Question.—What is your name and place of abode?
Answer.—Franklin, of Philadelphia.
Q.—Do the Americans pay any considerable taxes among themselves?
A.—Certainly; many and very heavy taxes.
Q.—What are the present taxes in Pennsylvania levied by the laws of the colony?
A.—There are taxes on all estates, real and personal; a poll-tax; a tax on all offices, professions, trades, and businesses, according to their profits; an excise on all wine, rum, and other spirits; and a duty of £10 per head on all negroes imported; with some other duties.
Q.—For what purpose are those taxes levied?
A.—For the support of the civil and military establishment of the country, and to discharge the heavy debt contracted in the last war.
Q.—Are not you concerned in the management of the post-office in America?
A.—Yes. I am Deputy Postmaster-General of North America.
Q.—Don't you think the distribution of stamps, by post, to all the inhabitants, very practicable, if there was no opposition?
A.—The posts only go along the sea coasts; they do not, except in a few instances, go back into the country; and if they did, sending for stamps by post would occasion an expense of postage amounting, in many cases, to much more than that of the stamps themselves.
Q.—Are not the colonies, from their circumstances, very able to pay the stamp duty?
A.—In my opinion, there is not gold and silver enough in the colonies to pay the stamp duty for one year.
Q.—Don't you know that the money arising from the stamps was all to be laid out in America?
A.—I know it is appropriated by the Act to the American service; but it will be spent in the conquered colonies, where the soldiers are, not in the colonies that pay it.
Q.—Is there not a balance of trade due from the colonies where the troops are posted, that will bring back the money to the old colonies?
A.—I think not. I believe very little would come back. I know of no trade likely to bring it back. I think it would come from the colonies where it was spent, directly to England; for I have always observed that in every colony the more plenty the means of remittance to England, the more goods are sent for, and the more trade with England carried on.
Q.—What may be the amount of one year's imports into Pennsylvania from Britain?
A.—I have been informed that our merchants compute the imports from Britain to be above £500,000.
Q.—What may be the amount of the produce of your province exported to Britain?
A.—It must be small, as we produce little that is wanted in Britain. I suppose it cannot exceed £40,000.
Q.—How then do you pay the balance?
A.—The balance is paid by our produce carried to the West Indies, and sold in our own island, or to the French, Spaniards, Danes and Dutch; by the same carried to other colonies in North America, as to New England, Nova Scotia, Newfoundland, Carolina and Georgia; by the same carried to different parts of Europe, as Spain, Portugal and Italy. In all which places we receive either money, bills of exchange, or commodities that suit for remittance to Britain; which together with all the profits on the industry of our merchants and mariners, arising in those circuitous voyages, and the freights made by their ships, centre finally in Britain to discharge the balance, and pay for British manufactures continually used in the province, or sold to foreigners by our traders.
Q.—Do you think it right that America should be protected by this country and pay no part of the expense?
A.—That is not the case. The colonies raised, clothed, and paid, during the last war, nearly 25,000 men, and spent many millions.
Q.—Were not you reimbursed by Parliament?
A.—We were only reimbursed what, in your opinion, we had advanced beyond our proportion, or beyond what might reasonably be expected from us; and it was a very small part of what we spent. Pennsylvania, in particular, disbursed about £500,000, and the reimbursements in the whole did not exceed £60,000.
Q.—You have said that you pay heavy taxes in Pennsylvania; what do they amount to in the pound?
A.—The tax on all estates, real and personal, to eighteen-pence in the pound, fully rated; and the tax on the profits of trades and professions, with other taxes, do, I suppose, make full half-a-crown in the pound.
Q.—Do you not think the people of America would submit to pay the stamp duty if it were moderated?
A.—No, never, unless compelled by the force of arms.
Q.—What was the temper of America towards Great Britain before the year 1763?
A.—The best in the world. They submitted willingly to the government of the Crown, and paid, in all their courts, obedience to Acts of Parliament. Numerous as the people are in the several old provinces, they cost you nothing in forts, citadels, garrisons, or armies, to keep them in subjection. They were governed by this country at the expense only of a little pen, ink and paper. They were led by a thread. They had not only a respect, but an affection for Great Britain, for its laws, its customs and manners, and even a fondness for its fashions, that greatly increased the commerce. Natives of Britain were always treated with particular regard; to be an Old-Englandman was of itself a character of some respect, and gave a kind of rank among us.
Q.—And what is their temper now?
A.—Oh! very much altered.
Q.—Did you ever hear the authority of Parliament to make laws for America questioned till lately?
A.—The authority of Parliament was allowed to be valid in all laws, except such as should levy internal taxes. It was never disputed in levying duties to regulate commerce.
Q.—In what light did the people of America use to consider the Parliament of Great Britain?
A.—They considered the Parliament as the great bulwark and security of their liberties and privileges, and always spoke of it with the utmost respect and veneration. Arbitrary ministers, they thought, might possibly at times attempt to oppress them; but they relied on it, that the Parliament on application would always give redress. They remembered with gratitude a strong instance of this, when a Bill was brought into Parliament, with a clause to make royal instructions laws in the colonies, which the House of Commons would not pass, and it was thrown out.
Q.—And have they not still the same respect for Parliament?
A.—No; it is greatly lessened.
Q.—To what causes is that owing?
A.—To a concurrence of causes; the restraints lately laid on their trade by which the bringing of foreign gold and silver into the colonies was prevented; the prohibition of making paper money among themselves, and then demanding a new and heavy tax by stamps; taking away at the same time trial by juries, and refusing to see and hear their humble petitions.
Q.—Don't you think they would submit to the Stamp Act if it was modified, the obnoxious parts taken out, and the duty reduced to some particulars of small moment?
A.—No; they will never submit to it.
Q.—What is your opinion of a future tax, imposed on the same principle of that of the Stamp Act; how would the Americans receive it?
A.—Just as they do this. They would not pay it.
Q.—Have not you heard of the resolutions of this House, and of the House of Lords, asserting the right of Parliament relating to America, including a power to tax the people there?
A.—Yes; I have heard of such resolutions.
Q.—What will be the opinion of the Americans on those resolutions?
