integrity was not debauched; no son rose against his father, no friend betrayed his friend. Fidelity to their religion, chastity, and respect for the ties of family, remained characteristics of the down-trodden race.

1763.

Relief was to come through the conflicts of the North American colonies with Great Britain. Ireland and America, in so far as both were oppressed by the commercial monopoly of England, had a common cause; and, while the penal statutes against the Catholics did not affect the Anglo-Irish, they suffered equally with the native Irish from the mercantile system. The restrictions of the acts of trade extended not to America only, but to the sister kingdom. It had harbors, but it could not send a sail across the Atlantic; nor receive sugar or coffee, or other colonial produce, but from England; nor ship directly to the colonies, even in English vessels, any thing but "servants and horses and victuals," and at last linens; and this classing together of "servants and horses as articles of the export trade gave the sanction of the British parliament to traffic in bond-servants.

Its great staple was wool; its most important natural manufacture was the woollen. "I shall do all that lies in my power to discourage the woollen manufactures of Ireland," said William of Orange. The exportation of Irish woollens to the colonies and to foreign countries was prohibited; and restrictive laws so interfered with the manufacture that Irishmen would probably not be allowed to wear coats of their own fabric.

In the course of years, the "English colonists" themselves began to be domiciliated in Ireland; and, with the feeling that the country in which they dwelt was their home, there grew up discontent that it continued to be treated as a conquered country. Proceeding by insensible degrees, they at length maintained openly the legislative equality of the two kingdoms. In 1692, the Irish house of commons claimed "the sole and undoubted right to prepare and resolve the means of raising money." In 1698, Molyneux, an Irish Protestant, and member for the university of Dublin, asserted, through the press, the perfect and recip

rocal independence of the Irish and English parliaments; that Ireland was not bound by the acts of a legislative body in which it was not represented. Two replies were written to the tract, which was also formally condemned by the English house of commons. When in 1719 the Irish house of lords denied the judicial power of the house of lords of Great Britain for Ireland, the British parliament, making a precedent for all its outlying dominions, enacted that "the king, with the consent of the parliament of Great Britain, had, hath, and of right ought to have, full power and authority to make laws and statutes of force to bind the people and the kingdom of Ireland."

1763.

But the opposite opinion was held with unabated vigor by the Anglo-Irish statesmen. The people set the example of resisting English laws by voluntary agreements to abstain from using English manufactures, and the patriot party acquired strength and skill just at the time when the British parliament provoked the American colonies to deny its power.

But, besides the conforming Protestant population, there was in Ireland another class of Protestants who shared in some degree the disqualifications of the Catholics. To Queen Anne's bill for preventing the further growth of popery, a clause was added in England, and ratified by the Irish parliament, that none should be capable of any public employment, or of being in the magistracy of any city, who did not receive the sacrament according to the English test act; thus disfranchising the whole body of Presbyterians. At home, where the Scottish nation enjoyed its own religion, the people were loyal: in Ireland, the disfranchised Scotch Presbyterians, who still drew their ideas of Christian government from the Westminster Confession, began to believe that they were under no religious obligation to render obedience to the British government. They could not enter the Irish parliament to strengthen the hands of the patriot party; nor were they taught by their faith to submit in patience, like the Catholic Irish. Had all Ireland resembled them, it could not have been kept in subjection. But what could be done by unorganized men, constituting

only about a tenth of the people, in the land in which they were but sojourners? They were willing to quit a soil which was endeared to them by no traditions; and the

1763.

American colonies opened their arms to receive them. They began to change their abode as soon as they felt oppression; and every successive period of discontent swelled the tide of emigrants. Just after the peace of Paris, "the Heart of Oak" Protestants of Ulster, weary of strife with their landlords, came over in great numbers; and settlements on the Catawba, in South Carolina, dated from that epoch. At different times in the eighteenth century, some few found homes in New England; but they were most numerous south of New York, from New Jersey to Georgia. In Pennsylvania, they peopled many counties, till, in public life, they balanced the influence of the Quakers. In Virginia, they went up the valley of the Shenandoah; and they extended themselves along the tributaries of the Catawba, in the uplands of North Carolina. Their training in Ireland had kept the spirit of liberty and the readiness to resist unjust government as fresh in their hearts as though they had just been listening to the preachings of Knox or musing over the political creed of the Westminster assembly. They brought to America no loyal love for England; and their experience and their religion alike bade them meet oppression with resistance.

CHAPTER V.

CHARLES TOWNSHEND PLEDGES THE MINISTRY

OF BUTE

TO TAX AMERICA BY THE BRITISH PARLIAMENT, AND RESIGNS.

FEBRUARY-APRIL, 1763.

1763.

Feb.

FOR several years, the board of trade had looked forward to the end of the war as the appointed time when the colonies were to feel the superiority of the parent land. Thirteen days after the ratification of the peace, the Earl of Bute, having the full concurrence of the king, made the change which had long been expected; and Charles Townshend entered upon the office of first lord of trade, with larger powers than had ever been exercised by any of his predecessors except Halifax, and a seat in the cabinet.

In the council, in which Townshend took a place, there was Bute, its chief, who was fully impressed with the necessity of bringing the colonies into order. As the head of the treasury, he was answerable for every measure connected with the finances; and his defects as a man of business left much to his indefatigable private secretary. There was Mansfield, who had boasted publicly of his early determination never to engage in public life "but upon whig principles;" and, in conformity to them, had asserted that an act of parliament in Great Britain could alone prescribe rules for the reduction of refractory colonial assemblies. There was George Grenville, then first lord of the admiralty, bred to the law, and implicitly upholding the supreme and universal authority of the British legisla ture. There was Bedford, absent from England at the moment, but, through his friends, applauding the new colonial system, to which he had long ago become a convert. There was Halifax, heretofore baffled by the colonies,

Feb.

and held in check by Pitt; willing to give effect to his long cherished opinions of British omnipotence. There 1763. was the self-willed, hot-tempered Egremont, using the patronage of his office to enrich his family and friends; the same who had menaced Maryland, Pennsylvania, and North Carolina; obstinate and impatient of contradiction, ignorant of business, and capable of cruelty in defence of authority.

To these was now added Charles Townshend, who had been trained to public life in the board of trade, and as secretary at war; and was now selected for the administration of the colonies. About his schemes there was no disguise. No man in the house of commons was thought to know America so well; no one was so resolved on making a thorough change in its constitutions and government. Halifax and Townshend, in 1753, had tried to establish order in the New World, by the prerogative, and had signally failed. The new system was to be derived from the transcendental power of the British parliament.

commons.

On his advancement, Townshend became at once the most important man in the cabinet and in the house of America, which had been the occasion of the war, became at the peace the great subject of consideration; and the minister who was charged with its government took the lead in public business.

The whole remittance from all the colonies, on an average of thirty years, had not reached nineteen hundred pounds a year, and the establishment of officers necessary to collect that pittance amounted to seven thousand pounds a year. The primary object was now a substantial American revenue, to be disposed of by the British ministry, under the sign manual of the king. The ministry would tolerate no further "the disobedience of long time to royal instructions," nor bear with the claim of "the lower houses of provinical assemblies " to the right of deliberating on their votes of supply, like the parliament of Great Britain. It was announced "by authority" that there were to be “ no more requisitions from the king," but, instead of them, an immediate taxation of the colonies by the British legislature.