SECTION III.

The prospects at the close of the war disappointed by acts of parliament. The growth of the colonies, and their advantage to Great Britain, while they were allowed to tax themselves. A new system of colonization is adopted, the sugar-act passed and the stamp act proposed. The colonies offer their reasons and petition against it. Debates in parliament on the introduction of the bill. The stamp-act passes; is odious to Americans, and universally opposed. The revenue officers obliged to resign. Mr. Pitt reprobates the act and advises to the repeal of it. The parliament, having asserted their right to tax America, repeal the act. Consequences of the repeal.

THE success and fortunate termination of the war with France and the Indian nations, not only raised the British empire to a distinguished pitch of national glory, but appeared to establish the tran quillity of her colonies upon a more permanent basis than it had ever been fixed at any preceding period. Unbounded prospects of navigation, commerce, wealth, national aggrandizement and happiness presented themselves both to Great Britain and America. Had the nation been favoured with some happy genius, capable of discerning her great and complicated interests, and of adopting a benevolent plan of administration, consistent with the rights, emolument and happiness of the parent country and of her colonies, it is not easy to describe that point of greatness and splendor to which the empire might have risen. Indeed, had the voice of those illustrious statesmen, who had raised the nation to that renown, which it then boasted, been heard, its union might have been preserved. But a new and fatal plan of colonization was now adopted, which distracted the nation, and terminated in the American Revolution.

During a century and a half, from their first emigration, the colonists were left to tax themselves. If there were any exceptions to this general rule, they were too inconsiderable to be worthy of notice. Great Britain, however, restrained and regulated their trade. She named the ports and nations to which only their merchandize might be carried, and with whom only they might trade. She obliged them to carry to her all their raw materials which might be wrought up for her emolument, and their other productions which she needed, or which might increase her wealth. She prohibited their manufacturing any articles among themselves, which might injure her manufactures or commerce, and their procuring manufactures from any other part of the globe, or even the products of European countries, which were her rivals, until they were first brought into her ports. Notwithstanding the numerous oppressions which the colonists had experienced, under the British government, and though all disrelished, and many, from the pressures which they felt, complained of the restrictions on their manufactures and commerce, yet they were generally disposed to submit to them. It was generally acknowledged that the parent country might exercise a

sovereign dominion over the whole empire, and that while it was guarded by contract, and exercised for the general emolument, it was safe and might not be resisted. Some warm defenders of American liberty conceded, that the supreme legislature represents the whole society, the dominions as well as the realm, and that this was implied in the idea of a supreme power.* But the right of taxing the colonies without their consent, was universally reprobated, as inconsistent with their natural charter, and constitutional rights.f Ancient usage was pleaded against it as well as the general principles of liberty.

During a period of more than a century, from 1660, to 1764, the parliament of Great Britain had passed nearly thirty acts restraining and regulating the trade of the colonies in such a manner as was judged most conducive to mutual advantage, and especially to her own particular welfare. In all these acts, the contributions of the colonies to the strength and aggrandizement of the British empire were established solely on the system of commerce. Not a single revenue act had been passed. Until this year they all stood upon a commercial footing, and were designed as regulations of trade, and not sources of a national reveuue.

While Great Britain adhered to this system of colonization, her American colonies increased and flourished beyond all parallel. In the same proportion as the colonies increased, the commerce, opulence, strength and glory of Great Britain increased.

Her whole export trade to the colonies in 1763, exceded half of all her exports, to other countries, sixty years before; and, antecedently to the independence of the American states, equalled her whole export trade at the aforementioned period. In the year 1604, the amount of the whole export trade of Great Britain, to America and all other countries, was no more than 6,509,000 pounds sterling: but in 1763, her exports to her American colonies only, amounted to 3,730,900 pounds; and so prodigious was the increase of the colonies, that, in about ten or twelve years after this period, the tonnage of their shipping, the number of their seamen and the amount of their trade was doubled. In the year 1772, the export trade of Great Britain, to them only, was 6,022,132 pounds sterling: and the annual increase during the four succeeding years was very rapid. In the short term of about 70 years the colonies added not less to the export trade of their parent country, than the whole of that to which she had grown by the increasing improvements of 1700 years. As it is evident, from the preceding history, that the settlement and protection of the colonies was not at the expense of Great Britain, so it is equally evident, that this increase of their trade was not at the expense or diminution of the general trade of the kingdom, for this increased during the same period from six, to sixteen millions.

