USA > Massachusetts > Suffolk County > Professional and industrial history of Suffolk County, Massachusetts, Volume II > Part 4
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adaptation of the new rig for the coasting and fishing trades became apparent at once.
In the autumn of 1;42 Faneuil Hall was completed and presented to the town by the princely merchant whose name it bears. It was to be both a town-hall and a market. It had been proposed more than once to build a market-house at the public expense, but the measure had been each time defeated ; and even the generous offer of Peter Faneuil had met with serious opposition, fortunately, on the part of only a minority of the citizens.
Neither the laws relating to navigation nor the "sugar and molasses act " (as it was called) of 1433, had been uniformly and rigidly enforced. As Palfrey suggests, it would have been imprudent for the home gov- ernment to cripple and offend the colonists by a strenuous interference with the business which furnished them with a great portion of their livelihood, while they were playing so important a part in the struggle with the French. Then there was the practical difficulty of securing an honest and scrupulous execution of the revenue laws by the servants of the crown. Governor Bernard reported that on his arrival in Massachusetts he had "entirely defeated the machinations of a for- midable confederacy intended to annul and avoid the Laws of Trade." The profits of illicit trade were so large that the merchants could afford to pay liberally for a complaisant policy in the administration of cus- tom-house affairs. The subordinate officers seem to have been called . upon to divide their receipts under the law with their superiors, and they evidently preferred to pocket fees which would be all their own. Thomas Hutchinson wrote to a correspondent in England: "For my part, I have always wished whilst I was in trade myself for some effectual measures to put a stop to all contraband trade; but I have always thought it might have been done without any further provision by the Parliament. The real cause of the illicit trade in this province has been the indulgence of the officers of the customs; and we are told that the cause of this indulgence has been that they have been quar- tered upon for more than their legal fee, and that without bribery and corruption they must starve."
One plan devised by the merchants who maintained intercourse with the interdicted islands in the West Indies, had been to load their vessels with molasses at the French or Spanish ports as usual and to purchase clearances "signed with the name, if not the handwriting, of the governor of Auguilla, who acted also as collector." This island was
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so small as not to afford a cargo for a single vessel, as was well known to the collectors of customs in New England, yet they allowed vessels with their cargoes, for a considerable length of time, to be entered without inquiry on these " Auguilla clearances." This, however, could not go on forever.
In 1261 the officers of the customs, under fresh instructions from England, began to be more rigorous in enforcing the law, and as it had always been odious, their conduct, so far as it was sincere, was resented, their proceedings were challenged, and their authority was called in question. Palfrey, indeed, doubts whether the new activity of the officers was prompted by anything else than by the increased opportunities which they conceived to be offered by the instructions of 1460 for adding to their official emoluments. Be this as it may, it was not long before they found themselves in open conflict with the mer- chants, and the latter, in self-defence, petitioned the General Court for a hearing on the questions involved; this request was granted, and a report in their favor was presented by the committee and accepted by the Legislature. The officers then brought the matter before the law courts, and at length succeeded in carrying their point. They were now encouraged to go further, and "as they had been accustomed, under color of the law, forcibly to enter both warehouses and dwelling houses, upon information that contraband goods were concealed in them, one of their number petitioned the Superior Court for writs of assistance to aid in the execution of his duty." Exceptions were taken to this application, and the cause was argued in the council chamber in the old building at the head of King street, before Thomas Hutch- inson, the newly appointed chief justice, and his four associates. This was the memorable occasion when James Otis, " a flame of fire." made his great plea in behalf of the popular liberties, and of which John Adams said: "American independence was then and there born." We are told also that Adams, carried away by the occasion, felt the spirit of resistance within him, and that from that time forward he could never read the Acts of Trade without anger, "nor any section of them without a curse." The chief justice was determined that the court should not yield to the eloquence of the patriot or to the pressure of public opinion, and he "prevailed with his brethren to continue the cause to the next term, and in the mean time wrote to England " for definite instructions. The answer was in favor of the government, and after it came, although the charge of illegality had not been touched,
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writs of assistance were granted by the court whenever the revenue officers applied for them, on the ground that such writs were issued by the Court of Exchequer in London.
