possible for the tea, and that as many people in the Colonies as possible should buy tea, since the more there was realized, the sooner would it collect from the Company what was owing. The situation was, therefore, the same in effect as if the State had granted to the Company the monopoly of supplying tea to the inhabitants of America, and had pledged itself to foster the monopoly by every direct and indirect means. As the consumption of tea by the people of the Colonies would have pecuniarily benefited Great Britain, consumers of tea would have been regarded by the British Government as its friends and non-consumers as its enemies, and the people of the Colonies would have been, in effect, subject to sumptuary regulations of the British Government, enforced through the instrumentality of spies and informers. That it was this monopoly feature which made the importation of the tea particularly odious is shown by an extract from a Philadelphia newspaper of January 3, 1774, quoted in the Principles and Acts of the Revolution by Hezekiah Niles, which read:

Upon the first advice of this measure, a general dissatisfaction was expressed that, at the time when we were struggling with this oppressive Act imposing a duty on tea, and an agreement not to import tea while subject to duty, our fellow subjects in England should form a measure so directly tending to enforce that Act and again embroil us with our parent State. When it was also considered that the proposed mode of disposing of the tea tended to a monopoly, ever odious in a free country, a universal disapprobation showed itself throughout the city.

The importation of the tea, under the circumstances, was a definite attack upon the member-statehood of the Colonies in the Federal Empire in four different ways: first, it was an execution of a taxing statute passed by the Central Government of Great Britain under a claim

that, as the Central Government of the British Empire, it had unconditional and unlimited power; second, it was an attempt to collect money from the Colonies to be expended for the maintenance of their Local Governments; third, it was an attempt to establish a monopoly of supplying tea to the Colonies in favor of an English corporation; and fourth, it was an attempt to subject the people of the Colonies to indefinite sumptuary regulations, enforced through spies and informers.

The Act for closing the port of Boston and for depriving the Province of Massachusetts Bay of its House of Representatives and elected Council, passed in the early part of 1774, and the other acts and measures for the coercion of the Colonies, were war measures, and are hence of little consequence from a constitutional aspect, except so far as they showed a determination, on the part of the British Government, to enforce its policy of depriving the Colonies of their member-statehood in the Federal Empire, and to convert them into mere integral and unrepresented parts of a Unitary State.

The Act of 1774, by which the Province of Quebec,which, under the Proclamation of 1763, included only what is now the continental part of the Dominion of Canada, was enlarged so as to include the whole of what was afterwards known as the Northwest Territory, and was given a government by a royal Governor and Council, and by which the Roman Catholic religion was placed under governmental protection, was regarded in the Colonies as a direct attack upon their member-statehood in so far as it deprived them of the benefit of free expansion into the Western region and the control of it for the purposes of their own development, and as an indirect attack, in so far as it almost surrounded them with a Government directly dependent on the British Government, in which the people had no representation whatever.

Thus, in the spring of 1774, it was no longer open to

doubt but that the British Ministry would convert the British Empire into a British Realm unless the Colonies could prevent it. Under these circumstances, the Congress at Philadelphia, to devise measures for concerted action, became a political necessity.

D

CHAPTER XV

THE FEDERAL EMPIRE DEFINED, 1774

URING the quiescent period from 1770 to 1774,

the most noteworthy contribution to the thought on the subject of the constitutional relationship between Great Britain and the Colonies was a pamphlet written by James Wilson of Philadelphia (who afterwards became an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States at its first formation), entitled Considerations on the Nature and Extent of the Legislative Authority of the British Parliament.

In this pamphlet, written when Wilson was twentyeight years of age and a student in the office of John Dickinson, he took the ground that the King was the sole representative of the State of Great Britain, for the administration of its relations with the Colonies, thus denying any power whatever to Parliament in this respect. After arguing that the liberties of the people of America could not, in the nature of things, be derived from the will of the people of England, but were natural rights, and that they could not be derived from the adjudication of the people of England, because they were interested parties and an incompetent and partial tribunal, he concluded, after an examination of the cases and of the methods of administration of the Colonies theretofore practiced, that the dependence of the Colonies was wholly upon the King, and that, in the performance of his functions, the King had legislative powers within a definite sphere. These legislative powers Wilson derived from

the principle of allegiance. As it is now apparent that the whole doctrine of allegiance has nothing to do with the question of constitutional relationship between political communities in the time of peace, and has its sole significance only as bearing on the relations between the State and its inhabitants arising out of war, present or prospective, it is unnecessary to consider what he said on this subject. The closing words of the essay, on the subject of the relationship of the King to the Colonies, were as follows:

This is a The prin

Now we have explained the dependence of the Americans. They are the subjects of the King of Great Britain. They owe him allegiance. They have a right to the benefits which arise from preserving that allegiance inviolate. They are liable to the punishments which await those who break it. dependence, which they have always boasted of. ciples of loyalty are deeply rooted in their hearts; and there they will grow and bring forth fruit, while a drop of vital blood remains to nourish them. Their history is not stained with rebellious and treasonable machinations; an inviolable attachment to their Sovereign, and the warmest zeal for his glory, shine in every page.

From this dependence, abstracted from every other source, arises a strict connection between the inhabitants of Great Britain and those of America. They are fellow-subjects; they are under allegiance to the same Prince; and this union of allegiance naturally produces a union of hearts. It is also productive of a union of measures through the whole British dominions. To the King is intrusted the direction and management of the great machine of government. He therefore is fittest to adjust the different wheels, and to regulate their motions in such a manner as to co-operate in the same general designs. He makes war: he concludes peace: he forms alliances: he regulates domestic trade by his prerogative, and directs foreign commerce by his treaties with those nations, with whom it is carried on. He names the officers of government;