that only the shell of
orthodoxy was left, John Adams could still say with
truth that the New England man was "a meeting-
going animal." The gate by which Boston was
entered on the north was closed on the Lord's day,
and one might be fined for strolling on the Common.
Taverns and shops were shut, and no Boston Nello
coiUd dress a periwig after sundown on Saturday.
The Puritan left no device untried to make of Sun
day a virtuous vacuum. Peter Oliver, the banished
Loyalist, sneeringly recorded that "some of the pious
' John Adams, Works, n, 66.

THE SOCIAL AND INTELLECTUAL GULF 327
zealots refused to brew their beer on Saturday lest
it should work on Sunday in defiance of the fourth
Commandment." ' Prejudice against "Romish holi
days" was softened from the early days when spruce
and laurel and evergreens were forbidden emblems,
and men had sat in jail for eating a Christmas mince
pie. The descendants of Sewall would no longer
have arranged the coffins in the family vault as "an
awful but pleasing Christmas diversion," yet the
curse of dullness had not yet been lifted from the
observances of that holiday. In the eyes of a liberal
foreigner. New England led not only a simple Ufe, ^,
but a narrow and bigoted one, and even the natives
of New England, when opportunity made them
polished and cultivated gentlemen, agreed with
Englishmen who found Boston, in 1769, "a noisy
turbulent place inhabited by people of coarse inso
lent manners, not amenable to reasonable control,
and like a huge recreation ground full of unruly boys,
playing at politics, and aping the ways of serious
citizens, and not a community of civilized crea
tures." * That criticism, which was most likely to
emanate from educated Englishmen, that America
was not "a community of civilized creatures," was
just the opinion most certain to cut to the quick,
and yet from the Old- World point of view there
was ground for this comment. At a time when the
old brick Independence Hall in Philadelphia, and
Trinity Church in New York, and the old yellow
brick Faneuil Hall in Boston were the finest speci-
« British Museum, Egerton MSS., 2671 F 13.
* Belcher, First American CivU War, i, 105.

328 CAUSES OF WAR OF INDEPENDENCE
mens of architecture in North America, England
possessed W^estminster Abbey, Lincoln and Lich
field and Wells Cathedrals, Magdalen Chapel, Con
way, Carnarvon and Warwick Castles, and hun
dreds of country homes unrivaled in the world.' Art
galleries, libraries, every creation of civilization
abounded in England, while in America little had
been done to that end except to clear the forest from
the land. American architecture was "bare and
square"; England's gifted with every grace which
the art of man had devised. Colonial churches,
wherein, at the time they were built, no music rose
lest it "bewitch the mind with syrenes sounds,"
were not Ukely to please the sense with aesthetic
lines. It was a Puritan dictum that God's altar
needed not the art of man. Colonel Barre need not
have warned his American friend, Josiah Quincy,
to let his countrymen beware, as of a deadly poison,
of taste in their buildings. Granted that Barre's
theory was correct that "'tis taste that ruins whole
kingdoms, 'tis taste that depopulates whole na
tions, "the danger to America was so far removed
in that day that the most ardent patriot need not
worry lest his countrymen be "ruined by a taste
for fine arts." *
Wbat was true of architecture was true of other
forms of art. America could boast no rivals to
Gainsborough, Romney, or Reynolds. Products of
Flaxman or Wedgwood might be found here and
there in luxurious American homes, but the makers
> Walpole, Letters, m, 119, 186.
• Mass. Hist. Soc, Proceedings, l, 452.

THE SOCIAL AND INTELLECTUAL GULF 329
had no rivals, not even imitators in the colonies.
Franklin would go no further in 1763 than to claim
that "some of our young Geniuses begin to lisp at
tempts at Painting, Poetry, and Music." ' England
was amply supplied with cultivated men and women
who would give appreciation and patronage to
talent or genius in art, but if America produced a
West or a Copley, he must go to live in England, that
the sensitive growth of his genius might not be
chilled. Benjamin Franklin (1763), before his heart
was seared by what he believed to be the wrongs of
his country, wrote of England : " Of all the enviable
Things I envy it most its People. Why should that
petty Island, which ... is but like a stepping Stone
in a Brook, scarce enough of it above Water, to
keep one's Shoes dry . . . enjoy in almost every
Neighborhood more sensible, virtuous and elegant
Minds than we can collect in ranging a hundred
Leagues of our vast Forests?" * The answer was,
of course, simple, for in America the fortunes were
not yet made which were to give leisure for the re
finements and amenities of life. Human time and
human energy were too much absorbed in the mere
struggle for existence. The wilderness had attracted
the robust and strong, and the land-hungry, but
not the neurotic, nor the weak, nor the intellectual
and artistic. The latter had been left behind, and
America would have to develop those types with the
passing of generations, or bide her time until her
evolving civilization should create conditions at
tractive to the European artists and intellectuals.
> Franklin, Writings (Smyth, ed), iv, 194. ^ Ibid.

330 CAUSES OF WAR OF INDEPENDENCE
For the present the refinement of England was ex
hibited iu the noble political phUosophy of Burke,
the lofty eloquence of Pitt, and Horace Walpole's
cultivation as seen in his charming letters, while the
ruder culture of the American frontier of the British
Empire was shown in Patrick Henry's stump ora
tory, Thomas Jefferson's amateur philosophy, and
the homely wisdom of "Poor Richard." A Horace
Walpole was unthinkable in the American colonies,
and even Benjamin Franklin was a phenomenon suf
ficient to be the pride of a continent. Great as was
the latter's reputation in science, his observations
in that field would not always bear inspection, as for
example his files, which, after being embalmed in a
bottle of Madeira, came to life months later! '
In every manifestation of artistic appreciation
there was the same sharp contrast. At a time when
Handel was moving England with his choral music,
psalmody was in America, Jonathan Boucher wrote,
"everywhere ordinary and mean." Boucher's criti
cism referred to a time long after it was proposed to
permit singing only to godly men regardless of their
voices, and to bar "carnall men and Pagans." * At
a time when some of the world's greatest musicians
were rising to fame on the European continent, and
when they enjoyed a great, appreciative audience in
England, the colonists had attained only the rudest
stages of that art. Not that "music, heavenly
maid," had fled the colonies, but she had never been
warmly esteemed there. In New England the Puri-
* Franklin, Writings (Smyth, ed), vi, 43-44.
' Eggleston, Transit of Civilization, 186.

THE SOCIAL AND INTELLECTUAL GULF 331
tan settlers had been hostile to music, and what they
permitted must have "conscience rather than ele
gance." Lest it should prove an instrument of the
devil to charm godly minds from holy thoughts, the
Puritan had been wary of music for its own sake.
In New York and Charleston the singing of hymns
was from the first accepted without controversy, but
in New England, church singing gained approval
slowly, and the strong prejudice against instrumental
music caused the church organ to be barred in some
districts until well into the nineteenth century.
Nevertheless the real beginning of truly American
music was probably in the psalm-singing of the Pil
grims; though Old-World music had been sung
earlier by the Virginians. The old "Bay Psalm
Book" with not more than eight or ten tunes was
not likely to allure with "syrenes sounds," and even
Williams's "New Harmony of Zion" (1769), and
Flagg's collection of one hundred and sixteen tunes
and two anthems might be resisted by the pure in
heart. Flagg admitted, "We are obliged to the
other side of the Atlantic chiefly for our tunes."
Yet America was progressing. As early as 1740,
Philadelphia had a "Musical Association." Choir
singing began about 1750, and twenty years later,
William Billings, the first American composer, and
a good type of the provincial crudity, published
"The New England Psalm Singer." There were
concerts in New England forty years before the
Revolution. Later in Charleston, Philadelphia, and
New York sporadic musical entertainments were
given, but in Charleston, at least, it seems to have

332 CAUSES OF WAR OF INDEPENDENCE
been necessary to mingle tight-rope dancing, magic,
and other thrills with the more sober musical en
tertainment.' Before the Revolution a few profes
sional musicians eked out an existence, and one in
Virginia advertised instruction in the "true method
of Singing Psalms." * Individuals throughout Amer
ica indulged a crude taste in an amateur way.
John Adams was in his youth tempted by the fiddle,
and both Henry and Jefferson yielded to its charms.
Every cultivated young lady must play the harpsi
chord or the spinet, which were to be found in the
homes of prosperous merchants and planters. Jef
ferson ordered a "forte Piano" of solid mahogany,
"worthy the acceptance of a lady for whom I intend
it." "Councillor" Carter had "an Armonica, one
of the new fashioned musical instruments invented
by B. Franklin," but his uncle, Langdon Carter,
less "moved with a concord of sweet sounds," com
plains in his diary of a "constant tuting" from one
instrument or another in the town of WiUiamsburg.^
"The cultivation of music is rather rare as yet,"
wrote Mittelberger about 1750. "In Philadelphia,
no music is made either in the English or in the
German Churches. Some English men give occa
sional concerts in private homes with a spinet or
harpsichord. I came to this country with the first
organ, which now stands in a High German Lutheran
Church in the city of PhUadelphia, and which was
buUt in HeUbronn . . . many people came from a
great distance, 10, 20, 30, 40, and even 50 hours'
* O. G. Sonneck, Early Concert Life in America, passim.
* M. N. Stanard, Colonial Virginia, chap. xn. ^ Hnd,

THE SOCIAL AND INTELLECTUAL GULF 333
journey to see and hear this organ. ... As I became
more and more known in Pennsylvania, and the
people learned that I had brought fine and good
instruments with me, many English and German
famUies came 10, 20, and 30 hours' journey to hear
them . . . and they were greatly surprised, because
they had never in all their lives seen or heard an
organ or any of these instruments." ' In apprecia
tion of music as in art, the colonies trailed far be
hind England. America was only at the beginning
of the ascent to Parnassus, and the muses hardly
knew of her existence.
Intellectual attainment in its higher spheres was
in America far below that in contemporary England.
A polite literature created by native authors did not
even exist in the colonies in a generation for which
Sterne was writing his "Sentimental Journey," Sher
idan, "The Rivals," and Goldsmith, "She Stoops
to Conquer." At a time when Johnson and Burke
and Cowper were delighting a cultivated EngUsh
public, America could boast only a few rushlights of
literature which even the inordinate national vanity
of historians of American literature has been unable
to keep aflame. Ten years before the American Rev
olution a Boston paper spoke of Michael Wiggles-
worth's "Day of Doom" as "those divine poems."
If not typical of New England taste, it did not shock
it to speak thus of a book which describes in doggerel
the damnation of non-elect babes for the guilt of
Adam's sin, merely granting them "the easiest room
in Hell," and which portrays Christ as now a Mo-
> Mittelberger, Journey to Pennsylvania, 114-15.

334 CAUSES OF WAR OF INDEPENDENCE
loch, now a saintly Dogberry. The Puritan mind,
which took sheer delight in the thought of that
"fiery deluge, fed with ever-burning sulphur uncon-
sumed," preferred Dent's "Plaine Man's Pathway
to Heaven wherein every man may clearly see
whether he shall be saved or damned" to the mere
worldly entertainment of the "Sentimental Jour
ney." On the eve of the Revolution there was much
lyric verse contrasting the charms of Freedom with
the ugliness of Tyranny, but no man of taste would
now give it a place in a collection of the best English
verse of the eighteenth century. In prose most
literary expression was pugnacious. Words were
blows. Mild and pleasing forms of literature were
not in fashion. Even theological literature must not
be mUd. The Puritan at least had only censure for
the "smooth divine, unused to wound the sinner's
heart with Hell's alarming sound."
Life in the colonies was too wrapped in the ma
terial interests, energy too much spent in the battle
for life. Even a Milton would have been mute and
inglorious where sympathy never turned its genial
face, and where no detached mind gave heed. Not
that the Americans of that day were wholly wanting
in the appreciation of pure literature, but the audi
ence was small, and usually provincial enough not
to recognize talent or genius untU it had been ac
claimed in England. Many who did care for elegant
literature acquired the taste in English schools where
the sons of wealthy planters or prosperous merchants
were apt to be educated, and their minds furnished
in the best English fashion. Lord Adam Gordon,

THE SOCIAL AND INTELLECTUAL GULF 335
traveling in Virginia before the war, says in his
journal that most of the gentlemen he met there were
educated in England.' Among such men it was, of
course, good form to gain polish and urbanity by
a communion with the classics, ancient or modern.
Nevertheless, the average Virginia gentleman had
not eaten excessively "of the dainties that are bred
in a book." It was to some extent in Virginia, as
Guevara says of the days of chivalry, "WTien among
knights or gentlemen talk is of arms, a gentleman
ought to have great shame to say that he read it,
but rather that he saw it." In Boston we are told
it was the Loyalists of the North End, whose sec
tarian bent was shown by the possession of the
"English Prayer Book," who read "Tom Jones,"
"Tristram Shandy," "Sir Charles Grandison," and
Addison's "Spectator." With them it was an im
ported fashion, followed because the path was well
worn by those whom they aped in England. Never
theless, good reading was not a monopoly of the
Hutchinsons and the Olivers, the Apthorps and the
Amorys, for Abigail Adams knew her Addison and
her Pope, her Milton, Dryden, and Shakespeare, and
had wit enough to quote them in her devoted letters
to her much too absent husband, John Adams. She
could not, however, be brought to like Moli^re, for
the good Puritan reason that "he ridicules vice,
without engaging us to Virtue."* Richard Henry
Lee reveals in his letters an acquaintance with
' Mereness, Travels in the American Colonies, 405. An interesting
list of the Virginians so educated, and where, is given in M. N. Stan
ard, Colonial Virginia, 292-94.
^ Warren-Adams Letters, 19.

336 CAUSES OF WAR OF INDEPENDENCE
Shakespeare, Pope, Butler's "Hudibras," and even
with the "Junius Letters," which were little liked m
America, perhaps because the subtlety of their in
nuendo and irony made little appeal to the conven
tional colonial mind. Lee also shows a famUiarity,
a little pedantic at times, with the Latin language,
and with the classic myths.' Nathanael Greene,
too, read the English poets, and knew well his
Plutarch and his Csesar. Henry Laurens, with no
Latin or Greek, and only a smattering of French,
had opened his mind to a liberal view of the world
by wide reading of the English, or the translated
ancient classics. The very names of his slaves,
Othello, TuUy, Mentor, Valerius, Claudius, Juliet,
Lavinia, and many simUar would attest that he
had at least brought away the scraps from his feast
of knowledge.*
In spite of the existence in the generation before
the Revolution of such institutions of learning as
Harvard College, sending forth its average of about
forty Bachelors of Arts annually, and of Yale, King's,
Princeton, WUliam and Mary, and other yet smaUer
colleges, the opportunities for acquiring more than
superficial learning were few. John Adams, at the
age of twenty, wrote sadly in his diary: "I long to
be a master of Greek and Latin. 1 long to prosecute
the mathematical and phUosophical sciences. I long
to know a little ethics and moral phUosophy. But
I have no books, no time, no friends. 1 must there-
1 R. H. Lee, Letters, i, 5, 129, 161, 167, 175, 187; The Francis Let.
ters, I, 112.
' Wallace, Henry Laurens. 15, 79.

THE SOCIAL AND INTELLECTUAL GULF 337
fore be contented to live and die an ignorant, obscure
fellow." Yet he was a Bachelor of Arts from Har
vard College.' In the yearnings of young Adams
one sees the avidity with which the ambitious youth
of America was reaching for even the scraps of
erudition. Adams improved every opportunity to
seize the crumbs of culture. He teUs with pride that
James Otis used to invite him home evenings to
converse "on aU subjects of religion, morals, law,
politics, history, philosophy, belles-lettres, theol
ogy, mythology, cosmogony, metaphysics, — Locke,
Clark, Leibnitz, Bolingbroke, Berkeley, " and other
"subjects as high as Milton's gentry in Pande

monium." *

He, with Otis and Thacher, belonged to the
" Sodalitas," a law club, really a political science
club, which read and discussed Blackstone, Robert
son's "History of Scotland," "Lord Coke," and
Rousseau.^ There was no lack of zest in the in
tellectual appetite of the most ambitious colonials,
but the pliant hour and the tools of science or
scholarship were wanting. Over a generation later,
Noah Webster sadly admitted, "our learning is
superficial in a shameful degree, . . . our colleges are
disgracefully destitute of books and philosophical
apparatus, . . . and I am ashamed to own that
scarcely a branch of science can be fully investigated
in America for want of books especially original
works. As to libraries, we have no such things.
There are not more than three or four tolerable
libraries in America, and these are extremely im-
' John Adams, Works, n, 13. ' Ibid., x, 285. » Ibid., n, 148.

338 CAUSES OF WAR OF INDEPENDENCE
perfect.' Great numbers of the most valuable
authors have not found their way across the Atlan
tic." — "As to classical learning," he went on,
"history, (civil and ecclesiastical,) mathematics,
astronomy, chemistry, botany, and natural history,
excepting here and there a rare instance of a man
who is eminent in some one of these branches, we
may be said to have no learning at all, or a mere
smattering." * Webster's words were even more true
in Franklin's time, when besides himself and David
Rittenhouse, who said of himself that "he would
probably be slain making a telescope as was Archi
medes, while tracing figures on the sand," there were
very few who had the least reputation in science.'
Franklin himself, in order to satisfy his hunger for
scientific knowledge, was obUged to correspond with
English or French scientists such as William Her
schel, Nevil Maskelyne, or Antoine Court de Gebelin.
It was not that the common people of America
were more unlettered than the masses in England,
for, at least in New England, the people were prob
ably better cared for in the rudiments of education
than in the mother country; but in the higher
aspects of intellectual life, English attainment
towered far above that of America. There was, of
' For libraries in Philadelphia, see Schoepf, i, 86-87; in the treasure
room of the Widener Library on the exhibition board is a list of books
in the Harvard Library in 1764 (in a newspaper account of a fire at
Harvard). For lists of books in Virginia libraries, see M. H. Stanard,
Colonial Virginia, 295; see also Libraries and Literature in North Caro
lina in the Eighteenth Century, Washington, 1890. Also American
Antiquarian Society, Proceedings, v, 171.
2 Henry Adams, History of the United States, i, 63.
• Pennypacker, Historical Sketches, 66.

THE SOCIAL AND INTELLECTUAL GULF 339
course, nothing uncivilized about the colonists, for,
after all, they were only transplanted Europeans,
and as far as possible had carried with them the
letters and arts and science of the Old World; but in
the early days only the ruder forms took root, while
the higher drooped and died. The colonists had, in
fact, made remarkable progress and already pos
sessed a culture admirably suited to the needs of
their simple life, but in the.eyes of the English con
noisseur, their science and art and letters seemed
boorish and rustic in a contemptible degree.
This cultural difference extended even to the very
language which was their common heritage. Noah
Webster wrote a few years after the Revolution, "a
new country, new associations of people, new com
binations of ideas in arts and sciences, and some
intercourse with tribes wholly unknown in Europe,
. . . introducenew words into the American tongue."
He even ventured to prophesy that in time American
English would differ from that of the British Isles
as Dutch or Swedish from German. Many easily
traced influences had brought this to pass. In ad
dition to the many new words learned from the In
dians for new objects unknown to the European
world, there were words and phrases culled from the
speech of the Dutch, French Huguenot, or German
settlers, and even from the negro slave. Their "suc
culent and nervous speech" drew some of its aber
rations from the climatic conditions, some from the
nervous haste of Americans, urging them to short
cuts for verbal expressions. If their speech was
vehement and brusque, the strain of frontier life

340 CAUSES OF WAR OF INDEPENDENCE
explauied it, and if they were unusually contemptu
ous of the rigors of grammar, that too might be ex
plained by their beuig cut off from the corrective
influence of books.
Witherspoon, who came from Scotland in 1769 to
be President of Princeton, asserted, "I have heard
in this country, in the senate, at the bar, and from
the pulpit, and see daily in dissertations from the
press, errors in grammar, improprieties and vulgar
isms which hardly any person of the same rank
would have fallen into in Great Britain." ' That
commentary was perfectly in keeping with the
opinion of most colonial governors and their coterie
of subordinate colonial officers.
English travelers, like cultivated Easterners wan
dering in the benighted West to-day, were wont to
regard their own English as the "pure and limpid
stream," and to denounce American divergences as
the turbid waters of a wild and swollen torrent.
They listened with iU-concealed disdain to amateur
botanists who were not only ignorant of Latin
names, but of their English equivalents, and who
had invented poke-weed, eel-grass, egg-plant, huckle
berry, and Johnny-jump-up. It was not enlighten
ing to have the landscape described by their colonial
host with outlandish terms such as run, fork, bluff,
neck, notch, and bottom-lands. It depended upon the
English visitor's sense of humor whether he was
pleased to find that mush had driven out porridge,
or that he was expected to eat Indian succotash,
1 The Druid No. 6, in Witherspoon, Collected Works (Green, ed.,
1800), IV.

THE SOCIAL AND INTELLECTUAL GULF 341
German noodle soup, or Dutch crullers and cookies.
It grated even on the royal ear to hear what seemed
the careless use of good English words. When the
loyal Hutchinson used the word "corn" in conver
sation with George III, the King stopped him testily
with "What corn?" "Indian corn," Hutchinson
explained, "or as it is called in authors, maize."
Jonathan Boucher, who came from England to
Virginia, and who for years preached to George
Washington, wrote spitefully, after he was driven
back to England for his loyalism, that the Americans
were "making all the haste they can to rid them
selves of the [English] language." He had encoun
tered in Virginia the droll Indian words, opossum,
chipmunk, papoose, and pow-wow, and had heard
new and odd combinations of familiar English words
like fire-water and war-path. His Brahmin sensibil
ities had been offended, no doubt, by the term
hired man, a term coined in America to avoid the
word servant, much resented by the frontiersman of
the late colonial period. A highly cultivated mind
like Boucher's was certain not to approve of the bold,
extravagant American humor and grotesque imag
ination, nor would he like colonial contempt for
grammatical authority. And yet he might have
found preserved in the colonies choice words that
had become archaic in England. "Our ancestors,"
Lowell laments with his dry humor, "unhappily
could bring over no English better than Shake
speare's," and in colonial times, as to-day, in remote
places where the stream of change has been little
felt, one coiUd hear the "gypsy phrases," the "loose

342 CAUSES OF WAR OF INDEPENDENCE
and brilliant syntax" of the Shakespearean vocab
ulary.' And yet Jonathan Boucher was very nat
urally not pleased. America was the refuge of the
uneducated and those not delicate in an aesthetic
sense. John Pory, annalist of early Virginia, found
the incoming vessels freighted more with ignorance
than other merchandise. These uncouth settlers
had no respect for the keepers of the sacred vessels
of the English language. They were cultural image-
breakers, knowing more of the axe and the plough
than of spelling books and grammar. To New Eng
land, too, there came in time men with only con
tempt for the high-browed Puritan divines — black
guard sailors, and workmen — ready to coin, with
loutish wit, new words from English materials such
as bull-frog, hog-wallow, razor-back, garter-snake, and
lightning-bug.^ When such forces had been at work
for one hundred and fifty years, it was not strange
that Franklin drew up (1768) a scheme of spelling
reform which should conform to the standards of
spelling and pronunciation in the New World.'
Eleven years later, when Ambassador to France,
he was instructed to use the "language of the United
States in communications to Louis XVI." This order
was given in the heat of strife, but betrayed that the
members of the foreign committees of Congress were
conscious of a difference between American and
English speech.
The peculiarities of language and colloquial slang
• H. L. Mencken, The American Language, 68, quotes Dialed
Notes, rv, iv, 283-97.
» Ibid., 44, 45. » Franklin, Writings (Smyth, ed.), v, 169.

THE SOCIAL AND INTELLECTUAL GULF 343
in New England during the colonial period are no
where more naively reproduced than in the journal
of Madame Knight kept on a journey from Boston
to NewYork.' Travelers usually derided such tor
ture of the King's English in private, but in 1775,
in the midst of debate in the Commons on the state
of American affairs. Colonel Grant, who had served
in America and claimed to know the colonists well,
made merry with them before Parliament; and, Han
sard says, "repeated many of their common-place
expressions, ridiculed their enthusiasm in matters
of religion and drew a disagreeable picture of their
manners and ways of living." *
In but one direction did American intellectual
attainment gain respect in England. American State
papers such as the resolutions of the Stamp Act
Congress, the Massachusetts Circular Letter, and
the Virginia Resolutions did much to enlighten
Europeans about the state of American civilization.
These "law-defying backwoodsmen" showed no
mean amount of cultivation in political matters and
minds moulded by political literature, law, and
history to a sober political conservatism worthy even
of the Old World. Few of the writers on politics
were unknown to the American leaders before the
War of Independence. Burke declared in 1775, "I
hear as many Blackstones are sold in America as in
England." John Adams read and quoted Harring- )
ton. Hooker, Sidney, Selden, Locke, Hobbes, Mon
tesquieu, Rousseau, Grotius, and Pufendorf. In
> The Journals of Madam Knight, etc. (N.Y. 1825 ed.).
> Force, American Archives (4th Ser.), i, 1543.

344 CAUSES OF WAR OF INDEPENDENCE
Franklin's library were Locke, Hoadley, Sidney,
Milton, and Montesquieu. John Hancock owned
Milton, and Beccaria on Crimes. Josiah Quincy be
queathed to his son, Sidney and Locke's Works.
Jonathan Mayhew knew well his Locke and Milton's
"Defence of the People of England." President
Stiles read with approval Harrington's "The Com
monwealth of Oceana." Samuel Cooper, writing to
Thomas PownaU, bolstered an argument by refer
ring to Jean Jacques Burlamaqui, the Swiss author
of "Principes du Droit Naturel" (1747). Selden,
and Montesquieu's "Spirit of the Laws" are quoted
by Richard Henry Lee. Robert Carter's library of
1066 volumes contained, in 1772, Locke, Sidney,
Hume, and Hobbes.' Samuel Adams had read
Grotius, Hooker, Hume and Locke, Montesquieu,
Sidney and Vattel; and Alexander Hamilton, youth
that he was, showed that he was grounded in Gro
tius, Hobbes, Hume, Locke, Montesquieu, and
Puffendorf. John Dickinson prepared for his "Farm
er's Letters" on a diet of Hooker, Hume, Locke,
and Montesquieu. This "catalogue of the ships,"
though it makes Homer seem to nod, is of great
signfficance, ff one would understand the source
of American liberal political philosophy. The wide
acquaintance with such literature was the one green
oasis in the arid desert of American intellectual
• John Adams, Works, n, passim; Sears, John Hancock, 109;
American Historical Review, vm, 328; R. H. Lee, Letters, i, 20; n, 95;
Stanard, Colonial Virginia, 304. Mr. Goshorn, a graduate student,
tabulated the number of times certain famous poUtical writers were
quoted before 1776 by the political leaders of America. Locke waa
quoted 22 times, Hume 20, Selden 11, Montesquieu 10, Grotius 8,
Harrington 8, Hooker 4, Vattel 4, Pufendorf 4, Hobbes 2, Sidney 6.

THE SOCIAL AND INTELLECTUAL GULF 345
attainment. No sensible English statesmen would
speak disdainfully of colonial accomplishment in
that branch of learning.
The other ways, however, in which the colonists
were inferior to the English in the externals of civil
ization, or at least different in a marked degree,
tended not only to create misunderstandings, but
actually a new nation. Not only was there the con
trast of country and town life, the differences in
wealth and the distribution of it, which brought in
their train the glaring moral dissimilarity and the
disparity in intellectual attainment, but there was
actual difference in the ethnic make-up of colony
and mother country. WTiatever combination of
peoples had in centuries past formed the English
race, the inflow of alien blood during the last two
centuries had made little change, while into America
during the last century had poured hundreds of
thousands of Germans and Scotch-Irish, many
thousands of French Huguenots and Dutch, until
fully two fifths of America's white population was
of other than English extraction. This same move
ment, together with religious unrest in England, had
brought a variety of religious sects, and had made
America, like the Netherlands, a "great mingle-
mangle of religions," very unlike the comparative
uniformity in England. This immigration had
brought also not only foreign tongues, but some of
the changes in the English language itself which
have just been noted. It was the great sum of all
these differences which created conditions fore
shadowing an independent America.

CHAPTER XIII
RELIGIOUS AND SECTARIAN FORCES WHICH
THREATENED IMPERIAL UNITY
A SPY traveling in the colonies in 1765 in the employ
of the French Government made in English a sum
mary sketch of the various religious sects in Amer
ica, closing with the observation, "In Boston they
are ranck bigoted presbitarians, of these sort of
people preserve me O Lord."' This fact and the
historical tradition, fixed in the Puritan mind, that
from their first settlement in New England they had
resisted the attempt of the British Government to
transplant into their midst the seeds of privilege and
the institutions of feudalism, became a secondary
cause for desiring to break the bonds uniting them
to the homeland. Early in the history of Massa
chusetts Bay, Archbishop Laud, hoping to supplant
the Puritan with the Anglican Church, had aided
Gorges, aristocrat and supporter of the Stuarts, in
an effort to set up as a feudal proprietor in the
Puritan midst.* The plan failed, but the fear re
mained, and after 1700 the suspicions of the colonists
were often aroused. Once the Anglican Church sup
ported a plan to subject all corporate and proprie
tary colonies to the direct control of the Crown, and
that was taken as an attempted blow at the Puritan
1 Paris Archives, Service Hydrographique de la Marine, vol. 76, no. 2;
Journal of Travel in American Colonies, July 9, 1765.
2 Bradford, History of Plymouth Plantation (Original Narratives
Series), 315-16.

RELIGIOUS AND SECTARIAN FORCES 347
and Quaker power. Often the dissenting sects noted
the zeal of that good shepherd, the Bishop of Lon
don, in getting political plums for members of his
Anglican flock. The same apostolic figure in lawn
sleeves was known to have secured a veto of laws
which had seemed good to dissenting colonial leg
islators. Andros, with that prelate's approval, had
tried to place marriages solely in the hands of Angli
can clergy. In Virginia, indeed, this was the case,
although some who held the holy monopoly were,
we are told, such as would "babble in a pulpit and
roar in a tavern." ' Nevertheless, though the Board
of Trade was not above aiding the interests of the
Established Church, the graven image of commerce
was not permitted to be injured by the zeal for the
true God.* For this reason the Board enforced
toleration, but even that was hateful to bigoted
dissenting colonists who wished to assail Anglican
rivals. To an American public long nagged by fear
of intrusion by Episcopalian officialdom there came,
nearly at the same time with the Stamp and Town
shend Acts, a threat of setting up an American
Episcopate.^ The Anglican Church, during the colonial period,
had legal establishment only in the colonies south
of Pennsylvania and in three counties of New York.
The Episcopal clergy in these colonies were obliged
* Pennsylvania Statutes at Large, n, 450, 480, 490; Colonicd Records
of North Carolina, vi, 716; Hutchinson, History of Massachusetts Bay,
I, 318; Johns Hopkins University Studies, xn, no. 4.
' Dickerson, American Colonial Government, 231-33.
' Since the publication of Dr. Cross's exhaustive and scholarly
study of the Anglican Episcopate and the American Colonies, it remains
the last word on the subject.

848 CAUSES OF WAR OF INDEPENDENCE
to secure ordination from the Bishop of London,
whose jurisdiction was extended over the colonies.
The journey of six thousand miles in a sailing vessel
"to interview a cross old gentleman" in London was
a serious matter enough to check the rise of a native
American clergy.' Those sent from England were
often the sort that had failed at home, and who only
disgraced the cloth in America. In Virginia, they
were reputed to be the sort to whom the sheep look
up and were not fed.* On the spiritual side, there
was much to be said for bringing Mahomet to the
mountain — for bringing a bishop to America —
and thus making ordination easy. Against this ex
cellent spiritual argument fought two very important
poUtical objections. In the North, the sending of
bishops on the authority of Parliament — and only
by its act could the American Episcopate be founded
— would seem to the dissenting sects to threaten
their overthrow; while in the South, where the
Anglican Church was established, the Episcopalians
preferred local to imperial control.
Beginning with an unsuccessful plan of Archbishop
Laud's in 1638,' to send a bishop to New England,
* Some of those who, "inwardly moved by the Holy Ghost" — to
use Mayhew's sneering phrase — "have taken a trip across the
Atlantic to obtain Episcopal ordination," were Rev. S. Johnson,
President of King's College; Rev. Timothy Cutler, President of Yale;
Rev. S. A. Peters, author of the History of Connecticut; Rev. E. Ap-
thorp, missionary "in foreign parts, at Cambridge, Mass." Thorn
ton, The Pulpit in the American Revolution, 100.
^ W. S. Perry, Historical Collections relative to American Colonial
Church. IV. 128; H. A. White, Southern Presbyterian Leaders, 106.
But see on the other side, WiUiam and Mary College Quarterly, xix, 13.
'According to the assertion of Heylyn, Cyprianus Anglicus. 347,
quoted by Cross, Anglican Episcopate, 21.

RELIGIOUS AND SECTARIAN FORCES 349
and to back him with some force to compel obedi
ence, there were isolated, still-born plans of this
sort, from time to time, for the next half-century.
In 1701, there was incorporated the "Society for
the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts,"
and this heavenly -minded society began very soon
to urge, from what were at first, no doubt, spir
itual motives, the establishment of an Episcopate
in America. They just missed being successful in
Queen Anne's time, but, thereafter, George I was
found to be cold toward the project, and the shrewd
Sir Robert Walpole was too wise to attempt it. For
a quarter of a century the idea dwindled, but revived
again when the Bishop of Oxford, Thomas Secker,
preached a notable sermon in its favor, which was
vigorously confuted by Rev. Andrew Eliot in Amer
ica. From 1748 to 1761, Thomas Sherlock, mean
while Bishop of London, strove without ceasing for
an American Episcopate. In 1763, Jonathan May
hew, whom John Adams sought to designate as the
spiritual director of the American Revolution, began
his famous attack upon the Society for the Propaga
tion of the Gospel. This Society, he declared, was
trying to "root out Presbyterianism" in America by
getting Parliament to establish a bishop in America.
He was answered by Secker and others; and this
controversy, says John Adams, "spread an universal
alarm against the authority of Parliament." Next
occurred (1767-71) a bitter pamphlet war between
Thomas Bradbury Chandler and Charles Chauncey,
in which the former's appeal for an Episcopacy was
sanctioned by a convention of his Episcopalian

350 CAUSES OF WAR OF INDEPENDENCE
brethren from New York and New Jersey. He was
accused of aspiring after a complete Church hier
archy with revenues, and bare toleration for dis
senters. A newspaper war characterized this con
troversy, in which figured William Livingston, John
Dickinson, and others who later became prominent
in the Revolutionary struggle. So bitter was the
attack on the Episcopacy that the dissenting writers
themselves seemed barely to refrain from that
ceremonial, the laying on of hands, which in their
ministration would have had no spiritual signfficance.
In the course of this paper war many improbable
perils were conjured up by the opponents of Episco
pacy. Some of the pamphleteers had "lived long on
the alms basket of words." Bishops, who in Arch
bishop Laud's time had been denounced by their
Puritan enemies as "knobs and wens and bunchy
popish flesh," now became "Apostolical monarchs,"
"right reverend and holy tyrants"; they would, it
was said, introduce "canon law — a poison, a pollu
tion." ' The Congregationalists of New England
were warned that they would "be consumed by the
flames or deluged in a flood of Episcopacy." Merci
lessly the Puritan Juggernaut was dragged over
every scheme for an American Episcopate. May
hew told his New England readers that the "People
have no security against being unmercifully priest-
ridden but by keeping all imperious bishops, and
other clergymen who love to lord it over God's
heritage, from getting their feet into the stirrup at
> Samuel Adams, Writings, n, 236. One said "the court of probate
might get into their hands." John Adams, Works, n, 284.

RELIGIOUS AND SECTARIAN FORCES 351
all." ' These prophecies of evil were the very thing
to appeal to the masses of the people who read them
in their newspapers. Moreover, after the Stamp and
other revenue acts, the economic aspects of the
religious question were dwelt upon. Set up a bishop
in America, and he must be supported. If the
colonial assemblies refused. Parliament would be
called upon to tax. In 1768, it was artfully asked,
"At this time when we are suffering from the re
strictions on our trade are we to be involved in eccle
siastical bondage into the bargain; Is this the time
to think of episcopal palaces, of pontffical revenues,
of spiritual courts and of all the pomp, grandeur,
luxury and regalia of an American Lambeth?"*
To these hints of tithes and spiritual courts were
added prophecies of the assumption of secular func
tions by the bishops.^ As to their attitude in poli
tics, it was pointed out that five bishops had joined
the Lords in their protest against the repeal of the
Stamp Act. All of these terrors were very real to
many good people; and it does not matter that the
English State authorities did not consider the Epis
copate project seriously,* for they were suspected of
doing so; and it was the American "state of mind"
that wrought the mischief. It was, as the Massa
chusetts House of Representatives put it (1768),
"very alarming to a people whose fathers, from the
• Cross, Anglican Episcopate, 145. • Ibid. 196, 213.
' Thornton, The Pulpit of the Revolution, 204; Richard Henry Lee,
Letters, i, 59; Mass. Hist. Soc, CoUections (2d Ser.), n, 209, 210;
Samuel Adams, Writings, n, 272.
* Cross, Anglican Episcopate, 199, 258; Literary Diary of Ezra
StUes. 1, 238.