* Otis's rights of the British colonies. The several colonies insisted on this, in the reasons which they offered against the stamp-act. Anonymous history of the war in America, part i. p. 81. Ramsay's Hist. vol. i. p. 49, 50.

The filial submission of the colonies to the sovereignty of the parent country, for so long a period, while it was exercised in superintending their general concerns, and in harmonizing the commercial interests of the empire, gave a clear demonstration, that, without parliamentary taxation, they might have been kept in proper subordination and subserviency to her government and interests. No subjects in the kingdom were more strongly attached to the royal house of Hanover, and to those revolutional principles which placed it on the throne of the British empire, than the colonists. They gloried in the British constitution, in their relation to Great Britain, and rejoiced in her growing commerce, strength and glory. Had that line of colonization been pursued, the benefit of which had been experienced for many ages, the colonies with great cheerfulness would have poured all the profits of their increasing labours and commerce into the lap of their parent.

For several years the British ministry had conceived the idea of a new plan of colonization, and of altering both the civil and ecclesiastical constitution of the colonies. Immediately after the pacification of Paris, new scenes were presented. The numbers and resources which the colonies had exhibited during the war, the show of wealth and plenty which had been made, at the entertainments given to some of the British generals and officers, in several of their capitals, the gold, silver and jewels appearing in the dress of the colonists, on these and other occasions, begat, in their fellow subjects of Great Britain, the idea that they were wealthy and powerful. It was said, that their taxes were light; that the whole expense of the civil establishment, in all the colonies in North America, was little more than seventy thousand pounds sterling: That their ecclesiastical constitution was no less economical: That tithes were not known among them: That their clergy were numerous: and that they were generally maintained by moderate stipends, or by the voluntary contributions of the people, &c. The national debt of Great Britain amounted to the enormous sum of a hundred and forty-eight millions. The annual interest of it only was nearly five millions, and the inhabitants of that country already groaned under a grievous load of

taxes.

While the British minister, in these partial views, was digesting plans for the diminution of this amazing debt, and for easing the inhabitants of Great Britain, he conceived the idea of raising a substantial revenue in the American colonies by parliamentary taxation.* The British ministry maintained the novel doctrine, That

"When

*Tudor, in his life of Otis, gives us the following interesting anecdote : President Adams was minister at the court of St. James, he often saw his countryman, Benjamin West, the late president of the royal academy. Mr. West always retained a strong and unyielding affection for his native land. Mr. West one day asked Mr. Adams, if he should like to take a walk with him, and see the cause of the American

the Parliament, as the supreme power of the nation, was vested with a constitutional authority to impose taxes on every part of the empire. The Parliament unanimously adopted the opinion, and, in March 1764, resolved that it had a right to tax the colonies. As a prelude to the memorable STAMP-ACT, the House of Commons also voted, "That towards further defraying the necessary expenses of protecting the colonies, IT MAY BE NECESSARY TO CHARGE CERTAIN STAMP DUTIES upon them." To these resolutions succeeded what has commonly been called, the SUGARACT, passed April 5th, the preamble to which ran in this alarming style: "Whereas it is just and necessary, that a revenue be raised in America, for defraying the expenses of defending, protecting, and securing the same, We the commons, &c. towards raising the same, give and grant unto your majesty, after the 29th of September, 1764, upon clayed sugar, indigo and coffee of foreign produce, [and on many other articles] the sum of," &c. Until this inauspicious hour no act of Parliament had been passed avowedly for the purpose of raising a revenue in the colonies. This act was fraught with ingredients highly disgustful and alarming. It not only declared the necessity, but JUSTICE of taxing the colonists for the avowed purpose of a parliamentary revenue, but the very wording of it excited, in the colonists, shrewd apprehensions that the Parliament would proceed to tax them to such a degree and for such a time, as they pleased, for the support of a military force to dragoon them into its unconstitutional measures. They imagined that they were able to defend themselves, and were averse from paying their money to purchase their own chains, and to bind themselves and their descendants in perpetual servitude.

