Chapter I: The Revolution Impending (1)

BY MELLEN CHAMBERLAIN,

_Librarian Boston Public Library._

THE American Revolution was no unrelated event, but formed a part of the history of the British race on both continents, and was not without influence on the history of mankind. As an event in British history, it wrought with other forces in effecting that change in the Constitution of the mother country which transferred the prerogatives of the crown to the Parliament, and led to the more beneficent interpretation of its provisions in the light of natural rights. As an event in American history, it marks the period, recognized by the great powers of Europe, when a people, essentially free by birth and by the circumstances of their situation, became entitled, because justified by valor and endurance, to take their place among independent nations. Finally, as an event common to the history of both nations, it stands midway between the Great Rebellion and the Revolution of 1688, on the one hand, and the Reform Bill of 1832 and the extension of suffrage in 1884, on the other, and belongs to a race which had adopted the principles of the Reformation and of the Petition of Right.

The American Revolution was not a quarrel between two peoples,—the British people and the American people,—but, like all those events which mark the progress of the British race, it was a strife between two parties, the conservatives in both countries as one party, and the liberals in both countries as the other party; and some of its fiercest battles were fought in the British Parliament. Nor did it proceed in one country alone, but in both countries at the same time, with nearly equal step, and was essentially the same in each, so that at the close of the French War, if all the people of Great Britain had been transported to America and put in control of American affairs, and all the people of America had been transported to Great Britain and put in control of British affairs, the American Revolution and the contemporaneous British Revolution—for there was a contemporaneous British Revolution—might have gone on just the same, and with the same final results. But the British Revolution was to regain liberty; the American Revolution was to preserve liberty. Both peoples had a common history in the events which led to the Great Rebellion; but in the reaction which followed the Restoration, that part of the British race which awaited the conflict in the old home passed again under the power of the prerogative, and, after the accession of William III., came under the domination of the great Whig families. The British Revolution, therefore, was to recover what had been lost. But those who emigrated to the colonies left behind them institutions which were monarchical, in church and state, and set up institutions which were democratic. And it was to preserve, not to acquire, these democratic institutions that the liberal party carried the country through a long and costly war.[1]

The American Revolution, in its earlier stages at least, was not a contest between opposing governments or nationalities, but between two different political and economic systems, to each of which able and honest men then adhered, and now adhere. The motives and conduct of each party, therefore, ought to be stated with exact impartiality. It was not only inevitable, but wise, and on the whole wisely conducted in accordance with the traditions and methods of political action to which our British race had been accustomed. It was also honestly and fairly opposed by those who neither accepted revolutionary principles, nor recognized the validity of the reasons assigned for their application to the existing state of affairs.

Readers of American history from the Restoration of Charles II., in 1660, to the Revolution find frequent reference to the King's Prerogatives, Navigation Laws, Acts of Trade, and in later years to Writs of Assistance, as subjects of complaint between Great Britain and her colonies; and as these were among the immediate causes of the war, they require explanation. When the Earl of Hillsborough (April 22, 1768) required the House of Representatives of Massachusetts, through Governor Bernard (June 21st), in his majesty's name, to rescind the resolution which had given birth to their Circular Letter of February 11, 1768, the order was a claim of right by the king to control the legislative action of that province; and the refusal of the House was regarded by the prerogative party both in Great Britain and in the colonies as in derogation of the king's constitutional power.

What was the foundation of this alleged authority of the king over the colonies? By the public law of all civilized nations in the fifteenth century, the property in unoccupied lands belonged to the crown of the country by which they were discovered;[2] and if, as was generally the case, these lands were inhabited by savages, still the fee was in the crown, subject only to such use as might be made of them by wandering tribes. Such is the law to-day. This title to the English colonies was not in the people of England nor in the state, but in the crown, and descended with it. The crown alone could sell or give away these lands. The crown could make laws for the inhabitants, and repeal them; could appoint their rulers, and remove them. Parliament could do neither. The political relations of the colonists were to the crown, not to the government of England; nor were they in any respect subject to parliamentary legislation.[3] They were not citizens within the realm, nor, except in a qualified sense, of the empire, but subjects of the crown, having only such rights as it granted to them in their charters; and even these charters the crown claimed, and exercised the right to amend or revoke. James I. amended that of Virginia in 1624, and Charles II. revoked that of Massachusetts in 1684. They were regarded merely as charters of incorporated land companies, and, as such, subject to revocation by the king who granted them; and when these companies had developed into municipal governments, they were considered as still subject to alteration or repeal by the sovereign power,[4] although in both cases rights of property were saved to the owners. Strange as this doctrine may seem, it is now substantial law in England and in America.

To all these rights, privileges, and disabilities the emigrants agreed when they purchased lands from the crown; and the rights and duties, whether of the crown or of its subjects, descended to their respective successors. With such rights, though not in all cases with such views in respect to them, the colonists came to America; and such rights, and no more, their children possessed, under the British Constitution, at the time of the American Revolution, in the days of George III.