352 CAUSES OF WAR OF D^DEPENDENCE
hardships they suffered, under such an establish
ment, were obliged to fly their native country into
a wilderness." '
In the North, the opposition to the plan of Amer
ican bishops was almost universal outside the pale
of the Episcopalian Church,* and even in the South,
the Anglican laity of Virginia were opposed, for they
already had State control, and did not want intru
sion by the British Government.' Even some of the
Virginia clergy recognized that that agitation would
"infuse jealousies and Fears into the Minds of the
Protestant Dissenters," and the House of Burgesses,
though almost wholly Anglican, approved of this
objection.* Arthur Lee, a Virginian, regarded the
scheme of an American Episcopate "as threatening
the subversion of both our civil and religious liber
ties." ^ Part of the Virginia clergy, however, and
' Samuel Adams, Writings, i, 149. Franklin expresses the same
idea. Writings (Smyth, ed.), v, 403. William Pitt had a similar view.
But see Franklin's denial. Writings (Smyth, ed), v, 207.
^ The synods of New Jersey and New York Presbyterians joined
the Congregational Association of Connecticut in frustrating the
efforts of Episcopal organization. Cross, Anglican Episcopate, 216;
Trent, in Jameson, Essays, 234; Literary Diary of Ezra Stiles, i, 24
(note). It would not have been more desirable, perhaps, had they
known that Dean Swift asked to be sent out as a bishop over the
Virginia Lilliputians. Cross, Anglican Episcopate, 91-92.
' Cross, Anglican Episcopate, 200.
* Ibid., 233, 235; Franklin, Writings (Smyth, ed), v, 404-05;
Literary Diary of Ezra Stiles, I, 116, 138; Samuel Adams, Writings,
n, 236.
' Thornton, The Pulpit of the Revolution, 110. As to forebodings
Buch as this, Dr. Cross says: "The fact that the leaders of the Church
of England in America thought and acted in concert, and furthermore,
that many of them held well-known loyalist sympathies, makes the
supposition possible that they held some ulterior motive in the intro
duction of bishops, which boded no good to the religious liberties of
their fellow-colonists." Cross, Anglican Episcopate. 166.

RELIGIOUS AND SECTARIAN FORCES 353
all, apparently, of the Maryland clergy did petition
the British Government for an American bishop.'
Some who favored this were accused of looking up
to the British Government "for an American epis
copate, and a pair of lawn sleeves." * One should
note that most of those in Maryland who had a part
in this petitioning later went into the Loyalist
party. As to the effect of this controversy in bringing on
the Revolution, we have the assertion of Jonathan
Boucher, a Loyalist, that it was "clearly one great
cause," and of John Adams, a Patriot, that the
apprehension contributed "as much as any other
cause, to arouse the attention, not only of the in
quiring mind, but of the common people, and urge
them to close thinking on the constitutional author
ity of parliament over the colonies." ' Dr. Cross, the
leading authority on the subject, takes a cautious
tone, saying: "If the question of the establish
ment of the Episcopate did not contribute a lion's
share in causing that enmity to England ... it is in
volved in the struggle and deserves to be regarded
as an important part of it," and again, "it was at
least one of the causes tending to . . . alienation." *
Looking at the matter from another angle, he says
later: "the strained relations which heralded the
approach of the war of independence strengthened
* Literary Diary of Ezra Stiles. I, 91.
' John Adams, Works, n, 358.
' Jonathan Boucher, View of the Causes of the American Revolution,
150; John Adams, Works, x, 185, 188, 288.
* M. Chamberlain, John Adams, 23, 47, 25 (note) ; Brooks Adams,
Emancipation of Massachusetts, 314 et seq.; Cross, Anglican Episco»
pofe, 157, 214; Thornton, The Pulpit ofthe Revolution. 109-10.

354 CAUSES OF WAR OF INDEPENDENCE
the opposition to Episcopacy, rather than that re
ligious differences were a prime moving cause of
political aUenation." ' In the light of the date (1750)
of the bitter Mayhew controversy — quite as en
venomed as any later contest — it is hard to agree
with this last opinion unless it is limited solely to
the Anglican Episcopate controversy, and does not
include other religious differences, cumulative in
effect and creating a general spirit of discontent.
Different issues were at different periods uppermost
in men's minds, and, though they might at times
seem most concerned with economic grievances, the
religious one was deep and abiding. Moreover, Dr.
Cross himseff points out another way in which this
quarrel surely had great influence, when he says:
"It is at least a tenable hypothesis that the bitter
ness of the controversy brought out so sharply the
latent hostility between Episcopalian and Puritan,
that many churchmen who might otherwise have
taken the side of their country, were, by the force
of their injured religious convictions, driven over
to the loyalists' ranks." *
If one looks only at this opposition to an American
Episcopate, one misses the full influence of religious
and sectarian forces in causing a desire for inde
pendence. One notable fact in addition was the large
number of Presbyterian and Congregationalist min
isters preaching in various parts of America, during
several generations, the doctrines of political liberty
which they had learned from their stujdy of seven-
• Cross, Anglican Episcopate. 271.
» Ibid., 214.

RELIGIOUS AND SECTARIAN FORCES 355
teenth-century apostles of free institutions.* Jona
than Mayhew tells us "that as a youth he was
initiated in the doctrines of civil liberty as taught by
Sidney, Milton, Locke and Hoadly; and he had
learned from the holy scriptures that wise, brave and
virtuous men were always friends to liberty"; and
that "where the spirit of the Lord is there is lib
erty." * New England preachers regarded them
selves and their flocks as lineal descendants of the
rebellious Puritans of Cromwell's time, and they felt
bound to defend the Puritan Revolution.* For such
a purpose these bookish men found an arsenal of
argumentative weapons in the writings of Locke and
MUton. Though their sermons might have no hint
of discontent, no incitement to rebellion, yet they
would often state Locke's theories more clearly than
Locke himself. Their people, living in an open-
minded frontier, fed on a political pabulum like this,
would be certain never to endure an arbitrary gov
ernment distant three thousand mUes.
The pulpit, in the northern provinces at least, was
in colonial times the most direct and effectual way
of reaching the masses, far outrivaling the news
paper, then only in its infancy. In New England,
moreover, a sermon was always preached as a part
of the imposing ceremony of the election. This was
not a mere compliment to religion, for after 1750,
the sermons were listened to as a source of politi
cal instruction. By legislative resolution they were
' See lists of sermons in my article in American Historical Review,
XIX, 48 et seq.
» Tudor, James Otis, 144. » John Witherspoon, Works, i. 326.

856 CAUSES OF WAR OF INDEPENDENCE
published in pamphlet form, and were scattered
through the colony, becoming in some cases a sort
of text of civil rights. Preachers like Mayhew and
Cooper seem to have known as much of the science
of government as Otis and the Adamses. They
boldly attacked the question of the nature of com
pacts and charters as they affected the relations of
the colonies to England. They discussed the origin,
nature, and end of government, and the rights of
man, and asserted that all laws were designed for
the good of the governed.
In these sermons, the congregations were told of
Locke's doctrine that it was the people's right to
choose their own rulers and to fix the bounds of
their authority. They were taught that government
was accountable to the people, and that the New
England charter had been a compact between the
sovereign and the first patentees. Samuel Davies,
the eloquent Virginia preacher, to whom Patrick
Henry listened from his eleventh to his twenty-second
year, taught that the British Constitution was "but
the voluntary compact of sovereign and subject." '
Henry gave proof that he had learned his lesson when
later he declared, "government is a conditional com
pact between king and people ... a violation of the
covenant by either party discharges the other from
obligation." Nearly one hundred years earlier, a
Connecticut preacher taught that "the choice of
public magistrates belongs to the people, by God's
' Samuel Davies, Sermons, ni, 80. There is little doubt that
Davies was Henry's model in public speaking. Ibid., i, 21; H. A.
White, Southern Presbyterian Leaders, 52-56, 104.

RELIGIOUS AND SECTARIAN FORCES 357
own aUowance. They who have the power to ap
point officers and magistrates, it is in their power,
also, to set the bounds and limitations of the power
and place unto which they call them." ' Among the
tracts reprinted just before the Revolution was one
first issued by a Massachusetts pastor in 1687, which
bore the title, "Democracy is Christ's Govern
ment." * Two tracts, by the Reverend John Wise,
of Ipswich, more than half a century old, one of
which was entitled the "Vindication of the Gov
ernment of New England Churches," so clearly set
forth the leading principles of democracy that they
were republished by subscription of laymen in 1772,'
and two editions soon exhausted.
New England ministers, along with their "three
mile prayers and half mile graces" at which their
critics jeered, were preaching, too, that people were
justified in rising even against the sovereign himself
in order "to redress their grievances; to vindicate
their natural and legal rights; to break the yoke of
tyranny." * This they reasoned from the natural
freedom of man, basing their arguments upon the
ideas of Milton, Sidney, and Locke. From the
earliest times, in fact, the ministers had taught the
duty to God and the fear of offending God, but had
not worried their flocks about their duty to kings or
with the fear of offending them. "Honor . . . and
obedience to good rulers, and a spirited opposition
1 Lord Acton, Lectures, 311. Mayhew, more than one hundred
years later than the Connecticut preacher, makes the same argument.
Thornton, The Pulpit ofthe Revolution, 61.
^ Dunning, Congregationalism in America, 275. • Ibid.. 270.
? Thornton, The Pulpit of the Revolution, 62.

358 CAUSES OF WAR OF INDEPENDENCE
to bad ones," was the burden of some New England
preaching, wrote John Adams.' "If," he said again,
"the orators on the 4th of July really wish to in
vestigate the principles and feelings which produced
the Revolution, they ought to study . . . Dr. May
hew's sermon on passive obedience and non-re-
sistence." * This famous sermon of Mayhew's at
tracted Adams' attention because of its boldness,
but the thesis was an old one, and much dwelt upon
later by the dissenting ministers of England. They
were driven to it out of mere oppugnance to Epis
copalian teachings. The young candidates for the
Anglican clergy were taught at Oxford that submis
sion and obedience, clear, absolute, and without ex
ception, was the badge and character of the Church
of England.* The Anglican clergy were compelled
to read, on the anniversary of the death of Charles
I, the Oxford homily "against disobedience and
wilful rebellion," or to preach a sermon against
that sin. Mayhew indulged in only modest hyper
bole when he charged the Anglican clergy with teach
ing that ff kings oppress, and prayers and entreaties
fail, we must all " suffer ourselves to be robbed and
butchered at the pleasure of 'the liOrd's annointed,'
lest we should incur the sin of rebellion and the
punishment of damnation." *
The scorn of the Puritan for such doctrines is also
> John Adams, Works, n, 167-68.
' Ibid., X, 301. See A discourse concerning unlimited Submission and
Non-resistance to the Higher Powers, etc., by J. Mayhew (Boston,
1750), 55 pp.
' Thornton, The Pulpit of the Revolution, 41; John Adams, Works,
X, 187; Evans, American Bibliography. 3282. ? Thornton, 63.

RELIGIOUS AND SECTARIAN FORCES 359
well shown in John Adams' article in the Boston
"Gazette" (1765) wherein he asserts that the New
England Puritans "... had an utter contempt of
all that dark ribaldry of hereditary, indefeasible
right, — the Lord's annointed, — and the divine,
miraculous, original of government, with which
priesthood had enveloped the Feudal monarch in
clouds and mysteries, and from whence they had
deduced the most mischievous of all doctrines, that
of passive obedience, and non-resistance." ' Adams
did not like it when the Reverend Mr. Gay on the
day of Thanksgiving said, "the ancient weapons of
the church were prayers and tears, not clubs."
This, he thought, inculcated submission to authority
in pretty strong terms.*
In refutation of the submission doctrine, Mayhew
preached the right of people to free themselves from
inglorious servitude and ruin. "It is upon this prin
ciple that many royal oppressors have been driven
. . . into banishment, and many slain by the hands
of their subjects . . . that Tarquin was expelled from
Rome, and Julius Csesar . . . cut off in the senate-
house . . . that King Charles I was beheaded before
his own banqueting house . . . that King James II
was made to fly the country which he aimed at en
slaving." * When Patrick Henry, a few years later,
expressed such ideas in the Virginia House of Bur
gesses, the Speaker thought he had spoken treason.
Mayhew declared: "The hereditary, indefeasible,
> John Adams, Worlcs, in, 454; see also Samuel Adams on this
•ubject; Wells, Samuel Adams, i, 245.
» John Adams, Works, n, 167-68.
» Thornton. The Pulpit of the Revolution, 62-63.

360 CAUSES OF WAR OF INDEPENDENCE
divine right of kings, and the doctrine of non-re
sistance which is built upon the supposition of such
a right, are altogether as fabulous ... as trans-
substan tation." ' Again he asked who can prove
"that those who resist a lawless, unreasonable
power, which is contrary to the will of God, do
therein resist the will and ordinance of God." *
He ridiculed the role of Charles I as "blessed saint"
and "royal martyr." Rather was he a "man black
with guilt," and "laden with iniquity," a "bur
lesque" upon saintship and martyrdom. A tyrant,
such as he, was "a messenger of Satan to buffet
us." * It was such fearless attacks that made serious
breaks in the citadel of superstition wherein sat the
"dread and fear of kings."
Some of the political doctrines quoted were in
culcated in New England's early days when political
leadership as well as moral guidance was doubtless
with the clergy. Only the commandments of God
took precedence then over their teachings. Even
in the eighteenth century, when the influence of the
elders had declined, their counsel and advice were
eagerly sought.* Pownall, who had been governor
of Massachusetts as late as 1760, warned Parliament
nine years later that it was arousing a spirit in New
England that would resist by force all efforts to tax,
^ Thornton, The Pulpit of the Revolution, 84; see also 86, note a,
and 70, 73, 75, 78, 82. See Witherspoon on the same subject. Works,
I, 326. '^ Twenty-five years later, John Adams was proclaiming the same
doctrine. Thornton, The Pulpit of the Revolution, 75, and note.
' Thornton, The Pulpit of the Revolution, 73, 74, note 99. Stiles has
a Uke attitude in his Literary Diary, i, 34, 35.
* American Historical Preview, xxx, 54, note 48.

RELIGIOUS AND SECTARIAN FORCES 361
and "if the ministers once fall in with this spirit, ff
the people once call upon them, they must take the
lead, . . . the people will be led by Moses and Aaron,
by the civil and religious." Once that is come to
pass, Pownall warned, "The spirit of their religion
. . . will, like Moses' serpent, devour every other
passion and affection." ' John Adams testifies that
the clergy were "jealous friends of liberty"; that
when he sought their advice they were "zealous in
the cause." In 1770, the "Merchants and other
Sons of Liberty" gave a banquet to the ministers in
Faneuil Hall. * Again WTiig gatherings were held
in garrets "crowded with patriots, mechanics and
lawyers, porters and clergymen, huddled promis
cuously into them." ' Peter Oliver, Loyalist, re
corded that Otis early urged the securing of the
"Black Regiment," meaning the dissenting clergy.
"WTiere better could he fly for aid," sneered Oliver,
"than to the horns of the altar?" Asa result, he
adds, the clergy "unceasingly sounded the yells of
rebellion in the ears of an ignorant and deluded
people." "In nomine Domini incipit omne malum,"
Oliver cynically concludes.*
When the Stamp and Townshend Acts and other
measures plagued the colonies, John Adams records
that the Puritan pulpits "thundered" and dwelt
more and more on the right of resistance. Against
the Stamp Act preached Charles Chauncey, one of
* Hansard, Parliamentary Debates, xvi, 498.
" John Adams, Works, n, 329, 424; Literary Diary of Ezra Stiles, I,
64, 55.
' Frothmgham, Life and Times of Joseph Warren, 50-51.
* British Museum, Egerton MSS., 2671 F 18.

362 CAUSES OF WAR OF INDEPENDENCE
the most eminent divines in America. When it was
repealed, his memorable sermon on the text, "As
cold waters to a thirsty soul, so is good news from a
far country," was filled with liberal political doc
trines.' Samuel StUlman, a Boston Baptist preacher,
denounced the same act from his pulpit, and John
Zubly, a German Lutheran minister, denied the
British right to tax, using as his text the proverb,
"A house divided against itself cannot stand." *
The "Boston Massacre" was piously magnified
by New England divines; the Reverend John
Lothrop preached upon the " Innocent Blood Crying
to God from the Streets of Boston." ' The Reverend
Samuel Cooke's sermon on this occasion was filled
with the doctrines of Locke, and the Massachusetts
House of Representatives resolved that it be printed
in the public press.* On the anniversary of the
"Massacre," in 1772, Dr. Chauncey preached a
sermon in the Old South Church, and then Joseph
Warren stepped into the pulpit, which was hung with
black cloth, and delivered an oration on the danger
of standing armies. In a sermon preached before
the Governor and Council, the Reverend Mr. Tucker
1 My article in American Historical Review, xrx, 52-53. ^ Ibid.
' Hearing that Governor Hutchinson would pardon the soldiers.
Dr. Chauncey in his pulpit cried, "Surely he would not counteract
the operation of the law both of God and of man . . . surely he would
not make himself a partaker in the guUt of their murder, by putting a
stop to the shedding of blood of those who have murderously spilt
the blood of others." Hutchinson, History of Massachusetts Bay,
in, 329, note.
¦• Thornton, The Pulpit of the Revolution, 147, 155. The text was:
"He that ruleth over men must be just, ruling in the fear of God."
It was listened to by the Lieutenant-Governor, Council, and House
of Representatives.

RELIGIOUS AND SECTARIAN FORCES 363
discussed the origin and design of government, and
the sacredness of compacts. "The people," he de
clared, "as well as their rulers are the proper judges
of the civil constitution they are under. . . . Un
limited submission is not due to government in a
free state." ' Upon every event in the series that
led to a war for independence, the influence of New
England's dissenting clergy may clearly be seen.
The Episcopal ministry did not meanwhile sit
with bridled tongue, mute and unprotesting. In the
North, however, they preached to a small minority
of the people, while in the South, especially in Vir
ginia, they were in bad repute, and had, moreover,
little influence over their congregations, made up of
a planter aristocracy which took its religion not over-
seriously. Jonathan Boucher, who later became
an ardent Loyalist, preached up to the eve of the
Revolution to his Episcopalian parishioner, George
Washington, who soon became the patriot leader.
In the Southern uplands, however, the Scotch-Irish
Presbyterian preachers were spreading the same
anti-monarchical doctrines as the New England
clergy. Nor was this conflict between Anglican and
dissenter confined to colonials of English extraction.
From those dissenting preachers, Germans or French
Huguenots, who had not come from the British Isles,
there came not so much a political opposition to the
Anglican Church, as one that was spiritual. Burke
suggested it when he asserted that "even the stream
of foreigners which has been constantly flowing into
' Literary Diary of Ezra Stiles, I, 218; Headley, Chaplains and
Clergy of the Revolution. 26

364 CAUSES OF WAR OF INDEPENDENCE
these colonies, has for the greatest part, been com
posed of dissenters from the establishments of their
several countries and have brought with them a
temper " like that of the British dissenters with whom
they mingled in America.' These non-English dis
senters were often little concerned with the political
antagonism between Anglican and dissenter, but
spiritually it was with the latter that they were fairly
sure to sympathize.
North of Virginia, the political hostility between
Church of England men and dissenters grew apace
as the period of open revolt drew near. Alexander
Mackrabie sensed it keenly in 1768 in New York.
He wrote to Sir Philip Francis : * "Among the many
disputes in this and the more northern parts of
America, the religious are not the least. The zealous
members of the Church of England are full of Appre
hensions at the great and growing power of the Pres
byterians. Don't imagine that I mean in any mat
ters that regard Salvation; that Affair might have
been left to shfft for itself at Doomsday. The Alarm
was taken at an Election lately; since which the
Parties have raged with tolerable violence. The
Church People, conscious that the Presbyterians,
who have the Appointment of their own Ministers,
must always outnumber them, are desirous of having
some Person here vested with the Power of Ordina
tion — but they don't like a Bishop, nor Eccle
siastical Courts, in short they don't know what they
want. You remember Dean Swift was to have been
made Bishop of Virginia. The Presbyterians should
» Burke, Works, n, 123. ' The Francis Letters, i. 98-99.

RELIGIOUS AND SECTARIAN FORCES 365
not be allowed to grow too great. They are all of
Republican Principles. The Bostonians are Pres
byterians." To the accuracy of Mackrabie's observation there
is a cloud of witnesses. In the following year, in
New York, the election conflict was between the
Livingston and Delancey factions, the former being
supported by the lawyers and dissenters and the
latter by the Anglican Church and the mercantile
interests.' At its close, Peter Van Schaack, pre
destined by his character, conservatism, and affilia
tions to become a Loyalist, wrote with joy: "Our
election is ended and the Church triumphant . . .
in spite of all the efforts of the Presbyterian inter
ests combined with some other dissenting sects." *
Lieutenant-Governor Colden wrote the Earl of
Hillsborough a year later that the opponents of the
British Government "consist chiefly of Dissenters,
who are very numerous especially in the country and
have a great influence over the country members of
Assembly. The most active among them are inde
pendents from New England or educated there, and
of Republican principles. The friends of the Ad
ministration are of the Church of England, the
Lutherans and the old Dutch congregations. . . .
From this the reason wUl appear of some bills having
passed the House of Assembly in favour of the Dis
senters, and in prejudice to the few ministers of the
Church of England, who have stipends by a law of
* Becker, Political Parties in the Province of New York, 18-19, 60;
Sedgwick, William Livingston, 107, 115.
' Van Schaack, Life of Peter Van Schaack. 10.

366 CAUSES OF WAR OF INDEPENDENCE
this Province." Again Colden declared that aU the
popular leaders of his day were both lawyers and
Presbyterians.' The struggle, dissenter agamst An
glican, was much older than the days of colonial
resistance to British taxation; as early as 1751 was
begun a struggle between these factions as to which
should dominate Kuig's College.* Ten years later,
Peter Van Schaack commented upon the fear of
the Presbyterians because of the growing power of
the Anglican Church in the legislature; "the other
branches of power [Governor and judges] being at
the disposal of the Crown and out of reach of those
who are disagreeable to mitred heads." '
The clash between the sects took place on every
occasion. Ezra Stiles noted in his meticulous "Liter
ary Diary" that, at dawn on March 18, 1769, the
anniversary of the repeal of the Stamp Act, a large
flag was hoisted to the top of the "tree of Liberty"
by the "Sons" of that same divinity, and the beU
in his church and that of the First Congregational
Church began and continued to ring, but the beU
of the Episcopalian Church struck a few strokes and
then stopped, "the Episcopalians being averse to
the celebrations." Next year the Anglican politi
cians tried "to confuse the Cause of Liberty," by
some bell-ringing and color-hoisting on Sunday, the
18th, instead of Monday the 19th, the day agreed
1 Ecclesiastical Records of New York, vx, 4181. The offensive laws
were vetoed in the Council where the Anglicans were strong. American
Historical Review, i, 239.
* Sedgwick, William Livingston, 80, 82, 95. King's College became
Columbia University.
' Van Schaack, Life of Peter Van Schaack. 11.

RELIGIOUS AND SECTARIAN FORCES 367
upon by the Sons of Liberty in Newport, Boston,
and New York. A year later the two Presbyterian
beUs struck, but the Anglican was silent at first.'
Then, as a Loyalist sadly recorded, the face of pub
lic affairs became melancholy, "altar against altar
in the Church, and such open bold attacks upon the
State, as, I believe the English annals do not furnish
us with the like since the reign of King Charles I." *
A royal governor's view of this conflict, altar
against altar, we have in a letter to the Earl of
Dartmouth written by Governor Martin of North
Carolina on the very eve of open rebellion.' "I can
not therefore, help observing to your Lordship the
congeniality of the principles of the Church of Eng
land with our form of government. To the reproach
of the professors of Christianity on both sides . . .
distinctions and animosities have immemorially pre
vailed in this country between the people of the
established Church and the Presbyterians on the
score of the difference of their unessential modes of
Church Government, and the same spirit of division
has entered into or been transferred to most other
concernments; at present there is no less apparent
schism between their Politics than in matters apper
taining to religion, and while Loyalty, Moderation
and respect to Government seem to distinguish the
generality of the members of the Church of England,
I am sincerely sorry to find that they are by no

* Literary Diary of Ezra Stiles, i, 6-7 (note), 16, 42, 96; see also I,
SO, 31, 294-95.
* Sabine, Loyalists, 333.
' North Carolina, Colonial Records, rx, 1086.

868 CAUSES OF WAR OF INDEPENDENCE
means the characters of the Presbyterians at large,
whence . . . the people of this denomination in
general throughout the continent are not of the
principles of the Church of Scotland, but like the
people of New England, more of the leaven of the
Independents, who according to English story have
been ever unfriendly to Monarchical Government." '
' See also Grigsby, in Washington and Lee Historical Papers, no. 2,
p.«.

CHAPTER XIV
THE BOSTON "TEA PARTY"
After the climax of feeling due to the "Boston
Massacre" the colonial public grew weary of the
"group of gloomy mortals" who still saw visions of
tyranny. Then came the cooling of colonial tempers
due to the repeal of the Townshend measures, except
as to the tax on tea; and finally the break-down
of the great mercantile combination against Brit
ish trade. For three years thereafter the shops
were filled with merchandise, business throve, ships
plied briskly over the customary trade routes, and
farmers were busy cultivating their lands. The alli
ance between the merchants and the radicals was
severed. "All Men of property," wrote Lieutenant-
Governor Colden, "are so sensible of their danger,
from riots and tumults, that they will not rashly
be induced to enter into combinations which may
promote disorder for the future, but will endeavor
to promote due subordination to legal authority." '
All friendship between John Hancock, merchant, and
Samuel Adams, agitator, was "suddenly at an end,"
wrote Hutchinson, and it is certain that on several
occasions Hancock threw his influence against the
efforts of Adams to stir the embers of discontent.*
"Officious Patriots" prated in vain about slaves
groaning from lack of liberty; the merchants were
tired of six years of agitation and bad business.
• New York Colonial Documents, vm, 217.
* Wells, Samuel Adams, i, 469, 470.

370 CAUSES OF WAR OF INDEPENDENCE
They fairly basked in the sunshine of better times,
and rejoiced in the political calm. They saw gold
actually being imported from England.' Floods in
France and Spain and Italy increased the call for
American grain, and with the profits from that trade
colonial merchants paid off long-standing debts in
England. It was true that as a result of non-impor
tation more products of colonial industry were to be
obtained than ever before, but that did not diminish
trade with England, and the domestic industry only
increased colonial prosperity. Shoes from Lynn,
paper from Milton, sails from Boston, watches and
bar-steel from Philadelphia were the boast of men
who would have America industrially independent.*
The old trade restrictions and the old revenue laws
lost their power to nettle the sensitive nerves of
the colonial trader. Even Parliament's legal tender
laws were modified in May, 1773, to ease the cur
rency stringency. Finally, tea itself lost its power
to stimulate the patriotic soul, and John Adams
confessed to dining with Hancock and drinking
"green tea from Holland, I hope, but don't know."
Only in New York and Philadelphia, the centers of
tea smuggling, was any heed given to the boycott
of dutied tea.' In two years over half a million
pounds of the "enervating leaves" passed through
the colonial customs houses, and yet it seems to be
true that more than nine tenths of the tea consumed
in that time was smuggled.*
' Schlesinger, The Colonial Merchants, 240-42, 255.
' Ibid., 243, 244. ' Ibid., 244, 246, 247.
* Ibid., 249. See also abstract prepared in the oflSce of Inspector of
Imports and Exports. Channing, Hist, of the U.S., m, 128.

THE BOSTON TEA PARTY 371
The incentive to the tea smuggler grew out of the
efforts of the East India Company to recoup their
losses by advancing the price of tea at their public
auction sales in London. As a result of this the
smuggler could afford, Hutchinson declared, "to
lose one chest in three"; and even after such a pos
sible loss, he could undersell the honest tea merchant
who had bought at the London auctions and paid
the tax in America. In order to put a stop to this
widespread evasion of the laws of the empire, the
activity of ships-of-war off American harbors was
redoubled. The zeal of the customs officers stirred
the fury of the mob. There were outbreaks at Fal
mouth and at Philadelphia in 1771, and in June of
1772 the "outrage" of the burning of the Gaspee.
Lieutenant Dudingston, who patrolled Narragansett
Bay with that vessel, had found the harbors of
Rhode Island most inhospitable to minions of the
law. The numerous coves and inlets made smug
gling easy, and among the people nobody loved a
customs officer. If the commander went ashore he
risked "insult" by seizure to answer the suits of
traders whose craft had been accused and held for
smuggling. Even Governor Wanton asked him to
answer complaints against the presence of his "pirat
ical vessel." ' To crown his troubles he ran aground
on a sand spit near Providence; at midnight boats
approached with fifty to one hundred and fifty men
who clambered on board, set Dudingston and his
saUors ashore, burned the vessel and vanished as
they came. The wrathful British authorities ordered
» Channing, Hist, ofthe U.S.. m, 125.

372 CAUSES OF WAR OF INDEPENDENCE
an investigation by a commission; but though a
cloud of witnesses knew the names of the mob, and
the detaUs of the exploit were common gossip, yet
only one runaway negro servant could be got to
testify, and he disgraced the inquiry. The main
effect of the commission and of the intent of the
British Government to bring the offenders to Eng
land for trial was to fan a flame of colonial wrath
which blazed with only brief respite until it de
stroyed the bonds which knit the empire.' During
the evolution of the Gaspee affair, Samuel Adams,
keenly alive to the cool temper of the Boston
merchants, realized that the cause of colonial free
dom must not be left dependent upon the seffish
interests of the merchant class, but that all the
people must be roused to sense the danger. WTien
Samuel Adams looked for "mighty grievances and
intolerable wrongs" he was famously successful. He
knew how to recite old grievances in the newest
kind of ways. Seizing upon the report, in Septem
ber, 1772, that judges' salaries were hereafter to be
paid by the British Government out of the revenue
collected in colonial customs houses, he urged in the
press that every social club, every town assembly,
every association consider the topic whether the
people were to be "freemen or slaves." Merchants,
he warned, were submitting to "the Indignity of a
Tribute," the body of the people looked on imcon-
cemed while "Pensioners" multiplied "like the
Locusts Ul Egypt." Was everything dear and sacred
to be submitted to the decisions of pensioned judges?
1 Calendar of Borne Office Papers (1773-75), no. 80.

THE BOSTON TEA PARTY 373
Were they to become "Hirelings" and help the
"iron Hand of Tyranny to ravish our Laws?"
"Merciful God! Inspire Thy People with Wisdom
and Fortitude and direct them to gracious Ends,"
he implored.'
But Samuel Adams was one of those prudent
mortals who, while much given to such pious ap
peals, kept his powder dry. He brought great pres
sure to bear on the selectmen to call a town meeting,
and overcoming all opposition he gained his end.
In meetings in Faneuil Hall Adams brought about
a colloquy with the Governor on the judges' salary
matter. At its height, designing to spread the re
sults of the debate, Adams introduced his famous
motion for a committee of correspondence of twenty-
one men.* Its duties were "to state the Rights of
the Colonists and of this Province in particular, as
Men, as Christians, and as Subjects: to communicate
and publish the same to the several Towns in this
Province and to the World as the sense of this Town,
with the Infringements and Violations thereof that
have been, or from time to time may be made —
Also requesting of each Town a free communication
of their Sentiments on this Subject." It passed
without opposition, and thus was born, in the wrath
ful words of the Tory pamphleteer, Daniel Leonard,
* Samuel Adams, Writings (Cushing, ed.), n, 334-37.
' It is not meant that Samuel Adams invented the idea of Com
mittees of Correspondence, for there had been similar committees at
the time of the Stamp Act in both Massachusetts and New York.
Moreover, Mayhew and others had long before suggested it, but this
time the idea was to grow and bear fruits of great importance. Becker,
Political Parties in the Province of New York, 45-46; Thornton, The
Pulpit ofthe Revolution. 44; R. H. Lee, Letters, i, 29, 106, 113.

374 CAUSES OF WAR OF INDEPENDENCE
"the foulest, subtlest, and most venomous serpent
ever issued from the egg of sedition."
Governor Hutchinson wrote to Pownall that the
committee was composed of "deacons," "atheists,"
and "black-hearted fellows whom one would not
choose to meet in the dark." These dangerous per
sons were James Otis, Samuel Adams, Joseph War
ren, Benjamin Church, Nathaniel Appleton, Oliver
Wendell, Josiah Quincy, John Bradford, Nathaniel
Barber, WiUiam Molineaux, and Robert Pierpont.
James Otis was at first the chairman, but when
madness again came upon him, he was succeeded
by "the Grand Incendiary of the Province." We
have no knowledge that Samuel Adams read Bacon's
Essay entitled "Of Seditions and Troubles," but he
imderstood as well as the "wisest and brightest of
mankind" that "common people are of slow motion,
if they be not excited by the greater sort," and "the
greater sort are of small strength, except the multi
tude be apt and ready to move, of themselves."
Adams used this new "engine of sedition" most
adroitly to awaken the people to the "violations of
their rights." A paper written by Adams and en
dorsed by the town meeting was soon sent to all the
towns in the province. It drew from the political
Pandora's box every ill real or fancied, which the
colonies had suffered, and conjured up perUs yet
to come. Many of the charges against the British
Government, later included in the Declaration of
Independence, make their appearance here. The
customs officers with wsits of assistance, the presence
of fleets and armies, the bogy of the American Epis-

THE BOSTON TEA PARTY 375
copate, the capricious and dangerous powers of the
admiralty courts, the restrictions on manufactures,
and the interference with home rule by means of
royal instructions to colonial governors, all were
exhibited with frightful mien in this circular letter
to which every community was invited to reply
through a like committee of correspondence to be
appointed by town meetings throughout the prov
ince. Radicals everywhere in the colony were now
given an organization hitherto unknown, and over
against the governmental machine, fairly in the
control of British officials, stood a revolutionary
organization full of sinister potentialities.' As time
went on, similar committee systems were established
in other colonies and everywhere became a powerful
force working on popular sentiment within each
province. It represented the radical faction and was
its agent to resist the will of the British Ministry.
Moreover, as Burke declared in 1775, "The new
institution is infinitely better obeyed than the an
cient government ever was in its most fortunate
periods. Obedience is what makes government and
not the names by which it is called." * General Gage
wrote the British Ministry that these committees
were "assuming to themselves more power and
authority than any body of men ever did, lookmg
upon Government as at an end, and making rules
and orders for the regulation of the people of the
country. In truth the people here have taken the
* E. D. Collins, Committees of Correspondence, in Annual Report,
American Historical Association (1901), i, 245-71. See critie-ism of
Collins' view in J. M. Leake, The Virginia Committee System 88-92.
» Burke, Works, n, 128.

376 CAUSES OF WAR OF INDEPENDENCE
government into their own hands and whoever does
not comply with everything proposed by them, their
« persons and properties are not safe." ' The commit
tees did not exercise such powers at first, but once
created, the march of events was sure to bear them
onward. For a time after the first organization in
Massachusetts their chief activity was to fan the
embers of discontent, or, as Samuel Adams ex
pressed it, arouse people from "stupor and inaction
to sensibility and activity." The merchants as a
class held aloof at first from this popular clamor
prescribed and directed by Samuel Adams. After
July, 1773, apathy seemed once more to reign.*
Lord North now became responsible (April 17,
1773) for a measure which roused the colonial mer
chant when all of Adams' demagogic devices had
failed. Once more he tried to save the fortunes of
the East India Company by helping them to sell
their ever-growing surplus of tea, which had mounted
to seventeen million pounds. His device, passed by
Parliament without opposition, amounted to no less
than giving the company a monopoly of the business
of selling tea in the colonies. It was that fact which
made the trouble rather than that the Government,
as Chatham said, had dressed "taxation, that father
of American sedition, in the robes of an East Indian
director." '
As far as taxes were concerned there was no new
inroad on American rights, but the English tea
• Calendar of Home Office Papers (1773-75), p. vii.
^ Schlesinger, The Colonial Merchants, 260, 262.
' Becker, Political Parties in the Province of New York, 96-102;
Hansard, Parliamentary History, xvn, 1356.

