USA > Massachusetts > Commonwealth history of Massachusetts, colony, province and state, volume 2 > Part 43
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So long as the war lasted the English government was too occupied with other things to be successful in its new design of enforcement. The close of the war for the time being ended that opportunity of offence.
While the new bill of 1764 reduced the duty on tea from six pence to three pence, it continued the use of the navy for enforcement, and provided that trials should take place before the Courts of Admiralty, which unlike the common law courts did not include juries. To the Boston merchants obviously three pence enforced was worse than six pence under the old policy which had been little less than permitted smug- gling. In anticipation of the expiration of the old law, the Boston merchants had petitioned for the removal of the molas- ses duty. The act of 1764 was England's reply to the suc- cession of protests.
The question whether the mother country was justified in adopting its new taxation policy, or the colonies were right in opposing, has always given concern to the historians writing on the period. It would seem useful for us today to obtain an understanding of the points of view of each side at the time.
476 CONTROVERSIES OVER BRITISH CONTROL
CONSTITUTIONAL ISSUE OF TAXATION
Several arguments on this subject appealed to the English taxpayer. The French war just closed had doubled the British debt from £75,000,000 to about £150,000,000. The annual charge of the government in the plantations was £350,000 a year, and England also bore the entire cost of the navy which had been used in part for the defense of the colonies. Colonial customs were yielding £2,000 a year; and it was costing near four times that amount to collect the scanty return. Just at this time the French war was succeeded by the Pontiac Indian war on the western frontier, for the con- duct of which England was maintaining ten thousand troops. In the meanwhile not only were the eastern colonies refusing to aid, as being far removed fron danger, but Pennsylvania under the control of the Quakers would not take part, even though her own inhabitants in the western section of the colony were being massacred.
The colonials told the story from their own point of view. They too had come out of war burdened with debt. Especially was this true of Masssachusetts, whose debt was estimated at £818,000 and was more than twice that of any other colony. Of this £160,000 was discharged by 1765 and provision had been made to wipe out the remainder by taxes in five years. There was reason in John Hancock's declaration that not a man in England was being taxed so much in proportion to his estate as himself.
Nevertheless Edward Channing alludes to "a favorite idea in England that the colonies were doing very little for the support of the governments and might easily bear the burden of considerable taxation." Moreover, in addition to what the colonies were paying in direct taxation by vote of their own assemblies, they were undoubtedly contributing through the operation of the mercantile laws of Great Britain several hundred thousand pounds annually by indirect taxation into the treasury of the mother country.
In addition to the economic aspects of the case for the Americans, there was also the constitutional principle at stake of "taxation without representation." This was perhaps no- where better expressed than in the instructions sent by the Gen-
477
ISSUE OF THE STAMP ACT
eral Court of Massachusetts to its agent, Mauduit, in London. "If all the Colonies are to be taxed at pleasure, without any representation in Parliament, what will then be to distinguish them in point of liberty, from the subjects of the most absolute prince. Every charter privilege may be taken from us by an appendix to a money bill. A people may be free and tolerably happy, without a particular branch of trade; but without the privilege of assessing their own taxes, they can be neither."
Obviously with such conflicting interests and their resulting collision of convictions, the imperial connections were under greater strain than ever before. New difficulties were coming up, destined to become more serious. And the British imperial system at that time provided no means for working out a mutual understanding and compromise.
CONSTITUTIONAL ISSUE OF THE STAMP ACT (1764 - 1765)
The Sugar Act of 1764 marks the adoption of a new colo- nial policy, in that the imposition of duties was no longer to be primarily for the regulation of trade but for the raising of revenue. The Stamp Act passed the next year went a long step further because for the first time a bill involving the raising of revenue in the interior of the colonies had been passed by Parliament. Hitherto the colonial assemblies had been the only bodies laying taxes other than duties payable at the waterfront on imported goods.
It is true that Grenville in connection with the Sugar Act had given a year's warning of the intended passage of a stamp tax. The colonials seem to have been so concerned, however, with the Sugar Act itself, as to give little thought to Gren- ville's further plans. When the year had expired, the bill was passed by Parliament with little interest and no organized protest; and certainly with no premonition of the opposition which it would arouse in the colonies. Out of the small at- tendance in Parliament at the time came only two speeches in opposition. To the authors of these, Barré and Conway, the Boston Town Meeting later sent resolutions of thanks and ordered their portraits for the Town Hall. The vote in the Commons was 294 to 49. It received the royal assent March 22, 1765, and was to go into effect November 1.