A.—They will think them unconstitutional and unjust.
Q.—Was it an opinion in America before 1763, that the Parliament had no right to levy taxes and duties there?
A.—I never heard any objection to the right of levying duties to regulate commerce; but a right to levy internal taxes was never supposed to be in Parliament, as we are not represented there.
Q.—You say the colonies have always submitted to external taxes, and object to the right of Parliament only in levying internal taxes; now, can you show that there is any kind of difference between the two taxes to the colony on which they may be laid?
A.—I think the difference is very great. An external tax is a duty levied on commodities imported; that duty is added to the first cost, and other charges on the commodity, and when it is offered for sale, makes a part of the price. If the people do not like it at that price, they refuse it; they are not obliged to pay it. But an internal tax is forced from the people without their consent, if not levied by their own representatives. The Stamp Act says we shall have no commerce, make no exchange of property with each other, neither purchase, nor grant, nor recover debts; we shall neither marry nor make our wills unless we pay such and such sums, and thus it is intended to extort our money from us, or ruin us by the consequences of refusing to pay it.
Q.—But supposing the internal tax or duty to be levied on the necessaries of life imported into your colony, will not that be the same thing in its effects as an internal tax?
A.—I do not know a single article imported into the northern colonies, but what they can either do without or make themselves.
Q.—Don't you think cloth from England absolutely necessary to them?
A.—No, by no means absolutely necessary; with industry and good management, they may very well supply themselves with all they want.
Q.—Considering the resolution of Parliament as to the right, do you think, if the Stamp Act is repealed, that the North Americans will be satisfied?
A.—I believe they will.
Q.—Why do you think so?
A.—I think the resolutions of right will give them very little concern, if they are never attempted to be carried into practice. The colonies will probably consider themselves in the same situation in that respect with Ireland; they know you claim the same right with regard to Ireland, but you never exercise it. And they may believe you never will exercise it in the colonies, any more than in Ireland, unless on some very extraordinary occasion.
Q.—But who are to be the judges of that extraordinary occasion? Is not the Parliament?
A.—Though the Parliament may judge of the occasion, the people will think it can never exercise such right till representatives from the colonies are admitted into Parliament, and that, whenever the occasion arises, representatives will be ordered.
Q.—Did the Americans ever dispute the controlling power of Parliament to regulate the commerce?
A.—No.
Q.—Can anything less than a military force carry the Stamp Act into execution??
A.—I do not see how a military force can be applied to that purpose.
Q.—Why may it not?
A.—Suppose a military force sent into America, they will find nobody in arms; what are they then to do? They cannot force a man to take stamps, who refuses to do without them. They will not find a rebellion; they may indeed make one.
Q.—If the Act is not repealed, what do you think will be the consequences?
A.—A total loss of the respect and affection the people of America bear to this country, and of all the commerce that depends on that respect and affection.
Q.—How can the commerce be affected?
A.—You will find that, if the Act is not repealed, they will take very little of your manufactures in a short time.
Q.—Is it in their power to do without them?
A.—I think they may very well do without them.
Q.—Is it their interest not to take them?
A.—The goods they take from Britain are either necessaries, mere conveniences, or superfluities. The first, as cloth, etc., with a little industry they can make at home; the second they can do without, till they are able to provide them among themselves; and the last, which are much the greatest part, they will strike off immediately. They are mere articles of fashion, purchased and consumed because the fashion in a respected country, but will now be detested and rejected. The people have already struck off, by general agreement, the use of all goods fashionable in mournings, and many thousand pounds worth are sent back as unsaleable.
Q.—Suppose an Act of internal regulations connected with a tax, how would they receive it?
A.—I think it would be objected to.
Q.—Then no regulation with a tax would be submitted to?
A.—Their opinion is, that when aids to the Crown are wanted, they are to be asked of the several Assemblies, according to the old-established usage, who will, as they always have done, grant them freely; and that their money ought not to be given away without their consent by persons at a distance, unacquainted with their circumstances and abilities. The granting aids to the Crown is the only means they have of recommending themselves to their Sovereign, and they think it extremely hard and unjust that a body of men, in which they have no representation, should make a merit to itself of giving and granting what is not its own, but theirs, and deprive them of a right they esteem of the utmost value and importance, as it is the security of all their other rights.
Q.—But is not the post-office, which they have long received, a tax as well as a regulation?
A.—No; the money paid for the postage of a letter is not of the nature of a tax; it is merely a quantum meruit for a service done; no person is compellable to pay the money if he does not choose to receive the service. A man may still, as before the Act, send his letter by a servant, a special messenger, or a friend, if he thinks it cheaper and safer.
Q.—But do they not consider the regulations of the post-office, by the Act of last year, as a tax?
A.—By the regulations of last year, the rate of postage was generally abated near thirty per cent. through all America; they certainly cannot consider such abatement as a tax.
Q.—If an excise was laid by Parliament, which they might likewise avoid paying, by not consuming the articles excised, would they then object to it?
A.—They would certainly object to it, as an excise is unconnected with any service done, and is merely an aid which they think ought to be asked of them, and granted by them if they are to pay it, and can be granted for them by no others whatsoever, whom they have not empowered for that purpose.
Q.—You say they do not object to the right of Parliament in levying duties on goods to be paid on their importation; now, is there any kind of difference between a duty on the importation of goods and an excise on their consumption?
A.—Yes, a very material one; an excise, for the reasons I have just mentioned, they think you can have no right to levy within their country. But the sea is yours; you maintain by your fleets the safety of navigation in it, and keep it clear of pirates; you may have therefore a natural and equitable right to some toll or duty on merchandise carried through that part of your dominions, towards defraying the expense you are at in ships to maintain the safety of that carriage.
Q.—Supposing the Stamp Act continued and was enforced, do you imagine that ill-humour will induce the Americans to give as much for worse manufactures of their own, and use them preferably to better ones of yours?
A.—Yes, I think so. People will pay as freely to gratify one passion as another—their resentment as their pride.
Q.—What do you think a sufficient military force to protect the distribution of the stamps in every part of America?
A.—A very great force; I can't say what, if the disposition of America is for a general resistance.