THE BOSTON TEA PARTY 377
merchant and the American tea merchant, who as
middlemen used to make profits by buying at the
public auctions in London and then selling to the
American retailer, were swept aside, leaving the
East India Company to be its own exporter to its
own branch tea houses in the colonies. The tea, free
of duty in England, reached American consumers
at half its old price even with the three pence duty
added in the American customs houses, and cheaper
even than smuggled tea; but the powerful interests
of both the honest and the illicit colonial traders were
utterly opposed.' Once more the colonial merchant,
conservative by nature and interest, lashed himself
into a fury and recklessly joined with the radicals
whose dangerous passions were so hard to control.
Since the public would actually profit as far as the
cost of its tea was concerned, the injured merchants
were careful not to confine their agitation too closely
to the true issue of their own prospective losses. The
hygienic arguments were not neglected, and it was
astonishing how clearly it could be shown that
"spasms, vapors, hypochondrias, apoplexies of the
serous kind, palsies, dropsies, rheumatisms, con
sumptions, low nervous mUiary and petechial fevers"
were all due to the drinking of tea.* The old political
arguments against taxation without representation
' For further details and qualifications see Schlesinger, The Colonial
Merchants, 262-64; also 133 Geo. Ill, c. 44. See M. Farrand article in
American Historical Review, ni, 266. It should be noticed that "non
importation" was impossible under such an arrangement, for the
East India Company itself would do the importmg. Colonial mer
chants would have no say in the matter.
' Schlesinger, The Colonial Merchants, 276.

378 CAUSES OF WAR OF INDEPENDENCE
were dressed up and paraded by the merchants
themselves, but ff the true objection to the plan, the
monopoly, was exploited in the press, the articles
were signed "Mechanic," "Patriot," "A citizen,"
or some Roman or English defender of liberty. Lest
other than tea merchants lose interest it was hinted
that this was only the entering wedge; that if the
East India Company was allowed to "pilfer the
trade" from the tea merchants, soon its other im
portations from India, spices, drugs, silks, china-
ware, and all other Oriental goods would be taken
from the traders in the commodities.' The com
pany's bad record in India was recited to show that
it would have no conscience as to the rights of its
fellow-men. John Dickinson pointed out how little
it regarded "the Laws of Nations, the Rights, Lib
erties, or Lives of Men. They have levied War,"
he declared, "excited Rebellions, dethroned lawful
Princes, and sacrfficed Millions for the sake of Gain.
The Revenues of Mighty Kingdoms have centered
in their Coffers. And these not being sufficient to
glut their Avarice, they have, by the most unparal
leled Barbarities, Extortions and Monopolies, stripped
the miserable Inhabitants of their Property and re
duced whole Provinces to Indigence and Ruin." *
Destroy the merchants, it was argued in order to
broaden the basis of the popular appeal, and the
shipbuilding would cease and other industries foUow
in their train. Long before any of the "pernicious
leaves" arrived in America, the rhetoric of pam-
* Schlesinger, The Colonial Merchant, 269, 273, 275.
' Life and Writings of John Dickinson (P. L. Ford, ed), n, 459-60.

THE BOSTON TEA PARTY 379
phleteers had been changed to the action of city mass
meetings, one of the first of which, apparently on
the initiative of the merchant aristocracy, was held
at the State House in Philadelphia, where it was
voted that any one who should aid this last minis
terial plan against American liberty should be de
nounced as "an enemy to his country." The mer
chants selected by the East India Company to re
ceive the expected tea were forced to resign, and at
a second meeting the entry of tea ships at the cus
toms house or landing of the tea was xmanimously
disapproved.' One of the worst mistakes of the East India Com
pany was that it did not choose as its agents the
colonial merchants who had been accustomed to
handle the tea trade. In Boston, where the danger
signals had long been flying; where Samuel Adams
was on the alert for some better issue than judges'
salaries to stir the public wrath; and where he was
preparing to supersede the orderly Boston town
meeting with an irresponsible mass meeting of
radicals from Boston and the neighboring towns; in
this true cave of Adullam, the Company had given
their prospective tea business to sons of the im-
popular Governor Hutchinson and to his nephew,
Richard Clarke, the detested men who had opposed
the late non-importation agreement. Hutchinson
himself was interested and doubtless influenced by
his interest.*
' Schlesinger, The Colonial Merchants, 281.
' Ibid:, 281-83; Channing, Hist, of the U.S.. m, 130. There were
five consignees.

380 CAUSES OF WAR OF INDEPENDENCE
By this error of judgment the Company made it
certain that the body of Boston merchants, though
hating and fearing mobs and violence, would never
theless support, if not actually direct, any measures
against the importation of tea in a manner that
menaced their business. If they tried to prevent
mob violence they were outwitted by Samuel Adams,
who seemed bent on committing his colony to revo
lution if not actual independence.'
Boston was one of four cities to which the East
India Company sent consignments of tea. Four
ships saUed thither, one being "cast away on the
Back of Cape Cod," the rest, under Captains Hall,
Bruce, and Coffin, dropping anchor in Boston Har
bor between November 28th and December 8th.
Before the "baleful" tea was halfway across the
ocean, placards had appeared on almost every comer
calling the freemen of Boston and the near-by towns
to meet under the "Liberty Tree" to hear the con
signees resign their offices and swear to reship the
"fateful" tea to London. When the offending agents
of the East India Company failed to appear at the
rendezvous, a committee, reenforced by a large con
course of people, waited upon them; but they still
refused, and a fortnight later a mob visited the house
of Richard Clarke, one of the tea agents, and broke
all his windows.*
The merchants as a class were alarmed by this
mob action: they had tried to use the legal town
meeting as their vehicle of protest, and therein had
' Schlesinger, The Colonial Merchants, 283-84.
' Letters and Diary of John Rowe, 252-57.

THE BOSTON TEA PARTY 381
adopted the Philadelphia Resolutions and agreed
that dutied tea was not to be imported. Once more
they asked the resignation of the tea agents and
were refused. At this point Samuel Adams took
matters out of the hands of the merchant-led town
meeting, and controlled the march of events through
a joint meeting of the committees of Boston, Brook-
line, Cambridge, Dorchester, and Roxbury, more
radical and less restrained by men of property. To
these committees were added the inhabitants of the
towns represented. The lowest as well as the highest
came, and there were no legal qualifications as at
town meetings. It was an irresponsible mass meet
ing which became too large for Faneuil Hall, and
some twenty-five hundred people adjourned No
vember 29th to Old South Meeting-House.' They
had been summoned by "papers stuck up," ad
dressed to "Friends! Brethren! Countrymen!" The
"worst of Plagues, The Detestable Tea," had ar
rived, and tyranny, the people were told, stared them
in the face. WTien the bells rang, every friend of
his country and posterity was urged to meet at the
haU. At the meeting, a single person, Hutchinson be
lieved, directed all. "Adams was never in greater
glory," he sneered. The first resolve was that the
tea must not be landed or duty paid. The meeting
only hissed the sheriff who brought Hutchinson's
command that they disperse and "surcease" their
proceedings. The people's blood was up. WTien
John Rowe was chosen a committee man, he con-
> Schlesinger, The Colonial Merchants. 284-85.

382 CAUSES OF WAR OF INDEPENDENCE
fessed to his diary that it was "much agamst my
will but I dare not say a word." '
"The flame is kindled and like lightning it catches
from soul to soul," wrote Abigail Adams.* The
Governor remained obdurate against the demand
of Rotch, the owner of the first tea ship, that he
sign a permit for the ship to leave before unloading
the tea. In fact he caused the guns at the fort to
be loaded and two warships to stand on guard at
other channels by which the vessel might escape.
On December 17th, under the law the tea on this
ship must be seized by the customs officer and sold
at auction if at that date the tea had not been
landed and the duty paid. The officer would not
blink the law; the consignees having taken sanctuary
in the Castle held that in honor they could not re
sign; the Governor bound to his oath of office, as
he pleaded, would not yield. The refusal of the con
signees was sent from their safe retreat at Castle
William, where, surrounded with cannon, they could
do things, as Hutchinson confessed, which they
"would not have dared to do in any other situation."
It was best to keep close, they decided, "until the
infernal spirit is layd or at least cool'd." ' If the tea
were offered at auction, it was dubious whether
Boston patriotism could stand the strain. A guard
of twenty -five men was set day and night to prevent
clandestine landing of the tea. On December 16th
the largest gathering ever known, five to seven
* Letters and Diary of John Rowe. 256.
' Warren-Adams Letters, 18.
• British Museum, Egerton MSS.. 2659 F 56.

THE BOSTON TEA PARTY 383
thousand people, came in and about Old South
Meeting-House. By fifties and hundreds they
flocked in from outlying towns. A committee made
a last demand at the customs house, and poor dis
tracted Rotch was sent once more to try his Quaker
eloquence upon the Governor, who was at Milton,
his country seat.'
Both missions failed. The news was reported at
dusk to the nerve-strained crowd in the dimly
lighted Old South. During two sessions the people
had been harangued by Samuel Adams, Dr. Young,
and Josiah Quincy, Jr. John Rowe had wondered
"how tea would mingle with salt water." Samuel
Adams arose, and solemnly declared, "This meeting
can do nothing more to save the country."* At
once there was a shout outside, and a band of men
disguised as Indians hastened to Griffin's Wharf,
where the tea ships lay. For two hours they hoisted
the chests from the holds of the vessels, broke them
open, and threw them overboard. It was bright
moonlight and crowds of people watched from the
wharves. There was no clamor, no talking, no
injury to any property but tea. Having finished,
the decks were cleaned, order restored, and the
"Indians" vanished "into Egyptian darkness."
Next morning tea lay strewn like seaweed along
Dorchester beach. The Bostonians had "made tea
for all the cod-fish on the banks of Newfoundland,"

» Mass. Hist. Soc, Proceedings, vm, 325-26.
' Drake, Tea Leaves, lxiv. This book contains a mass of contem-
porary materials concerning the "Tea Party." See minutes of tho
Tea Meetings. Mass. Hist. Soc, Proceedings (1st Ser.), xx, 10-17.

384 CAUSES OF WAR OF INDEPENDENCE
wrote a London WTiig. ^ Property of the East India
Company to the value of fifteen thousand pounds
had been destroyed by not only masons, farmers,
barbers, and blacksmiths, but by citizens of high
position, merchants who may have thought better
of it when the excitement was over.
Governor Hutchinson's ill-repute in Boston
reached its climax with this incident. But it had
been greatly augmented by Samuel Adams' clever
use of some letters written by Hutchinson to friends
in England and secured by Benjamin Franklin in a
manner which left it possible for enemies to question
his sense of honor. Franklin sent them to the polit
ical leaders in Massachusetts, stipulating that they
were not to be copied or printed. After they had
been handed about for a few days, Samuel Adams
rose in the Massachusetts Assembly and dramatic
ally asked to have the galleries cleared that he might
read certain letters inimical to American liberties,
tending secretly to alienate the affections of the
King. The Assembly having listened, resolved that
the letters tended "to undermine the Constitution."
Soon the public was mysteriously made aware of the
existence of letters damaging to Governor Hutchin
son, it being "buzzed about" that they would amaze
everybody. When the demand to see them increased,
Hutchinson was given the dates of some of the let
ters, and was asked for copies which might be pub
lished without violation of the stipulation made by
* Serious considerations on the Political Condition of Lord North, 64,
For a Philadelphia "Tea Party" at a later time see Friends Historical
Society, Bulletin, vol. m, no. 1, pp. 21-49.

THE BOSTON TEA PARTY 385
Franklin. This he refused, because, he declared, all
the views therein expressed were known through
other channels, and the letters were private. Copies
were spread about meanwhile, and at last by a pro
cess of curious ethical reasoning the House author
ized the printing. The publication was preceded,
however, by resolutions explaining what was ini
quitous in the letters and asking for the removal of
the Governor.' Moral obliquity having been thus
subtly insinuated into letters which in fact contained
nothing new, seventeen of them were published.
The result gave support to the sophist's assertion
that there is nothing either good or bad but thinking
makes it so, for the poisoned public mind found
them full of "evil and treason." The contents were
no longer the essential thing, but what they had been
said to be. The Boston Committee of Correspond
ence sent them out with the pious comment: "The
providential care of the gracious Being who con
ducted the early settlers of this country to establish
a safe retreat from tyranny, for themselves or for
their posterity, in America, has again wonderfully
interposed to bring to light the plot that had been
laid for us by our malicious and insidious enemies."
In England, meanwhile, as a result of Franklin's
confession that he had gotten possession of the let
ters, he was called before the Privy Council, where,
as he says, "all the courtiers were invited, as to
an entertainment," and Wedderburn, the Solicitor
* This was unanimously rejected by the Privy Council and Hutch
inson's letters judged meritorious. British Museum, Egerton MSS.,
2669 F 68.

386 CAUSES OF WAR OF INDEPENDENCE
General, made the aged philosopher the "butt of
his invective ribaldry for near an hour." ' General
Gage who was present says: "I suppose no man's
conduct and character was before so mangled and
torn, as Dr. Franklin's was at this time. People
wondered he had confidence to stand it with the
contemptuous looks of the audience upon him." *
Charles Fox remembered long after how the Council
came away "throwing up their caps and exulting
... at the speech," in which Franklin had been
"most uncommonly badgered." But, Fox declared,
we paid very dear for those "Tropes, figures, meta
phors and hyperboles ... all our American colonies,
a hundred million of money, and a hundred thou
sand of our brave fellow subjects." V/edderbum
was ironically complimented afterwards as "the
nobleman whose talents were so eminently useful
in procuring the emancipation of our American
brethren." *
In New York, when Paul Revere arrived with an
account of the "Boston Tea-Party," "vast numbers
of the people collected, and highly extolled the
Bostonians." Ringing bells and "universal huzzas"
greeted the news in the Quaker City. The thought
less masses in general seem to have applauded an
act whose very daring commended it to the popu
lar imagination, but individuals differed widely in
their reactions. John Adams in his diary recorded:
"Last night three cargoes of Bohea tea were emptied
' Franklm, Writings (Smyth, ed), vi, 189.
« British Museum, Egerton MSS., 2659 F 69.
' Franklin's own story of this episode is most entertaining. See
Writings (Smyth, ed), vi, 81, 108, 109, 172, 183-92.

THE BOSTON TEA PARTY 387
into the sea. This morning a man-of-war sails. This
is the most magnificent movement of all. There is a
dignity, a majesty, a sublimity in this last effort
of the patriots, that I greatly admire. The people
should never rise without doing something to be
remembered, something notable and striking. This
destruction of the tea is so bold, so daring, so firm,
intrepid and inflexible, and it must have so impor
tant consequences, and so lasting, that I cannot but
consider it as an epocha in history." To have let
it be landed, he argued, was to lose "all our labor for
ten years," and to subject "ourselves and our pos
terity forever to Egyptian task-masters." '
Henry Laurens, with the merchant's feeling for
the sacredness of property, wrote: "I won't say the
people have proceeded too far in drowning and
forcing back the tea; possibly it may prove to have
been the most effectual and therefore wisest method;
but at present I commend the proceeding at Charles
town in preference to all the rest; the consignees
refuse the commissions; the people will not purchase
the commodity; it must remain in store and perish
or be returned at the expense of those who sent it.
There is a constitutional stubbornness in such con
duct which must be approved of every true English
man and open the understanding of those whose
stubborn attempts to ensnare America are supported
by no other plea than power." *
Benjamin Franklin looked upon the "tea party"
as "an act of violent injustice." An out-and-out
Tory, Harrison Gray, beUeved God would punish
> John Adams, Works, n, 323-24. " Wallace, Henry Laurens. 194.

388 CAUSES OF WAR OF INDEPENDENCE
the unrepentant tea-destroyers in "the lake which
burns with fire and brimstone." ' The sober judg
ment of the merchant class in general was shocked
by the anarchy at Boston. Though there was less
sympathy for the great East India Company's loss
than there would have been for that of an individual,
yet there was remorse and fear in the hearts of the
conservative merchants. They agreed with an Eng
lish writer who said, "There is a strange Spirit of
Licentiousness gone forth in the World, which shel
ters itseff under the venerable and endearing Name
of Liberty, but is as different from it as FoUy is
from Wisdom." *
Boston was not alone in showing its antipathy to
East India Company tea. In PhUadelphia, when the
tidings came that Captain Ayres with a tea ship was
on his way up the Delaware, some eight thousand
people gathered in the square and resolved that he
put about and sail back whence he came. By his
obedience Philadelphia was saved the Boston di
lemma.^ At the port of New York the approaching
danger was sensed by the radicals who resorted to
an "Association of the Sons of Liberty." This
document signed by "lawyers, merchants, land-
' Channing, Hist, of the U.S., m, 133.
' Schlesinger, The Colonial Merchants, 299.
' Ibid., 290-91. Perhaps his obedience was quickened by the warn
ing sent him by a committee. "What think you. Captain, of a halter
around your neck, ten gallons of liquid tar decanted on your pate
with the feathers of a dozen wild geese laid over that to enliven your
appearance? Only think seriously of this and fly to the place from
whence you came; fly without hesitation; without the formality of a
protest; and above all. Captain Ayres, let us advise you to fly without
the wild geese feathers." Calendar of Home Office Papers (1773-75),
p. iv.

THE BOSTON TEA PARTY 389
holders, masters of ships and mechanics," promised
to boycott all who aided the bringing in of dutied
teas. The radicals, led by John Lamb, made the
most of the news from Boston and assembled two
thousand people, who agreed to a committee of cor
respondence to keep in touch with other colonies.
Fear of mob action seized the conservative mer
chants, Isaac Low and Jacob Walton, who resented
the intrusion of unprivileged classes into political
affairs. They were circulating a paper pledging the
signers to avoid violence when the news of the
"Boston Tea Party " stopped them. The consignees
meanwhile resigned and warned the incoming tea
ship Nancy under Captain Lockyear to return to
sea. By his great caution he saved the East India
Company a second loss; for another tea ship, the
London, arriving about the same time with a private
consignment, was boarded by an impatient mob who
stove in the tea chests and mingled more tea with
salt water.' Next day Captain Lockyear started
upon his return voyage, while a band at the wharf
played "God Save the King." The mechanics and
cobblers and tailors had again driven New York to
radical action. Nowhere in the northern ports was
the tea landed, though at Portsmouth and Newport
action was belated and tame, and the province of
Connecticut could not be made to sense the danger.
In Charleston, South Carolina, no great impres
sion was made at first by the new measure of Lord
North. There were few smugglers, the local Scotch
merchants were not popular, and ff they lost their
1 Becker. Political Parties in the Province of New York, 104-10.

390 CAUSES OF WAR OF INDEPENDENCE
business to the East India Company consignees,
what did consumers care? The merchants were
often only factors with a like relation to great
London merchants as tea consignees had to the
East India Company. WTien a tea ship actuaUy
arrived, however, the people were summoned by
hand-bills and in a great assembly framed a pledge
by which merchants would agree not to import
dutied tea. Christopher Gadsden and a committee
of planters had little success with this agreement,
and while efforts were being made through meetings
of the planters and mechanics to devise a plan agree
able to the merchants, the tea was removed to the
Government warehouse, and there it remained for
three years until independence of England made it
safe and proper to dispose of it at auction.'
Except in Massachusetts where, after the "Tea
Party," the radical spirit burst all the chains with
which conservative merchants sought to have it
shackled, there was no universal uprising as at the
time of the Stamp Act. Soon after the thoughtless
approval of Boston audacity by a few mass meetings
there seemed to be a general ebbing of the radical
power everywhere. Things were going badly for the
"Saviors of the people," when to their delight the
British Government changed the whole aspect of
the struggle from a dispute over trade regulation and
tax methods to a clear-cut issue as to whether the
British Parliament had the political right to punish
Boston by acts which ruined their commerce and
radically altered their government.
' Schlesinger, The Colonial Merchants, 295-98.

CHAPTER XV
LORD NORTH'S EFFORT TO PRESERVE
IMPERIAL DIGNITY
When Grafton's headship of the Ministry had given
way to that of Lord North, there had been a still
greater increase of the power of the King already
waxing with the growth of his personal faction.
Lord Chatham's illness had led during Grafton's
regime to the development of government by de
partments, and during Chatham's absence the King
had simply stepped in and maintained a balance
between factions entrenched in the several depart
ments. WTien also, in the effort to "find a medium
between the violence of George Grenville and the mad
ness of Lord Chatham," ' the resignation of Lord
Shelburne was brought about and Lord Hillsborough
was made Secretary of State for the Colonies, the
malign influence of the Bedford faction on American
affairs was determined. It grew thenceforth in its
effect upon the King until it reached full fruition in
the severance of the empire.
In Lord North, the King found a man of Tory
principles skilled in giving his royal master petty
governmental tasks so pleasing to a meticulous mind
like that of George III, and whose boast was that in
seven years he had never given a vote for popular
measures.* Though North was a skilfful warrior in
' Grenville Papers, rv, 250.
^Alvord, The Mississippi Valley in British Politics, n, 38; Win
stanley, Lord Chatham and the Whig Opposition, 322.

592 CAUSES OF WAR OF INDEPENDENCE
the parhamentary lists, to the King he was aU
amiability and obedience. For twelve years he bent
all of no inconsiderable talents to raising George III
to a zenith of royal influence. North was in office,
the King ruled. Able and industrious, a remarkable
debater and possessed of a wit of no mean order.
Lord North might have been a statesman of note
but for his subservience to a stubborn, self-willed
monarch who used him as a tool. He had good
sense, plenty of tact, and a remarkable sweetness
of temper which with his other talents marked him
for leadership which he preferred to let George III
employ to his own ends.
It was this Minister who was in power when the
news of Boston's rash conduct reached London.
Some very old and tried friends of the colonies were
surprised into words of resentment and censure.
"Clamour against the proceeding is high and gen
eral," wrote Franklin. Colonel Barre admitted that
his "sons of liberty" ought to be punished. Chat
ham wrote that Boston's conduct was "certainly
criminal," and admitted in Parliament that the
whole affair was "turbulent and unwarrantable."
The Bostonians, he said, had violated "the most in-
dispensible ties of civil society." He would not
"adopt their passions and wild pretensions." Frank
lin wrote home his disapproval, and hoped for a
speedy and "voluntary reparation."' "AU our
friends here wish this," he asserted. He thought the
eyes of all Europe were on Boston, but an examina-
• Chatham, Correspondence, iv, 336; Hansard, Parliamentary His
tory, xvn, 1354-55; Franklin, Writings (Smyth, ed), n, 179.

LORD NORTH'S EFFORT 393
tion of the letters of contemporary leaders on the
Continent showed that the European world was
much more interested in the papal bull for the sup
pression of the Jesuit Order than in the Boston "Tea
Party." Lord North lost no time in asking Parliament
(ISIarch 7, 1774) to vote measures for securing
obedience to the laws in America. A week later he
moved for leave to bring in what has come to be
known as the Boston Port Bill.' It aimed to remove
the customs houses from Boston and to stop all
landing and shipping of goods in that harbor untU
the town made full reparation to the East India
Company for the tea destroyed. Lord North be
lieved "that the people of Boston had begun many
years ago to throw off all obedience to this country."
Now is the time, he cried, to stand out, to defy them,
to proceed with firmness and without fear. Four or
five frigates will do the business without any miU
tary force, he held. The rest of the colonies would
"not take fire at the proper punishment" of dis
obedient Boston.* Boston had been the ringleader
thus far, but the rest would be peaceable enough if
she were punished. As Franklin commented, "Di
vine Providence first infatuates the power it designs
to ruin."
Parliament then entered upon a series of debates
which exceeded by a thousand pages of Hansard's
reports any previous debate on colonial matters
during all of their existence. Lord North had back-
• Pickering, Statutes at Large, xxx, 336.
* Almon, Debates of the House of Commons, ix, 92-94.

394 CAUSES OF WAR OF INDEPENDENCE
ing enough from among those whose patrons were
the "King's Friends" and from those who sat for
royal boroughs. All were obsequious now, for a new
election was near. Mr. Herbert said that "the
Americans were a strange set of people and that it
was in vain to expect any degree of reasoning from
them; that instead of making their claim by argu
ment, they always chose to decide the matter by
tarring and feathering." Mr. Van was more fero
cious and wanted to "destroy that nest of locusts."
"Boston ought to be knocked about their ears and
destroyed, delenda est Carthago." There must be no
more talk of that "attribute to awe and majesty."
He would "burn and set fire to all their woods" as in
the time of the ancient Britons.' The historian Gib
bon wrote a little later with the confidence of one
who had settled half a millennium of Roman prob
lems, "1 am more and more convinced that we have
both the right and the power on our side, ... we
are now arrived at the decisive moment of per
severing or of losing forever both our Trade and
Empire." *
It was safer to talk that way than to defend the
colonists. Burke declared that those who opposed
the bUl were menaced. "Look, sir, . . . into the pub
lic papers, you will see Cinna, and a thousand other
Roman names, throwing out their invectives, and
tarring and feathering all those who oppose the
biU." * He ridiculed the punishment of Boston to
> Almon, Debates, rx, 91-101, 141.
• Gibbon, Correspondence, i, 248.
• Almon, Debates, rx, 106.

LORD NORTH'S EFFORT 395
preserve British dignity. "This dignity of yours is
a terrible incumbrance to you. It has of late been
ever at war with your interest, your equity, and
every idea of your policy." He begged the Govern
ment to pause and take a reckoning of the point to
which it had drifted. He pleaded with Parliament to
note how general was the distemper, not "one port
in America where the goods have been landed and
vended." Had they the power, he asked, for a
universal proscription of the trade of America?
Punish individuals, he urged, not all the innocent
with the guilty.' Barre, too, cautioned them to
realize that this was "the first vengeful step," that
they were "becoming the aggressors and offering the
last of outrages to the people of America." "Let
the banners of rebellion be once spread in America,
and you," he cried to his British colleagues, "are an
undone people." He would vote for the Port Bill,
which "was a bad way of doing what was right,"
because he thought Boston had gone too far, but he
would seize this opportunity to point out that if the
British Ministers would "keep their hands out of the
pockets of the Americans," they would be obedient
subjects. Some members of Parliament, like the Bishop
of St. Asaph, neither approved of the Boston riots
nor of their punishment. General Burgoyne fa
vored persuasion rather than the sword, and he
was roundly abused for his mercy. All warnings were
in vain, however, and the bill with "so mild an
appearance" in Gibbon's view, passed "with but
• Almon, Debates, rx, 107.

396 CAUSES OF WAR OF INDEPENDENCE
very few negatives." ^ Parliament saw in Boston's
exhibition of temper no reflection upon ministerial
follies in government, no hint that there might be
actual grievances. As Parliament's power overtook
and passed that of the King, that body began to
conceive of itself as having acquired the "divine
right" with the power.
Lord North was not content with closing the
Port of Boston. On March 28th, he informed Par
liament that the Massachusetts government was all
wrong. For years, as he weU knew, Bernard and
Hutchinson had pressed for a change in the Massa
chusetts government which would make it conform
to that of New York or that of Virginia. "There
appears to be a total defect in the constitutional
power throughout," he declared. "If the Governor
issued a proclamation, there is hardly found a magis
trate to obey it, the Governor of his own authority
can do nothing." Now, Lord North announced, he
proposed "to take the executive power from the
hands of the democratic part of the government."
"Every gentleman," he said, "wUl naturally see the
impropriety of such irregular assemblies or town-
meetings which are now held in Boston." * Yes,
indeed, chimed in Lord George Germain, who for his
insight into their affairs was soon to become Secre
tary of State for the Colonies. He approved of put
ting an end to town meetings. "I would not have
men of a mercantile cast, every day collecting them-
* Force, American Archives (4th Ser.), i, 113; Almon, Debates, rx,
102, 116, 133.
» Almon, Debates, ix, 117-18.

LORD NORTH'S EFFORT 397
selves together and debating about political matters;
1 would have them follow their occupation as Mer
chants, and not consider themselves as ministers of
that country." You have there no government, no
governor, only a "tumultuous and riotous rabble"
which ought to stick to trade and leave "poUtics
and government which they do not understand." '
North expressed his approval of such ideas, and he
would "effectually purge the constitution of all its
crudities." He soon introduced bills which gave to
the King the appointment of Massachusetts coun
cillors. Jurors, who hitherto had been chosen in
town meeting, were thereafter to be summoned by
sheriffs, agents of the Governor. Town meetings
would, thenceforth, only be held by permission of the
Governor. The appointment and removal of judges
and sheriffs were also to be in his hands.* No heed
was given to the Bishop of St. Asaph, who declared,
"The Americans have the same veneration for their
Charters that we have for the Magna Charta."
The Duke of Grafton declared long after, "as for
the alterations in the Massachusetts charter which
envenomed the people, perhaps forever by this
violation of the law of nature, I opposed myself to
that with all my power, in public and in secret." '
Mr. Dunning in vain taunted the Ministry with
having made alterations in the government of Mas-
* Force, American Archives (4th Ser.), i, 67-68; Almon, Debates, rx,
120, 121.
2 Pickering, Statutes at Large, xxx, 381-90. See Historical MSS.
Commission, Reports, Various, vi, 257, for Knox's statement that Sir
Francis Bernard put these ideas about juries and the town meeting
into North's head.
' Archives des Affaires itranghes; Angleterre, tome 515, no. 4.

398 CAUSES OF WAR OF INDEPENDENCE
sachusetts without the previous ceremony of know
ing the old one. He claimed that the Governor had
power enough, but did not know it. Few listened
to Barre's warning that the Government had been
"goading and teasing America for these ten years
past . . . you are continually harrassing and beating
into their ears the word rebellion, till at last you wUl
find nothing but real rebellion in it." He asked
ominously, "If we in this country had not resisted
such arbitrary laws in certain ancient times, whether
we should have existed as a House of Commons here
this day." ' He saw nothing in the measures but
"inhumanity, injustice and wickedness." Pownall
disputed Germain's judgment and gave the Ameri
cans the character of a "conscientious, good, reli
gious, peaceable set of people"; doubting whether
there were "in all His Majesty's dominions a more
respectable set of persons existing." * All such pro
tests of men who had seen and who knew America
were brushed aside and the bUls were passed by a
large majority.
Meanwhile, Lord North had been advancing an
other bill to its third reading, one for "the impartial
administration of justice." Whenever the Governor
of Massachusetts might think that a fair trial could
not be had there for an officer or soldier questioned
for his conduct while suppressing riots or tumults,
he might with consent of his council send them for
trial to a sister colony or to England.' This plan, it
was hoped, woidd make for a more effective .execu-
* Almon, Debates, rx, 134, 249. » Ibid., 123.
• Pickering, Statutes at Large, xxx, 367.

LORD NORTH'S EFFORT 399
tion of the customs laws as well as an aid to the keep
ing of order. A petition from Mr. Bollan, the Mas
sachusetts agent in London, urging that this and
the "Government Act" be delayed until he could
get his colony's pleas in defense, was refused con
sideration. In vain was the fair trial recalled which
Captain Preston and his soldiers were accorded after
the "Boston Massacre." In vain were the protests
of SavUe, Burke, and Dowdeswell, and the warning
of Mr. Sawbridge that a minister who would enslave
America might later do the same with England.
While the Opposition abused him. Lord North sat
there somnolent and unashamed. Under attack he
always had an easy insolence which warmed the
hearts of his friends, but was gall and wormwood to
his enemies. He was unmoved, confident now in
public approbation, and probably right as far as
the politically active part of the nation was con
cerned. Mr. Fuller, of the Opposition, said that
much against his will he believed that the country
approved the bill, that the people of England were
misled. "If ever there was a nation running head
long to its ruin, it is this," he cried. There was no
staying the eager zest of the majority of the Com
mons to do Lord North's bidding. On May 20,
1774, "His Majesty bemg seated on the Throne, and
the Commons attended with their Speaker," the
royal assent was given.'
The Lords had meanwhile advanced another act
whose object it was "to facilitate the establishment
of a temporary mUitary government in Massa-
» Force, American Archives (4th Ser.), i, 79-80, 118, 126, 129.

400 CAUSES OF WAR OF INDEPENDENCE
chusetts." This "Quartering Act" aimed to remove
the difficulties which Colonel Dalrymple had met
when he arrived with his troops in Boston in the
days before the "massacre." Then the city fathers
chose to interpret the old Quartering Act to require
that he lodge his troops in the barracks on an island
in Boston Harbor, where they would have been quite
useless to queU riots within the city. Now it was
provided that, when the barracks were not in the
places where the soldiers were needed, the local
authorities must find suitable quarters for them. If
they neglected their duty, it would be lawful for the
Governor to direct the use of inns, alehouses, or
any uninhabited building for that purpose.' Except
Chatham's speech against clapping "a naval and
military extinguisher" over Boston Harbor, there
was almost no opposition. Though Chatham con
demned "in the severest manner" the riots of Bos
ton, yet he begged his colleagues to recall the follies
of Government which had roused their passions.
The destroying of the tea was the effect of despair,
he urged, "an act which in their cooler hours, they
would have thought on with horror." * He begged
for an amnesty on all her youthful errors. As for
himself, his prayers would always be for America's
welfare — "length of days be in her right hand, and
in her left hand, riches and honor; may her ways be
ways of pleasantness, and all her paths be peace."
AU such exhortation seemed to the Ministry like
mere sentimentality, safe enough for the Opposition,
' Pickering, Statutes at Large, xxx, 410.
* Hansard, Parliamentary History, xvn, 1354-56.

LORD NORTH'S EFFORT 401
but only pointing the road to ruin for a responsible
administration. The bill passed, and on June 2d,
the King's reason being temporarily under a cloud,
the royal assent was given by Commission, which
consisted of "three of the Lords Commissioners,
being in their robes, and seated on a form placed
between the Throne and the Woolsack, the Lord
Chancellor in the middle, with the Lord Archbishop
of Canterbury on his right hand, and the Earl of
Sandwich on his left." '
The Quartering Act was the fourth, and really the
last, of the measures which the Ministry thought of
as undertaken to punish Boston and perhaps to
bring the colonies to their senses. The Quebec Act,
however, passed nearly at the same time with no
thought of giving offense to the English provinces,
and not thought of as one of the punitive acts, was
soon classed with the other four by the Americans,
and all became known as the "Five Intolerable
Acts." Yet the provisions of the act which roused
almost universal execration in the colonies, and
which was supposed to have had vital connection
with the punitive measures directed at Boston, had
in fact been fully decided upon years before that
event, the Boston tea episode, which the colonists
suspected was its cause.* Indeed, Chatham, the
great friend of America, had been during his ad
ministration committed to three out of four of its
important provisions. Had the measure been passed
seven years earlier it would have differed little from
' Force, American Archives (4th Ser.), i, 170.
» v. Coffin, The Province of Quebec and ihe American Revolution, 530.

402 CAUSES OF WAR OF INDEPENDENCE
the Act of 1774.' The Quebec Act was passed with
the desire to put an end to that injustice done by
the hasty Proclamation of 1763, which by includ
ing the eighty thousand French-Canadians with the
people in the area west of the AUeghenies established
English courts, procedure, and law in French
Canada. Lord Mansfield had said of that mistake, which
was due to the ignorance of Lord Hillsborough when
using in haste the plans of Lord Shelburne, "The
history of the world don't furnish an instance of so
rash and unjust an act." Attorney -General Thurlow
called it the "grossest and absurdest and cruellest
tyranny that a conquering nation ever practiced over
a conquered territory." *
The English-speaking subjects in Quebec had
used the courts to seize the property of the French,
who, being Roman Catholics, and subjected to legal
disabilities as ff in English courts, were left helpless.^
All this after more than ten years was swept away
by a statesmanlike measure which may well soften
the judgment of history on Lord North, Lord Mans
field, Wedderburn, and even on the much-maligned
George III. The King as he signed the bill declared
it was founded "on the clearest principles of justice
and humanity." * In granting the French colonists
the free exercise of their religion, the British Parlia
ment made a commendable, forward step in the
> V. Coffin, The Province of Quebec, 411-31, 432-36, 450-56, 631.
' Grenville Papers, n, 467; Cavendish, Government of Canada;
Ahnon, Debates (1774), 29.
' Alvord. The Mississippi Valley in British Politics, i, 253-54.
« Ibid,, n, 247.

LORD NORTH'S EFFORT 403
progress of religious toleration.' The liberality of
Mansfield aided this measure greatly. The reaction
in New England to this phase of the Quebec Act was
not creditable to those men whose ancestors had
fled to the wilderness that they might worship as
they chose. The Whig leaders and the clergy fanned
the flames of rebeUion by much talk about holy
water and papal bulls. Thus they aroused the latent
Puritan bigotry until pre-Revolutionary literature
is filled with denunciation of this wise recognition
of the Roman Catholic religion in Quebec* Samuel
Adams sought to stir even the religious passions
of the Indians. "Brothers," he cried, "they have
made a law to establish the religion of the Pope in
Canada, which lies so near you. We much fear some
of your children may be induced, instead of wor
shipping the only true God, to pay his dues to images
made with their own hands." He always endeavored
to make "Popery and Slavery" seem synonymous.
It was not hard to rouse this traditional fear. No
farther back than 1745 the Puritan expedition
against Louisburg was a crusade. On their flag was
the motto, "Nil desperandum, Christ© duce." One
of the chaplains is said to have carried a hatchet
to destroy images in Catholic churches, and one old
deacon wrote : " Oh that I could be with you and dear
Parson Moody in that church, to destroy the images
there set up." It was a regular colonial custom at
the time of the Revolution that the Pope and the
' See, however. Coffin's criticism of this act in The Province of
Quebec, 532-37.
» See my article in American Historical Review, xrx, 59.