These claims of the crown every colony resisted as incompatible with its essential rights, and yet they were legal and constitutional prerogatives, admitted by the greatest judges of England, and most necessarily have been admitted in the colonies not only by Hutchinson and Oliver, but by James Otis and John Adams, had they sat as judges. It was on this legal and constitutional ground that the prerogative party stood both in England and in America.

But in England from the time of James I., and in America from the coming of Winthrop, there had been an anti-prerogative party; and as the prerogative party in England and the prerogative party in America were one and the same, so the anti-prerogative party in England and the anti-prerogative party in the colonies were one and the same, having similar views, and, though separated by a thousand leagues, working to the same end. On this question came the first political contest of the Revolution; that of parliamentary supremacy came later. The strength of one side was in legal and constitutional principles, as they were then interpreted by judicial tribunals; that of the other lay in the changes which were taking place in the British Constitution,—in short, in revolution. The revolutionary party succeeded in both countries: in America, by war; in England, by more silent influences which have greatly modified, if not destroyed, the prerogative.

Although the prerogative was a cardinal right in the British Constitution, and freely exercised by popular sovereigns like Elizabeth, it began to be questioned under James I., and resisted under Charles I., who lost his life in its defence, as James II. lost his crown.[5] But the progress of this revolution was not steady, nor did it always hold what it had gained. There came periods of reaction, one of which was in the early days of George III. He was strenuous in maintaining his prerogative, and, by the support of the "King's Friends", probably held it with a firmer hand than any of his predecessors since Elizabeth. The contest about the prerogatives encountered this difficulty: that successful resistance in a particular instance settled no principle, but left all other cases untouched.[6] The extension of the navigation acts to the colonies by Parliament, though assented to by King Charles II., was in derogation of his prerogatives; and so in the time of William III. (1696) was the attempt to transfer certain colonial affairs from the Privy Council, which represented the king, to a proposed Council of Commerce, which would have been the creature of Parliament. In consistency with these proceedings, the king's power over the colonies ought to have been transferred to Parliament; and instead of remaining the king's colonies, they ought to have become a part of the empire, and his authority over them no greater than that over the territory within the four seas. But it was otherwise. The colonists remained the king's subjects. He appointed their governors; he frequently set aside their laws, and over them he exercised his royal prerogatives. One capital point, however, had been gained by the revolutionary party on both sides of the water. Successful invasions of the prerogative had at length created what was called the "spirit of the constitution."[7] The loyalists, however, seemed to be firmly entrenched in their constitutional position, nor did the anti-prerogative party avoid a dilemma: how to escape out of the hands of the king without falling into the hands of Parliament. If, as some claimed when they resisted the royal prerogative, they were British subjects, entitled to the same rights and privileges as native-born subjects within the realm, why then should they, more than other subjects, be free from the burdens imposed by the imperial policy? But when, in pursuance of that policy, Parliament undertook to tax the colonies, then they were forced by the logic of the situation to claim that, though subjects of "the best of kings", they owed no more allegiance to Parliament than the Scotch did before the union.[8]

Probably no one more heartily detested the claims of the prerogative than Franklin; and yet the phase which the controversy had assumed compelled him to take high prerogative ground. Such was his position with regard to the Stamp Act, as is seen in the note below.[9] Andros himself could have asked for nothing better, in 1686; and when Franklin was asked what the king could do, should the colonies refuse just requisitions, he had no other answer than this,—that they would not refuse!

Such is the doctrine of the prerogative which gave rise to constant conflicts between the king and the colonists, from 1660 to 1774, and in every colony was among the political causes which led to the Revolution. But it was an English question as well as an American question,—a party question in both countries, and it was finally settled with the same result in each, though by different means. We must look further for the real controversy between the English people and the American people.

Another cause of the Revolution, but one which, in no strict sense, concerned the political relations between the people of Great Britain and the American colonists, was the attempt of the British merchants to monopolize the trade of the colonies, not for the benefit of the British people, but for their own. This also was a party question, on one side of which were arrayed the adherents of the Mercantile or Protective System, and on the other those of the Economic or Free Trade System. The mercantile class endeavored to subordinate colonial interests to the protective system by navigation laws and acts of trade; and the resistance of the colonists to these acts was a claim for free trade which finally involved them in a war with the mother country.

What were those navigation laws and acts of trade which called forth the invective of James Otis when he argued the Writs of Assistance, and revived in the bosom of the octogenarian John Adams the hearty curse he bestowed upon them in his youth; and on what foundation did they rest?[10]

Nations acquire new territories, and maintain and defend them, to promote their own interests, and not the interests of those who inhabit them; still less the interests of other nationalities. This has been the case in all ages and under all forms of government, to which our own age and nation form no exception. By the right of discovery the British crown became possessed of the territory included in the thirteen American colonies, settled mainly by British subjects. Lands were granted to individuals, or companies, with the expectation that they would build up prosperous communities, to contribute by their products and trade to the wealth of the mother country. On these purely selfish considerations she protected them; and when their trade was grown to be considerable and their markets valuable, the British merchants took measures to secure both, instead of sharing them with other nations, or allowing them to follow the interests of the colonists. Such was the policy of Great Britain at the dictation of the mercantile class; and in the maintenance of that policy, in sixty years between 1714 and 1774, she paid out of her Exchequer the enormous sum of £34,697,142 sterling, a sum greater than the estimated value of the whole real and personal property in the colonies.[11]