Q.—If the Stamp Act should be repealed, would not the Americans think they could oblige the Parliament to repeal every external tax law now in force?
A.—It is hard to answer questions of what people at such a distance will think.
Q.—But what do you imagine they will think were the motives of repealing the Act?
A.—I suppose they will think that it was repealed from a conviction of its inexpediency; and they will rely upon it that, while the same expediency subsists, you will never attempt to make such another.
Q—What do you mean by its inexpediency?
A.—I mean its inexpediency on several accounts: the poverty and inability of those who were to pay the tax, the general discontent it has occasioned, and the impracticability of enforcing it.
Q.—If the Act should be repealed, and the Legislature should show its resentment to the opposers of the Stamp Act, would the colonies acquiesce in the authority of the Legislature? What is your opinion they would do?
A.—I don't doubt at all that if the Legislature repeal the Stamp Act, the colonies will acquiesce in the authority.
Q.—But if the Legislature should think fit to ascertain its right to levy taxes, by any Act levying a small tax, contrary to their opinion, would they submit to pay the tax?
A.—The proceedings of the people in America have been considered too much together. The proceedings of the Assemblies have been very different from those of the mobs, and should be distinguished, as having no connection with each other. The Assemblies have only peaceably resolved what they take to be their rights; they have taken no measures for opposition by force; they have not built a fort, raised a man, or provided a grain of ammunition in order to such opposition. The ringleaders of riots they think ought to be punished; they would punish them themselves if they could. Every sober, sensible man would wish to see rioters punished, as otherwise peaceable people have no security of person or estate. But as to an internal tax, how small soever, levied by the Legislature here on the people there, while they have no representatives in this Legislature, I think it will never be submitted to. They will oppose it to the last. They do not consider it as at all necessary for you to raise money on them by your taxes, because they are, and always have been, ready to raise money by taxes among themselves, and to grant large sums, equal to their abilities, upon requisition from the Crown. They have not only granted equal to their abilities, but during all the last war they granted far beyond their abilities, and beyond their proportion with this country, you yourselves being judges, to the amount of many hundred thousand pounds; and this they did freely and readily, only on a sort of promise from the Secretary of State that it should be recommended to Parliament to make them compensation. It was accordingly recommended to Parliament, in the most honourable manner, for them. America has been greatly misrepresented and abused here, in papers and pamphlets and speeches, as ungrateful, unreasonable, and unjust in having put this nation to immense expense for their defence, and refusing to bear any part of that expense. The colonies raised, paid, and clothed near 25,000 men during the last war—a number equal to those sent from Britain, and far beyond their proportion; they went deeply into debt in doing this, and all their taxes and estates are mortgaged, for many years to come, for discharging that debt. The Government here was at that time very sensible of this. The colonies were recommended to Parliament. Every year the King sent down to the House a written message to this purport: That his Majesty, being highly sensible of the zeal and vigour with which his faithful subjects in North America had exerted themselves in defence of his Majesty's just rights and possessions, recommended it to the House to take the same into consideration, and enable him to give them a proper compensation. You will find those messages on your journals every year of the war to the very last, and you did accordingly give £200,000 annually to the Crown, to be distributed in such compensation to the colonies. This is the strongest of all proofs that the colonies, far from being unwilling to bear a share of the burden, did exceed their proportion; for if they had done less, or had only equalled their proportion, there would have been no room or reason for compensation. Indeed, the sums reimbursed them were by no means adequate to the expense they incurred beyond their proportion; but they never murmured at that: they esteemed their Sovereign's approbation of their zeal and fidelity, and the approbation of this House, far beyond any other kind of compensation; therefore there was no occasion for this Act to force money from an unwilling people. They had not refused giving money for the purposes of the Act; no requisition had been made; they were always willing and ready to do what could reasonably be expected from them, and in this light they wish to be considered.
Q.—But suppose Great Britain should be engaged in a war in Europe, would North America contribute to the support of it?
A.—I do think they would, as far as their circumstances would permit. They consider themselves as a part of the British empire, and as having one common interest with it; they may be looked on here as foreigners, but they do not consider themselves as such. They are zealous for the honour and prosperity of this nation, and, while they are well used, will always be ready to support it, as far as their little power goes.
Q.—Do you think the Assemblies have a right to levy money on the subject there, to grant to the Crown?
A.—I certainly think so; they have always done it.
Q.—Would they do this for a British concern; as, suppose, a war in some part of Europe that did not affect them?
A.—Yes, for anything that concerned the general interest. They consider themselves as a part of the whole.
Q.—What is the usual constitutional manner of calling on the colonies for aids?
A.—A letter from the Secretary of State.
Q.—Is this all you mean—a letter from the Secretary of State?
A.—I mean the usual way of requisition—in a circular letter from the Secretary of State, by his Majesty's command, reciting the occasion, and recommending it to the colonies to grant such aids as became their royalty and were suitable to their abilities.
Q.—Did the Secretary of State ever write for money for the Crown?
A.—The requisitions have been to raise, clothe, and pay men, which cannot be done without money.
Q.—Would they grant money alone if called on?
A.—In my opinion they would, money as well as men, when they have money or can make it.
Q.—What used to be the pride of the Americans?
A.—To indulge in the fashions and manufactures of Great Britain.
Q.—What is now their pride?
A.—To wear their old clothes over again, till they can make new ones.[282]
[265] "An American revenue was, in England, a very popular measure. The cry in favour of it was so strong as to silence the voice of petitions to the contrary. The equity of compelling the Americans to contribute to the common expenses of the empire satisfied many, who, without inquiring into the policy or justice of taxing their unrepresented fellow-subjects, readily assented to the measures adopted by Parliament for that purpose. The prospect of easing their own burdens at the expense of the colonists, dazzled the eyes of gentlemen of landed interest, so as to keep out of their view the probable consequences of the innovation."
