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the same question under many forms, "will pay no internal tax by parliament."

1766.

Feb.

"Is there any kind of difference," continued Grenville's ministry, "between external and internal taxes to the colony on which they may be laid?" "The people,” argued Franklin, "may refuse commodities, of which the duty makes a part of the price; but an internal tax is forced from them without their consent. The stamp act says we shall have no commerce, make no exchange of property with each other, neither purchase nor grant, nor recover debts, nor 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." "But suppose the external duty to be laid on the necessaries of life?" continued Grenville's ministry. And Franklin amazed them by his true answer: "I do not know a single article imported into the northern colonies but what they can either do without or make themselves. The people will spin and work for themselves, in their own houses. In three years, there may be wool and manufactures enough."

"Does the distinction between internal and external taxes exist in the charter of Pennsylvania?" asked a friend of Grenville. "No," said Franklin, "I believe not." "Then," asked Charles Townshend, "may they not, by the same interpretation of their common rights as Englishmen, as declared by Magna Charta and the Petition of Right, object to the parliament's right of external taxation?" And Franklin answered instantly: "They never have hitherto. Many arguments have been lately used here to show them that there is no difference; and that, if you have no right to tax them internally, you have none to tax them externally, or make any other law to bind them. At present, they do not reason so; but, in time, they may be convinced by these arguments.'

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On the twentieth, while the newspapers of New York were that very morning reiterating the resolves of the Sons of Liberty, that they would venture their lives and fortunes to prevent the stamp act from taking place, that the safety

1766. Feb.

of the colonies depended on a firm union of the whole, the ministers, at a private meeting of their supporters, settled the resolutions of repeal which even Charles Townshend was present to accept, and which, as Burke believed, he intended to support by a speech.

Early the next day, every seat in the house of commons had been taken; between four and five hundred members attended. Pitt was ill, but his zeal was above disease. 66 I must get up to the house as I can,” said he; "when in my place, I feel I am tolerably able to remain through the debate, and cry ay to the repeal with no sickly voice;" and, through the huzzas of the lobby, he hobbled into the house on crutches, swathed in flannels.

Conway moved for leave to bring in a bill for the repeal of the American stamp act. It had interrupted British commerce; jeoparded debts to British merchants; stopped one third of the manufactures of Manchester; increased the rates on land, by throwing thousands of poor out of employment. The act, too, breathed oppression. It annihilated juries, and gave vast power to the admiralty courts. The lawyers might decide in favor of the right to tax; but the conflict would ruin both countries. In three thousand miles of territory, the English had but five thousand troops, the Americans one hundred and fifty thousand fighting men. If they did not repeal the act, France and Spain would declare war, and protect the Americans. The colonies, too, would set up manufactories of their own. Why, then, risk the whole for so trifling an object?

Jenkinson, on the other side, moved a modification of the act; insisting that the total repeal, demanded as it was with menaces of resistance, would be the overthrow of British authority in America. In reply to Jenkinson, Edmund Burke spoke in a manner unusual in the house; connecting his argument with a new kind of political philosophy.

About eleven, Pitt rose. He conciliated the wavering by allowing good ground for their apprehensions, and, acknowledging his own perplexity in making an option between two ineligible alternatives, he pronounced for repeal, as due to the liberty of unrepresented subjects, and in gratitude

to their having supported England through three wars. He spoke with an eloquence which expressed conviction, and with a suavity of manner which could not offend even the warmest friends of the act.

"The total repeal," replied Grenville, "will persuade the colonies that Great Britain confesses itself without the right to impose taxes on them, and is reduced to make this confession by their menaces. Do the merchants insist that debts to the amount of three millions will be lost, and all fresh orders be countermanded? Do not injure yourselves from fear of injury; do not die from the fear of dying. With a little firmness, it will be easy to compel the colonists to obedience. America must learn that prayers are not to be brought to Cæsar through riot and sedition."