478 CONTROVERSIES OVER BRITISH CONTROL
The Stamp Act was a long one, consisting of a preamble and 117 paragraphs. Stamps were to be required on playing cards, dice, legal documents, liquor licenses, university de- grees, appointments to office, articles of apprenticeship, pam- phlets, newspapers, and almanacs.
Opposition was aroused fully as much by the provisions for enforcement as by anything else. By these provisions the Admiralty Courts could take jurisdiction if so requested by the informer or the prosecutor, thus depriving the accused of trial by jury. Another incongruity was the use of the Admi- ralty Courts for the enforcement of an inland tax.
In form a stamp tax was very common at that time, as it has been frequently used since. Such a tax existed in Eng- land, and Channing is of the opinion that, "Upon the whole, one gets the idea that the stamp duties, which it was proposed to charge [in America], were lighter than those which were actually being paid in England." As early as 1722 and 1728 proposals were made for a colonial stamp tax to be imposed by the home government. Moreover the Massachusetts legis- lature itself in 1755 passed a tax in this form as a war measure effective for two years. This was taxation by the colony's own Assembly, enforced by the regular Colonial Courts, and was quite a different thing from taxation by Parliament, with enforcement by courts presided over by royally appointed officials without jury trial.
MASSACHUSETTS PROTESTS AGAINST THE STAMP ACT (1765)
Excitement in Massachusetts was slow in developing. In fact, Patrick Henry in Virginia became the leader in arous- ing opposition to the new act. His resolutions, carried in the Virginia House of Burgesses, were described by Governor Bernard as "an Alarm-Bell to the disaffected. . . . It is in- conceivable how they have roused up the Boston Politicians, & been the Occasion of a fresh inundation of factions & in- solent pieces in the popular newspaper." This impolite ref- erence was to the Gazette, which had been taken over ten years before by Edes and Gill and had now attained the for that time very respectable circulation of some two thousand copies. Governor Bernard's feelings are indicated by his character-
:
479
LIBERTY MOBS
isation of it as "an infamous weekly paper which has swarmed with Libells of the most atrocious kind." During the sum- mer of 1765 the Gazette carried bitter attacks on the Stamp Act, making especial use of arguments based on the constitu- tional rights of the colonists.
However slow may have been the crystallizing of opposition in Boston it manifested itself in the worst possible form, that of mob action, when, August 8, 1755, the list of stamp distrib- utors was made public, and it was learned that the prized posi- tion in Massachusetts had been given to Andrew Oliver, the secretary of the Province and a brother-in-law of Hutchinson. A few nights later Oliver was hanged in effigy from an elm tree at the corner of Washington and Essex streets, the same tree afterwards called the "Liberty Tree." An old boot was also hung up, the reference being to Lord Bute, the prime minister. All day the figures remained on the tree, crowds gathering to see them. That evening a new building of Oliver's supposed to be intended for his stamp office was demolished, his house was broken into and some furniture destroyed. The next day Oliver resigned.
Bernard offered a reward for the offenders but they were not apprehended. Two days later there was a demonstration at Hutchinson's house, but after a few windows had been broken, the mob dispersed, upon being told (falsely) that the lieutenant governor was not in. On Sunday, August 25, Reverend Jonathan Mayhew preached a sermon in support of the popular side from the text, "I would they were cut off which trouble you."
LIBERTY MOBS (1765)
The next night, Monday, August 26, 1765, proved to be the worst of all. The house of Story, registrar of the Admiralty, was broken into and the records of the Admiralty Court de- stroyed. The house of the comptroller of the currency was plundered. Moving on to the house of Hutchinson, from which he and his family had fled for their lives, the mob thoroughly gutted his magnificent residence. While the in- trinsic loss ran into thousands of pounds, lovers of Massachu- setts have greater regret for the irreplaceable destruction of the historical material relating to the colony and province which
480 CONTROVERSIES OVER BRITISH CONTROL
Hutchinson had been collecting for years. Fortunately the manuscript of his History of Massachusetts was picked up and preserved, the stain of the street mud still upon its pages.
