USA > Connecticut > Fairfield County > Bridgeport > Reports and papers. Fairfield County Historical Society, Bridgeport, Conn. 1882-1896-97 > Part 13
Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27 | Part 28 | Part 29 | Part 30 | Part 31 | Part 32 | Part 33 | Part 34 | Part 35 | Part 36 | Part 37 | Part 38 | Part 39 | Part 40 | Part 41 | Part 42 | Part 43 | Part 44 | Part 45 | Part 46 | Part 47 | Part 48
I desire this evening to set forth the service rendered in the making of the Constitution by the man whom Connecticut placed at the head of her delegation, Dr. William Samuel John- son. In the convention itself his influence, though it must have been considerable, was at all events less palpable than that of Sherman and Ellsworth. But for more than twenty years he had been occupied, in America and in England, with the problem of the right aljustment of local and central authority. He had done his utmost to secure the combina- tion of colonial freedom with imperial control, and what he accomplished was so far a contribution to the development of the federal out of the imperial system, of the American out of the British constitution. What he and his colleagues per- formed in 1787 was for him the completion of a task which he began in 1765. Our study of his labors upon the Constitution will therefore cover his whole career as a statesman.
His history before his public life opened must be given very briefly. The chief source of information is his -Life and Times," by the Rev. Dr. Beardsley, of New Haven. This work has Intely come to a second edition, as it well deserved,
1 Connecticut. A Study of a Camion wealth-Democracy. Prof. viii .- ix. ; 221-2, etc.
12
and is principally complained of for being too short. But for this fault I might have had nothing to tell you, but I shoukl certainly have had nothing to tell you had the book not been written. It has a double interest for your Society, since its author, like its subject, is a native of Fairfield county.
William Samuel Johnson was born on the seventh of Octo- ber, 1727 (old style), in the town of Stratford, which then in- cluded that portion of the ancient parish of Stratfield in which we are now assembled. He was the eldest son of the leading Episcopal elergyman of the colony. Dr. Samuel Johnson, who became the first president of King's (now Columbia) College, New York. After being carefully trained at home young John- son graduated at New Haven in 1744, studied for three years longer as a "scholar of the house" on the Berkeley founda- tion, (a privilege won by his industry and ability.) attended leetures and took his second degree at Harvard in 1747, and entered on the practice of law in his native town. He had rare gifts of oratory, including much grace of action, with a voiee of singular richness and melody. While he was a dili- gent student of law, he made himself familiar with literature. and his mental discipline and acquisitions were such that he was found a delightful companion by the first man of letters in England, his namesake, Samuel Johnson. The latter said that there was "searee any one whose acquaintance he had more desired to cultivate." At the time when our, more eare- ful examination of his career begins he is described by the historian Pitkin as "one of the ablest lawyers and most aecom- plished scholars in America."
After serving two or three times as a deputy from Strat- ford, Mr. Johnson was made one of three commissioners selected to represent the colony in the Stamp Aet congress, which met in New York on his thirty-eighth birthday (new style), or October 7, 1765. The appointment of an Episcopa- lian to such a position shows that the Conneetient assembly, filled with Congregationalists, was not controlled by ecclesias- tical prejudices, and equally shows that Johnson himself was not controlled by them. Most Connecticut Episcopalians be- lieved that avowed opposition to the Stamp Act was "nothing
-
13
short of rebellion."? All that the colony desired of its com- missioners, (who were charged to "form no such junetion with" the rest as would subject them to the power of a majority.) was that they should unite in a "dutiful, loyal and humble Representation " to king and parliament.3 But they were expected to "avow opposition" to the Stamp Aet, and Johnson was fully prepared to answer this expectation. While he agreed with his fellow Episcopalians in disapproving of riotous opposition. which was perhaps what they had chiefly in mind, he was, unlike them, in hearty sympathy with those Americans who soon came to be called whigs. And this im- plied much more than sympathy with the English whigs. It was the latter who had imposed the tax against which the for- mer protested, and they imposed it in accordance with the chief article of the whig creed, the supremacy of parliament. This article, when asserted against the crown, was in fact the safeguard of English liberty, and English statesmen did not understand why it was not equally valid as against the eolo- nies. And the appeals which the colonies sometimes addressed to the king as their constitutional protector from the tyranny of parliament, must have sounded to whig ministers strangely like toryism. When Franklin said a few years later. (1770) that the lords and commons had "been long encroaching on the rights of" the sovereign, he confessed that they would think his doctrine almost treason against themselves, + And it is a striking illustration of the constitutional change which was in progress that the American revolution began with an apparent denial of the great doctrine of the English revolu- tion. The necessity for this lay in what John Richard Green describes as the failure of England "to grasp the difference between an empire and a nation," between "an aggregate of political bodies" related more or less closely "to a central state," and "an aggregate of individual citizens " forming one state. England did not even perceive that the colonies were