" The peace of Paris was as joyously welcomed in America as in England." But the mother-country was heavily burdened by debt, and the statesmen there were at their wits' end in their endeavors to pro- vide revenue. It is not strange that they looked to the North American colonies, so prosperous and so progressive, for help in their emergency. These colonies were an integral part of the empire, and, as it seemed, their fate was bound up with that of the empire as a whole. Why then should not they bear their proportionate share of the burdens which had been assumed or accepted in England for the common defence, and why should not they submit cordially to such measures of taxation as Parliament might enact? As George Grenville insisted: " Pro- tection and obedience are reciprocal. Great Britain protects America ; America is bound to yield obedience." A question might be raised as to the extent and value of the protection which the colonies had en- joyed. Colonel Barré, in the House of Commons, denied that they had been protected by the British arms. "They protected by your arms!" he exclaimed, "they have nobly taken up arms in your defence. And," he added, "the same spirit of freedom which actuated that people at first will accompany them still." But, waiving this point, the hardship of the position consisted in this, that the colonists had not been treated hitherto as on the same footing with their fellow-subjects at home. Their shipping interests had been crippled, their manu- facturing industries had been repressed, and every advance they had made had been watched with jealousy and suspicion. They had been governed practically as outsiders, and now it was proposed to lay new exactions upon them as subjects.
A further hardship was that the colonists had no direct representation in the legislative body which claimed the right to tax them. As a consequence they were not understood at Westminster, their circum- stances were not appreciated, and their wishes were not regarded. In this respect they were at a great disadvantage as compared with the large proprietors of the British West Indies, who resided in Britain, many of whom had seats in Parliament, and who, therefore, could enforce their demands by an offer of votes which a minister might feel that he could not afford to lose. This state of things continued far into the present century, and the battle for West India emancipation
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had to be fought out in England and Scotland rather than in the pos- sessions themselves in which slavery existed. The duties of 1:33 had been imposed at the call of the West India proprietors, who were "jealous of the success of their rivals at the north, and of the extent and importance of their commercial adventures," and who, having no shipping of their own, were ever ready to join hands with the British shipowners to hamper the commerce of the northern colonies.
If the British sugar planters could have had their way, New Eng- land would have been prohibited altogether from trading with the French, Dutch and Spanish West India islands. In the Massachusetts Archives (volume 88) there is a full report in manuscript of a hearing in 1150 before the Lords of Trade, which furnishes a suggestive illus- tration of the way in which men are often deceived by considerations of personal interest, and how selfishness may assume the plausible guise of publie spirit and patriotism. In the petition on which this hearing was based, it was said: "The petitioners charge the northern colonies with being the agents of France, and other foreign nations, carrying on commerce in Europe and America for their benefit, and against the interest of their mother country; and suggest there is danger of their becoming by this means, independent of it." They therefore prayed that the northern colonies might be prohibited from taking any sugar, rum or molasses from any of the West India islands not subject to the British crown. The charges were elaborated in ten articles, cach of which was replied to at length by the representatives of New England, and the danger was averted for the time.
On the accession of the Grenville ministry to power, it was deter- mined to pass a stamp act for the colonies, and the officers of the cus- toms were served with "new and ample instructions enforcing in the strongest manner the strictest attention to their duty." Proclamations against the clandestine importation of goods were issued December 26, 1763, and published in the Boston newspapers of the following month. The "restraint and suppression of practices which had long prevailed " could not but encounter great difficulties, and the whole force of the royal authority was invoked in aid. The troops were ordered to "give their assistance to the officers of the revenue for the effectual suppression of contraband trade;" the officers of the ships of war on the coast were also obliged to qualify, as Barry says, "for their new and distinguished duties as excisemen and tidewaiters," having the promise of a share in the property confiscated for violation of the law.