As in most mob violence the membership seems to have been drawn from the roughs of the town, who for the occasion were stimulated by liquor. A town meeting was called the next day at which resolutions expressing "abhorrence" were adopted and a "civic guard" organized. Nevertheless the townspeople made themselves responsible at least as "accessories after the fact," inasmuch as the merchants forced the sheriff to set free the mob leader, one Mackintosh, a shoemaker, whom he had arrested. Other leaders who had been placed in jail were rescued.
December 17 another mob, again led by Mackintosh, forced Oliver to take oath under the Liberty Tree that he would never enforce the Stamp Act. Two thousand are said to have been present and it was reported that Colonel Brattle, a mem- ber of the Council, paraded the streets arm in arm with Mackintosh. The Governor ordered out the militia but it refused to muster; another evidence that public opinion was on the side of the rioters.
In the meanwhile methods more legitimate were being em- ployed in protest against the Stamp Act. The House of Representatives voted for an inter-colonial congress. Resolu- tions were also passed, following the riots, to the effect that from the fathers had been inherited a relish for civil liberty ; but that it was hoped the sons would never have to countenance means except those legal, regular, and constitutional, a senti- ment sufficiently pointless to satisfy all concerned. In opposi- tion to the Stamp Act itself, however, other resolutions ap- pealed to the theory of natural rights, with the declaration that there are "certain essential rights common to mankind, founded in the law of God and Nature, and ... recognized by the British Constitution."
THE STAMP ACT CONGRESS (1765)
Out of the Stamp Act came the first movement for union initiated by the colonies themselves, and in this Massachusetts took the lead. June 8, 1765, a resolution was passed directing
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From the original in the Massachusetts Historical Society
A "STAMP ACT" STAMP AND ITS REVERSE, SHOWING OFFICIAL SEAL
THE Bofton- AND COUNTRY
No. 77%.
Containing the frefbeft Advices,
Gazette, JOURNAL.
Foreign and Domeffic.
*
MONDAY, January 22, 1770.
A LIST of the Names of thofe who AUDACIOUSL Y Continueto counteract the UNIT- ED SENTIMENTS OF the BODY of Merchants theo'out NORTH AMERICA ; by importing Braith Goods contrary to the Agreement.
Jolm Bernard,
(In King Street, atmoft oppofite Vernon'sHeld. James McMafters; (On Treat's Wharf.
Patrick McMafers,
John Griffith, xxxxx John Mein, (Opposite the Sign of the Lamb.
(CippoGie the White- Hoefe; and in King-Street. Ame & Elizabeth Cummings,
(Oppabite the Did Brick Meeting Haufe, shi of Bolton, And, Henry Barnes,
( Trader in the Top + of Marlboro". TAVE, and do dill continue to import Gouds from KI London, contrary to the Agreement of the Mer- chants .-. They have been requested to Store their Goods upon the Gime Trem as the tett of the Importers have done, but absolutely refuse, by conducting in this Manier. IT moft evidently appese that they have prefered their owo liite private Advantage to the Welfare of Ampi Ca : It is therefore highly proper thax the Public mould know who they are, that have at this critical Times For- didly detached thernfelser from the public Interest ; sud as they will be deemed Enemies to their Country, by sil who are well withers to it , to those who aford them their Countenance or give them, then CuSom, mui expeli to be considered in the fame difagreeable Light"
a. TO BE. LET,
The Front End of a convenient Brick Tenment, two Rooms on aFloor, firmare in Long- Lant'; enquire F SAMUEL BASS, living in the back End of The House.
XXXXXXXXXX
All Perfons that have any Demands ci the Eftare of Mix Alexander Young, Jate uf Bafiom, Ooster, deceas'd, are schied to bring in their Accounts to Mri. Motitable Yours, indeminiHarris , But all share
him of our inviotable attachment to his facred per" fon and government, and to befeech his Royal is- terpofition, as the father of all bis people, however remote from the feat of his empire, to quiet the minds of his loyal fubjects, of this colony, and to avert from them thofe dangers and miferies which will enfos from the feizing and carrying beyond fea, any perfon refiding in America fufpected of any crime whatfoever, to be tried in any other manner than by the ancient and long eftablifhed courfe of proceedings.
The following address was then agreed epon. and ordered to be transmitted to their agent in England, to be laid before his Majefty.