Between 1660 and 1770 Parliament enacted various laws whose enforcement produced irritation from the beginning, and had no inconsiderable influence in promoting the final rupture. These acts may be classed as,—First, navigation laws, designed to secure the naval and maritime supremacy of Great Britain throughout the world; these were aimed at the Dutch. Second, acts of trade, procured by the mercantile class, to monopolize the trade of the British colonies. Like the corn-laws of a later generation, these formed part of the protective system, and were dictated by class interest. Third, acts for the protection of British manufactures by preventing their growth in the colonies, where their best market was found. Fourth, acts designed to secure the strict execution of the preceding acts by establishing colonial admiralty courts, custom-houses, and boards of customs. Fifth, acts which imposed and regulated duties and port charges in commercial towns. In no sense were these acts for revenue, British or colonial. They brought nothing into the British Exchequer, but drew large sums from it.[12] They were passed solely in the interest of the mercantile and manufacturing classes, whose protection had much to do with bringing on the Revolution, but whose clamors happily prevented efficient measures for its suppression. These demonstrations, which gained them great credit in the colonies, grew out of their fear of losing not only the £4,000,000 due by their colonial debtors, but also their future trade.

Before the Grenville Act of 1764 no measures had been taken to relieve the Exchequer from demands on account of the colonies. The people and the government had suffered the mercantile and manufacturing classes to dictate their colonial policy. Not that the prosperity of these classes did not contribute to the general prosperity of the realm; for, on the contrary, it had made Great Britain the most affluent and powerful country on the globe. But this system did not promote the welfare of all classes alike; and when the time came, as it did after the frightful expenditure in the French War, that the Chancellor of the Exchequer was compelled to ask for ready money to pay the interest on the debt and to meet current expenses, neither the merchants nor the manufacturers, who had grown rich by the war, offered on that account to pay larger taxes, but they were quite willing that the British farmer should do so, or that a revenue should be sought from the American colonies.

Some account of these famous laws is essential at this point. There were three statutes embraced under the general term Navigation Laws and Acts of Trade, in which are to be found the principles of the Mercantile System. They were passed in 1660, 1663, and 1672, during the reign of Charles II., and may be found in the _Statutes at Large_,[13] with the following titles respectively: "An Act for the Encouraging and Increasing of Shipping and Navigation", "An Act for the Encouragement of Trade", and "An Act for the Encouragement of the Greenland and Eastland Trades, and for the Better Securing the Plantation Trade."[14]

The navigation laws will be more readily understood if we attend solely to their effect on the American colonies, and disregard unimportant exceptions and limitations. By the act of 1660, none but English or colonial ships could carry goods to or bring them from the colonies. This excluded all foreigners, and especially the Dutch, who at that time were the principal carriers for Europe. The result was that the colonists lost the advantage of their competition. Far more serious was the provision which restricted them from carrying sugar, tobacco, cotton, wool, indigo, ginger, fustic and all other dyeing wood, the product of any English colony, to any part of the world, except Great Britain, or some other English colony. This affected the English sugar islands of the West Indies and the Southern colonies, which were obliged to send their products to the overstocked English or colonial markets, more than it affected New England, whose great staples, lumber, fish, oil, ashes, and furs, were free to find their best market, provided only they were sent in English or colonial vessels.

British merchants not satisfied with this monopoly procured a more stringent act in 1663, which provided that no commodity, the growth, product, or manufacture of Europe, should be imported into the colonies, except in English-built ships, sailing from English ports. By this act England became the sole market in which the colonists could purchase the products or manufactures of Europe, nor could they send their own ships for them, unless English-built or bought before October 1, 1662. They were obliged to buy in English markets and import in English vessels.[15] This discouraged ship-building for the European trade in a country full of timber, and compelled the payment of charges and profits to English factors dealing in Continental goods for the American market.

By these two acts British merchants had undertaken to monopolize, with certain exceptions, the carrying trade of the colonies and their markets for the sale and the purchase of goods. But avarice was not satisfied. There had grown up a trade, especially profitable to New England, with the Southern colonies which were without shipping. By the act of 1660, foreign and intercolonial trade in certain articles was permitted, with the expectation that it would be limited to necessary local supply. But Boston merchants, shipping to that port tobacco and some other colonial products in excess of the local demand, sent the surplus to Continental Europe, without payment of British or colonial duties, and thus undersold the British trader, who had paid heavy import duties. To suppress this profitable irregularity, it was enacted in 1672 that the enumerated products shipped to other colonies should be first transported to England, and thence to the purchasing colony. The colonial merchants had the option, however, of bringing tobacco, for instance, from Virginia direct to Massachusetts, first paying an export duty equivalent to the English import duty.[16]

These enactments subjected colonial interests to those of British ship-owners and merchants; and as they had been thus duly protected, the manufacturers in turn claimed similar protection by statutes which should prevent the colonists from setting up competing manufactories.[17] How could there have been any difference of opinion among the colonists respecting such statutes? A general answer is, that the colonial system, which regarded the colonies as feeders for the navigation, trade, and manufactures of the parent state, was the accepted doctrine of European statesmen. Pitt was its stanchest advocate, and Burke its rational friend. Adam Smith, who assaulted it in 1776,[18] did not succeed in overthrowing it. Twenty-five years later, Henry Brougham controverted Smith's views.[19] It is not strange, therefore, that it found advocates among the colonists themselves. It was also far from being a one-sided question.