404 CAUSES OF WAR OF INDEPENDENCE
Devil were religiously burned on Guy Fawkes Day.
Calvinists were ready to believe anything concerning
Catholic deceit and cunning. William Livingston
(1755) stoutly affirmed that the French persuaded
the Indians that the Virgin Mary was born in Paris,
and that our Saviour was crucffied at London by
the English.' To Jeremy Belknap, the Church of
Rome was "the mother of harlots and abomina
tions." Samuel Adams, in 1768, "verily believed"
that "much more is to be dreaded from the growth
of Popery in America, than from Stamp-Acts or
any other Acts destructive of men's civil rights." *
John Adams, too, was alarmed (1771) that "the
barriers against popery, erected by our ancestors
are suffered to be destroyed, to the hazard even of
the Protestant religion." ^ He was much pleased
that "the rascally Roman Catholics" of Braintree
did not dare show themselves. Jonathan Mayhew
and Ezra Stiles, powerful ecclesiastical figures in
New England, were both violently prejudiced
against the "Romish Church."
It is not surprising, therefore, that a favorite de
vice on the banners carried by Puritan mobs, after
the Quebec Act, was the demand "no popery," and
that one of the motives animating the captors of
Ticonderoga was to secure the colonies from the
incursions of the Roman Catholics, "those children
* Sedgwick {William Limngston, 97-98) spoke of the "supersti
tious rites and fantastic trumperies of popery." See also John Adams,
Works, n, 5.
' Samuel Adams, Writings, l, 201-03.
' John Adams, Works, n, 252. His antipathy toward Catholics
appears repeatedly. Ibid., n, 5; in, 254, 268; x, 188.

LORD NORTH'S EFFORT 405
of darkness." Ezra Stiles was astonished that the
King and Lords and Commons, a whole Protestant
Parliament — even the bishops concurring — should
establish the Romish Church and "Idolatry" over
three quarters of their Empire. Judge Drayton, in
South Carolina, having in mind the Ministry's effort
to establish the Roman Catholic religion, pictured
"the fiames which are lighted, blown up, and fed
with blood by the Roman Catholic doctrines; doc
trines which tend to establish a most cruel tyranny
in Church and State — a tyranny under which all
Europe groaned for many ages." ' Even John Jay
looked upon the Quebec Act as a menace to Protes
tantism. Public assemblies, too, made their solemn
protest against this last act of the "lurking spirit of
despotism." The New York Assembly expostulated
with the British Government, and the famous
"Suffolk Resolves" deprecated the act as "danger
ous in extreme degree to the Protestant religion."
The Continental Congress approved of these re
solves and took the same ground as to the Catholic
menace in their addresses to the people of Great
Britain and to the colonies. It does not matter that
Congress, a few months later, when it saw the ad
vantage of allying Canada with the American Union,
"perceived the fate of the Catholic and Protestant
to be strongly linked together," for the earlier senti
ments were the real, and the latter the feigned ones.
The immediate reaction of the Puritans to the reli
gious provision of the Quebec Act caused them much
embarrassment at a later time.
' Force, American Archives (4th Ser.), i, 959; (5th Ser.), n, 1048.

406 CAUSES OF WAR OF INDEPENDENCE
Aside from the provision as to religion, the new
act ameliorated the political system. The Quebec
government, which was placed in the hands of a
governor and legislative councU, was left to establish
English criminal and French civil law. Trial by
jury in civil cases was not provided.' Even some of
these worthy provisions gave offense to the English
colonies, as the history of the next year will disclose,
but Massachusetts, Virginia, and Connecticut, with
their claims to land north of the Ohio, were greatly
incensed by another provision extending Quebec
southward to the Ohio and westward to the Missis
sippi, as ff, the Patriots complained, to prevent the
extension into that region of the free institutions of
the Atlantic colonies. The only motive of the British
Government was in fact not to "establish idolatry
over all that space," but to exuena tiie protection of
the imperial power over that part of the Mississippi
Valley. For the past ten years the British Govern
ment, changing with kaleidoscopic rapidity, had
altered and mended and varied its plans for the
western lands. The well-matured plans of Lord
Shelburne, ascendant in 1767, looking to the gradual
settlement of the domain under imperial direction,
had been set aside by 1772 for the ill-digested scheme
of Lord Barrington wherein the dominant idea was
the "inutility of imperial expense in the West." *
The trans-Allegheny region was to be a great Indian
reservation devoted to the fur-trade, but with the
duty of controUing it transferred to the colonial
' The law is given in full in Coffin, The Province of Quebec, Bi^57.
' Alvord, The Mississippi Valley in British Politics, n. 50, 51.

LORD NORTH'S EFFORT 407
government, which was ordered by imperial decree
to keep their citizens in bounds. Pitt's dream of a
teeming West, rich in farms and towns, growing
markets for British goods, was indefinitely put off.
By royal decree, moreover, the hopes of George
Washington, and many other land speculators not
so destined to immortality, were blighted.' Now in
1774 the ever-shifting policy of the British Govern
ment changed again. Under the local autonomy
of the colonial government lawlessness had been in
creasing in the West. The North Ministry was
alarmed. In the Quebec Act it made another effort
to give imperial protection, at least in the northern
part of the Mississippi Valley, to this Indian reserva
tion already created. In so doing, they took away
the control lately exercised by Virginia, Massa
chusetts, and Connecticut in the western regions to
which their charters gave them claim. To these
colonies, and to all colonial land speculators any
where, the Quebec Act seemed, therefore, only one
more of those punitive measures such as had already
been visited on Boston.*. In the effort to solve its
western problem, as in its solution of problems in the
eastern colonies, the British Ministry seemed to have
faUed. The climax of failure was reached at the same
time in the East and in the West, and the enraged
colonists were ready to take upon themselves the
solution of imperial problems affecting America.^
^Alvord, The Mississippi Valley in British Politics, n, 112--14.-
2 Another act which aroused feeling in America was one putting a
stop to the exportation of tools for the manufacture of cotton, linen,
woolen, and silk. Force, American Archives (4th Ser.), i, 220-22.
• Alvord, The Mississippi Valley in British Politics, n, 249-50.

408 CAUSES OF WAR OF INDEPENDENCE
In the midst of the debates on the coercive bUIs
and the Quebec measure, a debate took place on a
motion for the repeal of the duty on tea. Burke
made a noble and compelling speech on American
taxation which might have given pause to a body free
to think. He pointed out the "shifts and devices"
of the Ministry "full of meanness and full of mis
chief," by which they had tried to "pilfer piece
meal" the repeal of an act which they had not the
generous courage to admit was an error. As a result
"so paltry a sum as three-pence in the eyes of a
financier, so insignificant an article as tea in the eyes
of a philosopher, have shaken the pillars of a com
mercial empire that circled the whole globe." ' But
it was all in vain that he pleaded. Besides the in
ability of the official mind, guided by its rigidly
legalistic advisers, to turn its gaze from the accepted
principles governing trade control, or those touching
the exercise of the royal prerogative, there was truth
in the assertion of one of the high servants of the
Lord North Ministry to Josiah Quincy: "You can
have no idea of the taxes of this kingdom and the
distress of our poor. I don't mean our manufac
turers, but our hedgers and ditchers and threshers
. . . they are extreme poor and wretched indeed:
everything here is taxed to the utmost. The colonies
must relieve us, they must ease us of our taxes." *
Moreover, when their friends of the Ministry told
Quincy that the British Government had no desire
"to injure much less to oppress the Colonies," and
' Burke, Works, n, 14-15.
* Mass. Hist. Soc, Proceedings, l, 446 (Quincy's London Journal).

LORD NORTH'S EFFORT 409
"no wish but that of seeing the Americans free and
happy," and that the Administration was inclined
to "lenity and mildness," they meant every word of
it, and could not understand the cold cynicism which
repelled the idea.
Furthermore, the Ministry could not believe that
actual resistance would follow their measures. Lord
Chatham was not so complacent. "America sets
heavy on my mind," he wrote sadly. "There where
I have garnered up my heart, where our strength
lay, and our happiest resources presented them
selves, it is all changed into danger, weakness, dis
traction, and vulnerability." Franklin and Quincy
and other colonists in London were cautioned against
the folly of resistance. The Americans must fail,
they were told, in a contest with this "great and
powerfuU people." They were warned that "no
power in Europe ever provoked the resentment or
bid defiance to the Powers of this Island but they
were made to repent it." ' Was this not "the scep-
tered isle, the seat of Mars?"
To this pass the affairs of the British Empire had
come. Immediate causes of its approach to the
verge of war had been a series of misjudgments.
Nor was it strange that a ministry, day after day
puzzled by the unexpected, had at last committed
an unpardonable error. WeU-meant efforts to stop
colonial evasion of the tea tax led to the unfortunate
Gaspee incident. WTiile Samuel Adams was toUing
with committees of correspondence to stir the dying
' Mass. Hist. Soc, Proceedings, i>, 442-43 (Quincy's London
Journal).

410 CAUSES OF WAR OF INDEPENDENCE
embers of discontent, the North Ministry came to his
aid with a badly thought-out effort to save the East
India Company by a measure giving them a mo
nopoly of colonial tea trade. The American tea im
porters resented the loss of their business and ven
tured again to bring to their support that turbulent
monster — the rising democratic forces in the
greater towns. In Boston that venture led straight
to the Boston "Tea Party." From that violence the
conservative property-holders in general revolted,
but there was mass approval for the moment at
least. Even the friends of the colonists were angered
at first and the North Ministry pressed by the Gren
ville and Bedford factions, which had always stood
for stern methods with the colonies, took up and
carried through the punitive measures which be
came known as the "Five Intolerable Acts." All
this came to pass because, as far as the Ministry was
concerned, it could not rise to Burke's wisdom : "It is
not what a lawyer tells me I may do, but what
humanity, reason and justice tell me I ought to do."

CHAPTER XVI
UNION FOR RESISTANCE
When Henry Laurens presented a petition against
the Boston Port BUl, signed by thirty Americans
resident in London, the Earl of Dartmouth asked his
opinion of the proposed act. He repUed: "That if
the bills respecting America then pending in Parlia
ment should pass into Acts the people of the several
colonies from Georgia to New Hampshire would be
animated to form such a Union & Phalanx of re
sistance as he had theretofore believ'd that nothing
less than a divine Miracle could establish." ' He
knew that Americans were as stiff-necked people as
ever the foUowers of Moses. Moreover, even those
colonists that disapproved of Boston's riotous con
duct resented, as Governor Penn wrote from Phila
delphia, the effort to intimidate all America. " Their
delinquency," he said, "in destroying the East
India Company's tea is lost in the attention given
to what is here called the too severe punishment of
shutting up the port, altering the Constitution, and
making an Act, as they term it, screening the officers
and soldiers shedding American blood." * "Parlia
ment by their proceedings," resolved Hanover
County in Virginia, "have made us and all North
America parties in the present dispute."
On May 10, 1774, news of " the severest Act ever
* Wallace, Henry Laurens, 197.
* Force, American Archives (4th Ser.), I, 514.

412 CAUSES OF WAR OF INDEPENDENCE
was penned against the town of Boston" arrived
with the Harmony just from London, and a week
later General Gage, who was acting as commander-
in-chief of the British forces in America, landed from
the Castle, to which the ship Lively had brought him
the day before. He was received at the Long WTiarf
by Colonel Hancock's Company of Cadets, and at
"the Town House had his Commission read by the
Secretary, and took the Usual Oaths," as the new
Governor of Massachusetts.' He was "escorted to
Faneuill Hall, where a good Dinner by his Majesty's
CouncU" gave no suggestion that Gage had come to
execute an act of Parliament of which Samuel Adams
with customary moderation said, "for fiagrant in
justice and barbarity, one might search in vain
among the archives of Constantinople to find a match
for it." *
Gage had plenty of proof that thousands wel
comed his coming, and as he looked about him and
saw the natural resources of Massachusetts enriched
by the labor and thrift of a hardy, self-governing
people, he must have thought with Dr. Johnson that
"ff the rascals are so prosperous, oppression has
agreed with them, or there has been no oppression."
He could honestly think too that it was mere moon
shine to assert that ff the British Government were
allowed to tax without representation slavery would
surely result. To him the auguries of tyranny
which an Adams arrived at by a logical deduction
from principle were absurdly improbable. Such
• Letters and Diary of John Rowe, 269-70.
' Force, American Archives (4th Ser.), i, 332.

UNION FOR RESISTANCE 413
thoughts hardened his soldier heart, and made him
feel that he was dealing with an ungrateful people.
Perhaps he came to agree with Earl Percy who at
first was kindly disposed, but within a few months
wrote home: "the people here are a set of sly, art
ful, hypocritical rascalls, cruel and cowards. I must
own that I cannot but despise them compleatly."
Though the amiable Governor Gage had married
an American wife, a tender tie which it was hoped
would soften the rigors of his administration, he
showed no gentleness in executing the orders of his
royal master. Soon it was reported that the Boston
wharves were desolate, "entirely deserted; not a
topsail vessel to be seen either there or in the harbor
save ships of war and transports." The execution
was beyond the rigor of the act itself, thought
Samuel Cooper. Men believed that the town was
to be made a desolate wilderness and grass to grow
in its streets.^ Yet Gage was conciliatory, almost
deferential toward the civil authorities, and impa
tient military men began to say that he was no bet
ter than "an old woman." He allowed agitators to
speak their minds, and patriot papers, uncensored,
bitterly assailed him. But when it came to obeying
the letter of the law, he abated not one jot. Though
nine thousand bushels of wheat and corn were sent
from sympathetic Virginia and two shiploads of rice
from South Carolina, all was forced to enter the city
by way of Salem or Marblehead and thence around
through Cambridge by wagons, "Lord North's coast-
» Andrews' Letters, in Mass. Hist. Soc, Proceedings, vin, 328-30;
American Historical Review, viii, 328.

414 CAUSES OF WAR OF INDEPENDENCE
ers," as they were dubbed. The distance, twenty-
eight to thirty miles, made the expense eight doUars a
load, since the wagoners, "whipping their horses and
damning Lord North alternately," were not allowed
to carry any merchandise on the return trip. The
use of Charlestown ferry was not permitted because
the goods would then be water-borne, contrary to
law. A thousand bushels of grain from Weathers
field, Connecticut, and a thousand barrels of flour
from the Quaker City, came by the same devious
route. Even the "donation of the sympathizing
brethren of Marblehead," meat, fish, and sweet oil,
came in eleven carts instead of the easier way by
water. Nevertheless, Massachusetts "did not sit
solitary," but with the support and sympathy of
sister colonies she was "a princess among the prov
inces." Boston people endured all with astonishing
calmness and resolution, "neither dismayed nor
tumultous." ' Public works were planned, streets
paved, docks cleaned, and ships buUt to employ the
laboring men, who only grumbled a little because
they were thus compelled by the distributing com
mittee to earn what they held had been sent them
as a free gfft.*
Such currents of sympathy had never swept
through the colonies. H a town hesitated to give
aid to Massachusetts, it was at once scorned as a
Tory town. Yet, beneath the surface harmony of
applause for martyred Boston, there was a deep
' Andrews' Letters, in Mass.. Hist. Soc, Proceedings, vm, 329;
Mass. Hist. Soc, Collections (4th Ser.), iv, 1-278; Thornton, Tht
Pulpit of the Revolution, 213.
' Boston Town Records (1770-77), 174-89.

UNION FOR RESISTANCE 415
discord resulting from the change in the nature of
the contest with Parliament. Hitherto the colonial
merchant class had been calling upon Parliament for
reform in its trade laws and had used the mechanic
or any radical element in society as a powerful tool,
dangerous but necessary, and which it hoped to
drop when the ends were attained. Now the dis
pute with Parliament had become wholly political.
Trade reform was no longer the issue. The leaders
of riots, the "Jack Cades" who controlled the "lower
orders of mankind," were now a menace to men of
property. As Gouverneur Morris wrote, "the heads
of the mobility grow dangerous to the gentry." The
"daring coxcombs," who "roared out liberty . . .
and religion" and other cant terms, and were able
to rule the simple flock, set out to gain their own
aims — an independent America and the "rights of
man." ' At such aims the merchants were alarmed.
Protection of their trade by the powerful British
Empire was not to be sneered at in a world wherein
every great nation had its restrictive trade laws.
British laws might be offensive in some aspects,
but, when they subsidized colonial industries, fos
tered colonial shipping, and in the British markets
shielded American merchants from competition with
French or Dutch or Spanish traders, it was clear
that membership in the British Empire was a valu
able asset. Any merchant trading across the seas
could easily compute the value of Britannia's rule of
the watery wastes of the earth, and of new markets
won each succeeding year, it seemed, by British
' Force, American Archives (4th Ser.), i, 342.

416 CAUSES OF WAR OF INDEPENDENCE
arms.^ Many of the mercantile class began to see
through British eyes. Law and order began to look
more attractive than "liberty" marred by violence.
Now that no commercial principle was in question,
and it was only mob rule that was to be put down,
a merchant foimd his heart with the North Govern
ment. But the very measures which gave the merchants
pause made other men hasten on to a radical posi
tion. William Henry Drayton, who had tried to
stem the popular current in 1769, now asserted his
freedom, "at the risk of Iffe itself," against the malig
nant nature of the late "five acts of Parliament." *
Others had a like change of heart, and radicals
everywhere, from Samuel Adams at the North to
Christopher Gadsden in the South, seized the mo
ment of high feeling to carry America beyond the
point where there could be any going back.
In Boston "the merchants who either will not or
cannot" pay their debts, "the smugglers, the me
chanics, and those who are fascinated with the ex
travagant notions of independency," opposed com
pensation to the East India Company and favored
coercion of the British by withholding all trade.^
The conservative merchants and the moderates in
general regarded the "Tea Party" as a reprehen
sible act of mob violence for which Boston was
responsible and ought to pay. A town meeting was
called on May 13th, and a resolution not too fiery
• Schlesinger, The Colonial Merchants. 308-09.
' Gibbes, Doc. Hist., n, 12-13.
• Force, American Archives (4th Ser.), I, 506-08.

UNION FOR RESISTANCE 417
for the moderates in other colonies was adopted,
urging all America to unite in stopping trade to or
from Britain and her West Indies until the Port Act
was repealed. To fail in this, Boston urged, would
leave "odious oppression" to "rise triumphant over
right, justice, social happiness and freedom." '
This resolution, with a circular letter from the
Boston Committee of Correspondence, went forth
to become famous throughout all America. Many
Boston merchants in the first heat of passion had
signed agreements to join the merchants of other
colonies in severing relations with Great Britain,
but in cooler moments they repented, and rejoiced
when it later became known that the merchants in
other colonies were cool toward trade restrictions.
The Boston merchants went two or three hundred
strong to a town meeting and endeavored to get the
tea paid for. Failing there, they took the occasion
of Governor Hutchinson's departure to send him
an address, which before long became "infamous"
in Massachusetts as a list of "traitors to their
country." Sixty -three merchants and shopkeepers,
a dozen royal officers and others less exalted, but
dependent upon the favor of the men of property,
signed this protest against popular tumults, en
dorsing Hutchinson's "wise, zealous and faithful"
regime, and offering to pay their share of the East
India Company's indemnity.*
A week later the radical Committee of Corre-
1 Boston Town Records (1770-77), 172-74.
' Mass. Hist. Soc, Proceedings (1869-70), xi, 392. The signers are
grouped as to occupation and place of business. Thirty-one are
starred as not natives of America.

418 CAUSES OF WAR OF INDEPENDENCE
spondence countered with a Cromwellian "solemn
League and Covenant," wherein all signers, solemnly,
"in the presence of God," agreed to suspend all trade
relations with the British at once and not to buy or
use their goods after October Ist.^ By a sly artifice
the committee tried to have the covenant appear as
a spontaneous outburst of the non-mercantile pub
lic. Many merchants signed a protest against it as
"a base, wicked and illegal measure," meant for
their ruin. The legality of the committee and its
action was challenged, but in town meeting was up
held by a large majority.* Approval of the covenant
swept all the county conventions, and finally a pro
vincial convention, called in October to rule the
colony until Parliament should restore "constitu
tional government," commended the covenant to
the whole colony. The rest of New England was
not so warm for the plan, but preferred to elect
delegates to a Continental Congress which might
settle the policy for all America.^
Meanwhile Gage was finding Boston a most in
hospitable place for his regiments gathered from
Canada and the other frontiers. Idle workmen
would not build barracks, but, inspired by the Sons
of Liberty, preferred to ruin the lumber sent for that
purpose. Gage was forced at last to get most of his
labor from far Nova Scotia. None would sell wood
to the troops nor straw for their bedding.* The
' Schlesinger, The Colonial Merchants, 315-19.
' Letters and Diary of John Rowe, 277.
• Schlesinger, The Colonial Merchants, 323-27.
* Boston Gazette, October 3, 1774. New York radicals prevented
carpenters being sent to Boston when that was attempted. Force,
Awierican Archives (4th Ser.), i, 782, 802-04, 814.

UNION FOR RESISTANCE 419
councillors appointed under the "Massachusetts
Government Act" were declared by the Boston
Committee "unconstitutional," and Daniel Leonard,
an appointee, had " six balls and some shot fired into
his house," which hastened his seeking sanctuary in
Boston. Timothy Ruggles, another councillor, fled
to the same asylum after his house was attacked
and cattle maimed. Others resigned in haste their
unpopular offices. To defeat the new method of
choosing jurors, the mob at Great Barrington so
filled the court-house as not to leave room for either
judges or jurors.' Before this rising specter of re
bellion Gage quailed, and wrote home urging that
the acts be suspended until 20,000 Hessians and
Hanoverians could be hired to make an entire con
quest of New England. When told of town meetings
being held in spite of the law, he replied testily,
"Damn 'em! I won't do anything about it unless
his Majesty sends me more troops." * To this he
had come from his early assurance that the Bostoni
ans would be very meek if he with four regiments
took a resolute part.
WTien the proposal in Boston's circular letter was
borne to New York by Paul Revere, who appears
in Revolutionary literature like a centaur ever on
horseback,^ the final struggle began there between
the radicals and the principal merchants. Neither
John Morin Scott nor John Lamb, the mob leaders,
was the equal of Samuel Adams. They were reckless
• Mass. Hist. Soc, Proceedings, vm, 346. * Ibid., 348.
• New England Magazine, April, 1902; C. F. Gettemy, Paul Reverti
E. H. Goss, Paul Revert.

420 CAUSES OF WAR OF INDEPENDENCE
enough, but lacked abUity. Neither they, nor the
committee described by its opponents as "flaming
patriots without property or anythmg else but im
pudence," could dominate the situation.' The
"most considerable merchants and men of cool
tempers" got a new committee of flfty nominated,
with conservatives in a majority,* and this com
mittee was later conflrmed by a citizens' mass meet
ing, which conceded one more radical, making a
committee of fifty-one. This committee had a run
ning fight with the radicals until five delegates to a
provincial congress were finaUy elected, all mod
erates, two fated even to become Loyalists.^ The
significance of the struggle was fairly expressed by
Gouverneur Morris in a letter to Mr. Penn: "Yes
terday I was present at a grand division of the city,
and these . . . my fellow citizens . . . fairly con
tended about the future forms of our government,
whether it should be founded upon aristocratic or
democratic principles. I stood in the balcony, and
on my right hand were ranged all the people of
property, with some few dependents, and on the
other all the tradesmen." * His sympathies were
not with the "poor reptiles," the mob which had
begun to think and reason; he was ready to say,
"Farewell aristocracy," as he saw them basking in
the sunshine of their vernal morning, and with the
other "gentry" he began to fear that "ere noon

• Force, American Archives (4th Ser.), i, 300.
2 Becker, Political Parties in the Province of New York. 112-15-.
Nineteen members later became open Loyalists.
' Ibid., 115-35. * Ibid., 115.

UNION FOR RESISTANCE 421
they will bite." ' Beyond some half -promises, how
ever, the radicals gained little in this contest except
organization. The rural counties responded coldly
to the request of the "Committee of Fifty -One," to
send delegates; not twenty men were present in
Orange County, and in King's two men met and one
was unanimously elected by the other to the pro
vincial congress. In general a small faction took
any active part in the election, and six counties kept
out of the election altogether.*
In Pennsylvania was found a situation not unlike
that in New York, the masses pitted against the
great merchants, with whom stood the majority of
the peace-loving Quakers. The latter preferred
memorials and remonstrances to trade restrictions
and gestures of defiance; or, as their enemies said,
"one cargo of British goods to the salvation of
America." Charles Thomson, who was courting a
lady related to John Dickinson, and who was "the
Sam Adams of Philadelphia," led the radicals.'
Joseph Reed and Thomas Mifflin shared this leader
ship and they sought to enlist Dickinson, who had
looked askance at Boston's "Tea Party." In a
town meeting, called after Paul Revere rode into
Philadelphia with Boston's plea for succor, Dickin
son, gently restraining Thomson, gave his voice for
moderation, a petition for redress rather than full
acclaim of the Massachusetts plan. Under his in-

• Sparks, Gouverneur Morris, I, 23-26.
• Becker, Political Parties in the Province of New York, 139-40.
' John Adams, Works._u, 358. The lady had £5000 sterling, John
Adams says.

422 CAUSES OF WAR OF INDEPENDENCE
fluence a committee of nineteen, weighted on the
moderate side, was chosen, which with a Quaker
primness chid Boston by implication, and declared
in favor of a general congress with "non-inter
course" as a last resort. The Pennsylvania Assem
bly also was to be called that it might petition the
King, but the Governor frustrated that plan, and a
new public meeting forced the hand of the commit
tee of nineteen and brought about an enlargement
of the committee to forty -four members, reduced to
forty-three by the resignation of Joseph Pember
ton, "a pillar of the Society of Friends." ' Of this
Dickinson was chairman, and he prevented conflict
between its radical and moderate members.
Both factions faced a hostile, conservative body
in the lower house of the legislature, led by its
speaker, Joseph Galloway.* That "loyalist politi
cian," aristocratic by inheritance, was fearful of the
noisy elements among the people, and the recent
growth of "republican ideas." He believed in the
"American rights" up to a certain point, but stopped
short of the "anarchy" of popular movements. He
had money and property enough to dread excessive
taxation, but he did not court the aid of democracy,
"enemy of true liberty," in bringing the British
Government to terms.* Knowing his power the
"Forty-Three" tried to conciliate, but moved also
to thwart him. They asked him to summon the
House, but at the same time called a convention of
1 Schlesinger, The Colonial Merchants, 341-50.
* Baldwin, "Joseph Galloway," in Pennsylvania Magazine of His
tory, XXVI, 161-91.
*Ibid..UO.

UNION FOR RESISTANCE 423
county committees, sure to be radical because the
western counties would there have far greater rep
resentation than in the regular legislature where an
improportional system cheated them of a proper
influence.' Moreover, the Scotch-Irish Presbyteri
ans and German Lutherans disliked the domination
of the Quaker more than they feared "British
tyranny." If the convention could dictate the terms
to which delegates would be committed, the choice
of them might be left to the Galloway-ridden House.
That was what the convention undertook when it
met in Carpenter's HaU and chose Thomson as its
clerk, Thomas WiUing as chairman, and agreed to a
petition to the King as a first act of the general Con
gress soon to convene. It was declared to be the
purpose of Pennsylvania to join the other colonies in
wholly sealing up the trade with Great Britain if the
Congress so decreed and to support even more dras
tic steps. The Congress was to demand at least the
repeal of the "Intolerable Acts" and aU pretense to
a right to tax or to regulate America's internal
affairs. Finally, to appease the radicals, it was
agreed that Pennsylvania did not mean to restrain
its deputies from joining any measures the Congress
might approve.* In a body the convention pre
sented these instructions to the House of Repre
sentatives, which thereupon, ignoring the sugges
tion that Willing and James Wilson and Dickinson
' Lincoln, Revolvtionary Movement in Pennsylvania, 40-52. Three
Quaker counties, Philadelphia, Chester, and Bucks, with one half the
population of Pennsylvania, elected twenty-four of the thirty-six
deputies in the assembly.
» Schlesinger, The Colonial Merchants. 351-63.

424 CAUSES OF WAR OF INDEPENDENCE
be chosen, selected seven of its own members, in
cluding Galloway, as delegates to a Continental
Congress. Nothing was said of the convention's
instructions, but the delegates were told to seek
redress and also harmony with Great Britain, avoid
ing anything indecent or disrespectful to her.
The Galloway faction had expressed in a broad
side its doubt of the convention's authority. It was
simply "setting up anarchy above order — it is the
beginning of republicanism." All of their devices
failed to stem its rising tide. They resisted every
advance, for they believed with Hume that the only
way to make the people wise was "to keep them from
uniting into large assemblies," mere mobs, as a
loyal writer declared them, all swayed by the absurd
ideas of any member who might try to heat his au
dience with that blaze of patriotism with which he
conceived himself inspired.' But it was these leaders
of the masses who were gaining control, and under
their direction a new class, formed within a decade,
growing rapidly in numbers, was rising to power.
In Pennsylvania, as in a number of other colonies,
it consisted of small farmers in the back country,
Scotch-Irish and German immigrants, reenforced
by the voteless laborers and artisans of Philadelphia
or other seaboard cities. Clever young lawyers with
a gift for mob oratory led some, and Presbyterian
preachers whose very dissent made them enemies of
England with its Established Church, led others.
For over a decade this rising democracy had strug
gled for power against the little seaboard aristocracy
• Force, American Archives (4th Ser.), i, 607-08.

UNION FOR RESISTANCE 425
of wealth and accepted social leadership; which hob
nobbed with the Governor, aped the English gentry,
and patronized jewelers, lapidaries, chaise-makers,
and portrait-painters, whose interests thus became
linked with this privUeged group since they knew
weU "where thrfft would follow fawning." It was
from this class that royal governors chose their coun
cils, and even the assembly was often controlled by
its " interests." These men, who were not too modest
to speak of themselves as the "better sort," looked
with alarm at this pushing, aggressive class which
did not have "that repose which marks the caste of
Vere de Vere," but pressed without dignity into high
places. The colonial masses could no longer be con-
troUed by reverence for the high-born. The Quaker
merchants of Philadelphia, the holders of manors on
the Hudson, the tobacco and rice planters of Virginia
and South Carolina, and even the great merchants,
clergy, and professional men of New England, could
no longer rule without question their social inferiors.
The velvet coat, neckerchiefs, and wrist falls of
Irish lace, satin trousers and sUver embroidered
cocked hat, no longer enabled Daniel Leonard to
awe the Massachusetts mob who questioned his
loyalty to the colony. Thus, in 1774, came the
climax in the struggle between rich and poor. East
and West, those with a vote and those who were
voteless, between privUege and the welfare of the
common man. The two classes might work in har
mony or might clash on the question of resistance
to Great Britain, but they were pretty sure to be in
opposition on the issue of individual rights. A mer-

426 CAUSES OF WAR OF INDEPENDENCE
chant clad in London clothes, and whose mansion
walls were decorated with the oU portraits of his
ancestors whose Christian names he could recall at
will, might welcome the support of the mechanics
and smaU shopkeepers against a grievous tax by the
British Government, but the price, a right to vote
and to hold office, he was sure to resent, and he grew
more and more alarmed as the pressure became more
insistent. Some yielded in time, even ff ungra
ciously, but the more conservative, like Galloway,
were forced eventually to abandon the colonial
cause rather than try to win it at the cost of the loss
of privilege.
This class conflict existed in the South, as weU
as in the North, but in the plantation section the
merchants had been consistently on the conserva
tive side during aU the decade of controversy. The
planters, however, were more aroused in 1774 than
ever before, for while they might be Laodicean as
to trade reform issues, they were easily heated in a
tilt over constitutional rights and personal liberty.
Moreover, the planter's business was so conducted
that he was always deeply indebted to British mer
chants, and his crops pledged long ahead for goods
he was already enjoying. The most honest tobacco
and rice planter could not be unaffected by a pro
posal to suspend the collection of debts at a time
when he was very hard-pressed.' Virginia and North
* The British Government (1791) asked the English merchants for
the total debt owed them by various colonies in 1776, with interest
The totals reported for Virginia and North Carolina were £2,305,408
for the former and £379,344 for the latter. South Carolina's debt
was £687.953. Public Record Oflace, Chatham MSS., 343.

UNION FOR RESISTANCE 427
Carolina, therefore, resorted at once to the most
radical measures yet ventured upon and Maryland
followed closely.' The Virginia House of Burgesses
was in session when the Boston Port Act news came.
June 1st, when the act would go into effect, was
fixed upon as a day of fasting, humiliation, and
prayer, showing that Puritan piety existed in the
South as well as in New England, and was a senti
ment to be reckoned with. Governor Dunmore, who
had constantly irritated the burgesses from the first
days of his administration, dissolved the House be
cause of this effort "to inflame the country," but
the members, undismayed, met in the Apollo Room
of the "Raleigh" Tavern, made Peyton Randolph
chairman, and resolved on a boycott of all East
India commodities; it then instructed its Com
mittee of Correspondence to invite all the other
colonies to a general Congress.*
For this step the committee had prepared the way
over a year before, when, under instructions from
the House, it had at the time of the Gaspee affair
urged upon the other colonial legislatures the for
mation of inter-provincial committees of correspond
ence. Nine colonies had responded to that sug
gestion, and there existed the parts of a great
machine which only needed to be assembled at
Philadelphia or some other convenient point to
form a union of all the forces of discontent in Amer
ica.* When the Continental Congress met, there is
* Schlesinger, The Colonial Merchants, 359-61.
' Liugley, The Transition in Virginia, 81-82.
• Leake, The Virginia Committee System, 134-38.

428 CAUSES OF WAR OF INDEPENDENCE
good reason to believe that it was looked upon as a
meeting of the committees of correspondence of the
several colonies; indeed, its members were in most
cases the members of the committees of corre
spondence in the respective provinces.' In later gen
erations, when States and sections quarreled as to
whom the honor belonged of having been the first
to rebel, Virginia or Massachusetts, North or South,
there was much ado over the origin of the com
mittees of correspondence.* The truth seems to be
that Samuel Adams, inspired perhaps by Otis or
Mayhew, established the first system of local com
mittees. That of Boston corresponded with those
in other towns of that province, and soon other
provinces imitated that radical machine. It was
Virginia, however, imitating at first standing legis
lative committees already existing in England,
which set up various like committees in the House
of Burgesses, and at last (1759) a "committee of
correspondence" to keep in touch with Virginia's
agent in London.*
Out of this experience Virginia was inspired on
the eve of the Revolution (1773) to establish and to
urge other colonies to set up legislative committees
of correspondence which would keep each other in
formed as to the state of the public mind and strive
to preserve unity. From this committee now came
the first invitation of one colony to others to meet
^ Leake, The Virginia Committee System, 73-75, 147-48.
^ Ibid., 65-66; E. D. Collins, "Committees of Correspondence,"
in American Historical Association, Report (1901), i, 247.
3 Leake, op. dl., 11-15, 89-90; J. F. Jameson, "The Origin of the
Standing Committee System," in Political Science Quarterly, xx, 262-63.

UNION FOR RESISTANCE 429
in an all-American Congress, though many town
gatherings here and there in America had already
proposed that plan.' Indeed, the time was ripe and
the logic of events put the idea in every fertile mind.
The Virginia Burgesses, who ventured the call to
all the colonies, sent a circular letter to the rest of
their fellow-members to sound their constituents
and then, on August 1st, to come to a meeting at
Williamsburg. This appeal to the county meetings
revealed a spirit in those fountains of power more
radical than that of their representatives in the as
sembly. Only the Scotch merchants opposed, giving
as a reason "the injustice and perfidy of refusing
to pay our debts" to British creditors.* Many of
the merchants, whom a British visitor found "very
genteel people," planned "quitting the country as
fast as their affairs would permit." In spite of them,
the provincial convention met, chose delegates to
Congress and declared for an association to enforce
a boycott of British goods. This was going no
farther than the county meetings had zealously urged
them to go.
In North Carolina, in defiance of Governor Mar
tin's proclamation against "illegal meetings," there
were Uke county gatherings followed by a conven
tion at New Berne in which one of the fiery spirits
was William Hooper, a law pupil of James Otis, who,
with James Hawes and Richard Caswell, carried
through a series of measures not much different
1 Schlesinger, The Colonial Merchants, 363-93. Many men in pri
vate letters and in newspaper articles had suggested the plan even
earlier. ' Hunt, Writings of James Madison, i, 26.