" To the KING's molt Excellent MAJESTY, The humble ADDRESS of his dutiful and kryat Subjects the Honte of Alfembly of his Majelly's Colony of NorthCarolina, met in General Allembly. May it pleafs your Mojefty,
W [ E your Majety's moll loyal, dorifut, and affectionate futj &s, the houfe ofA/R mbly, .of this your Majelly's colony of North- Carolina, now met in general affembly, beg leave, in the moft humble manser, to allure > our Majetty. that your faithfol fobjects of this colony, ever diG tinguifhed by their loyalty and firm attachment to your Mejelly and your royal soceftors, are far from countenancing traitors, treafons, or mitprifon of treafon, and ready at any time to face'fice our lives and fortunes in defence of your Majetly's facred perfon and government,
It is with the deepell concere, and molt heartfelt xy grief, that your Majelly's moft dutiful fobirds of
NAILS.
On Thurfday the 2 5th Inft. At Ten o'Clock in the Morning :
Will be fold by PUBLIC VENDUE, at the Store of the late Mi Toen Spoonir, decear'd, next Door Eaft of the Heart and Crown'in Cornhill, Bafee.
L.1 bìs Hard Ware GOODS, the particulars of A which hath @ready beenadvertir'd, and was to have been told the 3d Init, had not Sicknefs prevented.
FTAS removed his School to a more commodious Place, a new Bijck Building in Hanover Street, a little below the Orange- Tree, where he teacher Spelling. Reading, Writing, one Anthmetic, at his oluat Hours: He allo tenches Writing and Arithmetic in the Evening. xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx TO BE DISPOSED OF,
XIX Years of the Time of a very haily, sflive Boy. about 14 Your of Age-exceeding tion and docile, w+very fuirable for any one whofe Bolnels will admit of keeping hiện at Home-mor fer a Matter of a Vedlkl: Enguise of Files and Gil.
From an original in the Harvard College Library
VIOLATORS OF THE NON-IMPORTATION AGREEMENT EXPOSED
481
THE STAMP ACT CONGRESS
the speaker to write to the Houses of the other colonies request- ing them to send delegates to a congress to be held in New York in October. Neither the Councils nor the Governors, except in the two self-governing colonies of Rhode Island and Con- necticut, were to have anything to do with the congress.
The loyalist element had a majority in the Massachusetts House, but thought it expedient to vote for the congress; and the resolution passed unanimously. No open effort was made to prevent the election, as one of the delegates, of James Otis, who had been foremost in urging the congress. The other two delegates, Oliver Partridge and Timothy Ruggles, were described by Governor Bernard as "fast friends of gov- ernment-prudent and discreet men, who would never consent to any improper application to the government of Great Britain."
When the Stamp Act Congress met at New York in Octo- ber, Ruggles was chosen "chairman." Forty-eight years later Thomas McKean, who had been a delegate from Delaware, wrote an account of the services of Ruggles at the Congress, in which he says that Ruggles was elected to the New York delegation by only one vote. During the sessions Ruggles supported what was done "fully and heartily"; but Otis, ac- cording to McKean, "suspected his sincerity." In the end Ruggles refused to vote for resolutions asserting the rights of the colonies and condemning the Stamp Act. His explanation that "it was against his conscience" led to an open chal- lenge to duel from Ruggles and an acceptance by McKean.
In Massachusetts the House of Representatives passed a resolution "That Brigadier Ruggles, with respect to his con- duct at the congress of New York, has been guilty of neglect of duty, and that he be reprimanced therefor by the speaker."
The influence of Otis on the Stamp Act Congress is difficult to determine. There he seems to have led the Massachusetts House into issuing the invitation. At the congress itself he failed of election either as "chairman" or as head of any of the committees. Nevertheless the testimony is that he was the boldest of the speakers on the patriot side.
482 CONTROVERSIES OVER BRITISH CONTROL
ATTITUDE OF THE MASSACHUSETTS GOVERNMENT (1765)
The stamps required by the new law arrived in Boston September 10, those destined for Massachusetts, New Hamp- shire, and Rhode Island being included. Since Oliver, the distributor, had resigned, there was no one officially commis- sioned to take charge of them. Bernard called a session of the Council and House of Representatives for "advise and assist- ance [as] the care of them devolves to the government, as having a general charge of the King's interest within it."
To this the House of Representatives replied: "May it please your Excellency, The House having given all due at- tention to your Excellency's message of this day, beg leave to acquaint your Excellency that the stamped papers mentioned in your message are brought here without any directions to this government; it is the sense of the House, that it may prove of ill consequence for them any ways to interest them- selves in this matter ; we hope therefore your Excellency will excuse us, if we cannot see our way clear enough to give you any advice or assistance therein."