James Otis's arguments on the Writs of Assistance and John Adams's letters to William Tudor, by dwelling on the injurious features of these acts, and passing over all compensating considerations, give an erroneous notion of them. The idea that they originated in a hostile disposition of the British people or merchants towards the colonists is not entitled to a moment's consideration. They formed a commercial policy, not a political policy. The more numerous, wealthy, and prosperous the colonists became, the more useful they were to the British merchants, so long as they could monopolize the trade. That was their object; and where the freedom of colonial trade would not interfere with British trade, it was left free. For example, the most profitable trade of New England was with the French and Spanish West India Islands and the Spanish Main. The short distance favored small vessels and small capitals. The exchange of lumber, grain, cattle, and fish for sugar and molasses, with an occasional voyage to the coast of Africa for slaves, during that traffic,[20] yielded rich returns. This trade was free; and so was that of Asia and Africa, and some ports of Europe, except for certain enumerated articles. It was not only permitted, but with respect to some commodities was encouraged by bounties. Between 1714 and 1774, the colonists, chiefly those of New England, received £1,609,345 sterling on their commodities exported to Great Britain;[21] and through a system of drawbacks, by which the duties on goods imported into England were repaid on their exportation to America, the colonists often bought Continental goods cheaper than could the subjects within the realm. These favors no more indicated good will than the restrictions indicated hostility. Both rested on purely commercial considerations. There were other compensations. The naval supremacy of Great Britain, due chiefly to the navigation laws, protected colonial commerce in whatever seas it was pushed; and the stimulus of monopoly withdrew British capital from other less lucrative enterprises, and directed it to the colonies, where it was freely used by planters in developing lands which otherwise would have been uncultivated for lack of capital.[22] And although certain colonial produce was obliged to find its only European market in England, it had the monopoly of that market.

If it was a hardship to the tobacco growers of Maryland and Virginia to be compelled to send that product to England, they had this advantage, that no Englishman could use any other. He was forbidden by penal statutes to grow his own supply even in his own garden. As to those laws which restrained manufactures in the colonies, it was the opinion of Henry Brougham,[23] who cites Franklin as an authority, that they merely prohibited the colonist from making articles which could have been more cheaply purchased.[24] He could import a hat from England for less than it cost to make one, and he did so. But the best ground for nominal submission to the navigation laws and acts of trade was found in their easy evasion, and the fact that they never were, and never could have been, rigidly enforced. From the first, all attempts to enforce them led to dissatisfaction. Randolph's revenue seizures in the time of Charles II. and James II. had no small influence in overthrowing Andros's government in the revolution of 1689, and so had Charles Paxton's in bringing on the American Revolution.

Before the new policy of enforcing these laws was entered upon, the colonies enjoyed British naval protection; they possessed the monopoly of the British market; they drew bounties from the British Exchequer; they purchased European goods more cheaply than the British people could do; and, stating the facts somewhat broadly, they manufactured whatever they found to be for their advantage, and sent their ships wherever they pleased, notwithstanding the navigation laws and acts of trade. The result was that the colonies, especially barren and frozen New England, engrossed most profitable commerce which England had attempted to monopolize, and increased in wealth beyond all colonial precedent.[25] But these halcyon days were destined to pass under clouds. British merchants had seen from the beginning the amassing of fortunes in the colonies by illicit trade, and the falling off of their own. They had striven to enforce the laws, and Parliament had lent its assistance,—but in vain. Under the first charter of Massachusetts, the collector of customs was the governor, whose annual election depended upon the good will of those who were evading the navigation laws; under the second charter, the governor was appointed by the king, and sworn to enforce those laws. But colonial juries generally checkmated the king's representative. Then followed admiralty courts without juries, which produced indignant protests. The new system was irritating rather than efficient on a long line of coast filled with bays, creeks, and ports not patrolled by revenue cutters. The British merchant was foiled, and anger was the result. The attempt to monopolize the commerce of the colonies was a failure; and so long as the navigation laws were a dead letter the advantages of the situation were with the colonists. They were content.