"The disposition to tax the colonies was also strengthened by exaggerated accounts of their wealth. It was said that the American planters lived in affluence and with inconsiderable taxes; while the inhabitants of Great Britain were borne down by such aggressive burdens as to make a bare existence a matter of extreme difficulty. The officers who had served in America during the late war contributed to this delusion. Their observations were founded on what they had seen in the cities, and at a time when large sums were spent by Government in support of fleets and armies, and when American commodities were in great demand. To treat with attention those who came to fight for them, and also to gratify their own pride, the colonists had made a parade of their riches, by frequently and sumptuously entertaining the gentlemen of the British army. These, judging from what they saw, without considering the general state of the country, concurred in representing the colonists as very able to contribute largely towards defraying the common expenses of the empire." (Ramsay's Colonial History, Vol. I., Chap. iii., pp. 332-335.)
[266] Prior Documents, etc., p. 5.
"The taxes of Great Britain exceeded by £3,000,000 what they were in 1754, before the war; yet the present object was only to make the colonies maintain their own army. Besides the taxes on trade, which were immediately to be imposed, Mr. Grenville gave notice in the House that it was his intention, in the next session, to bring in a Bill imposing stamp duties in America; and the reasons for giving such notice were, because he understood some people entertained doubts of the power of Parliament to impose internal taxes on the colonies, and because that, of all the schemes which had fallen under his consideration, he thought a Stamp Act was the best. But he was not so wedded to it as to be unwilling to give it up for any one that might appear more eligible; or if the colonies themselves thought any other mode would be more expedient, he should have no objection to come to it by Act of Parliament. At that time the merits of the question were opened at large. The opponents of the Government were publicly called upon to deny, if they thought it fitting, the right of the Legislature to impose any tax, internal or external, on the colonies; and not a single member ventured to controvert the right. Upon a solemn question asked in a full House, there was not one negative." (Bancroft's History of the United States, Vol. V., Chap. ix., pp. 186, 187.)
[267] Mr. Grenville gave the year's notice apparently from motives of kindness and courtesy to the colonies, "in order that the colonies might have time to offer a compensation for the revenues which such a tax might produce. Accordingly, when the agents of these colonies waited upon him to thank him for this mark of his consideration, he told them that he was ready to receive proposals from the colonies for any other tax that might be equivalent in its produce to the stamp tax, hinting withal that their principals would now have it in their power, by agreeing to this tax, to establish a precedent for their being consulted (by the Ministry, we suppose) before any tax was imposed upon them by Parliament.
"Many persons at this side of the water, and perhaps the agents themselves, looked upon this as a humane and generous proceeding. But the colonies seemed to consider it as an affront rather than a compliment. At least not one of them authorized its agent to consent to the stamp duty, or to offer any compensation for it; and some of them went so far as to send over petitions, to be presented to the King, Lords, and Commons, positively and directly questioning the authority and jurisdiction of Parliament over their properties." (Annual Register, Vol. VIII., Chap. ix., p. 33.)
[268] See Appendix to this chapter for a summary and review of the speeches of Mr. Charles Townsend and Colonel Barré.
[269] "The province of Virginia took the lead. On the 29th May, 1765, the House of Burgesses of Virginia adopted the following resolutions:
"Whereas the honourable House of Commons in England have of late drawn into question how far the General Assembly of this province hath power to enact laws for levying taxes and imposing duties payable by the people of this his Majesty's most ancient colony; for settling and ascertaining the same to all future times, the House of Burgesses of this present General Assembly have come to the following resolutions:
1. "Resolved,—That the first adventurers and settlers of this his Majesty's colony and dominion of Virginia brought with them, and transmitted to their posterity, and all other his Majesty's subjects since inhabiting his Majesty's colony, all the privileges and immunities that have at any time been held, enjoyed, and possessed by the people of Great Britain.
2. "Resolved,—That by the two Royal Charters granted by King James the First, the colonies aforesaid are declared entitled to all privileges of faithful liege and natural-born subjects, to all intents and purposes as if they had been abiding and born within the realm of England.
3. "Resolved,—That his Majesty's liege people of this most ancient colony have enjoyed the right of having been thus far governed by their own Assembly in the article of taxes and internal police; and that the same have never been forfeited, or in any other way yielded up, but have been constantly recognized by the King and people of Great Britain.
4. "Resolved, therefore,—That the General Assembly of this colony, together with his Majesty or his substitute, have, in their representative capacity, the only exclusive right and power to levy taxes and impositions upon the inhabitants of this colony; and that every attempt to vest such power in any person or persons whatsoever other than the General Assembly aforesaid, is illegal, unconstitutional, and unjust, and has a manifest tendency to destroy British as well as American freedom." (Prior Documents, etc., pp. 6, 7.)
These resolutions were introduced by Patrick Henry, in an eloquent and animated speech, in the course of which the following extraordinary scene occurred: In an exciting tone he exclaimed, "Cæsar had his Brutus! Charles the First had his Cromwell! and George the Third——" The Speaker, greatly excited, cried out "Treason! treason!" which was re-echoed from all sides. Then Henry, fixing his eye on the Speaker, and pointing his finger towards him, raised his voice above the confusion and concluded, "And George the Third may profit by their example. If this be treason, make the most of it." (Elliott's History, etc., Vol. II., p. 252.)
Mr Bancroft says: "The resolutions were published in the newspapers throughout America, and by men of all parties—by Royalists in office not less than by the public bodies in the colonies—were received without dispute as the avowed sentiments of the 'Old Dominion.'" (History of the United States, Vol. V., Chap, xiii., p. 278.)
[270] Holmes' Annals, Vol. II., page 135. Hildreth's History of the United States, Vol. II., pp. 530, 531.
[271] Cornelius Burgess, a Puritan minister, used to say of the rabble:
"These are my band-dogs. I can set them on; I can fetch them off again." (Rapin's History of England, Vol. IX., p. 410, in a note.)
[272] "On Sunday, 25th August (the day before these riots were renewed), Dr. Mayhew preached in the west meeting house, from the text, Galatians, chap. v. verse 12: 'I would they were even cut off which trouble you.' Although the sermon was regular enough, the text then seemed significant, and Hutchinson (History) states that some were excited by it. (Doubtless the 'Band-dogs' of Dr. Mayhew.) At any rate, in the night the bonfires brought together their crowds, who, grown bold by success, proceeded to express their hatred against the Admiralty Courts and the Custom-houses by attacking and damaging the houses of two officers, Story and Hallowell. In these they found good wines, which served to inflame their blood; and then their shout was, 'Hutchinson! Hutchinson!' A friend hastened to his house to warn him of his danger. He barred his windows, determined to resist their fury; but his family dragged him away with them in their flight. The mob rushed on, and beating down his windows, sacked the house (one of the finest in Boston) and destroyed everything, even a valuable collection of books and manuscripts.