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The whole country was roused, and the people were "stung nearly to madness" by the proceedings of the officials and of those who were assisting them. At the instance of the merchants of Boston and other towns, the General Court directed the agent of the province in London to labor for the repeal of the sugar act, and to exert himself to prevent the passage of the stamp act, "or any other impositions or taxes upon this or the other American colonies."
In the spring of 1164 Mr. Grenville gave notice of his intention to bring in a bill for imposing stamp duties in America, but, "out of tenderness to the colonies, " he consented to postpone it for a year. He also sought to conciliate the people of New England by two measures which they gratefully accepted for all that they were worth, but not as the price of their acquiescence in what they regarded as unequal and unjust schemes of taxation. The two measures referred to were, the revival of the bounties on hemp and flax, first granted in the reign of Queen Anne, and encouragement to the prosecution of the whale fishery. At the same session of Parliament, a bill was introduced, providing that duties be laid on various enumerated foreign commodities, as coffee, indigo, pimento. French and East India goods, and wines from Madeira, Portugal, and Spain, imported into the British colonies and plantations in America, and upon other articles, the produce of the colonies, ex- ported elsewhere than to Great Britain. It was provided, further, that a duty of threepence a gallon be laid on molasses and syrups, and an additional duty of twenty-two shillings a hundred weight upon white sugars, of the growth of any foreign American plantation, imported into the British colonies; and that the income of this last duty should be paid into the national treasury, to be disposed of by Parliament to- wards " defraying the necessary expenses of defending, protecting, and securing the British colonies and plantations in America." This tariff bill was pushed rapidly through all its stages, and, within a month from the day it was reported in the House of Commons, it received the royal assent. Machinery for its prompt and rigid enforcement was also de- vised and made ready. Two months later, all this had been made known in America, and, to quote the words of the Massachusetts Gasette, there was " not a man on the continent who did not consider it a sacrifice made of the northern colonies to the superior interests in Parliament of the West Indies."
Few, among those responsible for this legislation, had stopped to consider how it would be received by those whose material interests
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were to be affected, and, perhaps, imperilled, by it; but it was generally supposed that a rigorous administration of the new law, with the naval and military power to support it, would compel the popular submission. The exact truth on this point would, in due time, become apparent, but the first words spoken in response were those of protest. The General Court, in an address to Governor Bernard, at the autumnal ses- sion of 1164, represented as follows: " Our pickled fish wholly, and a great part of our codfish, are only fit for the West India market. The British islands cannot take off one-third of the quantity caught; the other two-thirds must be lost, or sent to foreign plantations where mo- lasses is given in exchange. The duty on this article will greatly diminish the importation hither; and being the only artiele allowed to be given in exchange for our fish, a less quantity of the latter will of course be exported-the obvious effeet of which must be a diminution of the fish-trade, not only to the West Indies but to Europe, fish suita- ble for both these markets being the prodnee of the same voyage. If, therefore, one of these markets be shut, the other cannot be supplied. The loss of one is the loss of both, as the fishery must fail with the loss of either."
"It was apprehended that in Massachusetts the annual loss to be sustained from the enforcement of the new aet would be not less than a hundred and sixty-four thousand pounds, while vessels worth a hundred thousand pounds would be rendered nearly useless; and there would be a further loss of property amounting to scareely less than a quarter as much, as the worth of the various articles of equipment and forms of industry used in the prosecution of the business. Five thousand sea- men would be thrown out of employment."
The question will be asked: If the duty on molasses laid by the act of 1433 was sixpence a gallon, while that laid by the act of 1264 was threepence, was not this reduction of fifty per cent. a boon to the province? The answer is easily found. The higher duty, as we have intimated, had been very generally evaded; the lower rate was to be collected at all hazards. Even if the methods for collection were not to be more thorough, it would be less of an object, both for the mer- chant and for the official, to run the risk involved in conspiracy to defraud the government under the lower rate, than it had been under the higher. The smuggler is a regulator in the movements of inter- national trade, whose operations no wise finance minister will fail to take into the account. A duty laid for revenue will invariably yield
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more to the public treasury at a moderate, rather than at the highest rate. In the instance before us, the duty was levied largely in the hope and expectation that it would be prohibitory, and the Boston merchants believed that this would be the effect.