But the time came at the close of the French War when the mercantile system was subordinated to a revenue system, and the enforcement of the navigation laws and acts of trade, made more stringent by some new ones, became the policy of the government. Its instruments were admiralty courts with enlarged jurisdiction, commissioners of customs, writs of assistance, and an adequate naval force. When that time came, the Revolution was not far off![26]

In 1755, Shirley, then governor of Massachusetts, had persuaded the General Court to attempt by a stamp act to meet the expenses of the French War. This produced an irritation like that which followed in 1765 the act of the British ministry;[27] and to Shirley, as much as to any other man, perhaps, was due the suggestion of those parliamentary measures which led to the Revolution. Long residence in Boston and his profession as a lawyer had made him familiar with the evasions of the navigation laws; and his larger duties as commander-in-chief, in which he found much difficulty in bringing the colonial assemblies into concerted and efficient action, doubtless suggested measures which were adopted by the British ministry. However this may have been, the enforcement of the navigation laws was taken in hand for the first time by the government, and no longer left to depend upon private interests. This unwonted activity was shown as early as 1754. Its most formidable weapon was the Writ of Assistance.

More than four years before the passage of the Stamp Act, James Otis had resisted the granting of these writs before the Superior Court of Massachusetts. John Adams, then a student of law, took notes of Otis's argument, and fifty-six years later wrote: "Then and there was the first scene of the first act of opposition to the arbitrary claims of Great Britain. Then and there the child Independence was born."[28] This was no mere rhetorical phrase.[29] The influence of this controversy in producing the Revolution is not wholly due to the fiery eloquence of Otis, whose words, said John Adams, "breathed into the nation the breath of life", nor to the range of his argument, which called in question the mercantile and political systems of Great Britain, but to their effect upon the commercial interest—then the leading one—of New England; for if the latent powers of these writs were set free, and used by the revenue officers, the commerce of Boston, Salem, and Newport would have been effectually crippled. Authorized in England, they were extended to the colonies by an act of William III.[30] The officers of customs, however, instead of applying to the courts for them, relied upon the implied powers of their commissions, and forcibly entered warehouses for contraband goods. The people grew uneasy, and some stood upon their rights against the officers, whose activity was stimulated by documents like that given in the note below.[31]

Governor Shirley issued these writs, though the power to do so was solely in the court.[32] But they would have held a less important place in the history of the Revolution had it not been for the concurrence of several circumstances. All writs become invalid on the demise of the crown and six months thereafter. George II. died October 25, 1760, and the news reached Boston December 27th. The government had already resolved upon a more vigorous enforcement of the revenue laws. The king had instructed Bernard, the newly appointed governor of Massachusetts, to "be aiding and assisting to the collectors and other officers of our admiralty and customs in putting in execution" the acts of trade. Pitt also directed the colonial governors to prevent trade with the enemy and a commerce which was "in open contempt of the authority of the mother country, as well as to the most manifest prejudice of the manufactures and trade of Great Britain."[33] Seizures of uncustomed goods were frequent. The third part of the forfeiture of molasses which belonged to the province amounted before 1761 to nearly five hundred pounds in money. Bernard arrived in August, 1760. Chief Justice Sewall, who had expressed doubts as to the legality of writs of assistance, died September 11th; and Hutchinson, his successor, took his seat January 27, 1761. As the outstanding writs had become invalid, their renewal became necessary. But when Charles Paxton, the surveyor at Boston, appeared for that purpose in the Superior Court, February term, 1761, he was confronted by a petition signed by sixty inhabitants of the province, chiefly merchants of Boston, who desired to be heard in opposition, in person and by their counsel, James Otis and Oxenbridge Thacher. Otis, Advocate-General for the crown, had resigned his office to avoid supporting the writ.[34] Gridley, the Attorney-General, appeared in his stead. No complete report of the arguments has been preserved.[35] Gridley, who treated the question as purely one of law, to be determined by statutes and precedents, said of Otis's argument, that "quoting history is not speaking like a lawyer;" and as to the arbitrary nature of the writ which allowed the entry of private houses in search of uncustomed goods, he reminded him that by a province law a collector of taxes, without execution, judgment, or trial, could arrest and throw a delinquent taxpayer into prison. "What! shall my property be wrested from me? Shall my liberty be destroyed by a collector for a debt unadjudged, without the common indulgence and lenity of the law? So it is established; and the necessity of having public taxes effectually and speedily collected is of infinitely greater moment to the whole than the liberty of any individual."

Otis's argument is well known. Carried to its logical results, it was a plea for commercial and political independence of the colonies, and was fully vindicated by the result of the conflict it precipitated. But as a legal argument it is less conclusive.[36]

The majority of the court, however, were with Otis; and had judgment been given at the time, the decision would have been in his favor. But Hutchinson counselled delay until the practice in England could be learned; and as it appeared that such writs were issued, of course, from the Exchequer, on the 18th of November, the court, after re-argument, pronounced them to be legal. Thenceforth they were freely used. Otis's argument, without doubt, secured his election to the General Court in May, in which his influence was second to that of no other in bringing on the struggle which ended in independence. Nor was its effect limited to Massachusetts. It reached the remotest colonies, and, as John Adams said, led to "the revolution in the principles, views, opinions, and feelings of the American people."[37]