"This excess shocked the wise friends of liberty, and in a public meeting the citizens discovered the destruction, and set their faces against any further demonstrations of the sort. Rewards were offered for the rioters, and Mackintosh and some others were apprehended, but were rescued by their friends; and it was found impossible to proceed against them." (Elliott's New England History, Vol. II., pp. 254, 255.)
"Mayhew sent the next day a special apology and disclaimer to Hutchinson. The inhabitants of Boston, at a town meeting, unanimously expressed their abhorrence of these proceedings, and a civil guard was organized to prevent their repetition. Yet the rioters, though well known, went unpunished—a sure sign of the secret concurrence of the mass of the community. Those now committed were revolutionary acts, designed to intimidate—melancholy forerunners of civil war." (Hildreth's History of the United States, Vol. II., Chap, xxviii., p. 528.)
[273] Ib., p. 527.
1. Lieutenant-Governor Hutchinson, whose house was thus sacked and his valuable papers destroyed, was the historian of his native province of Massachusetts Bay, whom I have quoted so frequently in the present volume of this history. Of his history, Mr. Bancroft, a bitter enemy of Hutchinson's, says:
"At the opening of the year 1765, the people of New England were reading the history of the first sixty years of the Colony of Massachusetts, by Hutchinson. This work is so ably executed that as yet it remains without a rival; and his knowledge was so extensive that, with the exception of a few concealments, it exhausts the subject. Nothing so much revived the ancestral spirit which a weaving of the gloomy superstitions, mixed with Puritanism, had for a long time overshadowed." (History of the United States, Vol. V., Chap, xi., p. 228.)
2. But though mob violence distinguished Boston on this as well as on other occasions, the opposition was such throughout the colonies, from New Hampshire to Georgia, that all those who had been appointed to receive and distribute the stamps were compelled, by the remonstrances and often threats of their fellow-colonists, to resign the office; and the stamped paper sent from England to the ports of the various provinces was either returned back by the vessel that brought it, or put into a place of sate keeping. "Though the Stamp Act was to have operated from the 1st of November, yet the legal proceedings in Courts were carried on as before. Vessels entered and departed without stamped papers. The printers boldly printed and circulated their newspapers, and found a sufficient number of readers, though they used common paper, in defiance of the Act of Parliament. In most departments, by common consent, business was carried on as though no stamp law existed. This was accompanied by spirited resolutions to risk all consequences rather than submit to use the paper required by the Stamp Act. While these matters were in agitation, the colonists entered into associations against importing British manufactures till the Stamp Act should be repealed. Agreeably to the free constitution of Great Britain, the subject was at liberty to buy, or not to buy, as he pleased. By suspending their future purchases until the repeal of the Stamp Act, the colonists made it the interest of merchants and manufacturers in England to solicit its repeal. They had usually taken so great a proportion of British manufactures, amounting annually to two or three millions sterling, that they threw some thousands in the mother country out of employment, and induced them, from a regard to their own interest, to advocate the measures wished for by America." (Ramsay's Colonial History, Vol. I., pp. 345, 346).
[274] "Petitions were received by Parliament from the merchants of London, Bristol, Lancaster, Liverpool, Hull, Glasgow, etc., and indeed from most of the trading and manufacturing towns and boroughs in the kingdom. In these petitions they set forth the great decay of their trade, owing to the laws and regulations made for America; the vast quantities of our manufactures (besides those articles imported from abroad, which were enclosed either with our own manufactures or with the produce of our colonies) which the American trade formerly took off our hands; by all which many thousand manufacturers, seamen, and labourers had been employed, to the very great and increasing benefit of the nation. That in return for these exports the petitioners had received from the colonies rice, indigo, tobacco, naval stores, oil, whale-fins, furs, and lately potash, with other staple commodities, besides a large balance of remittances by bills of exchange and bullion obtained by the colonists for articles of their produce, not required for the British market, and therefore exported to other places.
"That from the nature of this trade, consisting of British manufactures exported, and of the import of raw material from America, many of them used in our manufactures, and all of them tending to lessen our dependence on neighbouring states, it must be deemed of the highest importance in the commercial system of this nation. That this commerce, so beneficial to the state, and so necessary to the support of multitudes, then lay under such difficulties and discouragements, that nothing less than its utter ruin was apprehended without the immediate interposition of Parliament.
"That the colonies were then indebted to the merchants of Great Britain to the sum of several millions sterling; and that when pressed for payment, they appeal to past experience in proof of their willingness; but declare it is not in their power at present to make good their engagements, alleging that the taxes and restrictions laid upon them, and the extension of the jurisdiction of the Vice-Admiralty Courts, established by some late Acts of Parliament, particularly by an Act passed in the 4th year of his present Majesty, for granting certain duties in the British Colonies and Plantations in America, and by an Act passed in the 5th year of his Majesty, for granting and applying certain stamp duties, etc., in said colonies, etc., with several regulations and restraints, which, if founded in Acts of Parliament for defined purposes, they represent to have been extended in such a manner as to disturb legal commerce and harass the fair trader, and to have so far interrupted the usual, former and most useful branches of their commerce, restrained the sale of their produce, thrown the state of the several provinces into confusion, and brought on so great a number of actual bankruptcies that the former opportunities and means of remittances and payments were utterly lost and taken from them.
"That the petitioners were, by these unhappy events, reduced to the necessity of applying to the House, in order to secure themselves and their families from impending ruin; to prevent a multitude of manufacturers from becoming a burden to the community, or else seeking their bread in other countries, to the irretrievable loss of the kingdom; and to preserve the strength of this nation entire, its commerce flourishing, the revenues increasing, our navigation the bulwark of the kingdom, in a state of growth and extension, and the colonies, from inclination, duty, and interest, attached to the mother country."