The act was grievous and disgusting, as it required the monies to be raised by it to paid in specie, at the same time that regulations were adopted to obstruct the acquiring of gold and silver, and to

evolution. The minister, having known something of this matter, smiled at the proposal, but told him that he should be glad to see the cause of that revolution, and to take a walk with his friend West any where. The next morning he called according to agreement, and took Mr. Adams into Hyde Park, to a spot near the Serpentine River, where he gave him the following narrative. The king came to the throne a young man, surrounded by flattering courtiers; one of whose frequent topics it was, to declaim against the meanness of his palace, which was wholly unworthy a monarch of such a country as England. They said that there was not a sovereign in Europe who was Jodged so poorly; that his sorry, dingy, old, brick palace of St. James, looked like a stable, and that he ought to build a palace suitable to his kingdom. The king was fond of architecture, and would therefore more readily listen to suggestions, which were in fact all true. This spot that you see here, was selected for the site, between this and this point, which were marked out. The king applied to his ministers on the subject; they inquired what sum would be wanted by his majesty, who said that he would begin with a million they stated the expenses of the war, and the poverty of the treasury, but that his majesty's wishes should be taken into full consideration. Some time afterwards the king was informed, that the wants of the treasury were too urgent to admit of a supply from their present means, but that a revenue might be raised in America to supply all the king's wishes. This suggestion was followed up, and the king was in this way first led to consider, and then to consent, to the scheme for taxing the colonies."

interdict the use of the colonial paper currency. The regulations, taken together, were calculated at once to deprive the colonies of the means of trade, and to injure the commerce of both countries.

The principal source of acquiring gold and silver, and of making remittances to Great Britain, was the trade which the colonies carried on with the French and Spanish West Indies. To these they carried timber, boards, and materials of almost every kind for building, staves and hoops for casks, horses, cattle, and all kinds of provisions. In return, they brought back indigo, cotton, sugar, cocoa, molasses, bills of exchange, and such sums in specie as they chose. The whole profit of this trade centred in Great Britain. The bills of exchange, and all other articles not wanted in the colonies, either for their own consumption or as means of trade, were sent to the mother country in exchange for her various manufactures. The foreign trade of the colonies was really her trade. If this trade was prohibited by the letter of the navigation laws of the empire, it was not inconsistent with the spirit of them. The advantages of it to the colonies, and especially to Great Britain, were very great. For this reason it had been winked at by those in power. But soon after the peace such regulations were adopted, as nearly annihilated this lucrative trade. The British men of war received a general order to prevent all smuggling, or as the ministerial phrase was, to "crush the monster." Not only the men of war made prizes of French, Spanish, and English vessels employed in this trade, but armed cutters were fitted out for the same purpose, and to suppress every breach of the very letter of the laws of navigation. The commanders of these were obliged to take the usual custom-house oaths, and to act in the capacity of revenue officers. The sudden stoppage of a trade, which, like the vital fluid in the human body, gave life to business of every description, in the northern colonies, was productive of a general torpor in their commerce, and gave them a distressing blow. This general distress of the mercantile interest, and the heavy losses to which many of the colonists were subjected, soured their minds, created jealousies, and produced sentiments and designs altogether unfavourable to the mother country. These were further excited and inflamed by the arbitrary, unconstitutional, and cruel methods adopted for securing the collection of the duties imposed for the purpose of raising a revenue. It was enacted by the Parliament, that whenever offences should be committed against the acts, which imposed them, the prosecutor might bring his action for the penalty, in the courts of admiralty, by which means the defendant was deprived of the privilege of a trial by a jury of the vicinage, and was subjected to a decision of his case by a single man, a creature of the crown, whose salary was to be paid out of those very forfeitures adjudged by himself. What rendered the case of the defendant still harder, was, that he was subjected to a course of law, by which the prosecutor was exempted from the trouble of proving his accusation, and he was obliged. either to prove his innocence or