2 Church Documents. Connecticut, ii. 81.
3 Connectient Colonial Records, xii. 410.
4 The Life of Benjamin Franklin. Written by himself. John Bigelow. ii. 51.
-
14
"political bodies:" "they were not states but corporations," like a borough or a bank.5
The Stamp Aet, which was the imposition by parliament of a tax on the paper to be used in all sorts of legal and commer- cial transactions, struck at both the personal and the political rights of British subjeets in America. By assuming to take their money without their consent given through their repre- sentatives, parliament had violated a fundamental principle of the British constitution, and a principle about which there was no direct dispute. It had also violated a principle which Americans supposed to be established. and which flowed from the former, that the colonial assemblies, in which alone Amer- icans were or could be represented, had the sole power of, at any rate, internal tasation. This principle was in dispute, as it continued to be throughout the struggle, forming the great question at issue. And while the congress had of course to protest against the invasion both of personal and political rights, it was the latter which had chiefly to be asserted. It was the business of the congress to insist on the difference between a nation and an empire, to complement and limit the national doctrine of parliamentary supremacy by the imperial doctrine of state rights.
The part taken by our Stratford lawyer in the transactions of the congress is described by Mr. Bancroft in half a sen- tenee. The question being the ground on which the demand for the redress of grievances should be based. "Johnson. of Connecticut," says the historian, "submitted a paper which pleaded charters from the crown." Mr. Bancroft goes on to tell us how Robert Livingston, of New York. and Christopher Gadsden, of South Carolina, opposed the plan of resting the protest on the charters. Gadsden said. among other things, "I wish the charters may not ensnare us at last, by drawing different colonies to act differently in this great cause There ought to be no New England man, no New Yorker, known on the Continent. but all of us Americans." Instead of appealing to charters they "should stand upon the broad common ground of" their natural rights "as men and as the
5 History of the English People, Am. Ed., iv. 226-7.
15
descendants of Englishmen." And, according to Mr. Ban- croft. "these views prevailed; and . . . the argument for American liberty from royal grants was avoided." 6 Our famous historian hardly meant to give the impression that Johnson, (of whom ke elsewhere speaks with great respect.) would have used no other argument than this, and his account of the pro- ceedings is perhaps too condensed to admit a fuller report of one member's action. But as our interest just now centres in that member, it is pleasant to be able to remove a possible suspicion that he distinguished himself at the congress merely by an abortive effort to have the rights of man ascribed to the favor of kings.
The paper of which Mr. Bancroft speaks is evidently one in Jolmson's handwriting which was found among his mann- scripts by Timothy Pitkin, in the form of a committee's re- port. In this paper the rights which the Stamp Let invaded are traced back through the British constitution to the foun- dation of that "in the law of nature and universal reason." Clearly the author of the report did not suppose them to have had their origin in "royal grants." The charters, "and other royal instruments," are then mentioned by way of proving that the rights in question hal been formally recognized as belonging to British American subjects." and Gadsden ad- mitted that the charters might safely be appealed to as con- firmatory. The report proceeds to acknowledge parliament. "as consisting of the king, lords and commons," to be "the supreme legislature of the whole empire," and "the final judges" even as to those "essential rights" which could not justly be infringed. (The italies are in the report ) Further- more, it had become necessary "for the enjoyment of those
rights . that several colony jurisdictions should be erected." subjeet "to the supreme power of Great Britain." Under these jurisdictions the colonists had expected to be at least as free in America as they or their forefathers were else- where, and by them laws had been made and taxes levied. These quotations present an argument drawn mainly neither from abstract principles nor from the charters, but from the
6 History of the United States, Cont. Ed., iii. 503-10.
16
British constitution as imperial, from the recognized legiti- macy of certain dependent states, existing without prejudice to the supremacy of a central government. This supremacy. it will be observed, is asserted very strongly, and as extending to legislation. Many Americans learned to deny to parlia- ment the power of imperial, as distinguished from national, legislation, but Johnson always believed the former to be neces- sary to the government of an empire.
