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The Life of George Washington. John Marshall
Читать онлайн.Название The Life of George Washington
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isbn 4064066387686
Автор произведения John Marshall
Жанр Документальная литература
Издательство Bookwire
The idea of raising revenue in America, was so highly favoured in England, especially by the landed interest, that not even the influence of administration could have obtained a repeal of the stamp act, on the naked principle of right. Few were hardy enough to question the supremacy of parliament; and the act receding from the practical assertion of the power to tax the colonists, deeply wounded the pride of the King, and of the nation.
The temper discovered in some of the colonies was ill calculated to assuage the wound, which this measure had inflicted, on the haughty spirit of the country; and is supposed to have contributed to the revival of a system, which had been reluctantly abandoned.
Charles Townshend, chancellor of the exchequer, said boastingly in the house of commons, "that he knew how to draw a revenue from the colonies without giving them offence."[192] Mr. Grenville eagerly caught at the declaration, and urged this minister to pledge himself to bring forward the measure, at which he had hinted. During the sickness and absence of lord Chatham, the cabinet had decided on introducing a bill for imposing certain duties on tea, glass, paper, and painter's colours, imported into the colonies from Great Britain; and appropriating the money in the first instance, to the salaries of the officers of government. This bill was brought into parliament, and passed almost without opposition.
The friends of America, in England, had distinguished between internal and external taxation; and the same distinction had been made in the colonies. But the discussions originating in the stamp act, while they diffused among the colonists a knowledge of their political rights, had inspired also more accurate ideas respecting them.
These duties were plainly intended, not to regulate commerce, but to raise revenue, which would be as certainly collected from the colonists, as the duties on stamps could have been. The principle of the two measures was the same. Many of the Americans were too intelligent to be misguided by the distinction between internal and external taxation, or by the precedents quoted in support of the right, for which parliament contended. This measure was considered as establishing a precedent of taxation for the mere purpose of revenue, which might afterwards be extended at the discretion of parliament; and was spoken of as the entering wedge, designed to make way for impositions too heavy to be borne. The appropriation of the money did not lessen the odium of the tax. The colonists considered the dependence of the officers of government, on the colonial legislature, for their salaries, as the best security for their attending to the interests, and cultivating the affections of the provinces.[193] Yet the opinion that this act was unconstitutional, was not adopted so immediately, or so generally, as in the case of the stamp act. Many able political essays appeared in the papers, demonstrating that it violated the principles of the English constitution and of English liberty, before the conviction became general, that the same principle which had before been successfully opposed, was again approaching in a different form.
1768
The general court of Massachusetts, perceiving plainly that the claim to tax America was revived, and being determined to oppose it, addressed an elaborate letter to Dennis de Berdt, agent for the house of representatives, detailing at great length, and with much weight of argument, all the objections to the late acts of parliament. Letters were also addressed to the earl of Shelburne and general Conway, secretaries of state, to the marquis of Rockingham, lord Camden, the earl of Chatham, and the lords commissioners of the treasury. These letters, while they breathe a spirit of ardent attachment to the British constitution, and to the British nation, manifest a perfect conviction that their complaints were just.
Conclusive as the arguments they contained might have appeared to Englishmen, if urged by themselves in support of their own rights, they had not much weight, when used to disprove the existence of their authority over others. The deep and solemn tone of conviction, however, conveyed in all these letters, ought to have produced a certainty that the principles assumed in them had made a strong impression, and would not be lightly abandoned. It ought to have been foreseen that with such a people, so determined, the conflict must be stern and hazardous; and, it was well worth the estimate, whether the object would compensate the means used to obtain it.
Petition to the King.
The assembly also voted a petition to the King, replete with professions of loyalty and attachment; but stating, in explicit terms, their sense of the acts against which they petitioned.
A proposition was next made for an address to the other colonies on the power claimed by parliament, which, after considerable debate, was carried in the affirmative; and a circular letter to the assemblies of the several provinces, setting forth the proceedings of the house of representatives, was prepared and adopted.[194]
To rescue their measures from the imputation of systematic opposition to the British government, the house, without acknowledging the obligation of the mutiny act, complied with a requisition of the governor to make a farther provision for one of the King's garrisons within the province. The governor, soon afterwards, prorogued the general court with an angry speech, not calculated to diminish the resentments of the house directed against himself; resentments occasioned as much by the haughtiness of his manners, and a persuasion that he had misrepresented their conduct and opinions to ministers, as by the unpopular course his station required him to pursue.[195]
The circular letter of the house of representatives of Massachusetts was well received in the other colonies. They approved the measures which had been taken, and readily united in them. They, too, petitioned the King against the obnoxious acts of parliament, and instructed their several agents to use all proper means to obtain their repeal. Virginia transmitted a statement of her proceedings[196] to her sister colonies; and her house of Burgesses, in a letter to Massachusetts, communicating the representation made to parliament, say, "that they do not affect an independency of their parent kingdom, the prosperity of which they are bound, to the utmost of their abilities, to promote; but cheerfully acquiesce in the authority of parliament to make laws for the preserving a necessary dependence, and for regulating the trade of the colonies; yet they cannot conceive, and humbly insist, it is not essential to support a proper relation between the mother country, and colonies transplanted from her, that she should have a right to raise money from them without their consent, and presume they do not aspire to more than the right of British subjects, when they assert that no power on earth has a right to impose taxes on the people, or take the smallest portion of their property without their consent given by their representatives in parliament."[197]
On the first intimation of the measures taken by Massachusetts, the earl of Hillsborough, who had been appointed to the newly created office of secretary of state for the department of the colonies, addressed a circular to the several governors, to be laid before the respective assemblies, in which he treated the circular letter of Massachusetts, as being of the most dangerous tendency, calculated to inflame the minds of his majesty's good subjects in the colonies, to promote an unwarrantable combination, to excite an open opposition to the authority of parliament, and to subvert the true principles of the constitution.[198]
His first object was to prevail on the several assemblies openly to censure the conduct of Massachusetts; his next, to prevent their approving the proceedings of that colony. The letter, far from producing the desired effect, rather served to strengthen the determination of the colonies to unite in their endeavours to obtain a repeal of laws universally detested. On manifesting this disposition, the assemblies were generally dissolved;—probably in pursuance of instructions from the crown.
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