430 CAUSES OF WAR OF INDEPENDENCE
from those of Virginia.^ An English "Lady of
Quality " visiting in Wilmington at the time thought
that "noble country" . . . which "owed more favors
to its God and King . . . than any other in the
known world," was "equally ungrateful to both,"
and hoped that Governor Martin, whose "gentle
methods" with "these infatuated people" she mar
veled at, would leave the colony as he found it, "a
habitation to wolves and bears." *
South Carolina took fire less easily owing to the
resistance of the merchants and factors and of the
rice planters, who were afraid of having their rice
crop left on their hands as a result of non-exporta
tion. The resourceful Christopher Gadsden, one of
the several "Sam Adamses" of the time, who seems
to have been quite regardless of his large business
interests, directed the radical plans. In a large
meeting of irregular origin and composition, which
gathered at Charleston on summons from the Gen
eral Committee of the city, a "non-intercourse"
resolution failed, but the radicals secured a com
pensating victory by carrying a resolve that dele
gates to a "Continental Congress" were to have
"fuU power" to agree to "legal measures" for re
dress of grievances. Thereupon the struggle cen
tered on the election of conservative or radical dele
gates. Both sides resorted to dubious methods, but
the radicals carried the day and elected Gadsden,
Thomas Lynch, and Edward Rutledge, in addition
to Henry Middleton and John Rutledge, approved
• Ashe, History of North Carolina, i, 420-22.
« British Museum, Egerton MSS,, 2423 F 102.

UNION FOR RESISTANCE 431
by both factions. Edward Rutledge had been a
moderate, but he was the son-in-law of Gadsden
and the radicals were content. Later the Commons
House of Assembly in an early morning session, be
fore Governor Bull was awake, gave the election the
stamp of legality and voted money for expenses.'
The frontier and infant colony, Georgia, with its
annual subsidy from Parliament and its many royal
officers under British pay, with the "Haughty
Creeks" at their backs and with the consequent
need of Government protection, was not easily
stirred to rebellion. There was a mere handful of
radicals in the province, largely centered in St.
John's Parish; while St. Paul, the most popular
parish of the colony, was almost wholly loyal. It
proved impossible to get delegates sent to represent
Georgia in the Continental Congress.
1 Schlesmger, The Colonial Merchants. 373-78.

CHAPTER XVII
THE CONTINENTAL CONGRESS AND THE FIRST
BLOODSHED
Except that the Continental Congress was not
authorized by the Crown, the "Friends of Govern
ment" were not necessarily opposed to such a gen
eral council. It might be the best way for securing
a conciliation, and would at least prevent lawless
action. Samuel Adams feared it, and tried his best
to get the colonies committed in advance to a rebel
lious plan. Dickinson wished it, that war might be
avoided; while Josiah Quincy was afraid it might
be the source of timid or lukewarm counsels. New
York and Philadelphia merchants thought it might
at least postpone or soften non-intercourse, and
might even prevent such a blow to mercantile in
terests.' General Gage contented himseff with the
thought that Boston might "get little more than
fair words" from such a congress. Its apparent
limitation to trade restrictions, John Adams, a
delegate, regretted. "But what avails," he asked,
"Prudence, Wisdom, Policy, Fortitude, Integrity,
without Power, without Legions ? WTien Demosthenes
(God forgive the Vanity of recoUecting his Example)
went Ambassador from Athens to the other states
of Greece, to excite a Confederacy against Phillip,
he did not go to propose a Non-Importation or Non-
1 Schlesinger, The Colonial Merchants. 393-95.

THE CONTINENTAL CONGRESS 433
consumption Agreement ! ! ! " Adams hoped for
"Something a little more sublime and mettlesome." '
While the Massachusetts House locked the door
on the Governor's message of dissolution, delegates
were chosen, September 1st determined as the date,
and Philadelphia the place, for a Continental Con
gress. James Bowdoin, Thomas Cushing, Samuel
and John Adams, and Robert Treat Paine were
chosen as delegates.* John Adams for the moment
lost confidence. "We have not men fit for the
times," he wrote in his diary. "We are deficient in
genius, in education, in travel, in fortune, in every
thing. I feel unutterable anxiety. God grant us
wisdom and fortitude!" Still he was not without
devices. "I could," he wrote his wife, Abigail,
"turn the course of my reading and studies to sub
jects of Law, and Politics, and Commerce as may
come in play in Congress. I might be furbishing up
my old reading in Law and History, that I might
appear with less indecency before a variety of gentle
men, whose educations, travels, experience, family,
fortune and everything will give them a vast supe
riority to me, and I fear even to some of my
companions." He might well be concerned about
Samuel Adams, who had never left the bounds of
Massachusetts until he went as a delegate to the
first Continental Congress.* The journey to Phila
delphia was full of edification; nothing was lost, not
' Warren-Adams Letters, 29.
^ Force, American Archives (4th Ser.), r, 421-23. On June 15th,
Rhode Island, first of all the colonies, had chosen delegates; Massa
chusetts was two days later.
' Wells, Samuel Adams, i, 6.

434 CAUSES OF WAR OF INDEPENDENCE
even the view from the church steeple at Wethers-
field. At New Haven all the beUs in town were set
to ringing, and the people, men, women, and chil
dren, crowded at doors and windows as ff to see a
coronation. Roger Sherman, "a solid, sensible man,"
one of Connecticut's delegates, waited on them at
Isaac Bear's tavern, and pleased Adams, because he
would not concede that Parliament had a right to
make any laws whatever for America. The delegates
visited Yale College, but doubtless took especial
delight in seeing the gravestone of Dixwell, the
regicide.' On they went to New York, stopping at
the tavern, "the sign of the Bunch of Grapes," but
soon they were invited to private lodgings, where
they were made familiar with all the ins and outs
of New York politics, chiefly from the radical point
of view, though they met, on good terms seemingly,
a number, like Peter Van Schaack, who later became
Loyalists. They met the New York delegates, "all
Episcopalian" except Philip Livingston, "a great
rough, rapid mortal," who "blustered away so that
one could not converse with him." He had no more
delicacy than to remind John Adams that Massa
chusetts hanged the Quakers and that New Yorkers
feared the leveling spirit in New England. Two
New York delegates, Duane, "with a sly, surveying
eye," and Alsop, "a soft sweet man," gave Adams
recent news about the bad state of mind in England.
A week of entertainment greatly impressed Adams
with the grand houses, the rich and splendid furni
ture, the quantities of silver plate, but the breeding
* John Adams, Works, n, 340-45.

THE CONTINENTAL CONGRESS 435
he thought inferior to his beloved New England;
and he had not seen "one real gentleman, one well-
bred man." They talked "loud, very fast and al
together" paying no attention to one another — and
perhaps not to John Adams. He would rather, in
his Puritanical zeal for improving his mind, have
seen the college, the churches, and the booksellers'
shops,' and at the last moment part of his desire was
granted. At length the party crossed Paulus Hook Ferry
into New Jersey and pressed on to Princeton, where
they saw the college and Rittenhouse's planetarium,
showing most of the motions of the astronomical
world. The president and the students were all
" Sons of Liberty." Passing on through Trenton and
over the Delaware, the delegates arrived at last near
"the happy, the peaceful, the elegant city" of
Philadelphia, where they were met by carriages
filled with other delegates and gentlemen from the
city. Tired, dusty, and fatigued they rode into
town. It had been a long journey for many of the
delegates, but all agreed with Bland that they would
have gone " if it had been to Jericho."
Life for the next few weeks was a round of that
lavish hospitality for which the city has been famed
from that day to this. There was no rest. "A most
sinful feast again," John Adams wrote after ten days
of such a life, "everything which could delight the
eye or allure the taste; curds and creams, jellies,
sweetmeats of various sorts, twenty sorts of tarts,
fools, trifles, floating islands, and whipped sillabubs."
' John Adams, Works, n, 353.

436 CAUSES OF WAR OF INDEPENDENCE
"Parmesan Cheese, punch, wine and porter, beer,
etc." Again, when he dined with Chief Justice
Chew, there was "turtle and every other thing,
flummery . . . sweetmeats of 20 sorts . . . and then
a dessert of fruits, raisins, almonds, pears and
peaches. Wines most excellent and admirable. I
drank Madeira at a great rate, and found no incon
venience in it." ' Either the Madeira or the social
intercourse broadened the views of all the delegates,
and to some extent dispelled the mists of religious
or sectional prejudice. John Adams, the stern Puri
tan, attended the Baptist and Methodist, the Mora
vian and the Episcopalian Churches and even the
"Romish Chapel," where he conceded "the scenery
and the music are so calculated to take in mankind,
the paintings, the bells, the candles, the gold and
silver; our Saviour on the cross, all his wounds
bleeding," that he wondered the Reformation had
ever succeeded. He even summoned up diplomacy
enough to move, on the second day of the Congress'
meeting in Carpenter's Hall, that the session open
with prayers by Mr. Duche, the Anglican clergy
man; though he could not resist flattering himseff
that he was no bigot.* It was a good stroke, and dis
armed much prejudice against Puritan New Eng
land. John Adams' comments upon the delegates from
other colonies betrayed the New England bias. He
was meeting most of the delegates for the first time,
' John Adams, Works, n, 370-81.
2 Ibid., 364, 368, 369, 378, 395. Duch6 later disappomted Adams
and became a "Tory."

THE CONTINENTAL CONGRESS 437
as was true, perhaps, of most other members, for
only six had served in the Stamp Act Congress.
Dickinson, Adams wrote, "is a shadow, tall, but
slender as a reed; pale as ashes"; he was "agreeable
and modest." The elder Rutledge "had no keen
ness in his eye, no depth in his countenance, nothing
of the profound, sagacious, brilliant or sparkling"
and "maintains the air of reserve, design, and cun
ning." Lee was "a tall, spare man; Bland a learned,
bookish man." Edward Rutledge, "good natured
but conceited," was "young, sprightly, but not
deep; he has the most indistinct, inarticulate way
of speaking, speaks through his nose." "A perfect
Bob-0-Lincoln, — a swallow, a sparrow, a peacock;
. . . excessively weak and excessively variable and
imsteady." Csesar Rodney "is the oddest looking
man in the world; he is tall, thin and slender . . .
pale; his face not bigger than a large apple, yet there
is sense and fire, spirit, wit and humor in his counte
nance." ' Joseph Galloway, a " sensible and learned
but cold speaker," the greatest enemy of the
Adamses' cause, remembered Samuel Adams as
"equal to most men in popular intrigue and the
management of a faction. He eats little, sleeps little,
drinks little, thinks much and is most decisive and
indefatigable in the pursuit of his objects." All
these were surface, first impressions, but were what
any casual observer who was somewhat critical and
censorious might have gained had he enjoyed
Adams' or Galloway's opportunities.
Of the delegations to the Congress, four were in-
' John Adams, Works, n, 360-61, 362-64, 401.

438 CAUSES OF WAR OF INDEPENDENCE
structed to procure the harmony and union of the
empire, to restore mutual confidence or to establish
the union with Great Britain. Three were instructed
to report the breach made in American rights, and
to preserve American liberty. Two were to seek a
repeal of the obnoxious acts or to determine on
prudent and lawful measures of redress. Three were
simply to attend the Congress, or "to consult to
advance the good of the colonies." North Carolina
alone bound her inhabitants in honor to obey the
acts of the Congress, to which she was sending
delegates. New Jersey and Delaware, with chiefly
farming interests, were the only colonies to recom
mend a plan of complete restriction of incoming
and outgoing trade, but the southern plantation
provinces stood plainly for a two-edged plan of com
mercial war on England to which the northern
commercial interests were cold. As there were only
eleven merchant members, and the lawyers, together
with the representatives of agricultural interests,
predominated, some plan of trade restriction was
assured. FinaUy, the Congress was not thought of
as a lawmaking body, but was regarded as a con
vention of emissaries from distinct communities
who wished to take counsel among themselves con
cerning their common relations to England. It was
decided that each colony should have one vote.
Fifty -flve members from twelve colonies attended,
and Arthur Lee, with a flourish of his pen, calcu
lated that the Congress represented two mUlion
people. Peyton Randolph was chosen president, and
Charles Thomson, secretary.

THE CONTINENTAL CONGRESS 439
At first the Congress, under a rule of secrecy, pro
ceeded with "flattering tranquillity." Finding that
the New England members had "numberless prej
udices" to remove, the Adamses kept out of sight,
felt pulses, sounded depths, and insinuated their
sentiments through other persons.' The great ob
stacle to realizing the radical wishes was Joseph
Galloway and his strong group of moderates, " pos
sessed of the greatest fortunes in America," seeking
a clear definition of imperial relations and peaceful
petitions rather than some irritating trade coercion.
These men were startled when, on September 17th,
the radicals suddenly carried over their protest an
endorsement of the bold resolves of Suffolk County,
Massachusetts, nuUffying Parliament's "Intoler
able Acts," calling for a "people's government" and
a defensive militia, and advocating a complete sever
ing of all trade bonds with Great Britain, Ireland,
and the West Indies.* Then Congress continued
"nibbling and quibbling," as Adams impatiently
wrote. Debates were "spun out to an immeasurable
length." "There is no greater mortffication," he
declared, "than to sit with half a dozen wits, de
liberating upon a petition, address or memorial . . .
these subtle critics, these refined geniuses, these
learned lawyers, these wise statesmen are so fond of
showing their parts and powers." "The art and
address ... of a conclave of cardinals at the election
of a Pope, or of the princes in Germany at the choice
of an Emperor would not exceed the specimens we
» John Adams, Works, n, 382, 391.
* Schlesinger, The Colonial Merchants, 411-13.

440 CAUSES OF WAR OF INDEPENDENCE
have seen." ' His "patience and long-suffering"
were particularly tried when Joseph Galloway
countered the stroke of the radicals with a plan of
union, a wise and worthy effort to save the empire,
endorsed by Duane and Jay and Edward Rutledge,
with other men of fortune and property, and only
defeated by a majority of one in a vote of eleven
colonies. Then and there, Galloway asserted long
after, "the measures of independence and sedition
were . . . preferred to those of harmony and lib
erty." *
Day after day the conservative forces weakened
and radicals had their way. October 14th, Congress
approved a "Declaration of Rights," calm, moder
ate, and filled with the political theory and ideals of
the colonists.* Colonial rights to life, liberty, and
property were secured, they declared, by the prin
ciples of the British Constitution, the unchanging
laws of nature, and their colonial charters. They
were not and could not be properly represented in
Parliament, but only in their local assemblies where
must reside, therefore, the exclusive power of legis
lation. Nevertheless, for the good of the empire as
a whole, they would accede to acts of Parliament
regulating their external commerce if there was no
"idea of taxation, external or internal," but would
no longer submit to such oppressive acts as had
1 John Adams, Works, n, 391-401.
' Ibid., 387-90; Galloway, Candid Examinations of the Mutual
Claims of Great Britain and the Colonies, 53. The plan is in American
Archives (4th Ser.), I, 905-06.
3 Journal of Congress (Ford, ed), i, 63. No documents of the time
better reveal the colonial ideas of government.

THE CONTINENTAL CONGRESS 441
vexed them since 1764.' They asked, in a word, to
be restored to what had come to look like the golden
age before the Seven Years' War. Five colonies
denied all right of Parliament to regulate trade, five
admitted the right, and delegates from Massachu
setts and Rhode Island were not agreed. Into the
Declaration of Rights was written their compromise.
A like political philosophy, and no little argument
and declamation as to America's wrongs, were em
bodied in addresses to the British people, to the
King, to the Province of Quebec, and to the inhab
itants of the several colonies. WTien Chatham saw
them, he could think of no political expression of
any body of men which could rival these papers in
solidity of reason, force of sagacity, and wisdom of
conclusion under a complication of difficult cir
cumstances.* The real accomplishment of the Congress, how
ever, was the Continental Association, making
national and uniform the devices for commercial co
ercion which hitherto had been local and spasmodic.
It bore marks of strong southern influence in its
name, its basic likeness to Virginia's Association
adopted two months earlier, and in its expedients
for forcing the merchants to obey its provisions.*
When this Association was signed by all members of
the Congress, as it was on October 20, 1774, it bound
* Journal of Congress (Ford, ed), i, 71-73.
• Force, American Archives (4tk Ser.), I, 917-38; Hansard, Parlia
mentary History, xvni, 155.
' Schlesinger, The Colonial Merchants, 423-24. In the North in
general the merchants had previously enforced their own agree
ments.

442 CAUSES OF WAR OF INDEPENDENCE
them and their constituents at home to an industrial
attack upon England to be carried on until redress
should be granted by the British Government. A
stringent non-importation would begin December 1,
1774, and non-exportation September 10, 1775.
There was to be no profiteering, and local arts and
manufactures were to be encouraged. There was,
finally, a ban upon extravagance and dissipation,
gaming, cock-fighting, horse-races, and all expensive
diversions. Even the luxuries of mourning were to
be reduced.
Since the Congress could give no legal sanction to
its acts, it invented penalties and created adminis
trative and judicial organs to enforce the proposed
boycott. There were to be chosen, in every city,
town, and county, committees whose duty was to
secure signatures to the Association and to declare
"enemies to American liberty" all who refused to
sign or who violated its regulations. Its penalties
were not "the gallows, the rack and the stake . . .
but infamy" which is even "more dreadful to a free
man." The Association was not a mere compact
applying only to the parties to the covenant, but
applied to all persons and even to whole provinces.
Moderates could no longer go their own way, but
had been driven into the position of being traitors
to the general cause ff they were guilty of the least
deviation from the resolves of the Congress.' Yet
they need not have felt, as many like Galloway did,
that they had made a mistake in lending counte
nance to the Congress, which, dominated by radi-
1 Schlesinger, The Colonial Merchants, 428, 432, 433.

THE CONTINENTAL CONGRESS 443
cals, had pushed the colonies farther on the road to
rebellion; for they should have remembered that the
radical measures taken by the Congress had all been
warmly endorsed before by provincial conventions
and assemblies, and before that by county and town
meetings. Moreover, the measures of the Congress
were quickly endorsed, with the exception of a few
towns and small sections, by the same political
bodies which had created the continental gathering.'
The spirit of the Congress, indeed, was mUd com
pared with that of the people behind them, who
filled the papers with stories of rioting and burning
and of tarring and feathering those who opposed
their will. An almost universal protest found voice
in the letters of individuals and the resolutions of
towns and of county and provincial conventions.
All America was in a rebellious mood. Lord North
was "cursed from morn to noon, and from noon
to morn by every denomination of people." As
Chatham expressed it, "Mal-administration . . . has
not a move left — it is check-mate."* George III
and his Minister could no longer be excused for
thinking of Boston or even of New England as the
only contumacious region in America.
The "salvation" of the colonies through the
effects of the Continental Association soon seemed
assured. There had been a rush to buy British goods
before the boycott should begin and English im
portations into New York increased from £289,214
' Schlesinger, The Colonial Merchants, 435-72.
• Hansard, Parliamentary History, xvin, 160; Mass. Hist. Soc^
Proceedings, vm, 341.

444 CAUSES OF WAR OF INDEPENDENCE
in 1773 to £437,937 m 1774, but in the next year,
during the operation of the Association, trade fell
off to only £1228.' Reductions in trade totals were
not so great in all other ports, but were sufficient
to alarm the British merchants and manufacturers
by the prospect of depression and dull days ahead.
The buying in advance had merely tied up their
capital in America. Only a turn in European affairs
which drew British goods into new channels, into
Germany and Spain and the Baltic lands, robbed the
Continental Association of its logical effect.* Never
theless, before their deliverance through the new
twist in Europe's affairs, the merchants of England
had been quickened to action by the startling vision
of closing American markets. Petitions rained upon
Parliament from Belfast, Leeds, Manchester, Glas
gow, Birmingham, and many other factory towns
and shipping centers, foretelling bankruptcy and
ruin unless the Americans were conciliated by a re
peal of the obnoxious acts. The Ministry only
hardened its heart, and refused to let the Americans
rebel and then slip behind their creditors for security.
Lord North's only reply was that " as the Americans
had refused to trade with this kingdom, it was but
just that we should not suffer them to trade with any
other nation." * Bills to that end were passed first
against New England and then extended to five other
colonies.* The enforcement of the Association in America
• Macpherson, Annals of Commerce, in, 549, 564, 585.
» Schlesinger, The Colonial Merchants, 474, 475, 539-40.
» Ibid., 537, 538.
« 15 Geo. m, cc 10 and 18.

THE CONTINENTAL CONGRESS 445
had not been difficult. Its administrative machinery
had been quickly set up in every colony but Georgia,
and men obeyed the decrees of the Congress more
faithfully than the laws of the provincial legislatures.
The almost doubling of importation, just previous to
the boycott going into action, softened the early
effect on living conditions; and open war came so
soon as to make any guess as to its ultimate probable
effect mere speculation. In Massachusetts the Pro
vincial Congress made rules for all emergencies under
the Association and urged the ministers of the gospel
to instruct their people to cleave to the Association.
Under these rules, ff cargoes arrived after December
1st the local committees reshipped the goods or sold
them at auction, reimbursing the owner for his actual
investment. Non-consumption was harder to en
force, but there were numerous cases where the
committee forced buyers of tea to burn it in the
presence of a crowd, and then to ask the pardon of
the offended citizens. The greatest trouble was with
wandering peddlers and petty chapmen who sold tea,
and who tempted " women, girls and boys with their
unnecessary fineries." Home manufactures were en
couraged and all forms of extravagance and needless
games like cards and billiards were shunned. In
Connecticut the tendency of prices to rise gave the
most trouble and the profiteering was hard to prove,
since many goods came from neighboring colonies.
Offenders seemed to have a fair trial before local
committees and convincing proof was required. In
New York the enforcement was almost wholly in the
hands of the city Committee of Sixty which was very

446 CAUSES OF WAR OF INDEPENDENCE
active, and used the devices noted in New England,
but, as was also true of the Philadelphia Commit
tee, it seemed less concerned about the raising of
prices. They were more rigid in the matter of in
sistence upon simple funerals and the curtailing
of dissipations like puppet shows. Lieutenant-Gov
ernor Colden grudgingly admitted that the Asso
ciation was rigidly maintained in New York. The
aristocratic Quaker merchants of Philadelphia were
hostile to the Association and the Society of Friends
was made use of for opposing propaganda. Friends'
meetings resolved that Quakers would act con
trary to their religious principles and to the rules of
Christian discipline if they opposed government by
the devices of the Association. Other meetings tes
tified against "every usurpation of power and
authority in opposition to the Laws and Govern
ment." Many members from varied motives dis
agreed with this stand, and it is safe to say that the
Quakers were divided. In spite of their opposition,
the Committee of Sixty-Six which enforced the
Association could truthfully say that they had "not
met with the least impediment or obstruction" in
carrying it into execution.' Local manufacturing,
moreover, made a great advance at this time.
South of Pennsylvania the old antithesis between
the interests of planter and merchant created the
only obstacle to enforcement of the Association.
Merchants and factors, chiefly Scotch in Virginia
and North Carolina, sought to coerce the over-
^ This paragraph is based entirely upon Schlesinger, The Colonial
Merchants, chap. xn.

THE CONTINENTAL CONGRESS 447
zealous planters by pressing the collections of debts
in the provincial courts. Thereupon the provincial
conventions in the Carolinas and Virginia, domi
nated by the planters, closed the courts and forbade
lawyers, witnesses, and suitors to take part in civil
cases.' This put a stop to the harassing of debtors.
Governor Dunmore declared that in this high
handed measure "the men of fortune and preemi
nence joinedequally with the lowest and meanest." *
The next device of the Scotch factors in Virginia and
North Carolina was to discredit the Association by
a rapid elevation of prices. They supported one
another, and "even at the expense of their soiUs"
clannishly swore to each other's lies, as the radicals
declared. The committees met this problem by
fixing maximum prices. As a result of this opposi
tion there was a widespread antipathy to the Scotch
merchants, whose good faith was suspected even
when they signed the Association which in Virginia
was required of all inhabitants, thus forcing every
individual into a position of active friendship or of
open hostility. So high was the spirit of the com
munity that "The Laws of Congress," as Dunmore
glumly admitted, got "marks of reverence which
they never bestowed on their legal Government."
In South Carolina not so much attention was paid
to the sumptuary rules of Congress as in Maryland,
Virginia, and North Carolina where there was a
cessation of balls, and the races of the Jockey Club
* In certain cases the local committee might give permission for
civil actions.
* Force, American Archives (4th Ser.), i, 1062. This letter of Dun-
more's is most important as revealing the Loyalist point of view.

448 CAUSES OF WAR OF INDEPENDENCE
were called off. A traveler saw the ladies of Wil
mington burn their tea in solemn procession, but
commented dryly that they had delayed " until the
sacrifice was not very considerable, as I do not think
anyone offered above a quarter of a pound." In
Virginia gambling was deep-rooted. " Colonel Burd,"
as a French spy relates, was "never happy but when
he has the box and Dices in hand, . . . from a man of
the greatest property of any in America [he] has re
duced himself to that degree by gameing that few
or nobody will Credit him for Ever so small a sum
of money." ' Yet, in such a community where men
of this character were not rare, committees made
every effort to stop gaming. Outside of these special
problems, committees in the South displayed about
the same kind of activities as those in the North,
and all both North and South soon discovered that
they must cooperate with each other to prevent eva
sions of the Association under the guise of coastwise
trade.* In both North and South the few weak at
tempts of the conservatives or Loyalists to organized
opposition to the will of the Congress failed because
of the much better organization of the radicals.
It was this period of great activity of radical com
mittees which witnessed the most rapid formation
of the Loyalist Party. Many individuals had been
hanging back, and a few had openly opposed the
forward push toward rebellion, but beginning with
1774 these men had been drawing together, looking
• French Archives, Service hydrographique de la Marine, v, 76, no. 2.
' This paragraph is chiefly based upon Schlesinger, The Colonial
Merchants, chap. xm.

THE CONTINENTAL CONGRESS 449
anxiously into each other's faces, and in confiden
tial tones asking each other where it would all end.
Few realized up to 1774 that the quarrel between
America and England would end in violence. Men
could argue before on one side or the other without
calling for pistols and coffee for two. Many of the
ablest conservative writers and speakers had had
little to say in public until 1774.' Then opinion sud
denly crystallized and Daniel Leonard, Joseph Gal
loway, Samuel Seabury, and Jonathan Odell began
to write their powerful arguments to show that
America's best interests lay in a union with Great
Britain. The period of two years, 1774 and 1775,
was the time of the bloom of their polemical litera
ture. In general, they argued as Mansfield or Lord
North or old Dr. Johnson argued on constitutional
questions, but the main revelation of their argumen
tation was that they believed in a strong central
government, and delighted in the glories of a great
empire. To them was given a vision of a vast, power
ful British Empire dominating the world, and in
which they as citizens might thrill with a sense of
superiority. Others, not so ambitious, but having
a pacffic temperament, dreaded controversy. Still
others did not doubt the validity of the American
constitutional argument put up to deny Parlia
ment's right to tax America, but they at least dis
approved (if violent measures to resist Parliament.*
There were motives as diverse as the variety of
human emotions and interests which made men
Loyalists when the hour for decision arrived, but
• American Historical Review, i. 26. ' Ibid., i. 24,

450 CAUSES OF WAR OF INDEPENDENCE
there were certain classes foreordained by the logic
of their place in society and in the political structure
to be the leaders of that faction. During the latter
part of the colonial period all of the colonies outside
of New England were royal or proprietary colonies
in which most of the officials were appointees of the
King or proprietor. This created a social caste
which imitated England in its social aims. Gover
nors, lieutenant-governors, secretaries, councillors,
attorneys-general, and chief -justices looked to Eng
land for authority and support, and formed an ex
alted party looking down on the people of the colony.
Their habits were English rather than colonial, and
Iffe at the Governor's court was extravagant, graft
almost as common as in England. As a result the
great officers of government in America were the
backbone of the Tory Party. Next in influence was
the clergy of the Established Church. These groups
received the support of many of the landowners and
substantial business men — prosperous men who
were satisfied with the existing order of things. The
aristocracy of culture, of dignffied professions and
callings, of official rank and hereditary wealth were
therefore in a large measure ultimately found in the
Tory Party. Descriptions of them are rich with gold
lace, purple and gold, chariots and four horses, wigs
after the pattern of that of the Speaker of the House
of Commons. One of the motives which determined
some of the colonial aristocrats to turn to the Loyal
ist side was the manffest tendency of the masses to
demand, not only the colonial rights from the British
administration, but to assert their equal right in

THE CONTINENTAL CONGRESS 451
the Provincial Government with those to whom
they had long submissively yielded obedience. This
demand made most true aristocrats recoil with
horror. During the months in which the Congress was
elected and convened, and while it devised its co
ercive Association and left to a thousand willing
spirits the execution of it. General Gage with ships
of war and five thousand troops was doing his best
to carry out the rather rash orders of his King. He
may have recalled Tigranes' comment upon the
Roman army, which was too many for an embassy
and too few for a fight, since he made no effort to
disarm the inhabitants or to send Samuel Adams and
John Hancock to London for trial. He brought some
comfort, however, to Peggy Hutchinson who wrote
pathetically that she had "been running from a mob
ever since the year sixty-five." ' Gage was not the
"great person of military valor" whom Bacon
advised princes to have "near unto them, for the
suppressing of seditions in their beginnings," but he
did have enough good sense to appreciate the danger
of his situation. Wlien he sent out soldiers, Sep
tember 1, 1774, to seize three hundred barrels of
gunpowder which a Massachusetts Committee had
laid up against a time of need, messengers went fly
ing far and wide, there was wild excitement, swear
ing men left their farms, and some three thousand
militia who had been drilling for just such an occa
sion gathered at Cambridge before it could be ex
plained that six Americans had not been killed as
» British Museum, Egerton MSS., 2659 F 64.

452 CAUSES OF WAR OF INDEPENDENCE
rumored. It was said that forty thousand started
for Boston on that occasion. Little wonder that
Gage was glad to let sleeping dogs lie and to seek
even Hancock's influence to get barracks built before
winter came upon them. A Patriot dubbed him the
"Duke of Alva . . . shut up with his troops, and his
forlorn mandamus Councillors in Boston." '
In the spring Gage grew bolder and sent out dis
guised officers "in brown cloaths and reddish hand
kerchiefs" around their necks to locate roads, rivers,
defensible places, encampments, and sources of
forage. The narrative left by one of them of this
reconnaissance gives a graphic picture of the high
nervous tension, the bitter hostility throughout the
countryside. Suspicion dogged them. WTien they
remarked civilly to a "black woman," who waited
on them, that it was "a flue country," she retorted,
"so it is, and we have got brave fellows to defend
it." So sinister grew the warnings that they aU but
turned back. "Friends to government" were very
rare, but gave the spies brief respites from the long
hours of apprehension. An offer of tea was the best
proof that the host was Tory. On Sunday, at Worces
ter, they did not dare stir until evening because
nobody was allowed to walk the streets during
divine service. At Buckminster a company of mili
tia exercised under the very windows of their tavern,
and a commander harangued them, quoting Csesar
and Pompey, urging the men to wait for the British
fire. That over, they all entered the tavern and
1 The Remembrancer, i, 60. The "Mandamus Councillors" were
those appointed under the Massachusetts Government Act.

THE CONTINENTAL CONGRESS 453
heated their valor with pots of ale. As the spies
pushed on, they were harassed by horsemen scour
ing the country and asking very unpleasant ques
tions. The party barely escaped the Committee of
Correspondence at Marlborough, who searched their
host's house from top to bottom, and warned him
that had the spies been found the house would have
been pulled down about their ears.' As a result of
this or a similar expedition, it was learned that at
Concord was one of the many stores of arms and
provisions gathered by the Committee of Safety,
appointed by the Provincial Congress and led by
Samuel Adams and Joseph Warren. In spite of the
faUure, late in February, of an effort to seize brass
cannon at Salem, Gage resolved to destroy the stores
at Concord, and on the evening of April 18th, troops
for that mission gathered at the waterside.
The Committee of Safety was alert, and Joseph
Warren dispatched Joseph Dawes, and later Paul
Revere, to warn the town people and farmers on the
route. Prearranged signals in the tower of the Old
North Church gave the alarm to many, and the
riders reached the rest. As the British force marched
up into the country, the ringing of bells and firing of
signal guns and the boom of cannon made it clear
that the expedition was no secret. As they neared
the green at Lexington in the early dawn, they saw
"a body of country people drawn up in mUitary
order, with arms and accoutrements." A shot was
fired, but by which side or by whose order is one of
* Mass. Hist. Soc, Collections, iv, 204-14.

454 CAUSES OF WAR OF INDEPENDENCE
the unsolved questions of history.' It was probably
not heard around the world as some authorities
state. General firing then began, and when the
British soldiery passed on to Concord, they left
eight dead militiamen and ten wounded in Lexing
ton. The village of Concord was occupied, a few
stores not yet removed were destroyed, and there
were a few casualties in a brief fight between the
minutemen and the British picket at the bridge over
the river. But meanwhile the embattled farmers
were rising. Fighting, as some had fought the In
dians, from behind trees and rocks and stone walls
they poured a deadly fire into the red-coated British
regulars, so that with all their bravery they were
nearly ready to surrender when they entered the
welcome hollow square formed by the soldiers under
Lord Percy who had been sent with fifteen hundred
men to give them succor. After a rest the whole
force set out again for Boston, galled by a furious
fire from behind houses and stone walls. The mad
dened "red-coats" stopped at times, broke into
houses, killed all who were therein, and burned the
dwellings when they could. This only enraged the
"rebels" whose number and fire increased as Cam
bridge was neared.* The official report says that
"notwithstanding a continued skirmish for the
space of 15 miles receiving fire from every hill, fence,
* An excellent collection of the best evidence with the many con
flicting stories is in Source Problems in United States History, by A. C.
McLaughlin et al., 13-54. The essential source bibliography is there,
and in Winsor's Memorial History of Boston, ni, 101. See also F. W.
Coburn, The Battle of April 19, 1775.
' Mass. Hist. Soc, Proceedings (2d Ser.), v, 393.

THE CONTINENTAL CONGRESS 455
house, barn, etc., his Lordship kept the enemy off
and brought the troops to Charleston" and from
there they were ferried over to Boston.' There was
a crimson trail from Concord to Boston. Some
seventy-three of the British soldiers had been killed
and one hundred and seventy-four wounded, while
the Americans had lost forty -nine killed and thirty-
nine wounded. Gage wrote to the W^ar Department
three days later that he had nothing to trouble them
with, "but of an affair that happened here on the
19th. Inst." He reluctantly admitted that "they
were at length a good deal pressed." * He forgot to
mention that the next day Boston was a besieged
town, that from all New England men were hurrying
to the camp-fires of the besiegers.
To this point at last had come the relations of the
British Government and the American colonies, all
because the matter of right had been "kept perpetu
ally on the anvill." * It was contrary to nature that
conciliation would be possible now. It needed no
gift of prophecy to see that war had begun between
Britain and her colonies. That it would last seven
years and involve the greatest nations of the world
was a cosmic catastrophe which even the most dis
mal prophets did not foresee.
» Public Records Office, War Office {In-letters). n, F 179. ^ Ibid.
• American Historical Review, vm, 327.

CHAPTER XVIII
THE FREEST OF PEOPLES WERE THE
FIRST TO REBEL
To understand why England of all countries in
Europe should have been plagued with a rebeUion
of her colonies, one must compare in some detaU the
political and social conditions in the several States
of that continent. It will then appear that the
American Revolution was one of the glories of Brit
ish history, rather than a blot upon her fair political
record. The colonies of no other nation in that age
had progressed so far in the attainment and enjoy
ment of political liberty as to have "snuffed" the
taint of tyranny in those acts of the British Govern
ment which precipitated the struggle. WTiat polit
ical liberty American colonies enjoyed, they had, in
a large degree, inherited from the mother country.
"The flood of British freedom, which . . . from dark
antiquity hath flowed 'with pomp of waters un-
withstood,' " found even more generous channels in
the American colonies. All the conditions of colonial
Iffe in the forest border of the settled Atlantic coast,
on the frontier of the British Empire, tended to en
courage radical views, and to resist any backward
political step of the more conservative homeland.
They were the heirs of all the political accomplish
ment of England, and they had increased their
heritage. As British political progress had out
stripped the other lagging nations of Europe, so had

A FREE PEOPLE FIRST TO REBEL 457
that of the American colonies run on ahead of Eng
lish political advance. A brief survey of European
political conditions, besides furnishing a background
to the Revolutionary history, will give body and
definiteness to these general assertions.
WTien the Revolutionary War began. Englishmen
had behind them over five hundred years of struggle
for political liberty. From Simon de Montfort and
Edward I, the creators of the House of Commons,
striving to secure the rights of the knights and
burghers, to the days of Burke, Pitt, and Fox, the
great liberal leaders of the eighteenth century, Eng
land had made an almost ceaseless advance toward
control of Government by the people or their re
presentatives. Sometimes the progress was made
under the leadership of a great, wise, and liberal
king like Edward I, sometimes under the direction
of the titled aristocracy, but more and more, in the
later periods, through the impulse of wider and
wider circles of common men who were constantly
increasing their political experience. To tell every
step in the slow growth of English freedom would be
to tell again England's political history. It is not
the purpose here to recount the facts which estab
lish beyond cavil the assertion of the British his
torian, that Englishmen were the inventors of polit
ical liberty on the scale of the great nation-state, as
Greece was the inventor of political liberty on the
scale of the little city-state. It suffices to recall
that when in the seventeenth century the Bour
bons, HohenzoUerns, and Hapsburgs were eliminat
ing all popular influence in European Governments,

458 CAUSES OF WAR OF INDEPENDENCE
the English were decapitating Charles I, enticing
James II into exile, and putting on firm foundation
the principle that the people's representatives were
sovereign. In the eighteenth century, when benevo
lent despotism triumphed on Europe's mainland,
England perfected a Parliamentary system which
took away all the King's legislative power and most
of his executive power. This gain for liberal govern
ment was made by the leaders of the English people,
and not for them by a benevolent despot.
The century preceding the American Revolution
had seen the English WTiigs annUiilate the ancient
legal powers of the Crown by forcing it to act
through ministers responsible to Parliament.' The
transfer of this power had been obscured under con
ventions which continued the appearance of power
where, in truth, there was obedience. The evolution
of these conventions — party government, the cabi
net and a responsible ministry — solved the problem
of attaining Parliamentary Government while re
taining the King. As early as the time of Queen
Anne, the mystic halo of the divine-right sovereign
had vanished, though interested men did not cease
to deceive the masses with that royal aureole. Not,
perhaps, before 1760 had this revolutionary state,
legitimate in law before, become truly so by usage
and sentiment.* It was the WTiig Party, aristocratic
and even oligarchic as it was, that had wrought this
change, the harmonizing of monarchical principles
with Parliamentary supremacy. No King Edward,
• C. G. Eobertson, England under the Hanoverians, 162.
' Ibid., 163.