Of course the charters, by which the "colony jurisdictions " had been established, though not named in direct connection with the latter, furnished an obvious proof of the existence of the colonies as bodies politic. To have appealed to those in- struments as proving this would only have been asserting in another forin that the British constitution had extended its shelter over new states: that, as Connecticut virtually asserted at about the same time, the charters themselves were a part of the constitution. It would have been to act in the spirit of those who had for centuries appealed to Magna Charta; in accordance with the sober traditions of
" A land of settled government, A land of just and old renown, Where freedom broadens slowly down From precedent to precedent."
But it was not essential to the argument to name the char- ters, and Johnson was probably quite willing that the word should be omitted from the addresses which were to be sent to England.
Four papers, including a declaration of rights, were issued by the congress, and Pitkin has no hesitation in saying that the report presented by Johnson "formed the basis" of all of them. The address to the king was largely or wholly his work, and set forth the great political fact of the early establish- ment of "several governments " in America very much as does his preliminary paper. The petition to the house of com- mons, reported by another committee, is particularly interest- ing, as containing a very plain allusion to the charters. "The several subordinate provincial legislatures have been moulded
7 Conn. Col. Rec., xi. 422.
-
17
into forms as nearly resembling that of the mother country. as by his majesty's royal predecessors was thought convenient; and these legislatures seem to have been visely and graciously established, that the subjects in the colonies might. under the due administration thereof. enjoy the happy fruit of the British government."* (The italics are mine.) The congress. in fart. being composed of practical men. of English blood. did not dream of overlooking that aetion of the crown by which the state rights which they had to assert had been solemnly confirmed. It merely avoided the use of the word "charters:" it did not avoid what Mr. Bancroft ealls "the argument for American liberty from royal grants." And the word was omitted, not because "natural justice" and "abstract truth " were the only pleas which it became Americans to urge. but because, as Gadsden suggested. there was a possibility of livi- sion of interests owing to the unequal grants of power made to the different colonies. Self-government, for example, was most fully provided for in Connecticut and Rhode Island. while Maryland seemed best secured against parliamentary taxation. And although it was high time, as Gadsden farther said, for the colonists to think of theinselves as all alike Amer- icans. they could only act effectively, they always did aet, they were at that moment acting, as members of distinct political bodies. as citizens of Massachusetts, and New York, and Vir- ginia. And neither Gadsden nor Jolinson was able at the time to sign the addresses because of restrictions under which South Carolina and Connecticut, respectively. had laid them. To have disregarded the "colony jurisdictions " in 1765 would have obscured the very fact which it was so important to get clearly recognized. (as clearly, at any rate, as they yet recog- nized it themselves.) that the colonies were already states, with the right. as such, to protect the colonists.
Dr. Beardsley tells us that the three memorials sent to England were all prepared by Johnson." The statement is supported by the abundant use made of the paper which he
8 Pitkin's Politiest and Civil History of the [' S. i. 3. 6. 1-3. 44-55; Principles and Acts of the Revolution, et .. , Hez-kiah Nil -- : El. 1-75. 157 -. J.
9 Life and Times of William >3in1-1 Johnson, 32.
.
18
laid before the congress, and by the fact that the memorials, though reported by different committees, were evidently drawn up in concert. His influence in this famous assembly has hardly been appreciated. Though he was an eloquent speaker he was probably better fitted to shine at the bar than in debate. and when he sat in deliberative bodies his best work was done in committees. In this case, as in others, fame has been kinder to debaters than to committee-men. But it seems fair to say that when the American states formally and in unison claimed their place in the British empire as bodies politie, William Samuel Johnson was their leading spokesman. Undoubtedly what he said was what many others were saying, but it was felt that few could say it so well. And if he was not among those who appear to change the course of history, he admir- ably discharged the more useful function of helping to keep general aetion in harmony with natural progress.