"Such a number of petitions from every part of the kingdom, pregnant with so many interesting facts, stated and attested by such numbers of people, whose lives had been entirely devoted to trade, and who must be naturally supposed to be competent judges of a subject which they had so long and so closely attended to (besides that it showed the general sense of the nation), could not fail of having great weight with the House." (Annual Register for 1766, Vol. IX., Chap, vii., pp. 35, 36.)
[275] Ramsay's Colonial History, Vol. I., p. 348.
"At the same time that the Stamp Act was repealed, the absolute and unlimited supremacy of Parliament was, in words, asserted. The opposers of repeal contended for this as essential. The friends of that measure acquiesced in it, to strengthen their party and make sure of their object. Many of both sides thought that the dignity of Great Britain required something of the kind to counterbalance the loss of authority that might result from her yielding to the clamours of the colonists. The Act for this purpose was called the Declaratory Act, and was, in principle, more hostile to America's rights than the Stamp Act; for it annulled those resolutions and acts of the Provincial Assemblies in which they had asserted their right to exemption from all taxes not imposed by their own representatives; and also enacted that the King and Parliament had, and of right ought to have, power to bind the colonies in all cases whatsoever."—Ib., p. 349.
[276] "The aborigines were never formidable in battle until they became supplied with the weapons of European invention." (Bancroft's History of the United States, Vol. I., p. 401.)
[277] The treatment of the Indians by the early New England Puritans is one of the darkest pages in English colonial history. I have slightly alluded to it in the preceding pages of this volume. Many passages might be selected from the early divines of New England, referring to the Indians as the heathen whom they were to drive out of the land which God had given to this Israel. I will confine myself to the quotation of a few words from the late Rev. J.B. Marsden, A.M., noted for his Puritan partialities, in the two volumes of his History of the Early and Later Puritans. But his sense of Christian justice, tolerance, and humanity revolted at the New England Puritans' intolerance to each other, and their cruel treatment of the Indians. Mr. Marsden says:
"The New England Puritans were revered beyond the Atlantic as the Pilgrim Fathers, the founders of great cities, and of States renowned through the wide world for wealth, intelligence, and liberty. Their memory is cherished in England with feelings of silent respect rather than of unmixed admiration; for their inconsistencies were almost equal to their virtues; and here, while we respect their integrity, we are not blinded to their faults. A persecuted band themselves, they soon learned to persecute each other. The disciples of liberty, they confined its blessings to themselves. The loud champions of the freedom of conscience, they allowed no freedom which interfered with their narrow views. Professing a mission of Gospel holiness, they fulfilled it but in part. When opposed, they were revengeful; when irritated, fanatical and cruel. In them a great experiment was to be tried, under conditions the most favourable to its success; and it failed in its most important point. The question to be solved was this: How would the Puritans, the hunted, persecuted Puritans behave, were they but once free, once at liberty to carry their principles into full effect? The answer was returned from the shores of another world. It was distinct and unequivocal. And it was this: they were prepared to copy the worst vices of their English persecutors, and, untaught by experience, to imitate their worst mistakes. The severities of Whitgift seemed to be justified when it was made apparent on the plains of North America, that they had been inflicted upon men who wanted only the opportunity to inflict them again, and inflict them on one another." (Marsden's History of the Early Puritans, Chap, xi., pp. 305, 306.)
After referring to early conflicts between the Puritans and Indians, Mr. Marsden remarks as follows in regard to the manner in which the Puritans destroyed the Pequod nation:
"If there be a justifiable cause of war, it surely must be this, when our territory is invaded and our means of existence threatened. That the Indians fell upon their enemies by the most nefarious stratagems, or exposed them, when taken in war, to cruel torments (though such ferocity is not alleged in this instance), does not much affect the question. They were savages, and fought white men as they and their fathers had always fought each other. How then should a community of Christian men have dealt with them? Were they to contend as savages or civilized men? As civilized men, or rather as men who had forsaken a land of civilization for purer abodes of piety and peace? The Pequod war shows how little their piety could be trusted when their passions were aroused."
"After a week's marching, they came at day-break on the Indian wigwams and immediately assaulted them. The 'massacre' (so their own chronicler, Mr. Bancroft, has termed it) spread from one hut to another; for the Indians were asleep and unarmed. But the work of slaughter was too slow. 'We must burn them,' exclaimed the fanatic chieftain of the Puritans; and he cast the first firebrand to windward among their wigwams. In an instant the encampment was in a blaze. Not a soul escaped. Six hundred Indians, men, women, and children, perished by the steady hand of the marksman, by the unresisted broadsword, and by the hideous conflagration.
"The work of revenge was not yet accomplished. In a few days a fresh body of troops arrived from Massachusetts, accompanied by their minister, Wilson. The remnants of the proscribed race were now hunted down in their hiding places; every wigwam was burned; every settlement broken up; every cornfield laid waste. There remained, says their exulting historian, not a man or a woman, not a warrior or child of the Pequod name. A nation had disappeared from the family of men." "History records many deeds of blood equal in ferocity to this; but we shall seek in vain for a parallel to the massacre of the Pequod Indians. It brought out the worst points in the Puritan character, and displayed it in the strongest light. When their passions were once inflamed, their religion itself was cruelty. A dark, fanatical spirit of revenge took possession, not, as in other men, by first expelling every religious and every human consideration, but, what was infinitely more terrible, by calling to its aid every stimulant, every motive that religion, jaundiced and perverted, could supply. It is terrible to read, when cities are stormed, of children thrown into the flames, and shrieking women butchered by infuriated men who have burst the restraints of discipline. It is a dreadful licence; and true and gallant soldiers, occur when it may, feel that their profession is disgraced. But this was worse. Here all was deliberately calm; all was sanctioned by religion. It was no outbreak of mere brutality. The fast was kept; the Sabbath was observed; the staff of office, as a sacred ensign, was consecrated by one Christian minister, while another attended upon the marching of soldiery, and cheered them in the murderous design with his presence and his prayers. Piety was supposed not to abhor, but to exult in the exploit. This was true fanaticism. God's word and ordinances were made subservient to the greatest crimes. They were rudely forced and violated, and made the ministers of sin. When the assailants, reeking from the slaughter and blackened with the smoke, returned home, they were everywhere received with a pious ovation. God was devoutly praised, because the first principles of justice, nay, the stinted humanities of war, had been outraged, and unresisting savages, with their wives and children, had been ferociously destroyed." (Marsden's History of the Early Puritans, Chap, xi., pp. 305-311.)