In a petition of the General Court to the House of Commons, agreed upon at the same session as above, it was urged that " the importation of foreign molasses into this province, in particular, is of the greatest importance, and a prohibition will be prejudicial to many branches of trade, and will lessen the consumption of the manufactures of Great Britain ; that this importance does not arise merely, nor principally, from the necessity of foreign molasses, in order to its being consumed or dis- tilled within the province "; but, "that if the trade, for many years carried on for foreign molasses, can be no longer continued, a vent cannot be found for more than one-half of the fish of inferior quality, which are caught and cured by the inhabitants of the province, the French not permitting fish to be carried by foreigners to any of their islands, unless to be bartered or exchanged for molasses; that if there be no sale of fish of inferior quality, it will be impossible to continue the fishery; the fish usually sent to England will then cost so dear that the French will be able to undersell the English in all the European markets, and by this means one of the most valuable returns to Great Britain will be utterly lost, and that great nursery of seamen destroyed." In a letter written at the same time to the provincial agent in London, it was said: "We are morally certain that the molasses trade cannot be carried on, and the present duty paid."
The stamp act became a law, March 22, 1165. How its publication was received on this side of the water, we need not here relate. By its operation, the courts of the province were closed, business was sus- pended, and an unusual stillness reigned throughout the community. The provisions of the aet were very stringent ; and as the people refused to use the stamps which had been sent over, nothing remained but to abide the consequences. The principal merchants of Boston and other towns, to the number of two hundred, agreed to import no more goods from England, unless the aet should be repealed, and they counter- manded the orders already sent over. Several vessels went to sea, however, without stamped clearances, the custom-house officers giving the masters certificates that stamps could not be procured within their jurisdiction. The first ship to venture under such circumstances was the Boston Packet, Captain Ichn Marshall, owned and sent out by John
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Hancock. She was bound for London, and on her arrival in the Thames she passed the custom-house without having her papers called in question. Another vessel, engaged regularly in the trade between Boston and London at this time, was the London Packet, Captain Robert Calef.
Mr. Hutchinson wrote at this time: "I am now convinced that the people throughout the colonies are impressed with an opinion that they are no longer considered by the people of England as their fellow- subjects, and entitled to English liberties." There were "two Eng- lands," however, then, as there are now; and, in one them, America has never wanted for sympathy or support.
When the startling news reached England, of the uncompromising opposition of the colonists to the stamp act, a change of ministry had taken place and the Marquis of Rockingham had come into office. The question of immediate repeal was agitated throughout the kingdom, and confronted Parliament as it assembled in January, 1266. In the course of the debate on the first day of the session, William Pitt made the great speech which has endeared his memory to Americans for all time. In closing, he expressed it as his opinion that the act should be repealed, "absolutely, totally, immediately," and that the reason for this repeal should be assigned-" because it [the act] was founded on an erroneous principle." "At the same time," he added, "let the sovereign authority of this country over the colonies be asserted in as strong terms as can be devised, and be made to extend to every point of legislation whatsoever-that we may bind their trade, confine their manufactures, and exercise every power whatsoever, except that of tak- ing their money out of their pockets, without their consent." Even this broad-minded statesman could not divest himself of the idea that the colonies existed for the benefit of the mother country.
Petitions for the repeal of the stamp aet were laid on the table of the House of Commons from the merchants of London trading to North America, and from Birmingham, Bristol, Liverpool, Manchester, and other towns. Public opinion was thoroughly aroused, in part, no doubt, under the pressure of selfish considerations, for the commercial interests of the country were suffering greatly ; but, as Barry observes: " The people of England were friendly to liberty; their attachment to freedom was stronger than their love of arbitrary power; and their consciences and affections appealed to them loudly to side with those who were struggling to resist the eneroachments of absolutism." When
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the offensive measure was repealed, one year almost to a day from the time when it became a law, the church-bells of London were rung, the ships on the Thames displayed their colors, and the houses were illu- minated in all parts of the city.