Revolution, however, had been long impending. The treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle in October, 1748, which put an end to the long war between England and France, opened with the declaration that "Europe sees the day which the Divine Providence had pointed out for the reëstablishment of its repose. A general peace succeeds to a long and bloody war." But neither the peace, nor the treaty by which it was secured, was satisfactory to one of the belligerents; for England had failed to secure the commercial advantages for which the war had been undertaken, and the terms of the treaty, requiring her to give hostages for the restoration of Cape Breton to France, excited the indignation of the British people. Nor were other causes for the renewal of the war wanting. The aggressive policy of France in respect to the English possessions in Acadia and along the Ohio and the Mississippi, notwithstanding the treaty, soon produced its legitimate results. The Seven Years' War followed. In Asia and in the West Indies, the maritime powers measured their strength by sea. At the same time in North America, England and her colonies on the one side, and France on the other, contended for the empire of the continent. Led by Clive, Wolfe, Amherst, and Rodney, and inspired by the genius of Pitt, the forces of England everywhere prevailed, and she took the first place among the nations.

On the 10th of February, 1763, at Paris, was signed the treaty that recognized the extinction of the French empire in North America. This treaty marks an epoch in the history of America, as well as in that of England and of France. To the latter it was a period of humiliation, not only in the loss of colonies upon which, for nearly a century, she had expended vast sums without any adequate return, but also in the frustration of her purpose of gaining sole possession of the continent.

By England it was regarded as the close of a contest to maintain her power on the same continent, and make it subservient to her commercial and manufacturing interests, which had lasted for nearly a hundred years. Yet there was a well-founded apprehension, expressed at the time, that her colonies, relieved from the fear of French aggressions, would throw off the authority of the mother country.[38] What was the fear of the mother country, on the other hand, was the hope and expectation, more or less remote, of the colonies. For the experience gained in the French wars was of great value to them in the revolutionary struggle. Officers had become familiar with the direction of large bodies of troops, and with the means of their transport and supply; and soldiers had learned that efficiency depended upon discipline. Provincial assemblies also had been taught to look for safety in strategic operations remote from their own territory. But at no time before the assembling of the congress of 1754 had the colonies been called to consider such a union of all as would give unity to military operations, and secure the semblance, at least, of a general government. The union proposed at that time would have involved some loss of independence, without securing any efficient means of enforcing the recommendations of the congress, and so the colonies hesitated, and finally laid it aside. But there can be no doubt that the consideration given to it by the several colonies led them more readily to come together for concerted action in the congress of 1765.

* * * * *

The year 1763 is usually regarded as the beginning of the American Revolution, because in that year the English ministry determined to raise a revenue from the colonies. This led to a contest, which, like most civil wars, was long and embittered. It engendered feelings which have not yet passed away,—feelings which interfere with a calm and dispassionate review of the motives of the parties concerned, and of the circumstances which attended their controversy. It was a war between Britons and the descendants of Britons, who, with a common ancestry, laws, and manners, retained their essential race characteristics in spite of the lapse of time or the change of place: everywhere and always lovers of liberty, but in power haughty, insolent, and aggressive on the weak, and in subjection turbulent and impatient of restraint; proud of ancestry, partial to old customs and precedents, but quick to resist laws which impede the course of equity, and never permitting forms to prevent the accomplishment of substantial justice. Such was the parent and such was the child: and in the light of these facts we are to read the history of the Revolution. It exhibited the race in no new light, nor did the contest involve any new principle. Its sentiments were expressed in the old idiomatic language,—petition, remonstrance, riot, war.

For more than a hundred years the colonies had been regarded as appendages to the crown rather than as an integral part of the empire; and when Parliament, at the instigation of the mercantile classes and in derogation of royal prerogative, began at the close of the seventeenth century to assume control over them, and, a few years later, to vote large sums from the imperial treasury for their protection, and, in some cases, for the support of their civil governments, that body looked for reimbursement to the profits which would inure to British merchants from the monopoly of colonial trade and navigation, and flow indirectly into the national Exchequer. But with the close of the French War a new policy seemed to become necessary. The debt had swelled to frightful proportions. The British people were groaning under the weight of the annual interest and their current expenses. Every source of revenue seemed to be drained, and the ministry turned their eyes for relief to the colonies; not, indeed, for relief from the present debt, but from the necessity of adding to it the whole expense of defending the colonies. This was the fatal mistake which precipitated the Revolution. On this subject, however, there seems to be some misapprehension. The popular idea was, and still is, that the colonists were to be taxed to pay the interest on the national debt and the current expenses of the government, and that all moneys raised in the colonies were to pass into the British Exchequer (thus draining them of their specie), there to remain subject to the king's warrant. Such, however, was not the scheme of the ministry. Not a farthing was to leave America. All sums collected were to be deposited in the colonial treasuries, and only certificates thereof were to be sent to the Exchequer. These were to be kept apart from the general funds, and, after defraying the charges of the administration of justice and the support of the civil government within all or any of the colonies, they were to be subject to parliamentary appropriation for their defence, protection, and security, and for no other purpose.[39]