Such was the early Puritan method of fulfilling the Royal Charter to the Massachusetts Company of "Christianizing and civilizing the idolatrous Indians;" and such is a practical comment upon Colonel Barré's statement as to Indian cruelties.
But the intolerance of the Puritans to each other was as conspicuous as their cruel treatment of the Indians. On this point Mr. Marsden adds:
"The intolerance with which the Puritans had been treated at home might at least have taught them a lesson of forbearance to each other. But it had no such effect. It would almost seem as if, true disciples in the school of the High Commission and Star Chamber, their ambition was to excel their former tyrants in the art of persecution. They imitated, with a pertinacious accuracy, the bad examples of their worst oppressors; and with far less to excuse them, repeated in America the self-same crimes from which they and their fathers had suffered so much in England. No political considerations of real importance, no ancient prejudices interwoven with the framework of society, could be pleaded here. Their institutions were new, their course was hampered by no precedents. Imagination cannot suggest a state of things more favourable to the easy, safe, and sure development of their views. Had they cherished a catholic spirit, there was nothing to prevent the exercise of the most enlarged beneficence. Their choice was made freely, and they decided in favour of intolerance; and their fault was aggravated by the consideration that the experiment had been tried, and that they themselves were the living witnesses of its folly." (Marsden's History of the Early Puritans, p. 311.)
[278] It was but just to have added that the trade between England and America was as profitable to America as it was to England, and that the value of property and rents advanced more rapidly in America than in England.
[279] This is a withering rebuke to a conceited though clever young statesman, Lord Nugent, who, in a previous part of the debate, insisted that the honour and dignity of the kingdom obligated them to compel the execution of the Stamp Act, "unless the right was acknowledged and the repeal solicited as a favour," concluding with the remark that "a peppercorn, in acknowledgment of the right, is of more value than millions without."
[280] Bancroft's History of the United States, Vol. V., Chap. xxi.
[281] History of the United States, Vol. V., Chap. xxi., pp. 397, 398.
[282] Prior Documents, pp. 64-81.
Authority of Parliament over the British Colonies.
Before proceeding with a summary statement of events which followed the repeal of the Stamp Act, I think it proper to state the nature and extent of the authority of Parliament over the colonies, as interpreted by legislative bodies and statesmen on both sides of the Atlantic. Mr. Bancroft well remarks:
"It is the glory of England that the rightfulness of the Stamp Act was in England itself a subject of dispute. It could have been so nowhere else. The King of France taxed the French colonies as a matter of course; the King of Spain collected a revenue by his own will in Mexico and Peru, in Cuba and Porto Rico, and wherever he ruled. The States-General of the Netherlands had no constitutional doubt about imposing duties on their outlying colonies. To England exclusively belongs the honour that between her and her colonies the question of right could arise; it is still more to her glory, as well as to her happiness and freedom, that in that contest her success was not possible. Her principles, her traditions, her liberty, her constitution, all forbade that arbitrary rule should become her characteristic. The shaft aimed at her new colonial policy was tipped with a feather from her own wing."[283]
In the dispute which took place in 1757 between the Legislative Assembly of Massachusetts and the Earl of Loudoun as to the extension of the Mutiny Act to the colonies, and the passing of an Act by the local Legislature for the billeting of the troops, as similar in its provisions as possible to those of the Mutiny Act—so that it was accepted by the Earl of Loudoun—the Massachusetts Assembly vindicated their motives for denying the application of the Mutiny Act to the colonies, and for providing quarters for the military by an Act of their own, yet recognizing the legitimate authority of Parliament, in a message to Governor Barnard containing the following words:
"We wish to stand perfectly right with his lordship (the Earl of Loudoun), and it will be a great satisfaction to us if we may be able to remove his misapprehension of the spring and motives of our proceedings. His lordship is pleased to say that we seem willing to enter into a dispute upon the necessity of a provincial law to enforce a British Act of Parliament.
"We are utterly ignorant as to what part of our conduct could give occasion for this expression. The point in which we were obliged to differ from his lordship was the extent of the provision made by Act of Parliament for regulating quarters. We thought it did not reach the colonies. Had we thought it did reach us, and yet made an Act of our own to enforce it, there would have been good grounds for his lordships exception; but being fully persuaded that the provision was never intended for us, what better step could we take than, agreeable to the twentieth section of the Articles of War, to regulate quarters as the circumstances of the province require, but still as similar to the provisions made in England as possible? And how can it be inferred from thence that we suppose a provincial Act necessary to enforce an Act of Parliament?
"We are willing, by a due exercise of the powers of civil government (and we have the pleasure of seeing your Excellency concur with us), to remove, as much as may be, all pretence of necessity of military government. Such measures, we are sure, will never be disapproved by the Parliament of Great Britain, our dependence upon which, we never had a desire or thought of lessening. From the knowledge your Excellency has acquired of us, you will be able to do us justice in this regard.
"In our message to your Excellency, which you transmitted to his lordship, we declared that the Act of Parliament, the extent of which was then in dispute, as far as it related to the Plantations, had always been observed by us.
"The authority of all Acts of Parliament which concern the colonies, and extend to them, is ever acknowledged in all the Courts of law, and made the rule in all judicial proceedings in the province. There is not a member of the General Court, we know no inhabitant within the bounds of the Government, that ever questioned this authority.
