INTRODUCTION

I. The Taxation Question, 1764–70.

THE roots of the American Revolution go far down into the past. Geography and climate, institutional developments, religion and race, and other factors beyond our ken, may have made the separation inevitable. Only the immediate causes, however, can be studied in these documents. Since 1688 the colonies had been pushing toward a larger measure of selfgovernment, as indeed the dominions have done in the last century. Then came an attempt to check this evolution; to create new institutional bonds between the colonies and Great Britain, and to strengthen such as existed. It was a part of the struggle between centralization and localism which runs through all modern history; and not the least interesting phase were the attempted solutions through federalismunsuccessful in 1774-5, successful on a smaller scale in 1787-8. The American Revolution belongs not only to America; it is an important part of the great liberal movement of the eighteenth century, a portent of dominion home rule, and a laboratory of imperial and federal problems.

In 1760, when the Seven Years' War closed in North America, the English colonists were fairly satisfied with the existing rough compromise between home rule and imperial control. Although irritated with certain aspects of the old colonial system, they were content that Parliament should control imperial commerce, so long as it permitted them to prosper; and they had no criticism of a foreign policy which had brought glorious results. No separatist movement existed. In England, however, there was serious dissatisfaction with this rough compromise. It was commonly believed that the

colonies had not done their proper share in the war (below, p. 21).1 The colonists not only denied this, but asserted that they were pulling more than their own weight in imperial taxation (pp. 28-9, 33), and that the fruits of victory were imperial rather than local (pp. 7, 49-50). It would be even more difficult to-day to strike a just mean between these opposing views, than to decide who won the war' of 1914-18, or to settle debts and reparations. There was, and is, no agreed basis for the proper contribution of colonies to an imperial war; and it depended entirely on future events whether England or the Thirteen Colonies would get the most out of Canada and the Floridas.

} As early as 1762 the Newcastle ministry decided to retain in the colonies a garrison of 10,000 men (several times larger than the pre-war garrisons), and to tax the colonists for its support. The Grenville ministry had to find ways and means. The { Revenue Act of 17643 was the first important step in a new colonial policy. This law had a double purpose, to provide revenue, and to tighten the mercantile system by strengthening the Acts of Trade and Navigation.

Since the seventeenth century the colonists had not objected to the mercantile system as such. Scattered through the documents in this book are frequent admissions, as late as 1775, that Parliament was the proper body to regulate the trade of the entire empire. Nor is it true that the prohibition of direct trade with continental Europe had been complained

1 This is argued in G. L. Beer, British Colonial Policy, 1754-65, and E. I. McCormac, Colonial Opposition (Berkeley, Calif., 1911), by adopting a priori standards of what the colonies should have done; but they have at least shown that some did very much more than others, and that several had almost to be bribed to defend themselves. 2 Franklin's letter of 7 January 1766 on the Stamp Act (in all editions of his writings) is a typical expression. Note quotation from Governor Bernard's letters in Burke, Speeches on American Affairs (Everyman ed.), 33. Channing (United States, iii. 33) prints a table of outstanding colonial war debts in 1766.

3

4 Geo. III, c. 15. Also called the Grenville Act, Sugar Act, &c. See marginal references in the Instructions of 1769, printed below.

of, or systematically evaded. The older laws had, however, left certain loopholes for free trade, which were now closed. The Molasses Act of 1733, imposing a prohibitory duty on. molasses entering the English colonies from the foreign West Indies, had never been enforced; and one of the principal objections to the Revenue Act was its imposition of a lower but still onerous duty on such molasses.1 'The Act of Navigation is a good Act, so are all that exclude foreign manufactures from the plantations, and every honest man will readily subscribe to them,' wrote James Otis. Right as to Europe: but for God's sake, must we have no trade with other colonies ? '

As yet few persons had cared to look into the constitutional relationship between colonies and mother country. It would have been better for imperial unity had none but humorists done so. But the Revenue Act taught colonial lawyers that broadening down from precedent to precedent' might be disastrous. One single Act of Parliament', wrote James Otis 'has set people a-thinking, in six months, more than they had done in their whole lives before.' His pamphlet, The Rights of the British Colonies, is the first of numerous attempts by colonial publicists, following each forward move of the British Government from 1764 to 1774, to formulate a defensive theory of the colonial status. The short extracts here \printed (pp. 4-9) will show his interesting presentation of the law of nature' theory-the law above Parliament-which provided both a justification for the American Revolution and basis for the State and Federal Constitutions.3