The alleged necessity was this: The government had broken the French power in Canada, and shaken its hold upon the lakes and great rivers of the West. This achievement, so glorious to the empire, and therefore to the colonies as parts of it, and more immediately for their benefit, had added one hundred and forty millions to the national debt, under which the subjects within the realm were staggering. While some colonies had been tardy or negligent in furnishing their quotas of men and money for the war, yet it was acknowledged that as a whole they had borne their fair proportion of the expense, and that some had exceeded their share. So far all was clear. Although Canada had been conquered mainly for the colonies, still the conquest added to the security and glory of the empire, and the accounts for past expenditures were squared. But what of the future? As these possessions had been acquired, a stable government was needed for them, both for the safety of the colonies and for the honor of England. They were still inhabited by Indians under French influence, and they might become dangerous unless controlled by military power. Choiseul, the great French minister, informed by the reports of his secret agent, foresaw the complications likely to arise in the government of the colonies, and was not without hope of retrieving by diplomacy the losses which had occurred from war. Forts and garrisons were necessary. Although the Northern colonies were comparatively secure, the Carolinas and Georgia were menaced by powerful and hostile tribes. The government must regard the colonies as a unit, of which all parts were entitled to imperial protection. To this view of the case there could be no sound objection. Twenty thousand troops,—Pitt thought more would be needed,—besides civil officers to regulate such affairs as did not fall within colonial jurisdictions, were to be sent to the colonies. At whose expense ought these military and civil forces to be maintained? The British farmer objected to pay for the protection of his untaxed colonial competitor in the British market. If the colonies were to continue to be governed in the interest of the mercantile classes, upon them might reasonably fall the expense of their protection. But the acquisition of vast territories required a new policy, and it was deemed equitable that they should be defended at the expense of the empire of which the colonies were a part. They had claimed and received imperial protection, and they ought to bear a proportional part of the cost, which might be collected under the imperial authority with the same certainty and promptness as were taxes on other subjects of the king. This was the ministerial view of the matter as I gather it from the debates in Parliament.

This claim of the ministry was met by the liberal party on both sides of the water in two ways. It was asserted that the late war, and in fact all the wars which affected the colonies, had been waged in the interest of commerce and for the aggrandizement of the realm of which they were no part, and that the newly acquired territories were of doubtful advantage to colonies as yet sparsely populated. But if these considerations were not conclusive, still the colonists ought not to be taxed, because the imperial government by monopolizing their trade received far more than the colonial share of the expense attending their defence. The liberals also asserted that there was no disposition on the part of the colonists to seek exemption from a reasonable share of these imperial expenses; but as in the past they had voluntarily contributed their part, and in some cases even more, so they would in the future; and that in the future, as in the past, these contributions ought to be voluntary, and the frequency and amount to be determined by the provincial assemblies. Moreover, as the colonists neither had, nor could have, any equitable or efficient representation in the imperial Parliament, they could not consent to have their property taken from them by representatives not chosen by themselves.

The ministry and their adherents replied that the foregoing arguments, even if sound, were such as no party charged with the administration of affairs, and obliged to raise a certain amount of money from a people clamorous for relief from present taxes, could accept; that no reliance could be placed on voluntary contributions; that the necessities of government required that money should be raised by some system which would act with regularity and certainty, and reach the unwilling as well as the willing; that even in the last war, when the existence of the English colonies was threatened by a foe moving with celerity by reason of its unity, the movements of English troops had been delayed by the backwardness of the colonies in furnishing their quotas; and now that the pressure of the French power was removed from New England, that section would leave the Middle and Southern colonies to their own resources, especially when it was remembered how remiss those colonies had been in assisting the north and east when attacked.[40] It was also answered that so far from the monopoly of the colonial trade being a set-off to the expenses incurred by the mother country in defending the colonies, the fact was notorious that by the evasion of the navigation laws and acts of trade the colonists had escaped the restrictions intended by those laws, and at the same time had received bounties and drawbacks from the British Exchequer which enabled them to undersell the British merchants in the markets of Europe.

Here was a deadlock. The arguments on both sides seemed conclusive. No practical solution of the difficulty was proposed at the time, nor has been since. Both parties were firm in their convictions. Neither could yield without the surrender of essential rights. A conflict was unavoidable unless one party would relinquish the authority claimed by the imperial government; unavoidable unless the colonies, essentially free by growth, development, and distance, would yield to pretensions incompatible with their rights as British subjects. The new policy contemplated after the treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle in 1748 was carried into effect after the treaty of Paris in 1763. But nothing could have been more unfortunate than the time at which Great Britain inaugurated this policy, and no ministers than those by whom it was to be carried out. On essential political questions which divided the colonists and the mother country Great Britain herself was in the midst of a revolution. The new policy which was inaugurated fell into the hands of those opposed to it. Whig ministers were charged with the execution of an illiberal and reactionary scheme. Consequently, the administration of American affairs was weak and vacillating. The result was inevitable. Had Pitt, with his large views and great administrative abilities, been at the head of affairs for ten years after the peace, the Revolution might have been postponed. On the other hand, had the mercantile system during the same period been administered with the unity of purpose and thoroughness of measures which characterized Carleton's administration in Canada, and had it been enforced by the military genius of Clive, the rebellion might have been temporarily suppressed.