Between one and two o'clock on the morning of the twenty-second of February, the division took place. Only a few days before, Bedford had confidently predicted the defeat of the ministry. The king, the queen, the princess dowager, the Duke of York, Lord Bute, desired it. The scanty remains of the old tories; all the followers of Bedford and Grenville; the king's friends; every Scottish member except Sir Alexander Gilmore and George Dempster; Lord George Sackville; Oswald, Sackville's colleague as vice-treasurer for Ireland; Barrington, the paymaster of the navy,were all known to be in the opposition.

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The lobbies were crammed with upwards of three hundred men, representing the trading interests of the nation, trembling and anxious, and waiting to learn the resolution of the house. Presently it was announced that two hundred and seventy-five had voted for the repeal of the act, against one hundred and sixty-seven for softening and enforcing it. The roof of St. Stephen's rung with the long continued shouts and cheerings of the majority.

1766.

Feb.

When the doors were thrown open, and Conway went forth, there was an involuntary burst of gratitude from the grave multitude which beset the avenues; they stopped him; they gathered round him as children round a parent, as captives round a deliverer. The pure-minded man enjoyed the triumph; and, while they thanked him, Edmund

Burke, who stood near him, declares that "his face was as if it had been the face of an angel." As Grenville moved along, swelling with rage and mortification, they pressed on him with hisses. But, when Pitt appeared, the crowd reverently pulled off their hats; and their applause touched him with tender and lively joy. Many followed his chair home with benedictions.

He felt no illness after his immense fatigue. It seemed as if what he saw and what he heard, the gratitude of a rescued people, and the gladness of thousands, now become his own, had restored him to health; but his heartfelt and solid delight was not perfect till he found himself in his own house, with the wife whom he loved, and the children for whom his fondness knew no restraint or bounds, and who all partook of the overflowing pride of their mother.

1766. Feb.

This was the first great political lesson received by his second son, then not quite seven years old, the eager and impetuous William, who, flushed with patriotic feeling, rejoiced that he was not the eldest-born, but could serve his country in the house of commons, like his father.

At the palace, the king treated with great coolness all his servants who voted for the repeal. "We have been beaten," said Bedford to the French minister; "but we have made a gallant fight of it."

With the Scottish members, elected as they then were by a dependent tenantry, or in the boroughs by close corporations, the mind of Scotland was as much at variance as the intelligence of France with the monarchy of Louis XV. Adam Smith, at Glasgow, was teaching the youth of Scotland the natural right of industry to freedom; Reid was constructing a system of philosophy, based upon the freedom of the active powers of man; and now, at the relenting "of the house of commons concerning the stamp act," "I rejoice," said Robertson, the illustrious historian, "I rejoice, from my love of the human species, that a million of men in America have some chance of running the same great career which other free people have held before them. I do not apprehend revolution or independence sooner than these must and should come."

CHAPTER XXIV.

THE HOUSE OF LORDS GIVE WAY WITH PROTESTS. ROCKINGHAM'S ADMINISTRATION CONTINUED.

FEBRUARY-May, 1766.

1766.

Feb.

THE heat of the battle was over. When the bill for the repeal was ordered to be brought in, Blackstone wished clauses to be inserted, that all American resolutions against the right of the legislature of Great Britain to tax America should be expunged; but this was rejected without a division. Wedderburn would have enacted, in substance, that it should be as high and mortal a crime to dispute the validity of the stamp act as to question the right of the house of Hanover to the British throne.

While he was enforcing his sanguinary amendment, nearly all the American colonies were in concert continuing to put a denial on the pretension, even at the risk of civil war. Canada, Nova Scotia, and the Floridas, which were military governments, had submitted; the rest of the continent was firm. Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Maryland had opened their courts. From New York, the governor reported that "every one around him was an abettor of resistance." A merchant, who had signed a stamped bond for a Mediterranean pass, was obliged to stand forth publicly, and ask forgiveness before thousands. The people of Woodbridge, in New Jersey, recommended "the union of the provinces throughout the continent." Delegates from the Sons of Liberty in every town of Connecticut met at Hartford in convention, demonstrating by their example the facility with which America could organize independent governments; they declared for "perpetuating

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