" The relief and delight occasioned in America by the intelligence of the repeal of the stamp act were increased by the further action of the home government in relaxing the revenue regulations which had caused offence." The reservation of its prerogative in the matter of taxation, made by Parliament in the declaratory aet which accompanied the measure for repeal, did not give much concern at the first, but was regarded as the " bridge of gold " which "should always be allowed to a retreating assailant." The London merchants entreated their Ameri- can friends to take no offence at the declaration, although, as Hutchin- son says in his history, they could give no assurance that the principle would not be enforced. "Every newspaper and pamphlet, every public and private letter, which arrived in America from England, seemed to breathe a spirit of benevolence, tenderness and generosity." Thus wrote John Adams in his diary, and he added: "The utmost delicacy was observed in all the state papers in the choice of expres- sions, that no unkind impressions might be left upon the minds of the people in America." In all this we trace the hand of William Pitt, who had come into power and who had been raised to the peerage as Earl of Chatham, but, most unfortunately, was compelled almost immediately by severe illness to retire from public affairs, "and his withdrawal robbed his colleagues of all vigor or union." The enemies of the colonies were ever on the alert for mischief, and, at the same time, the course pursued by Governor Bernard and his "loyalist " sup- porters in Massachusetts had the effect to neutralize any spirit of conciliation which for a time prevailed in England.
In June, 1764, Charles Townshend, chancellor of the exchequer, as a reply to the taunts of George Grenville that he and his colleagues were afraid of the Americans and did not dare to tax them, secured the passage of a bill imposing duties on paper, glass, painter's colors, tea, and certain other articles imported into the colonies. The new duties were to be payable in sterling money, and were to go into effect in the fifth month after the enactment; just before this time arrived, three commissioners made their appearance in Boston, clothed with what were supposed to be adequate powers for the collection of the duties. Townshend's act was more objectionable than Grenville's stamp act
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had been, in this respect, that the receipts under the latter were to be covered into the imperial treasury and to be subject to the disposition of Parliament, while those under the former were to remain in America, and to be applied in making provision for the charges attending the administration of justice and the support of the civil government here. The officers of the crown were thus to be made independent, so far as their support was concerned, of the colonial legislatures. The new act, therefore, " was a menace of perpetual servitude." It was determined to nullify it by abstaining from the importation of the articles desig- nated in it, thus preventing a revenue from them, and to extend the arrangement to all other commodities brought from England, thus interesting the English merchants and manufacturers for a repeal of the law. The patriots of Boston resolved to form a combination " to eat nothing, drink nothing, wear nothing imported from Great Britain." Many of the merchants entered into an agreement in harmony with this resolution ; the governor thought this " impracticable," and his remedy, and that of the officials under him, for the existing difficulties, was this: "Ships of war and a regiment are needed to ensure tranquillity." A young merchant, William Palfrey, writing to his correspondent in London, April 14, 1:68, of the proposed stoppage of importations, said : " This salutary regulation is not to take place till the first of October next, and to be binding till the present grievous restrictions are taken off our trade." A few weeks later the same merchant wrote: " Where it will end 1 know not, but imagine there will be blood shed before it is over. You can't think how we are treated by those bashaws [the commissioners of customs]; our coasters, nay, our fishing and pleasure boats, are disturbed, fired at, and threatened." The time for mullifica- tion was still further postponed until January 1, 1269, after which date the merchants and traders had agreed that they would not import into the province "any tea, paper, glass, or painter's colors, until the act imposing duties on those articles shall be repealed." The agreement provided further, that during the year 1;69 there should be no impor- tation of goods or merchandise from Great Britain excepting salt, coals, fish-hooks, lines, hemp, duck, bar-lead, shot, wool-cards, and card-wire. Indirect importations by way of any of the sister colonies were also forbidden. According to Bradford, from twelve to fifteen ships had been arriving annually at the port of Boston, laden with the products and manufactures of Great Britain; but in 126t the amount of these importations was less by £165,000 than in 1464, and in 1:68 a large ship with English goods was sent back without unloading.
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