In the journals and statutes of the provincial assemblies we find from the beginning a similarity of causes leading to the final rupture. There are the same quarrels about the royal prerogative; the same repugnance to the navigation laws and acts of trade; the same unwillingness to make permanent provision for the support of the royal governors and judges, and the same restiveness under interference with their internal affairs; but owing either to differences in their original constitutions or of interests, commercial and agricultural, or because of varied nationality and religion, or by reason of all these causes combined, discontent was less general in the Southern than in the Northern colonies. Of the Northern colonies, in Massachusetts we find the causes which brought on the war operative and continuous from the beginning. Party strife between friends and opponents of prerogative existed in other colonies, but in Massachusetts the conflict broke out with special virulence between the adherents of Otis and those of Hutchinson. It was also intensified by the pecuniary interests of a large part of the inhabitants of Boston, which were affected by the enforcement of the navigation laws through the aid of writs of assistance. It was for this enforcement that Hutchinson was held responsible when the mob sacked his house, and were ready to do violence to his person.

The province had received from the British Exchequer more than £60,000 sterling for the war expenses of 1759, and nearly £43,000 for those of 1761. Money was plentiful, and more was expected from the same source. There was a lull in the angry storm of local politics when news of the preliminaries of peace reached Boston in January, 1763. With this came assurances that Parliament would reimburse the colonies for expenses incurred, beyond their proportion, in the last year of the war; and the two Houses of the General Court agreed upon an address expressing gratitude to the king for protection against the French power, and full of loyalty and duty. But quiet was not of long continuance. The close of the war dried up several sources of profitable trade or adventure,[41]—some legal, such as furnishing supplies to the king's forces, and some illicit. Then came orders from the Board of Trade to enforce the navigation laws, heretofore chiefly evaded, but now to be enforced with the aid of writs of assistance. At the same time plans were entertained by the cabinet for making changes in the constitutions of the colonies; and what was hardly less opportune, the English bishops incessantly pressed upon the ministry the adoption of archbishop Secker's scheme of introducing an episcopal hierarchy into America, which would have carried with it some of the worst features of the prerogative.[42] The history of the period from the treaty of 1763 to the meeting of the Continental Congress at Philadelphia in 1774 is a narrative of an attempt by the British ministry to enforce certain measures upon unwilling colonists, and of the resistance of the colonists to those measures. Who were the ministers, what were their measures, and how did the colonists resist them?

Pitt had carried the country through a long and glorious war; but he was not satisfied with the results. The cost had been heavy, and as a guaranty against future expense he meditated the substantial annihilation of the French power. He knew that France and Spain had entered into the Family Compact with a view to a war with England. War with Spain was only a question of time, and he would have anticipated its declaration by seizing the immense treasure belonging to that power, then on the sea. This would have replenished the British Exchequer, and perhaps have deferred a resort to American taxation. Pitt urged this measure at a cabinet meeting, September 18, 1761. His advice was not followed, and he resigned October 5. But war was declared against Spain, January 1, 1762, and carried on with brilliant results, though the golden opportunity of securing the Spanish treasure was lost. The preliminaries of peace were signed at Fontainebleau, November 3, 1763.

(From Andrews's _Hist. of the War_, London, 1785, vol. i. It follows a painting by Reynolds. Cf. cut in Murray's _History_, vol. i.—ED.)]

This virtually ended Pitt's connection with the ministry and with the conduct of American affairs as a leader; for although he was again at the head of the ministry from August 2, 1766, to October, 1768, his direction was merely nominal. It was during his administration that the Townshend Acts were passed, and the Mutiny Act extended to the colonies,—facts which show divided counsels and the lack of uniform purpose. Pitt seldom appeared in the ministry except to oppose his own government. Whenever his great powers were most needed by sore-pressed colleagues to devise some practicable policy for replenishing the Exchequer, or for governing the colonies, he was in the country wrestling with the gout. This was a serious loss to the mother country, but it hastened the independence of America.

From Doyle's _Official Baronage_, ii. 89. It follows Dance's picture. Cf. J. C. Smith's _Brit. Mez. Portraits_, i. p. 135; Gay's _Pop. Hist. U. S._, iii. 365; Walpole's _Last Journals_.—ED.]

The terms of peace with France were settled by Bute and Bedford, against the views of Pitt; but on April 16, 1763, Bute retired from the ministry, before the new policy for the government of the colonies had been fully developed. He was succeeded by George Grenville, who continued at the head of the government until July, 1765. Grenville was able, well informed, and thoroughly honest. His knowledge of financial matters was extensive and accurate, and, as Chancellor of the Exchequer during the preceding administration, he had become familiar with the difficulties of providing for the expenses of government. No question could have been more perplexing at this time. A certain amount of revenue was required to meet the interest on the public debt, and to defray current expenses. Economic theories of commercial policy would not serve as an item in the budget. The minister needed the money, and the Stamp Act was framed and passed. He also encountered other difficulties when public sentiment had become inflamed by the question of General Warrants. His relations to the king were unfriendly. Pitt threw his influence into the scale of the opposition, and Grenville's administration was a failure.