Addressing the Council, October 1, the Governor explained he had ordered the stamped papers to the Castle for protection ; but that he could not unpack or distribute them because he had no order to do so, and could not make himself liable for so large a value. On one occasion Bernard prorogued the House because it insisted on discussing the Stamp Act, but he was soon obliged to convene it again. At another time the House rebuked the Governor and Council for having provided addi- tional troops at the Castle, the House insisting on the constitu- tional point that expenditures could be authorized only by the people's representatives.
THE STAMP ACT IGNORED (1765-1766)
November 1, the date when the Stamp Act became effective, bells were tolled, flags half masted, and more effigies were hanged from the Liberty Tree. The question arose as to whether to conduct business without stamps, thus defying the law, or to suspend business altogether. As between these two policies of active or passive resistance, the latter was adopted for the time being in respect to everything except
483
INTER-COLONIAL PROTESTS
newspapers. The story is told that a wag in Boston sent to the printers a piece of bark on which he had written inquiring whether, since it was neither paper, parchment, nor vellum, it was free from the tax; in which case he was ready to supply quantities to all those whose consciences were bound by the late act.
No activity suffered more than legal proceedings, since the courts had to close because no unstamped processes could legally be served. In his diary for December 18, John Adams, who had been struggling to establish himself as a lawyer, wrote: "The probate office is shut, the custom house is shut, the courts of justice are shut, and all business seems at a stand. ... I have not drawn a writ since the first of Novem- ber. I have groped in dark obscurity till of late, and had but just become known and gained a small degree of reputation when this execrable project was set on foot for my ruin as well as that of America in general, and of Great Britain."
Gradually, without any preconcerted arrangements, business was resumed, though conducted without the stamps. Still the courts remained closed despite the request to the Governor and Council by a committee of eight headed by Samuel Adams representing the Boston Town Meeting. Finally in January the House of Representatives, in drafting its reply to the Gov- ernor's message, declared: "The custom houses are now open and the people are permitted to transact their usual business. The courts of justice also must be opened,-opened immedi- ately; and the law, the great rule of right, duly executed in every county in this province. This stopping of the course of justice is a grievance which this Court must inquire into. Justice must be fully administered without delay."
The Council laid this address on the table. Yet gradually, as the weeks went on, the courts were reopened by the judges on their own responsibility.
INTER-COLONIAL PROTESTS (1765)
In the meantime the Stamp Act had brought about the first of the series of economic measures which the people led by the merchants were to make effective against the mother coun- try. Two hundred and fifty merchants in Boston, following the
484 CONTROVERSIES OVER BRITISH CONTROL
lead of those of New York and Philadelphia, signed an agree- ment to import no articles from England, with some necessary exceptions, until the act was repealed. The result was a re- duction in the use of foreign articles, especially at funerals which the customs of the times required to be very elaborate.
Despite the restraining policy of the English government, manufacturing in America had developed to a point where it was possible to conduct this boycott on English goods with- out crippling interior trade. In three lines especial advance- ment had been made; the smelting of iron ore, the making of potash, and the manufacturing of coarse woolens for clothing.
The merchants canceled all orders if not filled before Janu- ary 1, 1766; and some agreed not to dispose of goods sent on commission even before that date. It was generally understood that mutton was not to be eaten lest the supply of wool fall short. The rich set an example by wearing homespun or old clothes. It is said that even the young ladies performed their part by agreeing not to receive attention from beaux who did not support the popular side.
In opposing' the Stamp Act, similar methods and activities were set in operation in all the colonies, involving interesting combinations of mob violence with appeals to reason. It is easy enough for the modern critic, writing from the point of view of a powerfully established and independent nation, to condemn either or both of such methods. At the beginning of the crisis the Americans were few, though politically unified, and their wealth' consisted chiefly in undeveloped resources. They felt that their economic interests were not a matter of concern to the government across the seas; and were undoubt- edly sincere in the belief that their constitutional rights were being violated. In attacking the most powerful naval nation in the world they could not be expected to be nice in selecting the means which they should use. England's repeal of the obnoxious act, a short time after its passage, was a tribute to the effectiveness of the means of pacific resistance if not to the great colonial principle of "no taxation without
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