Chapter XLI: Appendix: A. to Chapter X

DISCUSSION BETWEEN CHARLES TOWNSEND AND COLONEL BARRÉ IN THE DEBATE ON PASSING THE STAMP ACT, REFERRED TO ON PAGE 293.

It was during the discussion on this Bill that Colonel Barré made the famous retort to Mr. Charles Townsend, head of the Board of Trade. Mr. Townsend made an able speech in support of the Bill and the equity of the taxation, and insisted that the colonies had borne but a small proportion of the expenses of the last war, and had yet obtained by it immense advantages at a vast expense to the mother country. He concluded in the following words:

"And now will these American children, planted by our care, nourished by our indulgence to a degree of strength and opulence, and protected by our arms, grudge to contribute their mite to relieve us from the heavy burden under which we lie?"

As he sat down, Colonel Barré rose and replied with great energy, and, under the influence of intense excitement, uttered the following impassioned retort to the concluding words of Charles Townsend's speech:

"_They planted by your care!_ No; your oppressions planted them in America. They fled from your tyranny to a then uncultivated, inhospitable country, where they exposed themselves to almost all the hardships to which human nature is liable, and among others to the cruelties of a savage foe--the most subtle, and I will take upon me to say the most formidable of any people upon the face of God's earth; and yet, actuated by principles of true English liberty, they met all hardships with pleasure, compared with those they suffered in their own country from the hands of those who should have been their friends.

"_They nourished by your indulgence!_ They grew by your neglect of them. As soon as you began to care about them, that care was exercised in sending persons to rule over them, in one department and another, who were perhaps the deputies of deputies to some members of this House, sent to spy out their liberties, to misrepresent their actions, and to prey upon them; men whose behaviour, on many occasions, has caused the blood of those _sons of liberty_ to recoil within them; men promoted to the highest seats of justice--some who, to my knowledge, were glad, by going to a foreign country, to escape being brought to the bar of a Court of justice in their own.

"_They protected by your arms!_ They have nobly taken up arms in your defence; have exerted a valour amidst their constant and laborious industry, for the defence of a country whose frontier was drenched in blood, while its interior parts yielded all its little savings to your emolument. And, believe me--remember, I this day told you so--the same spirit of freedom which actuated that people at first will accompany them still. But prudence forbids me to explain myself further. God knows, I do not at this time speak from motives of party heat; what I deliver are the genuine sentiments of my heart. However superior to me in general knowledge and experience the respectable body of this House may be, yet I claim to know more of America than most of you, having seen and been conversant in that country. The people, I believe, are as truly loyal as any subjects the King has; but a people jealous of their liberties, and who will vindicate them if ever they should be violated. But the subject is too delicate; I will say no more."

_Remarks on the Speeches of Mr. Charles Townsend and Colonel Barré._

Perhaps the English language does not present a more eloquent and touching appeal than these words of Colonel Barré, the utterances of a sincere and patriotic heart. They were taken down by a friend at the time of delivery, sent across the Atlantic, published and circulated in every form throughout America, and probably produced more effect upon the minds of the colonists than anything ever uttered or written. Very likely not one out of a thousand of those who have read them, carried away by their eloquence and fervour, has ever thought of analysing them to ascertain how far they are just or true; yet I am bound to say that their misstatements are such as to render their argument fallacious from beginning to end, with the exception of their just tribute to the character of the American colonists.

The words of Charles Townsend were insulting to the colonists to the last degree, and were open to the severest rebuke. He assumed that because the settlements in America were infant settlements, in comparison with those of the mother country, the settlers themselves were but children, and should be treated as such; whereas the fathers of new settlements and their commerce, the guiding spirits in their advancement, are the most advanced men of their nation and age, the pioneers of enterprise and civilization; and as such they are entitled to peculiar respect and consideration, instead of their being referred to as children, and taxed without their consent by men who, whatever their rank in the society and public affairs of England, could not compare with them in what constituted real manhood greatness. But though Charles Townsend's insulting haughtiness to the American colonists, and his proposal to treat them as minors, destitute of the feelings and rights of grown-up Englishmen, merited the severest rebuke, yet that did not justify the statements and counter-pretensions on which Colonel Barré founded that rebuke. Let us briefly examine some of his statements.

1. He says that the oppressions of England planted the settlers in America, who fled from English tyranny to a then uncultivated, inhospitable country.