That Johnson was then in full sympathy with the mass of the Connecticut people was shown in various ways. He joined in passive resistance to the Stamp Act while it was in force, and when it was repealed he was chosen to thank the king, and to assure him, with perfect truth, of the "unshaken loy- alty " of the commonwealth. Before the congress assembled he had been one of twenty men nominated by popular vote for seats in the Governor's council. or board of assistants, and in the following April he was one of the twelve chosen, by popular vote. to occupy the position. Like all the higher of- fices in Connecticut at that period, this was commonly a per- manent one; the freemen, having made a good choice, adhered to it. though they might have made a new choice every year. In the meantime Johnson had been honored in a different way through his father's influence with the Archbishop of Canter- bury, the university of Oxford having conferred on him the degree of Doctor of Laws. The title had been well-earned by his lucid exposition of the British constitution in the Stamp Act congress, though that consideration probably had no great weight at Oxford.
Dr. Johnson had sat but a short time in the upper house when Connecticut gave him what was perhaps the strongest
19
proof that could have been given of confidence in his ability and integrity. She was summoned to defend before the king in council her title to a large traet of land, elaimed in behalf of the Mohegan Indians. The ease had been in litigation for seventy years, it had been closely connected with attacks on the colonial charter, and there was danger that an unfavor- able decision would be used to secure the forfeiture of the charter as proving misgovernment, if not dishonesty. The life of the colony, as a free commonwealth, almost seemed to depend on the result. And when Jolinson was sent, at the elose of the year 1766, to conduet the defence, and to serve the colonial cause in such other ways as might be open, the choice showed that the assembly could not find an abler law- yer. It also showed absolute trust in him as a man. It was perhaps not known, indeed, that his father had learned to detest the New England charters, and thought the govern- ments which they sanctioned "pernicious." This attitude of the elder Johnson had no doubt been reached through the pressure of ecelesiastical controversy, leading him to believe that the Connecticut charter gave the Congregationalists an unfair advantage.1ยบ It ought to be easy to forgive him now, since Conneetient herself long ago abolished the charter for very much the same reason. But whether his views on this point had become publie or not. there was no doubt about his intense, and perfectly reasonable, desire for an American epis- copate. And to most people in Connecticut bishops seemed even more intolerable than stamped paper. It was feared that their salaries would be raised by taxation, and that they would set up courts of probate and divorce. These fears were not feigned, for opposition to American bishops ceased when the colonies became independent : that the danger was not quite imaginary, though exaggerated, has been admitted by candid Episcopalians from that time to this. In 1766 anxiety on this subject had been freshly excited, but when the alarm was greatest Connecticut Congregationalists sent to the seat of danger, and to the society of the English primate, the son of the man from whose influence they had most to fear. certain
10 Beardsley's Life and Corresponde nee of Samuel Johnson, 206, 279, 293, etc.
1
20
to be charged by his father, as he was charged, to spare no efforts to get bishops for America. They could hardly have given more emphatic testimony to his virtue and enlightened patriotism. He would himself have welcomed a bishop clothed with purely spiritual powers, and he lived to do it. But he was unalterably opposed to the half-secular episcopate which the colonists dreadled, and which even his father did not ask for.
Owing to repeated postponements of the Mohegan case the younger Johnson was absent nearly five years, or until the antum of 1771. The publication by the Massachusetts His- torieal Society in 1885. of "The Trumbull Papers." contain- ing his official correspondence with the Connecticut gover- nors. Pitkin and Trumbull. makes it easy to follow his course as colonial agent. In the preface to this volume Johnson's letters are described as "written with great elegance of style," and as graphically reporting parliamentary debates, while the writer is called "a man of rare insight, great common sense, and most excellent judgment." Ninety years before, the cor- responding secretary of the society. Dr. Jeremy Belknap, wrote : "I have read the letters repeatedly with delight, and have gained a better idea of the political system than from all the books published during that period." Mr. Bancroft consulted them in manuscript, and often quotes from them.