"To prevent any ill consequences which may arise from an opinion of our holding such principles, we now utterly disavow them, as we should readily have done at any time past if there had been occasion for it; and we pray that his lordship may be acquainted therewith, that we may appear in a true light, and that no impressions may remain to our disadvantage."[284]
This is a full and indefinite recognition of the supreme authority of Parliament, even to the providing of accommodation for the soldiers; and such was the recognition of the authority of Parliament throughout the colonies. "It was generally allowed," says Dr. Ramsay, "that as the planting of colonies was not designed to erect an independent Government, but to extend an old one, the parent state had a right to restrain their trade in every way which conduced to the common emolument. They for the most part considered the mother country as authorized to name ports and nations to which alone their merchandise should be carried, and with which alone they should trade; but the novel claim of taxing them without their consent was universally reprobated as contrary to their natural, chartered, and constitutional rights. In opposition to it, they not only alleged the general principles of liberty, but ancient usage. During the first hundred and fifty years of their existence they had been left to tax themselves and in their own way." "In the war of 1755, the events of which were fresh in the recollection of every one, the Parliament had in no instance attempted to raise either men or money in the colonies by its own authority. As the claim of taxation on one side and the refusal on the other were the very hinges on which the revolution turned they merit a particular discussion."[285]
The only exception to the authority of Parliament over the colonies was levying internal taxes. A marked distinction was made between external and internal taxes. It was admitted upon all hands that the Parliament had the constitutional right to impose the former, but not the latter. The Tory opposition in the British Parliament denied the distinction between external and internal taxes, and maintained that if Parliament had the right to impose the one they had equally the right to impose the other; but the advocates of American rights maintained the distinction between external and internal taxation; and also Dr. Franklin, in his evidence at the bar of the House of Commons, in February, 1766, which I have quoted at length above, as the best exposition of the colonial side of the questions at issue between England and America. I will here reproduce two questions and answers on the subject now under consideration:
Q.—"You say they do not object to the right of Parliament, in levying duties on goods, to be paid on their importation; now, is there any kind of difference between a duty on the importation of goods and an excise on their consumption?"
A.—"Yes, a very material one; an excise, for the reasons I have just mentioned, they think you can have no right to levy within their country. But the sea is yours; you maintain by your fleets the safety of navigation in it, and keep it clear of pirates; you may have therefore a natural and equitable right to some toll or duty on merchandise carried through that part of your dominions, towards defraying the expense you are at in ships to maintain the safety of that carriage."
Q.—"Does this reasoning hold in the case of a duty laid on the produce of their lands exported? And would they not then object to make a duty?"
A.—"If it tended to make the produce so much dearer abroad as to lessen the demand for it, to be sure they would object to such a duty; not to your right of levying it, but they would complain of it as a burden, and petition you to lighten it."
It will be observed that in these words of Dr. Franklin there is the fullest recognition of the right of Parliament to impose duties on all articles imported into, or exported from, the colonies; the only exception was the levying direct or internal taxes for the purposes of revenue, the right to impose which was held, and we think justly held, to belong to the representative Legislatures elected by the colonists themselves. Such also were the views of the two great statesmen, Pitt and Burke, who with such matchless eloquence advocated the rights of the colonies—whose speeches have become household words in America, and are found in all their school books. Mr. Pitt, in a speech which I have quoted at length in a previous chapter, said expressly:
"Let the sovereign authority of this country over the colonies be asserted in as strong terms as can be devised, and be made to extend to every point of legislation whatsoever, that 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."
Mr. Pitt therefore advocated the repeal of the Stamp Act with all his fiery eloquence and energy, saying that he rejoiced that the colonists had resisted that Act—not by riots or force of arms, but by every constitutional mode of resistance, in the expression of public opinion against an unjust and oppressive measure. Mr. Pitt's speech has been quoted by American writers, and inserted in American school books, to justify the resistance of America to England in the revolution which was declared in 1776; but his speech was delivered, and the Act against which it was delivered was repealed, ten years before. The United Empire Loyalists were as much opposed to the Stamp Act as any other colonists, and rejoiced as heartily at its repeal.
Edmund Burke was the appointed agent of the province of New York, and no member of the House of Commons equalled him in the eloquent and elaborate advocacy of the popular rights of the colonies. Extracts from his speeches have been circulated in every form, and in unnumbered repetition in American periodicals and school books; but what he said as to the authority of Parliament over the colonies has not found so wide a circulation in America. In advocating the repeal of the Stamp Act, in his celebrated speech on American taxation, Mr. Burke said:
"What is to become of the Declaratory Act, asserting the entireness of British legislative authority, if we abandon the practice of taxation? For my part, I look upon the rights stated in that Act exactly in the manner in which I viewed them on its very first proposition, and which I have often taken the liberty, with great humility, to lay before you. I look, I say, on the imperial rights of Great Britain, and the privileges which the colonists ought to enjoy under those rights, to be just the most reconcilable things in the world. The Parliament of Great Britain sits at the head of her extensive empire in two capacities: one, as the local Legislature of this island, providing for all things at home, immediately, and by no other instrument than the executive power; the other, and I think her nobler capacity, is what I call her imperial character, in which, as from the throne of heaven, she superintends all the several inferior Legislatures, and guides and controls them all, without annihilating any. As all these Provincial Legislatures are only co-ordinate with each other, they ought all to be subordinate to her, else they can neither preserve mutual peace, nor hope for mutual justice, nor effectually afford mutual assistance. It is necessary to coerce the negligent, to restrain the violent, and to aid the weak and deficient, by the overruling plenitude of its power. She is never to intrude into the place of the others while they are equal to the common ends of their institution. But in order to enable Parliament to answer all these ends of provident and beneficent superintendence, her powers must be boundless. The gentlemen who think the powers of Parliament limited, may please themselves to talk of requisitions. But suppose the requisitions are not obeyed? What! Shall there be no reserved power in the empire to supply a deficiency which may weaken, divide, and dissipate the whole? We are engaged in war; the Secretary of State calls upon the colonies to contribute; some would do it; I think most would cheerfully furnish whatever is demanded. One or two, suppose, hang back, and, easing themselves, let the stress of the draft be on the others—surely it is proper that some authority might legally say, 'Tax yourselves for the common supply, or Parliament will do it for you.' This backwardness was, as I am told, actually the case of Pennsylvania, for some short time towards the beginning of the last war, owing to some internal dissensions in the colony. But whether the act were so, or otherwise, the case is equally to be provided for by a competent sovereign power. But then this ought to be no ordinary power, nor ever used in the first instance. This is what I meant when I have said at various times that I consider the power of taxing in Parliament as an instrument of empire, and not as a means of supply."[286]