Abbildungen der Seite
PDF
EPUB

nothing but give way to the popular impulse. He dismantled the fort, and suspended his power to execute the stamp act. When the assembly came together, it confirmed the doings of its committee at the congress.

In New Jersey, Ogden was disavowed by his constituents, and burned in effigy. The assembly, by a unanimous vote, accepted his resignation as speaker, and thanked the two faithful delegates who had signed the proceedings of the congress. Of those proceedings, New Hampshire, by its assembly, signified its entire approbation. The voluntary adhesion of the representatives of Georgia was esteemed valid on the part of that colony. Its governor was met by " the same rebellious spirit as prevailed at the north."

1765.

Nov.

The delegates of South Carolina were received by their assembly on the twenty-sixth of November. On that morning, the papers of the congress, the declaration of rights, and the addresses were read; in an evening session, they were all adopted without change, by a vote which wanted but one of being unanimous; they were signed by the speaker, and put on board the "Charming Charlotte," a fine ship riding in the harbor with its sails bent; and the next morning, while the assembly were signifying, in the most ample manner, their satisfaction at the conduct of their agents, it stood away, with swelling canvas, for England. "Nothing will save us," wrote Gadsden, "but acting together; the province that endeavors to act separately must fall with the rest, and be branded besides with everlasting infamy."

The people of North Carolina would neither receive a stamp-man, nor tolerate the use of a stamp, nor suffer its ports to be closed. Its legislature was so long prorogued that it could not join in the application of the congress; but, had there been need of resorting to arms, "its whole force was ready to join in protecting the rights of the continent." It was the same throughout the country. Whereever a jealousy was roused that a stamp officer might exercise his functions, the people were sure to gather about him, and compel him to renew his resignation under oath, or solemnly before witnesses.

"JOIN

The colonies began to think of permanent union. OR DIE" became more and more their motto. At Windham, in Connecticut, the freemen, in a multitudinous assembly, agreed with one another "to keep up, establish, and maintain the spirit of union and liberty;" and, for that end, they recommended monthly county conventions, and also a general meeting of the colony.

1765. Dec.

At New London, the inhabitants of the county of that name, holding a mass meeting in December, unanimously decided, in carefully prepared resolves, that every form of rightful government originates from the consent of the people; that lawful authority cannot pass the boundaries set by them; that, if the limits are passed, they may reassume the authority which they had delegated; and that, if there is no other mode of relief against the stamp act and similar acts, they must reassume their natural rights and the authority with which they were invested by the laws of nature and of God. The same principles were adopted at various village gatherings, and became the political platform of Connecticut.

In New York, the validity of the British navigation acts was more and more openly impugned, and the merchants claimed a right to every freedom of trade enjoyed in England. When the general applied for the supplies, which the province was enjoined by the British mutiny act to contribute for the use of the troops quartered among them, the assembly would pay no heed to an act of parliament to which they themselves had given no assent; and, in the general tumult, their refusal passed almost unnoticed.

Here

Everywhere the fixed purpose prevailed that "the unconstitutional" stamp act should not go into effect. Nothing less than its absolute repeal would give contentment, much as England was loved. The greatest unanimity happily existed; and all were bent on cherishing it for ever. was something new in the affairs of men. Never had the people of provinces extending over so vast a continent, and so widely sundered from one another, been thus cordially bound together in one spirit and one resolve. In all their tumults, they deprecated the necessity of declaring inde

pendence; but they yet more earnestly abhorred and rejected unconditional submission. Still satisfied with the Revolution of 1688 and its theory of security to liberty and property, they repelled the name of "republican" as a slander on their loyalty; but they spurned against "passive obedience." Nothing on earth, they insisted, would deprive Great Britain of her transatlantic dominions but her harboring ungenerous suspicions, and thereupon entering into arbitrary and oppressive measures. "All eyes were turned on her with hope and unbounded affection," with apprehension and firmness of resolve. "Pray for the peace of our Jerusalem," said Otis, from his heart, fearing "the parlia ment would charge the colonies with presenting petitions in one hand and a dagger in the other." Others thought 66 England would look with favor on what was but an old English spirit of resentment at injurious treatment." They trusted that "the united voice of this very extensive continent," uttering "the sober opinions of all its in-. habitants," would be listened to, so that Great Britain and America might once more enjoy "peace, harmony, and the greatest prosperity." "Every moment is tedious," wrote South Carolina to its agent in London: "should you have to communicate the good news we wish for, send it to us, if possible, by a messenger swifter than the wind."

1765.

Dec.

1765. Dec.

CHAPTER XX.

PARLIAMENT LEARNS THAT AMERICA HAS RESISTED.
ROCKINGHAM'S ADMINISTRATION CONTINUED.

DECEMBER, 1765 JANUARY, 1766.

THE stamp act, said George Grenville, when, emaciated, exhausted, and borne down by disappointment, he spoke in the house of commons for the last time before sinking into the grave, "the stamp act was not found impracticable. Had I continued in office, I would have forfeited a thousand lives, if the act had been found impracticable." "If the administration of this country had not been changed," Rigby, the leader of the Bedford party, long persisted in asserting, "the stamp-tax would have been collected in America with as much ease as the land-tax in Great Britain." Lord North professed to be of the same opinion. The king had dismissed the only ministry bent on enforcing it; and his heart was divided between a morbid anxiety to execute the law and his purpose never again to employ Bedford and Grenville.

The opinion of England was as fluctuating as the mind of the king. Many of the landed aristocracy regarded the conduct of the colonies as an open rebellion, which ought to be checked in the beginning; the mercantile people were for redressing their grievances. The traditions of the public offices were at variance. Successive administrations had listened to schemes of coercive taxation; but the friends of colonial freedom could reply that no minister before Grenville had attempted to carry such projects into effect. Each side confidently invoked the British constitution. Grenville declared the paramount authority of parliament throughout the British dominions to be the essence of the Revolution of

1688; others insisted that, by revolution principles, property is sacred against every exaction without consent. The one party ventured to assert that America was virtually represented in the British parliament as much as the great majority of the British people; and, while America treated the pretext as senseless, a large and growing party in England demanded for all its inhabitants a share in the national council. In the new ministry, Northington, the chancellor, and Charles Yorke, the attorney-general, insisted on the right to tax America; while Grafton and Conway inclined to abdicate the pretended right, and the kind-hearted Rockingham declared himself ready to repeal a hundred stamp acts rather than run the risk of such confusion as would be caused by enforcing one.

1765.

Nor was the argument on which the stamp act rested in harmony with the sentiments and convictions of reflecting Englishmen. Its real authors insisted that protection and obedience are correlative duties; that Great Britain protected America, and therefore America was bound to obedience. But this is the doctrine of absolute monarchy, not of the British constitution.

Dec.

The colonists had a powerful ally in the love of liberty, which was to the true Englishman a habit of mind, grafted upon a proud but generous nature. His attachment to it was stronger than the theory of the absolute power of a parliament, of which an oligarchy influenced the choice and controlled the deliberations. The British constitution was in its idea more popular than in its degenerate forms; it aimed at carrying out "the genuine principles of liberty," by securing a free and unbiassed "vote to every member of the community, however poor;" but time and a loose state of national morals had tended to produce corruption. "The incurvations of practice," whether in England or the colonies, were becoming "more notorious by a comparison with the rectitude of the rule." "To elucidate the clearness of the spring conveyed the strongest satire on those who had polluted or disturbed it." America divided English sympathies by appealing with steadfast confidence to the cherished principles of English liberty in their ideal purity.

« ZurückWeiter »