In reply it may be affirmed, as a notorious fact, that the southern and middle colonies, even to Pennsylvania, were nationalized by the kings of England from their commencement, and were frequently assisted by both King and Parliament. The Dutch and the Swedes were the fathers of the settlements of New York and New Jersey. The "Pilgrim Fathers," the founders of the Plymouth colony, did, however, flee from persecution in England in the first years of King James, but found their eleven years' residence in Holland less agreeable than settlement under English rule, or rather English indulgence, in America. The founders of the Massachusetts Bay settlement were a Puritan section of the Church of England, of which they professed to be devoted members after they embarked for America. A wealthy company of them determined to found a settlement in America, where they could enjoy the pure worship of the Church of England without the ceremonies enjoined by Archbishop Laud--where they could convert the savage Indians, and pursue the fur and fish trade, and agriculture; but they were no more driven to America by the "tyranny" of England, than the hundreds of thousands of Puritans who remained in England, overthrew the monarchy, beheaded the king, abolished the Church of England, first established Presbyterianism and then abolished it, and determined upon the establishment of Congregationalism at the moment of Cromwell's death. But those "Puritan Fathers" who came to Massachusetts Bay, actually came under the auspices of a "Royal Charter," which they cherished as the greatest boon conferred upon any people. But among their first acts after their arrival at Massachusetts Bay was that to abolish the Church of England worship itself, and set up the Congregational worship in its place; to proscribe the Common Prayer Book, and forbid its use even in private families, and to banish those who persisted in its use. And instead of converting and christianizing the savage heathen--the chief professed object of their emigration, and so expressed in their Royal Charter of incorporation--they never sent a missionary or established a school among them for more than twelve years; and then the first and long the only missionary among the Indians was John Elliott, self-appointed, and supported by contributions from England. But during those twelve years, and afterwards, they slew the Indians by thousands, as the Canaanites and Amalekites, to be rooted out of the land which God had given to "the saints" (that is, to themselves), to be possessed and enjoyed by them. The savage foe, whose arms were bows and arrows,[276] were made "formidable" in defence of their homes, which they had inherited from their forefathers; and if, in defence and attempted recovery of their homes when driven from them, they inflicted, after their own mode of warfare, "cruelties" upon their invaders, yet they themselves were the greatest sufferers, almost to annihilation.[277]

2. "The colonies being nourished by the indulgence" of England, assumed by Charles Townsend, is the second ground of Colonel Barré's retort, who affirmed that the colonies grew by England's neglect of them, and that as soon as she began to care for them, that care was exercised in sending persons to rule over them in one department or another, etc.

In reply, let it be remembered that three out of the four New England colonies--Plymouth, Rhode Island, and Connecticut--elected their own governors and officers from the beginning to the end of their colonial existence, as did Massachusetts during the first half century of her first Charter, which she forfeited by her usurpations, persecutions, and encroachments upon the rights of others, as I have shown in Chapter VI. of this history; and it has been shown in Chapter VII., on the authority of Puritan ministers, jurists, and historians, that during the seventy years that Massachusetts was ruled under the second Royal Charter, her governors being appointed by the Crown, she advanced in social unity, in breadth and dignity of legislation, and in equity of government, commerce, and prosperity, beyond anything she had enjoyed and manifested under the first Charter--so much so, that the neighbouring colonies would have gladly been favoured with her system of government. It is possible there may have been individual instances of inefficiency, and even failure of character, in some officers of the Government during a period of seventy years, as is the case in all Governments, but such instances were few, if they occurred at all, and such as to afford no just pretext for the rhapsody and insinuations of Colonel Barré on the subject.

3. In the third place, Colonel Barré denied that the colonies had been defended by the arms of England, and said, on the contrary, "they have nobly taken arms in your defence." It is true the colonists carried on their own local contests with the Indians. The northern colonies conceived the idea of driving the French out of America, and twice attacked Quebec for that purpose, but they failed; and the French and Indians made such encroachments upon them that they implored aid from England "to prevent their being driven into the sea." It was not until England "nobly took up arms" in their behalf, and sent navies and armies for their "defence," that the progress of French arms and Indian depredations were arrested in America, and the colonists were delivered from enemies who had disturbed their peace and endangered their safety for more than a century. At the close of the last French war, the colonies themselves, through their Legislatures, gratefully acknowledged their indebtedness to the mother country for their deliverance and safety, which, without her aid, they said they never could have secured.