A FREE PEOPLE FIRST TO REBEL 459
no benevolent despot of the type so common in con
tinental Europe of that age, had decreed these re
forms, but rather the leaders of a freedom-loving
people, becoming ever more conscious of their power.
Nevertheless, it was certain that great famUies,
a socially privileged class, a commercial hierarchy
(such was the make-up of the Whig Party) could not
and did not give England the real essentials of a
liberal government — religious toleration, a humane
criminal code, a truly representative legislature, a
free press and the right of the common man to vote.'
In a society struggling up toward political freedom,
such limitation on personal liberty could not long
survive. A new England politically was emerging
by 1760. The grave defects still existing in Eng
land's Parliamentary system were openly attacked.
Reformers ere long were pointing out that the House
of Commons, because of a moth-eaten suffrage law,
did not properly represent its constituencies. Sarum.
was a sheep-walk, Droitwich, a by-gone salt pit,
Dunwich was half under the sea; yet these wild
places helped to outvote the nation's centers of
trade and industry.* Moreover, low ethical stand
ards, the barter and sale of Parliamentary seats,
representatives under "wages" from the King, made
corruption easy and lent power to an unscrupulous
monarch. Stars and ribands, pensions, offices in the
royal household, and sinecures in the Government
services, were all resources of an inexhaustible
treasury of corruption. All put power in the King's
* C. G. Robertson, England under the Hanoverians, 163.
» Ibid.. 172-73.

460 CAUSES OF WAR OF INDEPENDENCE
hands. Indeed, such resources helped George HI to
hold the Parliamentary Opposition at bay for twenty
years. In a word, as things were in 1760, the Ministry
was responsible to the Commons, but the Commons
was not effectually responsible to the majority of the
people. The executive part of the governmental
machine had been reconstructed, but it was a re
modeling of the social and economic organization
that was needed. Even this requisite reform, Eng
land was, by 1792, to be on the verge of making
when the excesses of the French Revolution arrested
the reformers. Their work, however, was merely
delayed and was to reach its fruition in 1832, when
the Revolutionary storm was spent.'
This "realm of England," advanced to the very
bounds of an era of liberal government, was still too
handicapped by tradition to advance the little re
maining way that would have preserved her union
with her American colonies. Yet, compared with
the political regime in the countries of continental
Europe, the liberalism of England seemed radiant
perfection. England had already passed along the
highway to political liberty along which less favored
nations were not to pass for half a century. In
France and Spain the Bourbon kings were bent on
preserving the personal authority of the monarch
in absolute despotism, and in the latter, at least,
the King's views were generally supported by all
classes of society. In France Louis XVI expressed
the faith that was in him when he said, "It is
God's will that whoever is born a subject should
* C. G. Robertson, England under the Hanoverians. 174.

A FREE PEOPLE FIRST TO REBEL 461
not reason but obey." ' With all their absolutism,
however, the Bourbons were less autocratic than the
Hapsburgs. In Spain, Philip V started the custom
of allowing Government officers of the higher class
to sit when discussing affairs of state with their
august master.* The Hapsburgs required them to
remain on their knees as if in the presence of the
Deity. Though merely a form, it was indicative of
the real absolutism in government. In the Hun
garian portion of the Hapsburg dominions, there was
a chancellery, responsible to none but the King, and
reflecting merely the light of the royal sun.* In
Prussia, though Frederick, called "the Great,"
talked sententiously about the King being the "first
servant of the state," and the people "not being
there for the sake of the rulers," but "the rulers for
the sake of the people," yet he was utterly skeptical
of the intelligence and reliability of the common
man. He deliberately trained his subjects to ex
pect everything governmental to be done for them,
nothing by them. He rejected their political co
operation and "postponed indefinitely their train
ing and education in state affairs." The depth
of their abject submission we may see in the
expression of thanks by the citizens of Grieffen-
berg for relief funds sent them when their city was
burned:* "The gratitude of such dust as we, is, as we are
aware, of no moment or value to you. We shall,
* Parkman, The Old R6gime in Canada, 232.
' Chapman, A History of Spain, 426.
• Marczali, Hungary in the Eighteenth Century, 332.
* Preuss, Friedrich der Grosse, iv, 484

462 CAUSES OF WAR OF INDEPENDENCE
however, implore God to grant your Majesty his
divine favors in return for your royal bounty."
Frederick nursed his divine right and his absolute
rule with all the solicitude of less benevolent despots.
He bestrode his narrow political world "like a
Colossus," and even chief ministers were hardly
more than secretaries to him. Frederick was Prus
sia. Nor were the citizens of other German States
admitted to greater political freedom or experience.
Incompetent and wicked Governments still lingered
in Bavaria and Wiirttemberg. Ignorant, impover
ished people in serfdom bore not only the weary
loads imposed by luxurious and tyrannical rulers,
but by an equally seffish priesthood.' In these, as
well as smaller States of Germany, men might be
imprisoned at the mere whim of the ruler or hired
out to fight for any cause which would pay their
masters best.* Most of the large number of petty
princes possessed and exercised the power of Iffe
or death over their subjects. Certainly in Spain,
Austria, or Germany, there was nothing compar
able to the political progress made in England.
Politically, it is hard to take seriously Italy of the
eighteenth century. There, that age was a "happy,
lotus-eating time," when Goldoni could happen
upon his colony of the "Arcadia of Rome" and
solemnly accept from his new friends the gift of the
Fegean fields in Greece, becoming thus a shepherd
* Priest, Germany in 1740, 28.
' Six States of Germany let out their soldiers to Great Britain
in the American Revolution. Lowell, Hessians in the American
Revolution, 2.

A FREE PEOPLE FIRST TO REBEL 463
of the "Colony of Alpheus." ' It was of Italy's
careless, amiable, and entertaining society that
Goethe wrote to a friend, "Would that I could pass
on to you but one breath of this delightful exist
ence!"* As Sedgwick says, "Italy was stiU like a
comedy of Goldoni, dukes enjoying taxes and mis
tresses, priests accepting oblations and snuff, nobles
sipping chocolate and pocketing rent, while the poor
peasants kept behind the scenes, sweated and toiled
for a bare subsistence." * Italy alone, perhaps, in
that age, could have offered the myriad romantic
situations suited to evolve such geniuses as Casa
nova and Goldoni. One must read Monnier's pages
in order to realize how much of life, and even happi
ness, there might be in a country wholly without
political liberty.*
Italy was "a name and not a nation." She was
broken into numerous small states, of which Milan,
Sardinia, Sicily, Naples, Tuscany, and Parma were
used as so much small change to adjust the bargains
among the Great Powers — especially the Bourbons
and Hapsburgs. With Italy's heritage, they "hag
gled and bargained, offered and counter-offered
when they did not battle and lay siege and pillage
and devastate." Small despots did their own will
when they were not doing that of greater despots.^
Perhaps the worst condition was in the Papal States
where there was a debased people, no order, and a
> H. D. Sedgwick, A Short History of Italy, 354.
' Monnier, Venice in the Eighteenth Century, 32.
» H. D. Sedgwick, A Short History of Italy, 36.
* Monnier, Venice in the Eighteenth Century.
* Vernon, Italy, chap, m.

464 CAUSES OF WAR OF INDEPENDENCE
government scandalously bad. Dumas, in "Monte
Cristo," hardly exaggerates the power of the brigand
chiefs. That vocation alone promised fortune if a
man were not an officer of the Church. In Rome,
itseff, life on the economic side was easy, but, in the
country, famine, war, official oppression, and a low
state of agriculture made life wretched.' With each
brief Papal reign there was a change of officers eager
to enrich themselves by monopoly, and in a hurry
to get in the harvest. Italy surely was no rival of
England in the race for human liberty.
Eastern Europe, especially Russia during the
eighteenth century, was but just emerged from a
kind of magnificent Oriental barbarism. It lagged
two centuries behind England in all those character
istics by which we measure degree of civilization or
advance in political liberty. Except among a few
nobles there was in Russia hardly even a struggle
for political liberty. It was said that Peter the
Great by blows with his cane taught his nobility to
feel themselves free men and Europeans.* In the
reign of Empress Anne, while yet the century was
young, the leaders of the Russian nobility, as ff
emulating the English nobles in the days of King
John, had forced the Czarina's assent to certain
reforms that would secure their liberties. There was
to be a High Council which would bridle her power,
and which would have made of Russia a sort of
oligarchic republic. With the backing of a group of
the lesser nobles, who offered to lay at her feet the
» Vernon, Italy, 389.
• Rambaud, History of Russia, chaps, v-ix.

A FREE PEOPLE FIRST TO REBEL 465
heads of the ambitious reformers, Anne tore into
bits that "scrap of paper," the already signed
"conditions," and with executions and exile disposed
of the would-be makers of Russia's Magna Charta.'
During ten years of her reign, thirty thousand people
were exiled to Siberia and five to seven thousand
were condemned to death.* In a single year, four
himdred and twenty -three men were put to torture.
The people of Russia paid little attention to their
rulers except to obey their laws. WTiile rightful
Czars and proper heirs to the throne were murdered
or imprisoned during forty years of shameful in
trigue among rulers or pretenders to supreme power,
all Russian people of every class except a few cour
tiers and guard officers remained perfectly indif
ferent. The Russian subject remained, even in
Catherine II's time, not so much a citizen as a tax
payer.* That immortal feminine despot, Catherine II, who
reigned in Russia at the time of the American Revo
lution, possessed absolute power such as no other
sovereign of her time pretended to exercise. Yet
Catherine was enlightened and tolerant, even while
she was welding the chains of her absolute power.
She succeeded in making the Russian nobility the
pillar of her autocracy. Her despotism became
firmly established because that class were self-
interested allies. She took very seriously Mon
tesquieu's dictum, "NobUity is the natural support
of monarchy." * To her nobUity she granted the ex-
' Kovalevsky, Russian Political Institutions, 119.
« Ibid.. 122. ' Ibid.. 127. * Ibid., 128, 135.

466 CAUSES OF WAR OF INDEPENDENCE
tension of serfdom and she gave them the monopoly
of the right to acquire inhabited estates.' The Rus
sian nobility, by this securing of its economic wealth
to the detriment of the people, lost its chance of
being supported by them in its demands for personal
liberty and control of public affairs. They could not,
as King John's nobility, become leaders of a move
ment for political emancipation.* Not in Russia,
surely, was there any such advance toward political
liberty as in England.
Poland, in a very different sense, fell far in ar
rears in humanity's forward movement toward free
dom. It was during Catherine's reign that Poland,
with no cohesion in the State, with its anarchic
constitution, the most vicious ever devised by man,
and with its paralyzed Diet and helpless executive,
went headlong to political ruin. As King Casimir
had long before warned the Diet, no human society
can stick together on these terms. "This glorious
republic," he cried, "will get torn into shreds, . . .
[and] be stuffed into the pockets of covetous neigh
bours." In two partitions, one on the eve of the
American Revolution and one just after its close,
Casimir's prophecy was fulfiUed. Poland disap
peared as an independent kingdom.*
The very success of the three robber monarchs,
Frederick, Catherine, and Maria Theresa, measured
the impotence of democracy in continental Europe.
All the world saw that strong and greedy despots
' Large areas of Russia in that day were uninhabited.
' Ibid., 130, 131.
• Eversley, Partitions of Poland, 26.

A FREE PEOPLE FIRST TO REBEL 467
had conspired to plunder a feeble State, with little
more regard for common honesty or mere decency
in method than might be shown by an Assyrian or
a Redskin. To Frederick II, Poland was Naboth's
vineyard, and both Catherine II and Maria Theresa
saw it in the same light. When the Prussian King
blasphemously invited the two empresses to partake
with him of his Holy Eucharist, Maria Theresa shed
some tears over the iniquity of the robbery, but she
adapted her morality to the "Reason of State" and
"sought compensation for the violence done to her
feelings by insisting on a larger share of the spoils." '
Though democratic Europe was against the parti
tion, it was powerless before this caprice of absolut
ism. The political system of Europe was shaken,
public morals were lowered, and public law was
weakened by the act, but the forces of democracy
were helpless.*
This slight sketch of continental European con
ditions would leave a false impression if we failed
to include with it a brief survey of the tremendous
forces making for political betterment. France, en
joying in that day as to-day a spiritual leadership
like that of Greece in the ancient world, gave the
intellectual impetus.* It is an open question whether
the revolutionary spirit originated in, or was merely
taken up by the French iateUectuals. Certain it is
, > W. A. Phillips, Poland, 69.
' Lecky, England in the Eighteenth Century, v, 217. The truckling
Voltaire approved it; Rousseau denounced it. Years later Carlyle
could see in it only "the operation of Almighty Providence and of the
eternal laws of nature."
• Rocquain's The Revolutiormry Spirit Preceding the French Revdu-
tion is a treasure house of contemporary evidence.

468 CAUSES OF WAR OF INDEPENDENCE
that by the middle of the eighteenth century the
people were in a dangerous mood. They talked of
burning Versailles, erected at their expense. Two
thousand women surrounded the Dauphin and
Dauphiness at Notre Dame crying, "Give us bread,
we are dying of hunger"; and, "Dismiss the harlot
who governs the nation." Men were heard to ex
press pleasure that the Government used violent
measures, for that would "hasten the revolution."
In 1753, when the Parliament was disgraced, Paris
was in an uproar. There was a cry, "Long live the
Parliament! Down with the King and Bishops!"
A chief magistrate thought the Parisians were in a
highly inflammable state, and prophesied the shut
ting of shops, and barricades. There were patrols
of French and Swiss guards in the streets. A sudden
tack in the course of the Government — a tack said
to have been suggested by Madame de Pompadour
— averted revolution. StiU, it was force alone that
sustained the Government, and within ten years the
Paris Parliament was warning the King that "to
sustain a Government by force, was to teach the
people that force could overturn it." In France, at
least, the initiative of her people and not of her
sovereigns promised political advance.
But it was not the revolutionary temper of the
French people which was to exercise the greatest
influence on the outside world. By the middle of
the eighteenth century, the forward-looking, vision-
seeing spirits in France were shaking every founda
tion on which complacent conservatism sat en
throned. Nothing seemed firm. The Advocate-

A FREE PEOPLE FIRST TO REBEL 469
General of France expressed his opinion (1747) of a
book entitled "Morals." "Reason is exalted," he
solemnly warned,' "as the sovereign judge of Reli
gion." "Humility, mortification, penance, celibacy,
the indissolubUity of marriage, and all Christian vir
tues, are decried by the author. . . . He even cen
sures the penalty which human justice attaches to
the crimes of theft and homicide." In this case the
author was obscure, but soon Voltaire and Diderot
with more power and less crudity were attacking the
props of established society. Formal religion and
morality were first assailed, but the old political
faith and governmental forms soon felt the shock of
battle. As early as 1747, D'Argenson was asking,
"In view of the slight esteem in which Royalty is
held, will anyone dare to take any steps toward
the introduction of a Republican Government? . . .
These ideas are coming, and new customs make their
way rapidly with the French." *
By 1762, a period of French history when the
significant events were books not acts, appeared
Rousseau's "Social Contract." It advanced the
startling theory of the sovereignty of the nation, of
appeal to the people as the court of last resort.
Even radicals thought it important that a book of
this kind should not be allowed to ferment in minds
easily excited. An earlier work on human "In
equality" Voltaire declared was a new book against
the human race. " Wben we read your book," wrote
the philosopher, "we feel like going on all fours."
Two years later, Voltaire raised a prophetic voice,
• Rocquain, The Revolutionary Spirit, etc., 49. ^ Ibid.. 48.

470 CAUSES OF WAR OF INDEPENDENCE
"AU I now see sows the seeds of a Revolution which
will infallibly spring up, but I shall not be a witness
of it." Another year passed and the General As
sembly of the French clergy declared publicly: "A
multitude of fearless writers have trodden under
foot all laws, both human and divine. . . . Nothmg
has been respected, either in civil or spiritual order.
The majesty of the Supreme Bemg and that of the
King is outraged. ... In the realm of faith, in that
of morals, and even in the State itseff, the spirit of
the century seems to threaten a Revolution that presages
on all sides total ruin and destruction."^ Voltaire,
Helvetius, Diderot, Rousseau, and Montesquieu
were the leaders of these fearless writers.
Horace Walpole, in the year 1765, found philos
ophy and free-thinking all the rage in Paris. Even
the women discussed "public rights," and their
salons became "miniature States-General." At pri
vate gatherings and supper-parties, the chief topic
was the "violation of the constitution,"* The
Encyclopaedists furnished the talkers with their
themes. Members of the Parliament wished to
arrest Voltaire as a warning to authors against too
great license, but he, more cunning than Socrates,
and having no desire to emulate him in the drinking
of hemlock, publicly took communion in church, an
act received as a recantation. A letire de cachet, or
dering Diderot to give up all his manuscripts, warned
him to flee Paris in haste. Marmontel's "Beli
sarius," a plea for tolerance, was condemned by the
* Rocquain, Tite Revolutionary Spirit, etc., 94.
' Walpole, Letters, vi. 301, 309.

A FREE PEOPLE FIRST TO REBEL 471
Faculty of Theology. Yielding to their complaints,
the Government ordered the new edition of the En
cyclopaedia to be taken to the Bastille. The crime
of the writers of the incarcerated volumes was de
scribed by the Advocate-General of France: "The
Philosophers have constituted themselves the pre
ceptors of the human race. 'Liberty of thought' is
their cry, and this cry has made itself heard from one
extremity of the earth to the other  Revolution,
so to speak, has been accomplished. Kingdoms have
felt their ancient foundations totter, and nations,
astonished to find their principles annihilated, have
asked themselves by what fatality they have become
so different from their former selves. [Religion is
attacked by the Philosophers.] In writings without
number, they have poured forth the poison of un
belief. Eloquence, poetry, histories, romances, and
even dictionaries have been infected [from Paris they
have spread like a torrent to the country]. The
contagion has penetrated even to the workshops
and cottages" '
During the four years in which JNIadame du Barry
reigned by the side of Louis XV, the prestige of
royalty faded away. While the monarch, "shut up
in his seraglio and plunged in debauchery," insisted
that he owed an account of his conduct to God alone,
monarchy by divine right became almost universally
condemned. Much read authors were declaring that
"the King and the Law received their authority
from the same source . . . the unanimity of the
wishes of the 'Nation.' " In a pamphlet, "The
• Rocquain, The Revolutionary Spirit, etc., 103-04.

472 CAUSES OF WAR OF INDEPENDENCE
Maxims of Public Right," it was asserted that
"kings were made for people and not people for
kings." The Government dared go no further than
the mere suppression of the "Philosophical Reflec
tions upon the System of Nature, " which held that
it was not the people's right alone, but their duty to
rise up against despotism. Abbe Raynal's "Philo
sophical and Political History of the Establishment
and Commerce of the Europeans in the Two Indies,"
wherein he attacked ministers, priests, and kings
with equal violence, was merely suppressed by a
Decree of Council. In France at least the Revolu
tion in political ideas had already taken place —
that in governmental forms and institutions was not
far off.
But the influence of the French intellectuals did
not stop at the frontiers of France. In Spanish li
braries were found the works of Voltaire, Diderot,
Mirabeau, Montesquieu, and Rousseau, as well as
those of the English thinkers, Locke and Hobbes,
whose influence most of the French writers had felt.'
Even the heretical Encyclopaedia was there and some
of these works were in translation. The Spanish
Minister, Aranda, corresponded with French re
formers. The Duke of Alba wrote letters to Rous
seau, the Marquis of Miranda to Voltaire. The
Inquisition failed to bar this flood of democratic
ideas. The Bourbons, like other "benevolent des
pots" of that age, gave much attention to intellec-
1 Voltaire said of Locke, "Never was there perhaps a wiser or more
methodical spirit, a more exact logician than Locke." Lowell, The Eve
ofthe French Revolution. 56-61. The French censor objected especiaUy
to this admiration.

A FREE PEOPLE FIRST TO REBEL 473
tual, social, and economic reforms, though mean
whUe holding fast to their royal prerogatives.
"Enlightened despotism" was a fad of the age. AU
reform must come from above. The Cortes in Spain
was kept unimportant, and all governmental ma
chinery of a democratic character was viewed with
suspicion.' "Everything for the people, but nothing
by them," was the slogan of the Bourbons. All
ameliorations came in the form of royal orders.
"For such is my will " ran the royal decrees. It was
the monarch and not the people that progressed
politically. Spanish kings could not realize that
"man is not changed by whitewashing or gUding his
habitation." Italy also felt the French influence. The jurist
Beccaria, its most distinguished liberal writer, de
clared, "I owe all to French books." D'Alembert,
Diderot and Condillac, Montesquieu and Helvetius
were, he wrote, "the object of my preoccupation
during the day and of my meditation during the
night." * Italian rulers, too, felt the spell of these
reformers either directly or through Beccaria.
Leopold of Tuscany abolished the death penalty,
burned the gallows and instruments of torture, car
ried through economic reforms which restored pros
perity, and removed tiresome taxes. He even talked
of granting a constitution and becoming a constitu
tional monarch.* Yet his government was frankly
absolute, and he believed that only an autocratic
» Chapman, History of Spain, 426-27, 436- -37. 441.
• Great Jurists of the World, 505.
» Vernon, Italy. 428-29, 430.

474 CAUSES OF WAR OF INDEPENDENCE
government could effect reform.' "Liberty" did
not mean to benevolent despots that their subjects
were to have a share in government, but merely
safety of their persons and equality before the law.
In Lombardy, then under Austrian rule, Joseph II
put an end to farming out taxes, which had been
collected with much tyranny. "In the time of the
Gospels as well as today," he said sententiously,
"the farmers of taxes have always been odious to the
people."* In Austria, Joseph abolished serfdom,
secured civU rights and freedom of worship to aU
Protestants.* Toiling "with uncontented care" he
tried to rule better than he knew. Traveling, read
ing, picking up ideas from the Encyclopaedists, im
bibing liberal opinions from every source, he "did
good with a cudjel" until his reformed subjects,
like those of Leopold, looked upon him as a senseless
ruler with a mania for innovation. Verri, the re
former, said of him, "He disregarded public opinion,
and exhibited to men the despot who knows no other
ride than his own wUl." Had Mazzini lived a hun
dred years earlier, he might have taught Joseph that
" the Utopist may see afar from a hUl the distant land
which will give to society a virgin soul, a purer air,
his duty is to point it out with a gesture and a word
to his brothers; but he cannot take humanity in his
arms and carry it there in a single bound; even ff
this were in his power, humanity would not therefore
have progressed. ' ' Few of the reforms of the benevo
lent despots made the people happier. The ignorant
' Cambridge Modem History, vi, 602. • Vernon, Italy. 415.
» Priest, Germany since 17 Jfi, 27

A FREE PEOPLE FIRST TO REBEL 475
Ferdinando of Naples who undertook no reforms
could say truthfully to Joseph II, "When I go trav
elling I can hardly tear myself from my people, your
subjects are pleased when you are far off. . . . Do
take a little rest and let others do the same." To
the other Italian reformer, Leopold of Tuscany, he
pointed out the people's dullness. "Florence was
gay in the time of the Medici," he jeered. "Believe
me, and govern them a little less; all your learning
makes them dull." '
Of all the benevolent despots of the eighteenth
century, perhaps Frederick "the Great" was the
most intelligent. This "Spartan in the morning,
Athenian in the afternoon," pensioned Voltaire,
offered a stipend to Rousseau. He read and ap
plauded their liberal books and corresponded with
both. The works of most of the French liberal
writers were known to him, but his own liberalism
was that of a despot. His reforms in Prussia were
numerous. He ordered the courts to render deci
sions to noble and peasant alike, and he proclaimed
religious tolerance — that "every man was to go to
Heaven in his own way"; but it was his despotic
wUl and not the free will of the people that deter
mined these reforms. The nature of Frederick's
religious tolerance was not badly described by Less-
ing when he wrote that "Berlin liberty ... merely
consists in the liberty of circulating as many witti
cisms as you like against religion." * Some small
States of Germany imitated the reforms in Prussia.
The administration of justice was improved, class
' Vernon, Italy, 410. ' Canibridge Modem History, vi, 713.

476 CAUSES OF WAR OF INDEPENDENCE
distinctions were softened, and the burdens of the
peasantry lightened, but in all cases a command by
a despot to a submissive people secured the reforms.'
Maria Theresa granted political and social reforms
— in education, trade, religious toleration, and laws
affectmg the condition of the peasants — but only
so far as it might not weaken the authority of her
absolute government. In the Hungarian portion of
her empire, at least, there was the form of a parlia
ment, but the prerogatives of the Crown practicaUy
annulled its power.*
In Russia, Catherine II played with liberal ideas,
and took pride in her familiarity with the works of
the French philosophers. She had a romantic ad
miration for Charles James Fox, and she knew
Blackstone so well that Sir James Harris, himself a
lawyer, admitted that she soon had him beyond his
depth in the discussion of the laws and constitution
of his own country. In her instructions to her com
mission (1766-68) to make a "new code of laws for
Russia," she confessed to have "piUaged" the
phUosophers of the West, Montesquieu and Bec
caria.* Indeed, her Minister, the cautious Count
Panin, declared that these instructions contained
"axioms enough to knock a waU down." They were
so liberal that Catherine boasted to Voltaire that the
"Instruction" came under the interdict in Paris.
Yet she found an excuse for breaking up the "Com
mission" saying that she had gotten hints and knew
* Priest, Germany Since 171fi, 28, 29.
' Marczali, Hungary in the Eighteenth Century, chap. T.
• Rambaud, History of Russia, 101.

A FREE PEOPLE FIRST TO REBEL 477
now what to do herself. She was the State. In
Russia as elsewhere in continental Europe, the State
was developed by rulers like a private property, for
its own good and that of its masters. All seemed
imbued with the idea that the more they governed
the better off the people would be. Nothing should
be done by the people, but everything for them.
As a result the people everywhere seemed to prefer
the ills of an old regime than to be driven to set up
a new and better one.
Viewing these political conditions in continental
Europe and comparing them with the political at
tainments of contemporary England, one may see
that Burke was uttering the truth, and not a foolish
boast, when he told the British House of Commons
that freedom was a "commodity of price" of which
Englishmen "had the monopoly." Slavery, Burke
told them, "the sons of England may have anywhere.
It is a weed that grows in every soil. They may have
it from Spain, they may have it from Prussia." In
England alone had the power of the King been so
curbed that he could not, by his despotic will, op
press the people, but that he could act only through
ministers responsible to the legislature. Burke
begged Parliament to keep its sovereign authority as
the sanctuary of liberty, the sacred temple conse
crated to the common faith in freedom. "Do but
that," he cried, "and English colonists wherever
they may live will turn their faces toward West
minster. The more they multiply, the more friends
you will have." He was merely urging what was
fated to become a splendid realization, that the more

478 CAUSES OF WAR OF INDEPENDENCE
the British Empire should grow, the more freedom
would be established on the face of the earth. It was
the failure of a Parliament, corrupted by George III,
to heed the warning of England's greatest living
statesmen, Burke and Pitt and Fox and Camden
and Barre, that brought about the rending of the
empire. No doubt, a majority of the politically
active people of England for a time were opposed
to these great statesmen. The nation was, therefore,
on the eve of disaster, as any nation is like to be
when its greatest minds and characters are forced to
defy and to try to defeat the convictions of a ma
jority of their countrymen. The British Empire
was doomed to be broken asunder, but it was
brought to that disaster by the insistent demand of
Englishmen in America for the full enjoyment of
those liberties which England had fostered beyond
any other country of the world.

THE END

INDEX

INDEX

Absolutism, Spanish, 93 n.; in con
tinental Europe, 460-67; reforms
imposed by despots, 473-77. See
also Divine right; Monarchy.
Acts of Navigation and Trade, restric
tion on tobacco, 63; beginning, 64;
classes of restriction, results, 64-68;
and colonial shipbuilding, 65; and
royal navy, 67; and natural trend
of trade, 130; payment of duty at
English port, 195; Townshend's
administrative measure, 247; cus
toms efficiency under it, 256, 267,
282; Liberty riot in Boston, 283;
other violence, 283 ; conditions after
cessation of non-importation, 369,
370; controversy absorbed in larger
issue, 390; Continental Congress on,
440, 441; closing ot colonial ports,
444. See ako Board of Trade; Com
merce; Mercantile system; Molas
ses (Sugar) Acts; Smuggling.
Adams, Abigail, culture, 335.
Adams, John, on beginning of Revo
lution, 1; heroics, 43; prophecy of
American greatness, 110; on Sugar
Act, 128; and Stamp Act, 159-62;
and Stamp Act riots, 167; on Sons
of Liberty, 170, 194, 293; on Otis,
173, 174, 181 ; in Sodalitas, 174, 337;
on Writs of Assistance case, 177-
79; and Pitt's attitude, 200; on vir
tual representation, 211, 212; on
natural rights, 225 ra. ; on British
Constitution and liberty, 231; on
Liberty riot, 283; on troops in Bos
ton, 286, 288; counsel for "mas
sacre" soldiers, 288; on Samuel
Adams, 291; on subsidence of agita
tion, 311; American brag, 317; New
England conscience, 325, 326; and
culture, 336, 433; and political
study, 343; on clergy and liberty,
358, 360, 361; drinks tea, 370; on
Tea Party, 386; on Quebec Act, 404;
attitude toward Continental Con
gress, 432, 433; delegate, 433; jour
ney to Philadelphia, 433-35; on
Philadelphia hospitality, 435; dis
arms prejudice, 436, 439; comments
on other delegates, 436, 437.
Adams, Samuel, Sr., aud Land Bank,
292.
Adams, Samuel, on governor and civil
list, 41, 42; provincialism, 72, 433;
and imperial representation, 215; on
natural rights and power of Parlia

ment, 225-27; on fixity of Constitu
tion, 230, 235; on British Constitu
tion and liberty, 232; on non-im
portation, 262; Hutchinson pension
incident, 274; on control over sala
ries, 275, 372; on riot compensation,
280; on troops in Boston, 286; and
Boston Massacre, 289, 290; charac
ter, 291-96; Circular Letter, 296;
attitude toward Hutchinson, 311;
keeps agitation alive, 311, 312, 372,
376, 409; political study, 344; Han
cock abandons, 369 ; committees of
correspondence, 373-76, 428; and
Tea Party, 379-83; and Hutchinson
Letters, 384; on Quebec Act, 403,
404; on Port Bill, 412; fears Con
tinental Congress, 432; delegate,
433; journey to Philadelphia, 433-
35; Galloway on, 437; conduct at
Congress, 439 ; Committee of Safety,
453.
Addison Joseph, on British merchant,
66.
Administration of colonies, parlia
mentary control, 24, 137, 179-81,
188; inefficiency, 68-70; efforts to
strengthen, 70, 71 ; and union, 71-74 ;
policy of compulsive centralization,
84-86, 105; IJritish, not anachro-
nous,87, 88, 100, 104, 105; but colo
nies in advance of times, 88—90,
456, 477, 478; Spanish, 91-93, 98;
French, 94r-99; Dutch, 99; Portu
guese, 100; Greek, 100, 101; Roman,
102; candor of new British policy,
reason for failure, 107, 144, 145; as
separate cabinet department, 116;
character of Shelburne, 116-18;
attitude of Bedford Ministry, 125;
Grenville as minister, 127; acqui
escence in parliamentary control,
137. See also Coercive Acts; Colo
nial government; Commerce; Im
perialism; Standing army; 'Taxa
tion; Union; West.
Admiralty trials under Sugar Act, 127.
Agitation, character of Samuel Adams,
291-96; subsidence (1770), 310, 311,
369, 370, 390; Samuel Adams keeps
it alive, 311, 312, 372, 376; revival
by GaspSe affair, 372 ; committees of
correspondence as instrument, 374—
76; importance of Coercive Acts,
390; promotion by English minis
try, 409, 410; results of wholly po
Utical, 414-16; New York radicals.

482

INDEX

419-21 ; leaders in Philadelphia, 421 ;
and overthrow of colonial autocracy,
424-26; attitude of planters, 426;
universality, 443. See also Adams,
Samuel; Boycott; Committees of
correspondence; Dickinson, John;
Gadsden, Christopher; Henry, Pat
rick; Otis, James; Sons of Liberty;
Violence.
Agriculture, iufluence on American
politics, 313.
Alba, Duke of, and Rousseau, 472.
Albany, and non-importation, 269.
Albany Plan, rejection, effect, 72-74.
Alembert, Jean d', influence, 473.
Alsop, John, delegate, characterized,
434.
American Revolution, Adams on ori
gin, 1; as glory of British history,
456.
Amherst, Jeffrey, on fur-traders, 112;
forbids western settlements, 114.
Andros, Sir Edmund, as Anglican,
45.
Anglican Church in colonies, attitude
toward, 45, 346, 347 ; Parsons' Cause,
149-53 ; authority of Bishop of Lon
don, 347; establishments, 347; char
acter of clergy, 348; early move
ments for bishop, 348; 349; episco
palian controversy in North, 349-52 ;
South and bishop, 352; controversy
and Revolution, 353, 354; clergy
and civil liberty, 363 ; and New York
politics, 364^66; identification with
loyalism, 366-68, 450. See also
Religion.
Anne of Russia, and nobility, 464.
Appleton, Nathaniel, committee of
correspondence, 374.
Apthorp, East, ordination, 348 n.
Aranda, Count of, and French reform
ers, 472.
Architecture, in England and America,
327, 328.
Argenson, Marquis d', on republican
ism, 469.
Aristocracy, Virginia, 147; Burke on
leadership, 240; overthrow of colo
nial, 424-26; colonial and loyalism,
450. See also Democracy.
Arnold, Benedict, and smuggling, 134.
Arts, contrast of English and Ajneri-
can conditions, 327-33.
Assemblies, colonial. See Colonial
governments.
Association. See Continental Associa
tion.
Association of the Sons of Liberty,
388.
Atlantic Ocean, as barrier, influence
on colonial development, 6, 10-13,
105.
Audiencia, in Spanish colonies, 98.
Augustine, Saint, on poverty, 8.