The preamble of the Revenue Act (p. 39) announcing that the new duties were levied for revenue purposes, was the point

See documents printed in Callender, Selections from Economic History, chapter iii, and pp. 122-35; and G. L. Beer, op. cit., chapter xiii. 2 Rights of the British Colonies (1764), 55. Cf. Burke, op. cit., 24. For the historical background to this theory, see C. H. McIlwain, The High Court of Parliament (Yale Univ. Press, 1910), and C. Becker, Declaration of Independence (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1922).

on which colonial lawyers concentrated, for they saw in it the thin end of a wedge of taxation without representation'. Principiis obsta was the cry (p. 6). This thin-end-of-the-wedge argument we find running through the whole pre-revolutionary controversy. It is a fair question whether potential rather than actual oppression did not produce the ferment in America. erica.

On 22 March-1765, before colonial opinion had been fairly mobilized against the Revenue Act, Parliament passed the Stamp Act.1 This law extended to the colonies, where social conditions made stamp duties particularly onerous,2 a system long prevalent in England. Stamp duties, in sterling, were required on all legal documents, on newspapers, pamphlets, and almanacs, playing cards and dice.

The wedge was entering fast, but it was now taking the form of direct internal taxation, against which it was easy to concentrate. The issue was no longer complicated with trade regulation, as in the Revenue Act; and it touched the pride or interest of all classes in every colony, save Nova Scotia, which showed an abnormal docility. Virginia led off with Henry's speech (of which ascending versions have been given, to show how tradition is made), and defined the issue in the Resolves of 30 May (pp. 14-18). The Stamp Act Congress in New York, the first intercolonial meeting summoned by local initiative, adopted a more reasoned and moderate set of resolves than Henry's (p. 32). 'No taxation without representation' was the cry. But were the colonies not ' virtually ' represented in Parliament ? Had a colonial government any higher status than an English corporation? Would a grant of direct representation solve the difficulty? Daniel Dulany's and Soame Jenyns's pamphlets (pp. 18-32) are good examples of the arguments used on both sides of the water in the 15 Geo. III, c. 12. Digest in Macdonald, Documentary Source Book, 122. 2 See quotations from William Sumner in Callender, op. cit., 137.

periodical press, the clubs, county courts, market places, and wherever men gathered together.1

Colonial opinion was united against the Stamp Act as on no issue before or since. Royal officials were powerless to enforce it, and the new Rockingham ministry had it repealed. At the same time the Declaratory Act of 17662 was passed, declaring that King and Parliament' have full power and authority to make laws and statutes of sufficient force and validity to bind the colonies in all cases whatsoever'. This was barely noticed in the colonies, and the Revenue Act was forgotten; the repeal of the Stamp Act seemed completely satisfactory. 나 A new period of agitation began in 1767, with the passage of the Townshend Acts.3 Parliament returned to the policy tentatively begun in 1764, that of raising a revenue through customs duties. To this end the colonial customs service was completely reorganized by the creation of a special American Board of Commissioners of the Customs, resident at Boston, and directly responsible to the Treasury; and by the establishment of new vice-admiralty courts. New duties-the 'Town(shend duties'-were levied on certain British manufactures, land on tea, when entering the colonies. The moneys thus raised in the colonies, instead of going to support the garrison, were to be used to create a colonial civil list (p. 51), and thus render the royal governors and judges independent of the assemblies.

In the Instructions issued by the new American Commissioners of the Customs to their subordinates (pp. 74-83), we can find exactly what acts and regulations regarding colonial trade, navigation, and manufactures were in force in 1769. The newer regulations (p. 81, note) were probably necessary to prevent the systematic smuggling that had sprung up since 1 See Channing, iii, chapter iii, and M. C. Tyler, Literary History of the Revolution, i, chapters iii-v, for the more important pamphlets. 2 6 Geo. III, c. 12: almost a word-for-word copy of the Irish Declaratory Act of 1719, 6 Geo. I, c. 5.

3 7 Geo. III, c. 41, 46, 56; 8 Geo. III, c. 22.

Channing, iii, chapter iv, should be read with this document.