When Johnson reached London, in February, 1767. there had been no renewal of parliamentary taxation, though the right to renew it was maintained. William Pitt, lately made Earl of Chatham, was the nominal head of the ministry, and was inflexibly opposed to taxation. But his health was giving way. and he soon ceased to take part in public business, though he did not resign his post until October, 1768. When Chat- ham became inactive the chancellor of the exchequer. Charles Townshend, a brilliant but impulsive and unstable man, assumed the leadership. He died in the same year (1767) but in the meantime he had, as it woukl almost seem in a fit of pet- ulance. induced parliament to lay a duty on several articles, including tea. for the purpose of raising an American revenne to be used in paying the salaries of American governors and
-
.
.
21
judges. This would have made those high officials independent of the people but left them dependent on the king, a situation very unfavorable to freedom. The colonists had heretofore submitted, after a fashion, to the imposition of duties, or to what was ealled external taxation, in the way of regulating trade. But they now began to give up the distinction between internal and external taxation, and they also began to give up the importation of dutiable goods. In the mean time the special administration of the colonies was assigned to Lord Hillsborough, who retained it during the whole of Johnson's residence in England. Hillsborough was diligent aud court- eous, but obstinate and arbitrary. He called the American theory of colonial self-government "a polytheism in politics," and "fatal to the constitution." 11 In January. 1770, Lord North became prime minister. He had ability and good na- ture, but was almost entirely controlled by the king, who, as Mr. Green says. "was in fact the minister," and wholly re- sponsible for "the shame of the darkest hour of English his- tory." 12 In March, 1770, Lord North introduced. and par- liament passed. a bill removing all the new duties except that on tea. But they were removed not because they were un- constitutional but because they were "anti-commercial." Throughout the whole period of Johnson's agency. therefore, the attitude of England was essentially the same. Being a single state of the empire she claimed the right to lay burdens on the other states.
In these circumstances. Johnson showed himself, to borrow a phrase of his own, "a hearty American." His devotion was proved, if in no other way, by his consenting to remain so many years absent from his family at a very great sacrifice of interest and feeling. But he was also willing to inenr dinger for the common cause. When Townshend's proposals were under discussion, soon after his arrival, and colonial agents were forbidden to attend the sessions, he got admission to the gallery, and sat there taking notes while the speaker was assur- ing George Grenville, the late prime minister, that no agents
11 Trumbull Papers, (Collect. Mass. Ilist. Soc .. 5th Series, ix.) 307.
12 Hist. Eng. Peop. ; iv. 252.
1
22
were present. He told Governor Pitkin that he should renew the attempt at the risk of imprisonment. 13 His view of polit- ieal matters was that of Americans generally. He believed that the dispute was not a struggle between the head of the empire and seditions provinces. "For clearly," he wrote, "the controversy is . between subjeet and subject, between the people of America and the people of Britain, which shall have the power over American property." This was precisely Franklin's opinion, as transmitted from England in 1770.14 And Johnson judged of men, in their publie capacity, by their attitude on the general subject of colonial rights. He was very much afraid of Lord Chatham because he knew that Chatham held "the dangerous idea of a right to restrain us absolutely from every species of manufacture." "Should he come into power," added Johnson, he must be obeyed; "it is with him but a word and a blow." 13 In fact Johnson found but few friends of America in England, as he estimated friendship, though he had personal friends in all parties. There were few who admitted her title to what he really claimed for her, equal political rights with England.
And like a "hearty American " Johnson rejoiced in the "firmness and intrepidity" with which the colonies met the efforts of the ministry at once to "deceive" and to "intimi- date" them, and was delighted by the assurances which were given him "of the firm universal union of all the people of America to assert and maintain their indubitable rights." This union, he said, "joined to a prudent, well-advised con- duet, must render them impregnable, and insure their sue- cess."16 The conduct which he thought prudent and well- advised was not by any means hanging custom-house officers in etfigy, nor breaking their windows. He often complained of the obstacles which such proceedings threw in his way. What he did emphatically approve of, and constantly implore his countrymen to persist in, was the non-importation agree-
Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.