Austria-Hungary, absolutism, 461 ;
reforms, 474, 476.
Ayres, Capt., tea ship, 388.
Bacon, Sir Francis, on colonization, 8;
on colonial government, 42.
Bacon, Nathaniel, and individual ac
tion, 18 n.
Barber, Nathaniel, committee of cor
respondence, 374.
Barrfe, Isaac, on colonial oflScials, 50;
on colonies in French and Indian
War, 77; on Pitt, 122; and Stamp
Act, 142—44; American gratitude,
195; as representative, 203; and
Massachusetts Circular Letter, 298;
on architecture, 328; and Boston
Tea Party, 392; on Boston Port Bill,
394; on Massachusetts Regulating
Act, 398.
Barrington, Viscount, western policy,
193, 406; on imperial representa
tion, 216 n.
Bath, as rotten borough, 205.
Beccaria, Marchese di, colonists read,
344; and French intellectuals, 473;
influence, 476. '
Bedford, Duke of, and ministry, 121,
122; attitude toward colonies, 125;
and repeal of Stamp Act, 190; atti
tude of colonists, 196; influence of
faction on American affairs, 391.
Beeston, Sir William, on colonial legis
lative rights, 218.
Belknap, Jeremy, on Catholicism, 404.
Bentham, Jeremy, on Shelburne, 116.
Bernard, Sir Francis, on charters, 32;
on centralization, 125; on colonies
and British manufactures, 128; on
illegal trade, 129, 134; on Virginia
Resolves, 157; and Stamp Act riots,
167, 172; and imperial representa
tion, 215; on colonial legislative
rights, 217, 220; on Hutchinson
pension incident, 274; on need of
coercion, 277; and riot compensa
tion, 280; character as governor,
recall, 281 ; and convention of towns,
300; and Massachusetts Regulating
Act, 397 n.
Billings, William, as musician, 331.
Bishop for colonies. See Anglican
Church.
Blackstone, Sir William, on power ot
Parliament, 226, 229.
Bland, Richard, on colonial adminis
tration, 68; as leader, 148; as source
for Henry, 152; and Henry's resolu
tions, 155; delegate, characterized,
437.
Bloomsbury Gang, 190.
Board of Trade, on status ot colonial
assemblies, 51; impotence, 68, 69;
and Casa de Contra taci6n, 92; for
bids western settlements, 114; head

INDEX

483

in cabinet, 116; and royal veto, 151;
and religious matters, 347. See also
Acts of Navigation.
Bollan, William, and Regulating Act,
399.
Boroughs, ^Sir John, on sea power,
56.
Boston, non-importation (1765), 164;
Stamp Act riots, compensation for,
166-68, 280; portraits of Conway
and Barrfe, 195; non-importation
(1768-70), Mein incident, 256,258,
260-62, 269-71; antagonism to
customs officials, 282; Liberty riot,
283; troops sent to, 283-85; lodging
aud subsistence for troops, 285, 418,
452; attitude towards troops, 286-
88, 299; literary conditions, 335;
Sodalitas law club, 337; committee
of correspondence, 373, 374; Quar
tering Act (1774), 399-401; siege
begins, 455. See also following titles,
and Massachusetts.
Boston Massacre, troops sent to Bos
ton, 283-85; conduct toward them,
, 285-88; "massacre," 288; trial of
¦ soldiers, 288; forced withdrawal of
troops, 289, 290.
Boston Port Bill, debate and enact
ment, 393-96; petition against, 411;
and union, 411; enforcement, con
ditions under, 412-14; colonial sym
pathy aud relief, 414; aud political
agitation, 414-16; Boston's attitude
and circular letter, 416-18. See
also Coercive Acts.
Boston 'Tea Party, consignees of tea,
379; arrival of tea, 380; agitation
and meetings, 380—83; destruction,
383; colonial reception of news, 386;
colonial opinion, 386-88; effect in
England, 392. See also Boston Port
Bill; Tea.
Botetourt, Lord, as governor, 303,
304.
Boucher, Jonathan, on colonial music,
330; on colonial speech, 341; on
episcopal controversy and Revolu
tion, 353 ; and Washington, 363.
Bouquet, Henry, ^forbids settlements,
114.
Bowdoin, James, delegate to Conti
nental Congress, 433; journey to
Philadelphia, 433-35.
Boycott of British goods, non-impor
tation as protest on Stamp Act,
163-65; effect iu England, 186;
abandoned (1766), 194; New Eng
land non-consumption measures
against Townshend Acts, 254, 255;
attitude aud purpose of merchants
(1768), 255, 268; failure of attempt
ed non-importation league, 255-58;
non-importation by large northern
cities, 258, 259; carrying out, oppo

sition, 259-63; effect, 262, 263, 266;
by other northern cities, 263 n.;
in South, 264-68, 305; breakdown,
268-71, 369, 370; effect in England,
271 ; Boston uon-consuniption agree
ment (1774), 418; attitude of Penn
sylvania (1774), 423; Virginia non-
intercourse resolves and association,
427, 429; iu North Carolina, 429;
question iu South Carolina, 430;
instructions to delegates in Con
gress, 438. See also Commerce;
Continental Association.
Braddock's Defeat, causes, 79.
Bradford, John, committee of corre
spondence, 374.
British Constitution, colonial concep
tion, 224-28; English conception,
226, 229; source of colonial view,
228, 229 ; colonial d*luctiou of fixity,
230, 231; colonial appreciation, 231;
English attitude toward parlia
mentary absolutism, 232-34; con
stitutional results of divergent the
ories, 234^36; divergent ideals and
iudependeuoe, 236-38; development
to 1775, 457-60, 477, 478.
British debts of colonials (1776), 426 n.
Bruce, James, tea ship, 380.
Buckingham, Duchess of, on Method
ism, 240.
Buethner, J. C, on sea passage, 13.
Bull, William, outwitted by assembly,
431.
Burgoyne, John, aud Boston Port
BiU, 395.
Burke, Edmund, on effect of distance,
10, 13; on colonial inheritance, 22;
on control ot colonies, 71 ; and Shel
burne's plan, 119; ou whale fisheries,
129; on Acts of "Trade, 135; on time
ly warning of Stamp Act, 140; on
colonial lawyers, 159; ou Rocking
ham and repeal of Stamp Act, 190;
as representative, 203 ; and imperial
representation, 214; on colonial
legislative rights, 218; on dangers in
centralization, 222; on American
spirit ot liberty, 237; mistaken idea
of colonists on, 239; on aristocratic
leadership, 240; ou Chatham-Graf
ton Ministry, 243; ou Chatham,
243 ; on partial repeal of Townshend
duties, 308; on non-English colo
nists, 363; on committees of cor
respondence, 375; on Boston Port
Bill, 394; on bill on soldiers' trials,
399; on American taxation (1774),
408; on legality versus humanity,
410; on British freedom and colo
nies, 477.
Burlamaqui, J. J., colonists read, 344.
Burnaby, Andrew, ou colonial pro
vincialism, 82; ou Virginians, 146.
Burnet, William, as governor, 44.

484

INDEX

Bute, Earl of, resigns, 115; and min
istry (1763), 121, 122.
Byrd, William, and gambling, 448.
Cabot, John, and British claim, 55.
Calvert, George, aud imperialism, 56.
Calvert, Nicholson, on impossibility
of coercion, 299.
Camden, Earl of, and repeal ot Stamp
Act, 190; American gratitude, 196;
on taxation aud representation, 217;
on power ot Parliament, 233 ; in min
istry, 243; and Grafton, 273.
Canada, British conquest, 59; or
Guadeloupe, 62, 108; French ad
ministration, 94^99; and Pitt's im
perialistic policy, 108. See also
French and Indian War; Quebec.
Card-playing, condemned, 324, 325.
See also Gambling.
Carleton, Sir Guy, on colonial gover
nors, 39.
Cariisle, Earl ot, delay in voyage, 11.
Carlyle, Thomas, ou partition of Po
land, 467 n.
Carter, Langdon, and music, 332.
Carter, Robert, aud music, 332; po
litical study, 344.
Cartwright, John, on franchise, 205;
and power of Parliament, 233.
Casa de Contrataci6n, power, 92.
Caswell, Richard, as radical leader,
429.
Catherine II, absolutism, aud no
bility, 465; and Poland, 466; as
reformer, 476.
Cato, on governors, 104.
Centralization. See Union.
Chandler, T. B., episcopal controversy,
349.
Charleston, Stamp Act mob, 168;
non-importation, 264; music in,
331; and tea, 389, 390. See also
South Carolina.
Charlestown, Mass., seizure of pow
der, 451.
Charters, influence on political devel
opment, 32; conflict in Massachu
setts over, 33. See also Colonial
governments.
Chatham, Earl ot. See Pitt, William.
Chauncey, Charles, episcopal contro
versy, 349; aud Stamp Act, 361;
and Boston Massacre, 362, 362 n.
Chesterfield, Earl of, on elections, 208.
Choiseul, Duke of, on Pitt, 244.
Christmas, iu New England, 327.
Church, Benjamin, committee of cor
respondence, 374.
Church ot England. See Anglican
Church.
Cicero, on Verres, 103.
Circular Letter ot Massachusetts,
296-98; colonies ordered to ignore
it, 297; Massachusetts refuses to

rescind it, 297; response of colonies,
298.
Civil rights. See Natural rights.
Clare, Lord, aud Franklin, 316.
Clarke, Richard, aud tea, 379, 380.
Codrington, Christopher, on trials of
governor, 44.
Coercion, policy as mistake, 85, 105;
as policy, 192, 277; as only method
ot securing obedience, 284; warning
against, 299. See also Coercive
Acts ; Standing army.
Coercive Acts, as final cause of Revo
lution, 390; Boston Port Bill, 393-
96; Massachusetts Regulating Act,
396-98; act for soldiers' trials, 398,
399; Quartering Act, 399-401; and
Quebec Act, 401; aud union, 411;
operation ot Port Bill, 412-14; po
litical infiuence of agitation against,
414^16; attitude ot Boston, 416-18;
and ot Massachusetts, 418, 419;
Quartering Act in Boston, 418;
struggle in New York, 419-21; ac
tion and attitude ot Pennsylvania,
421-24; agitation and democratic
ascendancy, 424-26; attitude of
planters, 426; action in Virginia,
427-29; in North Carolina, 429; in
South Carolina, 430; Georgia and,
431 ; Gage's attitude, 451, 452. See
also Continental Congress; Tea.
Coflin, Shubael, brings tea, 380.
Coke, Sir Edward, on unconstitutional
legislation, 227.
Colbert, J. B., and imperialism, 57.
Colden, Cadwallader, on governor and
finances, 39; on lawyers, 159; and
Stamp Act, 160; on non-importa
tion, 164; on sectarian politics, 365,
366; on attitude of conservatives,
369; ou Association, 445.
Colonial agents, control over, 51.
Colonial governments, influence of
local, 19, 20; vested rights, 22, 23;
insistence ou rights, 23 ; influence of
crown control, 24; divergence from
English precedents, 26, 28, 29; influ
ence of written fundamental lawj
30-32, 230-32; and charters, 32-35;
aud natural law, 34, 224-29; influ
ence on independence, 46; control
over judiciary, 50, 274r-76; assem
blies and councils, 50; controversies
and French and Indian War, 78-83;
in advance of times, 88, 456, 478;
actual self-government, 89, 90; bick
erings absorbed in fundamental
struggle, attacks on British Govern
ment, 198, 199; divergent theories
of legislative rights, 217-20; atti
tude of English privileged class,
239-41; act suspending New York
legislature, 276-79; and Massachu
setts Circular Letter, 296-98. See

INDEX

485

also Administration of colonies;
Imperialism ; Judiciary ; Political
theories; Representation; Union.
Colonies, religious causes, 2, 3, 7; and
political reform, 3-7; Atlantic as
barrier, 6, 10-13, 105; and lack of
wealth, 7-9, 317-19; influence of
wilderness, 8, 13-19, 105, 313; lack
of social traditions, 9, 10, 17, 30;
legal effect ot new environment, 17,
18, 26, 2S, 29; individualism, 18; di
vergence from English character,
312. See also Administration of colo
nies; Agitation; Boycott; Coercion;
Coercive Acts; Colonial govern
ment; Commerce; Imperialism; In
dependence ; Loyalists ; Manufac
tures; Paper money; Political the
ories; Quebec Act; Religion: Re
sistance ; Social conditions ; Standing
army; "raxation; Union; Violence;
West; colonies by name.
Commerce, aud imperialistic wars, 58;
colonial, and provincialism, 75, 76;
illicit, during French and Indian
War, 83; colonial regulation and
royal veto, 151 ; colonial, and Stamp
Act, 158. See also Acts of Naviga
tion; Boycott; Mercantile system;
Merchants.
Commercial companies, and coloniza
tion, 2.
Committee of Safety of Massachu
setts, 453.
Committees, local, to enforce Associa
tion, 442, 445.
Committees, standing legislative,
428.
Committees of correspondence, origin
of local, 373, 374; as instrument of
agitation, 374-76; Boston circular
letter, 417; Boston covenant, 419;
origin of inter-provincial, 427; Con
tinental Congress as meeting of,
428; credit tor origin, 428.
Conciliation, becomes impossible,
455.
Concord, Mass. See Lexington and
Concord.
Condillac, E. B. de, iufluence, 473.
Congregationalism, and natural rights,
354. See also Religion.
Connecticut, Fundamental Orders, 31 ;
and French and Indian War, 81;
franchise iu, 206; non-consumption,
255; non-importation, 263 ra. ; aud
Massachusetts Circular Letter, 297
n.; and tea, 389; western claim and
Quebec Act, 406, 407; and Associa
tion, 445. See also Colonies; New
England.
Conservatives, as loyalists, 450. See
also Loyalists; Merchants.
Constitution of United States, basis,
235.

Constitutions, colonial, 30, 32. See
also British Constitution; Constitu
tion of United States.
Continental Association of 1774, 441 ;
measures for enforcement, scope,
442; popular support, 443; results
in England, British counter-act,
444; effectiveness of enforcement,
444-48.
Continental Congress, and Quebec
Act, 405; proposed, 427; as meeting
of coramittees ot correspondence,
427, 428; calling favored by Phila
delphia, 422; resolutions of Pennsyl
vania convention, delegates, 423;
election of Virginia delegates, 429;
South Carolina delegates, 430; Geor
gia not represented, 431; factional
attitude toward, 432; Massachu
setts delegates, 433 ; time and place,
433; Rhode Island election, 433 n.;
journey of Massachusetts delegates,
433-35; hospitality, 435; effect on
provincialism, 436; delegates char
acterized, 436, 437; instructions to
delegates, 437, 438; representation,
438; organization, 438; caution, de
bate, 439; plan tor union, 440; rad
ical ascendancy, Declaration of
Rights, 440; addresses, 441; Con
tinental Association, 441-43. See
also Coercive Acts.
Conway, H. S., in ministry, 186, 243;
American gratitude, 195; aud coer
cion, 285.
Cooke, Samuel, and Boston Massacre,'
362.
Cooper, Samuel, on colonial legislative
rights, 219; political study, 344;
on Port Bill, 413.
Copley, J. S., an artist, 329.
Cornbury, Viscount, character, 36. '
Council of the Indies, power, 92.
Councils, colonial, clash with assem
blies, 50, 51 ; mandamus councillors,
397, 419.
Coxe, Daniel, on Stamp Act, 158.
Cromwell, Oliver, and emigration, 4 n. ;
and sea power, 56.
Cross, A. L., on Anglicanism and loy
alism, 352 n. ; on episcopal contro
versy aud Revolution, 353, 354.
Culture, condition in colonies, 327-
45.
Cumberland, Duke of, and Rocking
ham, 184.
Currency Act of 1764, 127, 144, 158.
See also Paper money.
Curwen, Samuel, ou English dissipa
tion, 320.
Cushing, Thomas, delegate to Conti
nental Congress, 433; journey to
Philadelphia, 433-35.
Customs. See Acts of Navigation.
Cutler, Timothy, ordination, 348 n.

486

INDEX

Dalrymple, William, aa commander in
Boston, 286.
Dartmouth, Earl of, land speculation,
113 71. ; in ministry, character, 185.
Davies, Samuel, as Henry's teacher,
153 ; political doctrines, 356.
Davis, Solomon, and Stamp Act riot
ing, 166.
Dawes, Joseph, Concord alarm, 453.
Debts, colonial, to English merchants
(1776), 426 n.
Declaration of Rights by Continental
Congress, 440.
Declaratory Act, 191; and Townshend
Acts, 250; and retention of duty ou
tea, 307.
Defense of colonies. See Standing
army.
Defoe, Daniel, English brag, 316.
Delaware, non-importation, 263 n. ;
instruction to delegates, 438. See
also Colonies; Middle Colonies.
Democracy, Separatists and, 3, 6;
colonization and development, 3-7;
influence of American environment,
313; ascendancy ot colonial, 424-26.
See also Colonies; Natural rights;
Political theories.
Denny, William, and illicit trade, 84 re.
Dent, Arthur, as literary favorite,
334.
Dickerson, O. M., on royal veto, 150 n.
Dickinson, John, on Stamp Act, 159;
and Otis, 180 re. ; intercolonial leader,
198; on fixity of Constitution, 230;
on safeguarding liberty, 237; on
opposing Townshend Acts, 251;
training and legal basis of opposi
tion, 251, 284; Letters from a Farm
er, arguments, 252; on control over
salaries, 275 ; on revenue for defense,
276; on New York restraining act,
278; political study, 344; episcopal
controversy, 350; on East India
Company, 378; and opposition to
Coercive Acts, 421, 422; and Con
tinental Congress, 423, 432; charac
terized, 437.
Diderot, Denis, influence, 469, 470,
473.
Dinwiddle, Robert, and colonial
troops, 78, 79.
Disraeli, Benjamin, on Shelburne, 117.
Divine right, James I on, 5; colonial
denial, 357-63; of Parliament, 396;
French condemnation, 471. See also
Absolutism.
Dongan, Thomas, as governor, 43.
Dowdeswell, William, and reduction of
land tax, 246; on bill on soldiers'
trials, 399.
DoysiS, Abel, document discovered
by, 156 re.
Drake, Sir Francis, and British im
perialism, 65.

Duane, James, delegate, character
ized, 434 ; and plan of union, 440.
Du Barry, Madame, political influ
ence, 471.
Duche, Jacob, chaplain of Congress,
436.
Dudingston, William, and Gaspee,
371.
Dudley, Joseph, as governor, 38.
Dulany, Daniel, and Stamp Act, 160,
163; on virtual representation, 213;
iegal training, 251.
Dumas, Mathieu, on American na
tional character, 312.
Dundas, Alexander, in Boston, 287.
Dunmore, Earl of, dissolves assembly,
427; and Association, 447.
Dunning, John, on Massachusetts
Regulating Act, 397.
DuQuesne, Marquis, and Indians, 120.
Dutch East India Company, autoc
racy, 99.
East Florida, in Proclamation of 1763,
123 re.
East India Company. See Tea.
Education, colonial, 336-39. See also
Social conditions.
Edwards, Thomas, on natural rights,
229.
Egremont, Earl of, as head of ministry,
116 re.; and extension of Quebec,
119 re.
Election sermons, political influence,
355, 356.
Eliot, Andrew, on non-importation,
271; and colonial bishop, 349.
Embargo, British, on colonial trade,
444. See also Boycott.
Encyclopedists, influence, 469-77.
Essex, Earl of, and imperialism, 56.
Established church. See Anglican
Church.
Evelyn, John, on Massachusetts, 300.
Extravagance. See Sumptuary pro
hibitions.
Falmouth, Maine, customs outbreak,
371.
Fauquier, Francis, on Virginia Re
solves, 157.
Federation, as overlooked solution of
imperial problem, 220-22.
Ferdinando of Naples, and reforms,
475.
Finances, control of colonial, 39-43,
48-51, 306. See also Taxation.
Flagg, Josiah, on colonial music, 331.
Fox, C. J., morals, 323; on grilling of
Franklin, 386; and Catherine II,
476.
France, imperialism and British wars,
57-59; colonial administration, 94^
99; absolutism, 460; forces for po
litical reform, 467-72.

INDEX

487

Franchise in England and America,
204-06.
Francis, Sir Philip, on danger in po
litical logic, 140.
Franklin, Benjamin, on colonial gov
ernors, 36, 40; on Acts of 'Trade, 66;
on Albany Plan and independence,
72; on fur-traders, 112; and Shel
burne, 117; on Sugar Act, 127 re.;
on smuggling, 132; and Stamp Act,
142; examination before Commons,
186; and non-importation, 194; and
imperial representation, 216; on
holding the colonies, 238; on effect
of non-importation, 271; on English
presumption and condescension,
315, 316; on lack of wealth, 318; on
English immorality, 319, 324; on
colonial art, 329 ; on English refine
ment, 329; as scientist, 330, 338;
and American spelling, 342 ; politi
cal study, 344; and colonial bishop,
352 re.; and Hutchinson Letters,
384; grilling by Privy Council, 385,
386; on Boston Tea Party, 387, 392;
on Boston Port BUl, 393.
Franklin, WUliam, on colonial pro
vincialism, 82.
Frederick the Great, absolutism, 461,
462; and Poland, 466; as reformer,
475.
French and Indian War, factions in
assemblies, 52; attitude of colonies,
76-83; micit trade, 83, 131 ; effect on
colonial administration, 83-86; re
quisitions during, 141.
French intellectuals, influence in
France, 467-72; abroad, 472-77.
French Revolution, omens and proph
ecies, 468-70.
Frontier life, political influence, 8, 13-
19, 26, 28, 29, 105; and individual
ism, 18; and representation, 210;
social influence»-313 ; and overthrow
of aristocracy, 424, 425.
FuUer, Rose, on bill on soldiers' trials,
399.
Fur-trade, and imperial control of
West, 111, 112, 118; and Proclama
tion of 1763, 124.
Gadsden, Christopher, provincialism,
72; and Stamp Act, 160; in Stamp
Act Congress, 183; as intercolonial
leader, 198; on natural rights, 237,
267; and non-importation, 264, 267;
and tea, 390; and Coercive Acts,
430; delegate to Congress, 430.
Gage, Thomas, and Stamp Act rioting,
171; and Quartering Act, 276; on
committees of correspondence, 375;
on grilling of Franklin, 386; arrival
as governor, 412; and Port BUl, 413;
and quartering of troops, 418, and
nullification of Regulating Act,

419, 451, 452; and Congress, 432;
seizes powder, 451 ; spies, 452; Salem
affair, 453; Lexington and Concord,
453-55.
Galloway, Joseph, and Stamp Act,
160; as conservative leader, 422,
424, 426; delegate to Congress, 424;
characterized, 437; on Samuel Ad
ams, 437; position in Congress, 439;
plan of union, 440; loyalist argu
ment, 449.
Gambling, prohibition under Associa
tion, 442, 448. See also Sumptuary
prohibitions.
Gasp4e, burning, 371; commission,
effect, 372. i
Gay, Ebenezer, on submission, 359.
George III, and ministry (1763), 121,
122; (1766), 184; and repeal of
Stamp Act, 192; statue in New
York, 196; personal government,
242, 249, 273, 460, 478; and reten
tion of tea duty, 269; influence of
Bedford faction, 391; and North,
391.
Georgia, and French and Indian War,
78; and Stamp Act, 171; and Stamp
Act Congress, 182; non-importa
tion, 265, 266; and Coercive Acts,
431. See also Colonies; South.
Germain, Lord George, on Massachu
setts Regulating Act, 396-98.
German-Americans, and representa
tion, 211 ; and liberty, 363; attitude,
423, 424.
Germany, absolutism in, 461, 462;
enlightened despots, 475.
Gibbon, Edward, and Boston Port
BUl, 394, 395.
Gilbert, Sir Humphrey, and imperial
ism, 56.
Glass, duties on. See Townshend Acts.
Glen, James, on control by assembly,
47.
Gloucester, Duke of, and Lady Wald
grave, 321.
Goethe, J. W. von, on Italy, 463.
Goldoni, Carlo, representativeness,
462.
Goldsmith, Oliver, and western em
pire, 109; and Shelburne, 117.
Gordon, Lord Adam, on Virginians,
334.
Gorges, Sir Ferdinando, colonial plans,
346.
Goshorn,  , on political science in
colonies, 344 n.
Governors, character of colonial, 36J
37; and assemblies, 35-38, 43-45)
and patronage, 38, 39; and finances,
39-43, 48, 49; and Anglicanism, 45;
dominated by assemblies, 46; in
French Canada, 96, 99; in Spanish
colonies, 98. See ateo Colonial gov
ernment.  • —

488

INDEX

Grafton, Duke of, and repeal of Stamp
Act, 190; in Chatham Ministry,
243; nominal leadership, 245; char
acter, 245, 249, 321; and Townshend
Acts, 248; reorganization of min
istry, 249; faU, 272, 273; on Massa
chusetts Regulating Act, 397.
Grant, James, ridicules colonists, 343.
Grattan, Henry, on Pitt, 189.
Gray, Harrison, on Boston Tea Party,
387.
Great Barrington, Mass., mob, 419.
Greece, colonies, 100, 101.
Greene, Nathanael, culture, 336.
Grenada, in Proclamation of 1763,
123 m.
GrenvUle, George, land speculation,
113 re.; as head of ministry, 116 re.;
Sugar Act, 126, 135; and paper
money, 127; ignorance of colonial
conditions, 127; graft, 138 n.; char
acter, 139; foreshadows Stamp Act,
140; and substitutes, 141; argument
for Stamp Act, 141, 142; faU, 184;
and repeal of Stamp Act, 187; and
mUitary enforcement, 192; attitude
ot colonists toward, 196; and colo
nial representation, 214; and reduc
tion of land tax, 246.
GrenvUle, Richard, and treason-trials
measure, 302.
Grotius, Hugo, colonists read, 343,
344.
Guadeloupe, in Paris negotiations
(1763), 62, 108-10.
Halifax, Earl of, as head of ministry,
116 n. ; attitude of colonists toward,
196.
HaU, James, tea ship, 380.
HamUton, Alexander, political study,
344.
Hampden, John, and Massachusetts,
3, 4.
Hancock, John, and smuggling, 132;
on Stamp Act, 158; Liberty riot,
283; prosecution, 283 re.; on troops
in Boston, 286; and subsidence of
agitation, 311; political study, 344;
abandons Adams, 369; serves tea,
370; and Gage, 452.
Hanover County, Va., on Coercive
Acts, 411.
Harmony, brings Boston Port BUl,
412.
Harnett, Cornelius, and non-importa
tion, 266.
Harrington, James, and Penn, 4; on
American democracy, 17; colonists
read, 343, 344.
Harris, Sir James, and Catherine II,
476.
Harrower, John, on horrors of sea pas
sage, 12.
Hawes, James, as radical leader, 429.

Hawkins, Sir John, and British im
perialism, 55.
Hay, Anthony, and non-importation
305.
Helvetius, C. A., influence, 470, 473.
Henry, Patrick, provincialism, 72; as
back-country leader, 149; Parsons'
Cause, origin of argument, 152,
153, 356; character and reputation,
153, 154; Stamp Act resolutions and
speech, 154-58; intercolonial leader,
198; and treason trials overseas, 304.
Herbert, Henry, on Boston Port BiU,
394.
HUlsborough, Earl of, and Proclama
tion of 1763, 123; colonial secretary,
249, 391; and Massachusetts Circu
lar Letter, 297, 299.
Hoadley, Benjamin, colonists read,
344.
Hobbes, Thomas, colonists read, 343,
344.
Holland, First Baron, land specula
tion, 113 re.
HoUand, Third Baron, on Shelburne,
116 re.
Hooker, Richard, and political re
form, 3, 4; colonists read, 343, 344.
Hooper, William, as radical leader,
429.
House of Commons, as model for
claims ot colonial assemblies, 51, 52,
89. See also Parliament.
Hudson's Bay Company, and imperial
control, 112.
Hughes, John, stamp officer, 142.
Huguenots, colonial clergy and lib
erty, 363.
Hume, David, and Shelburne, 116;
colonists read, 344.
Hutchinson, Peggy, and troops, 451.
Hutchinson, Thomas, on colonial ad
ministration, 84; and Stamp Act,
160; on Stamp Act riots, 166; house
sacked, 166; Otis and chief-justice
ship, 176; Writs of Assistance case,
177-79; on Massachusetts Resolves,
216; on power of Parliament, 227;
on non-importation, 261, 262; pen
sion incident, 274 ; and Boston Mas
sacre, 289, 290; on Adams' "defal
cation," 292; on public excitement,
305; Adams' attitude, 311; Ameri
canisms, 341; on Adams and Han
cock, 369; on smuggling tea, 371;
on Boston committee of corre
spondence, 374 ; aud Tea Party, 381-
83; letters episode, 384^86; recaU,
address to, 417.
Hutchinson Address, 417.
Hutchinson Letters, 384, 385; grilling
of Franklin, 385, 386.
Imperialism, growth of British sea
power and, 55-57 ; and French wars.

INDEX

489

87; British triumph in Seven Years'
War, 58, 59; resulting problems, 59;
aud mercantUe system, 60-63; aud
Acts of Navigation and Trade, 63-
67 ; colonies aud royal navy, 67 ; lack
of proper administration, 68-71;
colonial union and colonial provin
cialism, 71-76; colonies aud French
and Indian War, 76-83; policy of
coercive centralization, 84-86; pres
ent-day policy, 106; candor aud
failure of earlier policy, 107; Pitt's
policy, 107, 145; British opposition
to it, 108-10; aud clashing interests
in West, 110-13; aud western claims,
114; question of colonial support of
establishment, IIS, 119; Shelburne's
plan, 118, 119; funds for establish
ment, 124; character of Bedford's
policy, 125; acquiescence in parlia
mentary control, 137; alternative
means of supporting establishment,
138, 139; logic ot colonial support,
139; cumulative effect of measures,
144, 158; Otis' views, 181; effect of
repeal of Stamp Act, 192; lack aud
need of imperial constitution, 196;
and representation, 211-16; over
looked federal solution of problem,
220-22; loyalism and, 449. See also
Administration of colonies; Colo
nies; Union.
Independence, influence of clash of
governors and assemblies, 46; effect
of weak administration of colonies,
68; influence ot colonial provincial
ism, 72, 73; influence of coercive
policy, 85, 105; actual colonial self-
government, 89, 90; as impossible
early policy, 101; Sugar Act and,
136; Otis' view, 180; as outcome of
centralization, 222; as result of di
vergent constitutional views, 236-
38; influence of industrial condi
tions, 313; concUiation becomes im
possible, 455. See also Colonies.
India House. See Casa de Coutrata-
ci6u.
Indians, English colonies and, 83, 111,
120; as imperial wards, 113; aud
prohibition of western settlement,
114 re.; Conspiracy of Pontiac, 120,
121, 124; imperial control ot trade
and relations, 118; West as reserva
tion, 193, 406.
Individualism, development iu colo
nies, 18, 313.
Industry. See Manufactures.
IngersoU, Jared, stamp officer, 142.
Intendant, in French Canada, 95,
99.
Isolation. See Atlantic Ocean.
Italy, conditions iu, 462-64; influence
of French intellectuals, enlightened
despots, 473-75.

Jackson, Richard, on Stamp Act, 144.
Jamaica, and Stamp Act, 171 re.; legis
lative rights, 218.
James I, on divine right, 5.
James II, aud crown control over colo
nies, 24.
Jay, John, on Quebec Act, 405; dele
gate, and plan of union, 440.
Jefferson, Thomas, on Virginia Re
solves, 137; and treason trials over
seas, 304; American brag, 317.
Jenyns, Soame, on English parties,
184; on colonial representation, 214.
Johnson, Samuel, on Canada, 109;
and Shelburne, 117; ou charter
governments, 125; on colonists, 412.
Johnson, Pres. Samuel, ordination,
348 re.
Johnson, Sir William, aud Proclama
tion ot 1763, 124.
Jones, Thomas, and Stamp Act, 160.
Joseph II of Austria, reforms, 474.
Judiciary, character and control of
colonial, salaries, 50, 274-76; in
French Canada, 97; admiralty,
127; treason trials overseas, 301-05;
trials ot soldiers, 398, 399. See also
Colonial government.
Junius, on colonial governors, 36; on
Grafton, 273; on partial repeal of
Townshend duties, 307.
Jury, Massachusetts Regulating Act
on, 397, 419.
Kalm, Peter, ou American wealth, 317.
Keith, Sir WUliam, and assembly, 40.
Kirk, Thomas, mobbed, 283.
Knight, Madame, journal, 343.
La Hontan, Baron de, on justice in
Canada, 97.
Lamb, John, aud tea, 389; as radical
leader, 419.
Laud speculation, and control of the
West, 111-15, 407; after French and
Indian War, 115; aud Proclamation
of 1763, 123, 124.
Land tax, reduction of British, 246.
Language, colonial, 339—43.
Laud, William, and Gorges, 346; and
colonial bishop, 348.
Laurens, Henry, as trader, 66; ou op
position to Stamp Act, 161; and
Stamp Act mob, 168, 169; and
"Townshend Acts, 267; on political
excitement (1769), 305; ou English
brag, 316; ou English morality, 320;
Puritanism, 324; culture, 336; on
Boston Tea Party, 387; on Coercive
Acts and union, 411.
Law, colonial divergence from English,'
17, 18, 26, 28-32.
Lawyers, aud Stamp Act, 159.
Leaders, development of American,'
198.

490

INDEX

Lee, Arthur, and colonial bishop, 352;
delegate, on extent of representa
tion, 438.
Lee, R. H., and Stamp Act, 142, 165;
and treason trials overseas, 304;
culture, 335; political study, 344;
delegate, characterized, 437.
Legislatures, colonial. See Colonial
government; Representation.
Leonard, Daniel, on committees of
correspondence, 373 ; mandamus
councillor, 419, 425; as Loyalist,
arguments, 449.
Leopold of Tuscany, reforms, 473, 475.
Lessing, G. E., on Frederick and reli
gious toleration, 475.
Letters from a Farmer, arguments
against Townshend Acts, 252. See
also Dickinson.
Lexington aud Concord, battle, 453-
55.
Liberty, as colonial inheritance from
England, 456-58, 477, 478; iufluence
of French intellectuals, 467-72; re-
I forms by enlightened despots, 472-
' 77. See aiso Natural rights; Political
theories.
Liberty, Boston riot, 283.
Liberty, revenue sloop, burned 233.
literature and learning, Enghsh and
American, 333-39.
Lively, brings Gage, 412.
Livingston, PhUip, delegate, charac
terized, 434.
Livingston, Robert, as oflScial, 39 re.;
Ulicit trade, 132.
Livingston, WUliam, episcopal contro
versy, 350; on Catholicism, 404.
Local government, iufluence, 19, 20.
Locke, John, on natural rights, 228;
colonists read, 343, 344; Voltaire on,
472 re.
Lockyear, Capt., tea ship, 389.
Lombardy, reforms, 474.
London, tea, ship, 389.
London, Bishop of, aud colonial le^s-
latiou, 150, 151; colonial authority,
347.
Lonsdale, Earl of, control of rotten
boroughs, 207.
"Lord North's coasters," 413.
Lothrop, John, and Boston Massacre,
362.
Louis XV, and decline of monarchy,
471.
Louis XVI, aud absolutism, 460.
Lovelace, Francis, as governor, 43.
Low, Isaac, and tea, 389.
Lowell, J. R., on colonial speech, 341.
Loyalists, larger loyalty, 74 re.; and
Stamp Act, 160; influence ot whoUy
political agitation, 414-16; attitude
of GaUoway, 422; formation ot par
ty, arguments, 448; motives, 449-
61.

LuggershaU, rotten borough, 208.
Luxuries. See Sumptuary prohibi
tions.
Lynch, Thomas, on smuggling, 132;
delegate, 430.
Lyttelton, W. H., on Stamp Act, 171 n.
Mackintosh,  , Stamp Act riots,
166.
Mackrabie, Alexander, on non-im
portation, 262, 268; on New York
amusements, 325 ; ou sectarian poli
tics, 364.
Madison, James, and Townshend
Acts, 270.
Mandamus councUlors, persecuted,
397, 419.
Mansfield, Lord, on Stamp Act, 189;
attitude ot colonists toward, 196;
on virtual representation, 212, 213;
on colonial legislative rights, 217,
222; on British Constitution, 226,
235; on Quebec and Proclamation
of 1763, 402.
Manufactures, colonies as market for
British, 62; British monopoly in
colonies, 64, 65 ; encouragement and
development of colonial, 254, 255,
370, 445, 446. See also Acts of Navi
gation; Mercantile system.
Marblehead, relief of Boston, 414.
Maria Theresa, and Poland, 466; re
forms, 476.
Marmontel, J. F., influence, 470.
Martin, Josiah, on Anglicanism and
loyalism, 366; and convention, 429,
430.
Maryland, and French aud Indian
War, 80; non-importation, 264;
aud Massachusetts Circular Letter,
297 re.; and colonial bishop, 353.
See also Colonies ; South.
Mason, George, aud treason trials
overseas, 303.
Massachusetts, development of rep
resentation, 26; character ot legis
lature aud administration, 28; and
charter rights, 33-35 ; governor's sal
ary, 41; aud Anglicanism, 45, 351;
control of finances, 49; aud French
and Indian War, 81; independent
action, 90; riot compensation, 167 ».,
280; caUs Stamp Act Congress, 173;
Otis as leader, 173-75; Writs of
Assistance case, 175—79; franchise
iu, 206; and repeal of Stamp Act,
193; and natural rights, 227, 236;
non-consumption (1768), 254, 255;
and New York restraining act, 279 ;
and Quartering Act, 279 re., 400;
recall of Bernard, 281; protest on
troops in Boston, 287; Samuel Ad
ams as leader, 291-96; convention
of towns (1768), 300; address by
ParUament against, 300, 301.; com-

INDEX

491

mittees of correspondence, 373;
Hutchinson Letters, 384; act on
trials of soldiers, 398, 399; western
claim and Quebec Act, 406, 407;
provincial congress, aud non-con
sumption (1774), 418; election of
delegates to Congress, 432; jour
ney of delegates 433-35 ; and Asso
ciation, 445; Gage's attitude, 451,
452; alarm (1774), 451; spies, 452;
Committee of Safety, 453; Salem
affair, 453; Lexington aud Concord,
453-55. See also next titles, and
Boston; Colonies; New England.
Massachusetts Circular Letter inci
dent (1768), 296-98.
Massachusetts Historical Society, and
Boston Massacre monument, 289 re.
Massachusetts Regulating Act, de
bate, provisions and enactment,
396-98; and union, 411; provincial
congress, 418; nullified, 419. See
also Coercive Acts.
Massachusetts Resolves of 1765, ou
representation, 216.
Masts, as colonial product, 61.
Mather, Increase, on new order in
America, 17; on Andros, 46.
Mayhew, Jonathan, and Stamp Act
rioting, 167; and repeal of Stamp
Act, 194; on natural rights, 228;
American brag, 316; on lack of
wealth, 318; political study, 344;
episcopal controversy, 349-51; aud
civU Uberty aud revolt, 355, 357 re.,
358-60; and committees of corres
pondence, 373 re., 428; on Catholi
cism, 404.
Mazzini, Giuseppe, on Utopist, 474.
Medicine, in colonial times, 12 re.
Mein, John, and non-importation,
mobbed, 260, 261.
Melanchthon, PhiUp, on natural
rights, 229.
MercantUe system, and American raw
material, 60-62 ; and British attitude
toward New England, 61 ; and colo
nies as market for manufactures,
62, 63 ; effect on colonial administra
tion, 68-72; universaUty, 87; aud
Pitt's imperialistic policy, 108; nat
ural aid to, 761. See also Acts of
Navigation aud Trade.
Merchants, colonial, and cumulative
effect of Stamp Act, 158; character
of opposition, 255, 268, 309, 369,
370, 372; attitude of southern, 264,
265, 426, 429, 446, 447; and tea
monopoly, 377-79, 389; and Boston
Tea Party, 380-83, 388; and wholly
poUtical agitation, 414, 415; Boston,
and Port BUl, 416-18; New York,
and radicals, 419-21; overthrow of
control in Pennsylvania, 424—26 ; as
loyalists, 450. See also Commerce.

Methodism; Lady Buckingham on.'
240.
Middle colonies, and Sugar Act, 129.
See also Colonies.
Middle Temple, colonists trained in,
251 re.
Middleton, Henry, delegate to Con
gress, 43.
Mifflin, Thomas, as radical leader, 421.
Milton, John, aud social compact, 4;
colonists read, 344.
Miranda, Marquis of, and Voltaire,
472.
Mississippi Company, 115.
Mississippi Valley. See West.
Mittelberger, Gottlieb, on hardships
of sea passage, 12; on music in colo
nies, 332.
Molasses (Sugar) Acts, ot 1733, nulli
fication, 125, 130-35; of 1764, en
forcement, 126, 127, 135; effect on
colonial trade, 128-30, 136, 144,
158; and favoritism to West Indies
colonies, 130; colonial protests, 145;
Otis aud act, 179; general duty
(1766), and smuggling, 195, 282.
See also Acts of Navigation and
Trade.
Moliueux, William, and Stamp Act
rioting, 166; committee of corre
spondence, 374.
Monarchy, and parliamentary govern
ment, 458. See also Absolutism;
Divine right; Prerogative.
Monroe, James, and Camden portrait,
196 re.
Montesquieu, Baron de, mistake on
British Constitution, 233; colonists
read, 343, 344; influence iu Europe,
470.
Moore, Sir Henry, and Quartering
Act, 278.
Morality, English aud American, 319,
448.
Morris, Gouverneur, on radical agita
tion, 415, 420.
Muir, John, on forests ot America, 14.
Music, in colonies, 330-33.
Nancy, tea ship, 389.
Natural rights, early appeal to, 34;
appeal in Stamp Act Congress, 183;
Gadsden's assertion, 267; inculca
tion by dissenting clergy, 354-63;
attitude of colonial Anglican clergy,
363; attitude of non-English sects,
363; Declaration of Rights, 440.
See also British Constitution; Lib
erty; Political theories.
Naval stores, as colonial product, 61.
Navigation Acts. See Acts ot Naviga
tion and Trade.
Navy, as colonial defense, 67.
Netherlands, decline of sea power, 67;
colonial administration, 99.

492

INDEX

New England, adjustment to frontier
life, 16, 19; and mercantile system,
61; West Indies trade, 61; effect of
Sugar Act, 128; proportional repre
sentation, 210; ethical outlook, 325-
27; aud Anglican Church, 346; cler
gy aud civil liberty and revolt, 354-
63. See also colonies by name.
New Hampshire, and French and
Indian War, 81; and Stamp Act
Congress, 182 ; and non-importation,
263 re. See also Colonies; New Eng
land.
New Haven, reception of Massachu
setts delegates, 434.
New Jersey, control of finances, 49;
and French and Indian War, 81 ; and
non-importation, 263 re.; and Mas
sachusetts Circular Letter, 297 re.;
aud colonial bishop, 350, 352 re.;
instruction of delegates, 438. See
also Colonies; Middle Colonies.
New Wales, 115.
New York, control by assembly, 48;
control of judiciary, 50; control of
money bUls, 51; and French and
Indian War, 81; proportional repre
sentation, 210; paper money relief
(1770), 270; and Quartering Act and
restraining act, 276-79; riot com
pensation, 280; and colonial bishop,
350, 352 re.; sectarian factions and
politics, 364-66; aud Quebec Act,
405 ; election for provincial congress,
420, 421. See also next title, and
Colonies; Middle Colonies.
New York City, non-importation
(1765), 164; Stamp Act rioting, 168;
statues of Pitt and George III, 196;
non-importation (1768), 257, 258,
262, 269-71; tea smuggling, 370;
and news of Boston Tea Party, 386 ;
and tea ships, 388; radical leaders,
419; and election for provincial
congress, 420; Massachusetts dele
gates iu, 434; aud Association, 445.
See also New York ; Stamp Act Con
gress.
Newcastle, Duke of, judicial appoint
ments, 50; in ministry, 185; aud
party government, 242.
Newport, Stamp Act rioting, 168; aud
non-importation, 269; burning of
Liberty, 283; Stamp Act repeal an
niversaries, 366; aud tea, 389.
Newspapers, and Stamp Act, 160.
NichoUs, Richard, as governor, 43.
"Ninety-Two," 298.
Nobility, position in Russia, 464-
66.
Non-consumption. See Boycott ; Sump
tuary prohibitions.
Non-exportation. See Continental As
sociation.
Non-importation. See Boycott.

Norfolk, Duke of, control of rotten
boroughs, 207.
North, Lord, in Grafton Ministry,
249 ; as head of ministry, 273 ; partial
repeal ot Townshend duties, 307;
tea measure, 376; and the king, 391;
Boston Port BUl, 393; Massachu
setts Regulating Act, 396, 397; act
on soldiers' trials, 398; attitude
toward the colonies, 408; and ques
tion of resistance, 409; fatal errors,
409, 410; closes colonial ports, 444.
North Carolina, governor's salary,
41 re.; judiciary, 50; aud French and
Indian War, 78; and Stamp Act
Congress, 182; non-importation,
266; British debts, 426 re.; conven
tion and measures (1774), 429; in
struction ot delegates, 438; and
Association, 446, 447. See also Colo
nies; South.
Nova Scotia, and Stamp Act, 171 n.
Odell, Jonathan, loyaUst arguments,'
449.
Ohio Land Company, and imperial
control, 114.
Oldfield, Thomas, on electoral condi
tion, 209 re.
Oliver, Andrew, stamp distributor,
burned in effigy, 166.
Oliver, Peter, on political effect of
Atlantic barrier, 10; ou trials of
governors, 44; ou non-consumption,
255; on Adams, 293, 294; on Puritan
Sabbath, 326 ; ou clergy and political
agitation, 361.
Oswald, Richard, land speculation^
113 m.
Otis, James, Sr., aud justiceship, 176;
character, 176 re.
Otis, James, aud Acts of Trade, 130;
ou trade laws as dead letter, 133;
on substitutes for colonial tax, 138;
and Stamp Act Congress, 173; abil
ity, learning, 173-75; Writs of As
sistance case, 175, 178; personal
motives in case, 176; character and
political views, 179-82; claim to
fame, 182; as intercolonial leader,
198; on virtual representation, 213;
and imperial representation, 215;
and natural rights, 225, 238; polit
ical readings, 230; on British Consti
tution, 232; Hutchinson pension
incident, 274; on troops in Boston,
286; aud Sons ot Liberty, 294; and
Circular Letter, 298; and subsidence
of agitation, 311; resentment of
English presumption, 315; Sodalitas
Club, 337; and aid of clergy, 361;
committee of correspondence, 374,
428.
Paine, R. T., delegate to Congress;

INDEX

493

433; journey to PhUadelphia, 433-
35.
Painting, in England and America,
328-29.
Paints, duties on. See Townshend
Acts.
Palatines, suffering in emigration, 11.
Panin, Count, on Catherine's instruc
tions, 476.
Papal States, conditions in, 463.
Paper, duties on. See "Townshend
Acts.
Paper money, check on colonial, 127;
grievances remain, 195; special per
mit for New York, 270; prohibition
eased, 370. See also Specie.
Paris, "Treaty of (1763), imperialistic
results, 59 ; Canada-Guadeloupe
problem, 62, 108.
Parkman, Francis, ou French colonial
administration, 96.
Parliament, aud control over colonies,
24, 137, 179-81, 188; address against
Massachusetts (1868), 300, 301;
divine right, 396. See also next title,
and Acts of Navigation aud Trade ;
Coercive Acts; Paper money; Tax
ation.
Parliamentary government, efforts for,
in England, 242; attitude of Pitt,
242; development to 1775, 458-60,
478. See also British Constitution;
Political theories.
Parsons, Nancy, and Grafton, 249,
321.
Parsons' Cause, tobacco as currency,
149; Two Penny Act, veto, 150, 153;
suit, Henry's plea, 152, 153.
Parties, character of English, 184.
Patronage, influence in colonies, 38,
39.
Pemberton, Joseph, and Philadelphia
committee, 422.
Pendleton, Edmund, aud Henry's res
olutions, 155; and opposition to
Stamp Act, 162; and treason trials
overseas, 304.
Penn, John, on Coercive Acts, 411.
Penn, William, influences ou, 3, 4;
ou wUderness, 16.
Pennsylvania, control of fluances, 49;
and French aud Indian War, 79;
illicit war-time trade, 84 re.; fran
chise in, 206; proportional repre
sentation, 210, 211; city committee,
convention of committees, 421-23;
delegates to Congress, 423, 424;
overthrow of seaboard aristocracy,
424. See aZso Colonies; Middle Colo
nies; Philadelphia.
Percy, Earl, on colonists, 413.
Percy, George, on wilderness, 14.
Peter the Great, and nobility, 464.
Peters, S. A., ordination, 348 n.
PhUadelphia, non-importation (1766),

164; (1768), 257-59, 262, 263, 269-
71; attacks on customs officers, 283;
music in, 332; tea smuggling, 370,
371; merchants and tea monopoly,
379; and news of Boston "Tea Party,
386; and tea ships, 388; relief of
Boston, 414 ; committee ou Coercive
Acts, 421, 422; and Association, 445.
See also Continental Congress;
Pennsylvania.
PhUip V of Spain, and absolutism,
461.
Phipps, C. J., on colonial administra
tion, 69; on treason-trials measure,
302.
Physical conditions, and provincial
ism, 74-76. See also Atlantic; Fron
tier.
Pierpont, Robert, committee of cor
respondence, 374.
Pilgrims, aud democracy, 3, 6, 7.
Pinckney, C. C, legal training, 251.
Pitt, William [Earl ot Chatham], and
colonial market, 62, 65; and colonies
in French War, 83, 84; and coercion
of colonies, 85; on colonial adminis
tration, 100; imperialistic policy,
107-10; and Shelburne's plan, 119,
and ministry (1763), 121; character
as minister, 122; and colonial taxa
tion, 137; aud Stamp Act, 143; on
opposition to Stamp Act, 160; on
Writs of Assistance, 175; aud min
istry (1766), 184-86; political vision,
185, 193; and Stamp Act repeal,
autUogy, 187-89, 191 ; and Declara
tory Act, 191; statue iu New York,
196; and imperial constitution, 196;
colonial mistakes on attitude, 200,
239; as representative, 203, 204; on
rotten boroughs, 206; aud imperial
representation, 214; ou power of
Parliament, 229 re.; aud Rocking
ham Ministry, 241; opposition to
party government, 242 ; peerage and
ministry (1766), 243-45; resigns,
249, 272; aud Grafton, 272; and
Quartering Act, 277; and colonial
bishop, 352 re. ; ou tea measure, 376;
and Boston Tea Party, 392; on Co
ercive Acts, 400; and Quebec Act,
401; fears resistance, 408; on ad
dresses of Congress, 441; on Asso
ciation, 443.
Planters. See South.
Poland, conditions iu, partitions, 466,
467.
Political reform, and colonization, 3-7.
Political theories aud practices, char
acter of American presentations,
200; divergence from English, 200,
201, 211; divergent theories on rep
resentation, 202-16; representation
and taxation, 217; divergent the
ories on legislative rights, 217-20;

494

INDEX

overlooked federal solution, 220-22;
centralization leads to independence,
222 ; influence of American industri
al conditions, 313, 314; colonists
aud political science, 343-45. See
also _ Administration of colonies;
British Constitution; Colonial gov
ernment; Democracy; Imperialism;
Independence; Monarchy; Natural
rights; Parliamentary government;
Representation; Union.
Polybius, on governors, 103 n.
Pontiac, conspiracy and imperial con
trol of West, 120, 121, 123.
Population, surplus and colonization,
2.
Ports, general closing by Parliament,
444. See also Commerce.
Portsmouth, aud non-importation,
269; and tea, 389.
Portugal, colonial administration, 100.
Pory, John, on wilderness, 16; on colo
nial speech, 342.
Pound, Roscoe, on Blackstone's con
tradiction, 229 re.
Pownall, Thomas, on colonial repre
sentation, 25 M.; on Townshend
Acts, 274; and New York restrain
ing act, 278 re.; on partial repeal of
Townshend duties, 308 ; on influence
of colonial clergy, 360; ou Massa
chusetts Regulating Act, 398.
Prerogative, exercise in colonies, 29,
35, 37. See also Monarchy.
Presbyterians, and colonial bishop,
352 re.; aud natural rights, 354, 367;
aud New York politics, 364-66.
See also Religion.
Preston, John, Boston Massacre, trial,
288.
Price, Richard, aud Shelburne, 117.
Priestley, Joseph, and Shelburne, 117;
on Shelburne, 117.
Princeton, coUege and Townshend
Acts, 270; Massachusetts delegates
at, 435.
Privy CouncU, Franklin before, 385.
Proclamation of 1763, causes, 107-15;
Shelburne's plan, 118-20; delay and
issue, boundary lines, 120-24; and
later measures, 145, 192, 406, 407.
See also Imperialism ; West.
Proportional representation, in Amer
ica aud England, 202, 206-11.
Proprietary government, unpopular,
33.
Prosperity, colonial, 412. See also
Wealth.
Providence, R.I., democracy, 29, 30;
and non-importation, 269.
Provincial congresses, Massachusetts,
418; election in New York, 420, 421.
Provincial conventions, Pennsylvania,
421-24; Virginia, 429; North Caro-
. Una, 429.

Provincialism, in assemblies, 62-54; in
colonies, 72-74; physical conditions
enhancing, 74-76; and French and
Indian War, 76-84; effect of Con
tinental Congress, 436. See also So
cial conditions; Union.
Prussia, absolutism, 461, 462; reforms'
475.
Pufendorf, Baron Samuel von, colo
nists read, 343, 344.
Puritans, political views, 6; adjust
ment to frontier life, 16, 19. See also
New England.
Pym, John, and America, 4.
Quakers, and Coercive Acts, 421 ; and
Association, 445. See also Philadel
phia.
Quartering Act, New York opposition,
276-79; quarrel in Massachusetts,
279 re.; controversy iu Boston, 285,
400, 418, 452; of 1774, 399-401.
Quebec Act, as one of Coercive Acts,
,' 401; real character and purpose,
' 401-03 ; colonial denunciation of rec
ognition of Catholicism, 403-05 ; gov-
, ernmeutal provisions, 405; extended
' boundaries and western claims, 406,
407.
Quebec Province, proposed extension
(1763), 119 m. ; in Proclamation of
1763, 123 M.; and Stamp Act, 171 n.
See also Quebec Act.
Quincy, Josiah, Sr., committee of cor
respondence, 374.
Quincy, Josiah, Jr., on control over
judges, 275; counsel for "massacre"
soldiers, 288; political study, 344;
Tea Party, 383; and Continental
Congress, 432.
Racial conditions, influence on inde
pendence, 345.
Radicals. See Agitation; Violence.
Raleigh, Sir Walter, 56.
Randolph, Edmund, on Henry, 154.
Randolph, Edward, foUed by distance,
10 re.; conflict with Massachusetts,
34.
Randolph, John, aud Henry's resolu
tions, 156.
Randolph, Teyton, and Henry's reso
lutions, 155, 156; and treason trials
overseas, 304; and Coercive Acts,
427; president of Congress, 438.
Raynal, Abbe, influence, 472.
Reed, Joseph, as radical leader, 421.
Reforms, by enlightened despots, 472-
77; results, 474, 477.
Regency BUl, and overthrow of min
istry, 184.
Religion, iufluence on colonization, 2,
3, 7; dissenting clergy and civil
liberty and revolt, 354-63; colonial
AngUcans and liberty, 363; non-

INDEX

495

English sects and liberty, 363; sec
tarian political division, 364-68;
Quebec Act, real aud attributed
purpose, 401-05 ; Congress and sec
tarianism, 436. See also Anglican
Church; Social conditions.
Representation, development in colo
nies, 24-28, 90; assemblies aud royal
governors, 35—39, 43-45; aud finan
cial control, 39-43, 48-51, 306;
dominance over royal administra
tion, 46-49, 52; opposition to all
royal officials, 49; House of Com
mons as model for claims of assem
blies, 51, 52, 89; and royal veto, 52,
71, 150-52; character of assemblies,
provincialism, 52-54; and taxation,
184, 217 ; variant English and Amer
ican bases, 202, 459; as to residence,
202-04 ; as to franchise, 204-06 ; as to
proportion, 206-1 1 ; virtual colonial,
211-13; imperial, 213-16; Congress
ou, 440; control through, in Eng
land, 457-60. See also Colonial
government.
Requisitions, failure, 141.
Residence, as representative qualifica
tion, 202-04.
Resistance, right preached, 357-63;
belittled in England, 409; Massa
chusetts alarm (1774), 451; Gage's
spies, 452; Committee of Safety,
453; Salem affair, 453; beginning of
active, 453-55.
.Revere, Paul, "Ninety-Two" punch
bowl, 298; as courier, 386, 419, 421;
Concord alarm, 453.
Revolution, pulpit inculcation of right,
357-63.
Rhode Island, and French and Indian
¦War, 81 ; Ulicit war-time trade, 84 re. ;
and molasses trade, 131; franchise
iu, 206; non-consumption (1768),
255; and non-importation, 263 m. ;
and Massachusetts Circular Letter,
297 re. ; Gaspee affair, 371; election
to Congress, 433 re. See also Colo
nies; New England; Newport; Prov
idence.
Richardson, Samuel, ou Dartmouth,
186.
Riots. See Violence.
Rittenhouse, David, as scientist, 338,
435.
Robinson, Rev. John, on democracy,
6.
Robinson, John, attack on Otis, 181.
Rockingham, Marquis of, ministry,
character, 184, 185; and repeal of
Stamp Act, 190; and imperial policy,
192; Pitt and ministry, 241-43; faU,
244.
Rodney, Csesar, delegate, character
ized, 437.
Roman CathoUc Church, Quebec Act,

colonial denunciation; 402-05. See
also Religion.
Rome, colonial administration, 102.
Romney, man-of-war in Boston Har
bor, 283.
Rotch, Francis, and tea, 382.
Rotten boroughs, 205, 206, 459.
Rousseau, J. J., colonists read, 343;
and partition of Poland, 467 re. ; in
fluence, 469, 470.
Rowe, John, and Stamp Act rioting,
166; on departure ot Bernard, 282;
Dundas' abuse, 287; on Boston
Massacre, 288; and tea, 381, 383.
Royal commissioners, defiance by
Massachusetts, 33.
Ruggles, Timothy, in Stamp Act Con
gress, 173, 183; mandamus councU-
lor, 419.
Russia, absolutism, 464r-66; reforms,
476.
Rutland, Duke of, control of rotten
boroughs, 207.
Rutledge, Edward, legal training, 251;
delegate to Congress, 430, 431;
characterized, 437; aud plan of un
ion, 440.
Rutledge, John, delegate to Congress,
430; characterized, 437.
St. Asaph, Bishop of, ou effect of non
importation, 271; and Boston Port
BUl, 395; on Massachusetts Regu
lating Act, 397.
Salaries, colonial controversies, 39-43;
50; payment out of Townshend
Acts revenue, 247, 274-76; Adams
on, of judges, 373.
Salem, affair (1775), 453.
"Sam Adams' Regiments," 290.
Sandwich, Earl of, ou New England;
61; and repeal of Stamp Act, 190;
attitude of colonists toward, 196;
control of rotten boroughs, 208.
Sandys, Sir Edwin, aud political re
form, 3, 4; and imperialism, 56.
SaviUe, Sir George, on biU ou soldiers'
trials, 399.
Sawbridge, John, on biU on soldiers!
trials, 399. _
Science, colonial, 338.
Scotch-Irish, and representation, 210!
clergy and Uberty, 363; attitude,
423, 424.
Scott, J. M., as radical leader, 419.
Sea power. See Imperialism; Navy.
Seabury, Samuel, loyalist arguments;
449.
Sears, Isaac, and non-importation,
270.
Seeker, Thomas, and colonial bishop,
349.
Sedgwick, H. D., on Italian conditions,
463.
Sedgwick, Theodore, on popery, 404 o.

496

INDEX

Selden, John; colonists read, 343.
Selwyn, George, control of rotten bor
ough, 208.
Separatists, and democracy, 3, 6, 7.
Serfdom, in Russia. 466; abolition in
Austria, 474.
Seven Years' War, and British im
perialism, 58. See also French aud
Indian War.
Shelburne, Earl of, importance in
colonial administration, 115 m. ; in
cabinet as head of Board of Trade,
116; character, 116-18; study of
western problem, plan, 118-20, 125;
resigns, 122, 249, 391; and Stamp
Act, 143; aud repeal, 190; in Chat
ham-Grafton Ministry, 243.
Sherlock, Thomas, and colonial bishop,
349.
Sherman, Roger, and Massachusetts
delegates, 434.
Shipbuilding, Navigation Acts and
colonial, 65.
Shirley, "WUliam, and Massachusetts
iu French War, 81.
Sidney, Algernon, and Penn, 3; colo
nists read, 343, 344.
Simplicity, colonial life and laws, 18.
Slave-trade, and Sugar Act, 128 ; pro
tection by royal veto, 151.
Smith, Adam, ou western empire, 108 ;
and Shelburne, 116; on commercial
restrictions, 136; and colonial rep
resentation, 214.
Smith, John, on wUderness, 13; and
imperialism, 56.
Smith, WUliam, ou democracy in colo
nies, 6 re. ; on need ot central control,
53.
Smuggling, during French and Indian
War, 83, 131; iu West Indies trade,
126, 131; check by Sugar Act of
1764, 126, 127, 135; aud Acts of
Trade, 130; colonial attitude, 132-
35 ; Writs of Assistance case, 175-79 ;
general sugar duty and, 195, 282;
aud non-importation, 258; of wine.
Liberty mob, 282 ; violence elsewhere,
283; ot tea, 370, 371; Gaspee affair,
371.
Social compact theory, colonists and,
4.
Social conditions, lack of wealth and
poverty, 7-9, 317-19; lack of colo
nial social traditions, 9, 10, 17, 30;
simplicity of colonial life, individual-
, ism, 18, 313; contrasting American
I and English, 314; colonial resent
ment of English presumption and
condescension, 314r-16; mutual self-
complacency, 316; ethical contrasts,
319-27, 448; artistic contrasts, 327-
33; literary and cultural contrasts,
333-39; linguistic contrasts, 339-
43; colonial poUtical knowledge.

343-45; influence of ethnic differ
ences, 345. See also Provincialism;
Religion; Sumptuary prohibitions.
Social traditions, lack, 9, 10, 17, 30;
individualism as substitute, 18.
See also Social conditions.
Society for the Propagation of the
Gospel in Foreign Parts, colonial
controversy, 349.
Society of the Supporters of the Bill
of Rights, 306.
Sodalitas, Boston law club, 174, 337.
Sons of Liberty, origin of name, 143;
iu opposition to Stamp Act, 169-71;
and repeal of Stamp Act, 194; fes
tivals, Adams as leader, 293, 294.
South, and Sugar Act, 129; joins in
protest (1765), 146; aristocracy,
147; attitude of merchants and
planters, 264, 426, 430, 446. See
also colonies by name.
South Carolina, governor's salary;
41 re.; control by assembly, 47, 48,
50-52 ; and French and Indian War,
78; commerce and Stamp Act, 163 re;
proportional representation, 210;
aud legislative rights, 219; non
importation (1769), 264, 266-68,
271; aud Massachusetts Circular
Letter, 297 re., 298; WUkes Fund
dispute, 306; relief of Boston, 413;
British debts, 426 re. ; action against
Coercive Acts, delegates to Con
gress, 430; and Association, 447.
See also Charleston ; Colonies ; South.
Spain, colonial administration, 91-93,
98; absolutism, 93 re., 460, 461; in
fluence of French intellectuals, 472;
enlightened despotism, 472.
Specie, drain by Sugar Act, 127; and
check to colonial bills ot credit, 127,
and colonial trade with England,
128; drain and Currency Act, 144;
drain by Stamp Act, 144, 145, 158.
Speech. See Language. -
Stamp Act, timely warning, 140; al
ternatives, requisitions, 141; argu
ments for, 141, 142; office under,
sought, 142 ; Barre's opposition, 142—
44; cumulative effect, »144, 145, 158;
arouses South, 146; basis ot Virgin
ia's opposition, 146; Virginia Re
solves aud Henry's speech, 154-58;
occupational elements ot opposition,
158-60; universality of opposition,
160; methods ot opposition, 161-63;
non-importation, 163-65; violence,
165-69; riot compensation, 167 re.,
280; Sons ot Liberty, 169-71; dis
tributors resign, 171; nullified, 171;
British government aud opposition,
171; change of ministry, 184-86;
English pressure for repeal, 186;
Franklin's examination, 186; Gren-
viUe's argument against repeal, le-

INDEX

497

gality, 187; Pitt's argument for
repeal, expediency, 188; Mansfield's
defense, 189; repeal in Lords, 190;
vote on repeal and Declaratory Act,
190, 191; effect of repeal on imperi
alism, 192; American reception of
repeal anniversaries, 193-96, 366;
economic effect ot repeal, 194 ; repeal
and Townshend Acts, 250; pulpit
denunciations, 361, 362. See also
next title, aud Taxation.
Stamp Act Congress, call, 173; at
tendance, 182; and union, 182, 183;
output, 183.
Standing army, question of, in colo
nies, 118, 119; support of colonial
establishment, 127; in Stamp Act,
145; opposition to provision in
Townshend Acts, 276; New York
and Quartering Act, 276-79; Mas
sachusetts and Quartering Act,
279 re.; troops sent to Boston, 283-
85; attitude toward them there,
285-88; Boston Massacre aud with
drawal, 288-90; act for trials ot
soldiers, 398, 399 ; return to Boston,
question ot barracks, 419, 452; re-
enforcement asked, 419.
Standing committees, colonial, 428.
Stiles, Ezra, political study, 344; on
Anglicans and Stamp Act repeal
anniversaries, 366; on Quebec Act,
404, 405.
Stillmau, Samuel, aud Stamp Act, 362.
Stuart, John, and Proclamation of
1763, 124.
Suffolk Resolves, on Quebec Act, 405.
Suffrage. See Franchise.
Sugar Act. See Molasses.
Sumptuary prohibitions, in opposi
tion to Stamp Act, 163; and to
Townshend Acts, 254; under Con
tinental Association, 442, 445, 447,
448.
Sunday in New England, 326.
Swift, Jonathan, aud colonial bishop
ric, 352 re., 364.
Taxation, in Albany Plan, 73; possible
substitutes for support of imperial
establishment, 138, 139; logic of
colonial, 139; and representation,
184, 216, 217; and colonial legisla
tive rights, 217-20; controversy
absorbed iu larger issue, 390; influ
ence of English home conditions ou
colonial, 408; Congress on, 440.
See also Finances; Stamp Act; Tea;
Townshend Acts.
Tea, duty under Townshend Acts, 247;
duty retained, 269, 306-08; b9ycott,
health arguments against drinking,
254, 377; drinking resumed, 370;
duty, price, and smuggling, 370,
371; conflicts over smuggUng, Gas

pee affair, 371, 372; measure for
colonial monopoly, 376; resulting
denunciation, 376-79; selection of
consignees, 379, 380; arrival and
destruction at Boston, 380-83; colo
nial opinion ou destruction, 386-88;
fate elsewhere, 388-90; effect in
England of destruction, 392; pro
posed repeal of duty, 408. See also
Coercive Acts; Townshend Acts.
Thatcher, Oxenbridge, "Writs of As
sistance case, 177; Sodalitas Club,
337.
Thomson, Charles, as radical leader,
421, 423 ; secretary of Congress, 438.
Thurlow, Edward, on Quebec and
Proclamation of 1763, 402.
Tobacco, trade and English policy, 63;
as currency. Parsons' Cause, 149-53.
Town meetings, Massachusetts Regu
lating Act on, 397; act ignored, 419.
Towns, convention of Massachusetts,
300.
Townshend, Charles, land specula
tion, 113 re.; and Stamp Act, 142;
iu Chatham-Grafton Ministry, 243;
character, 245; acts, 246-^8; death,
248.
Townshend Acts, character ot Town
shend, 245; necessity for revenue,
246; new duties, 247; use of revenue,
247; colonial customs reforms, 247;
attitude of Grafton, 248, 249; reve
lation to colonies, 250; colonial legal
arguments against, 251; Letters
from a Farmer, 252; measures
against, 253; non-consumption in
New England, 254, 255; colonial
merchants and, 255, 258; failure of
non-importation league, 256-58 ;
efficiency of customs service under,
256, 257, 282; non-importation in
large northern cities, 258, 259; car
rying out non-importation, opposi
tion to it, 259-63; non-importation
in other northern colonies, 263 re.;
in South, 264-68, 305; breakdown
of non-importation, 268-71, 369,
370; repeal ot duties except ou tea,
269, 306-08; effect ot non-importa
tion in England, 271; opposition to
intended use of revenue, 274-76;
New York restraining act, 277-79;
Massachusetts Circular Letter, 296-
99; crisis, 305, 306; effect of acts,
308, 309; aud of partial repeal, 310,
311,369. See aZso "Taxation; Tea.
Treason, proposed trials oversea, 301-
03; colonial protests, 303-05.
Tryon, WUliam, and non-importation,
266.
Tucker, Josiah, advocates separation,
101, 362.
Tuscany, reforms, 473, 475.
Two Penny Act of Virginia, 150-53.

498

INDEX

Union, provincialism, as obstacle, 52-
54, 72-'74; influence in administra
tion of colonies, 71; physical ob
stacles, 74-76 ; provincialism during
French aud Indian War, 76-84;
compulsive centralization as result
of French War, 84-86, 105; Bedford
Ministry and centralization, 125;
Otis' view, 180; influence of Stamp
Act ou South, 146; Massachusetts
Circular Letter, 296-99; Coercive
Acts aud, 411; Galloway's plan,
440. See also Boycott; Committees
' ot correspondence; Continental Con
gress ; Imperialism ; Stamp Act Con
gress.
Usher, R. G., on early Navigation Act,
64 re.
Utrecht, Treaty of, and British im
perialism, 58.
Van, Charles, and Boston Port BiU,
394.
Van Schaack, Peter, aud sectarian
politics, 365, 366; and Massachu
setts delegates, 434.
Vattel, Emerioh de, on fixity of Con
stitution, 230; colonists read, 344.
Verres, Caius, as provincial ruler, 103.
Verri, Count, on Joseph II, 474.
Veto, royal, on colonial legislation, 52,
71, 150-52.
Viceroys, in Spanish colonies, 98.
Violence, Stamp Act riots, 165-69;
compensation for sufferers, 167 re.,
280; merchants and rise, 255, 268,
270, 309, 369, 370, 372; non-im
portation and, 261 ; Liberty riot in
Boston, 283; other attacks on cus
toms officials, 283, 371; burning of
Gaspee, 371, 372. See also Boston
Tea Party; Sons of Liberty.
Virginia, representative government,
25; character ot legislation, 26; gov
ernor aud finances, 41; control by
assembly, 48; and French and In
dian War, 78; western claims aud
imperial control, 114, 115; basis of
opposition, 146; character of tide
water leaders, 147, 148; back-coun
try traits, 148; Henry and Parsons'
Cause, 149-53; Henry's character,
153, 154; Stamp Act Resolves and
Henry's speech, 154-57; sections
and Resolves, 157; and Stamp Act
Congress, 182; franchise in, 206;
non-importation (1769), 264, 266,
271, 305; and Massachusetts Circu
lar Letter, 297 m. ; aud Botetourt,
303; protest on treason trials over
seas, 303; aud colonial bishop, 352;
western claims aud Quebec Act,
406, 407; relief of Boston, 413; Brit
ish debts, 426 re. ; aud Coercive Acts,
427; inter-provincial committee of

correspondence, 427, 428; call of
Continental Congress, 428, 429;
provincial convention, delegates to
Congress, 429 ; and Association, 446,
447. See also Colonies; South.
Virtual representation, divergent the
ories, 211-13.
Voltaire, and partition of Poland,
467 re.; aud political reform, 469,
479; prophecy of revolution, 469;
recants, 470; on Locke, 472 re.
Waldgrave, Lady, and Duke of
Gloucester, 321.
Walpole, Horace, on British insolence,
85; on Shelburne, 117; on Stamp
Act, 142 ; on Barrfe, 143 ; on imperial
pride, 219; on "Townshend, 245;
on reason versus majority, 303; on
English immorality, 322, 323; on
French intellectuals, 470.
Walton, Jacob, and tea, 389.
Wanton, Joseph, aud Gaspee, 371.
War of the Spanish Succession, as
commercial struggle, 58.
Warren, Joseph, Boston Massacre
anniversary oration, 362; committee
of correspondence, 374; Committee
of Safety, 453; Concord alarm, 453.
Washington, George, on colonial
troops in French War, 78 ; aud west
ern settlement, 115; and opposition
to Stamp Act, 162; aud non-impor
tation, 264, 266; aud treason trials
overseas, 303 ; on defense of liberty,
305; land speculation, 407.
Wealth, lack, influence in colonial
development, 7-9; social influence
of lack, 314; English and colonial,
317; colonial prosperity, 412. See
also Social conditions.
Weathersfield, Conn., relief of Boston,
414.
Webster, Daniel, on Revolution as
war of theories, 237.
Webster, Noah, on lack of culture, 337.
Wedderburn, Alexander, grUling of
Franklin, 385, 386.
Wendell, Oliver, committee of corre
spondence, 374.
Wesley, John, on crossing the Atlan
tic, 12 re.; and English moraUty,
322.
West, Benjamin, as artist, 329.
West, Richard, on colonial rights, 23 n.
West, Pitt's policy, 107-10; clashing
interests, 110—13; western claims
and imperial control, 114, 115; set
tlement forbidden, 114; Shelburne's
study of problem, his plan, 118-20;
plan for orderly settlement, 119;
effect of Conspiracy of Pontiac, 120,
121, 123; issue ot Proclamation of
1763, boundary line and existing
settlements, 123, 124; proclamation

INDEX

499

and later imperial measures, 144,
145, 406, 407; effect of Stamp Act
repeal, 192. See also Imperialism.
West Florida, in Proclamation of 1763,
123 re.
West Indies, New England and trade,
61. See also Molasses (Sugar
Acts.
Western claims and imperial control,
111, 114, 115; and Quebec Act,
406.
Westmoreland County (Va.) Court
House, proposed portrait of Cam
den, 196.
Whale fins (bone), duty, 129.
Whig Party, aud parliamentary gov
ernment, 458, 459.
Wigglesworth, Michael, "Day of
Doom," 333.
WUkes, John, as colonial hero, 286;
South Carolina fund dispute, 306.
WiUiams, Roger, aud democracy, 29.
'iVilling, Thomas, in Pennsylvania
Convention, 423; passed over for
Congress, 423.

Wilson, James, passed over for Con
gress, 423.
Winthrop, John, on causes of coloniza
tion, 2; and representation, 26, 27;
aud imperialism, 56.
Wise, John, aud democracy, 357.
Witherspoon, John, on colonial speech;
340.
Wolfe, James, on colonials, 315.
Wright, Robert, as justice, 50 re.
Writs of Assistance, purpose, 176
Otis' personal interest in case, 176
scene, 177; Otis' argument, 178
result, 179 re.; continued use, 257.
Wythe, George, and Henry's resolu
tions, 156.
Yeardley, Sir George, and first as
sembly, 25.
Yorke, Charles, death, 273. _
Young, Arthur, on commercial restric
tions, 136.
Young, Thomas, and Tea Party, 383.
Zubly, John, and Stamp Aot, 362.

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