1. 11. RECEPTION OF TOWNSHEND'S LAW IN AMERICA. 118 the annual grant was the one efficient control upon maladministration. A period of wild and feverish confusion followed. Counsels of the most violent kind were freely circu lated, and for a time it seemed as if the appointment of the new Board of Commissioners would be resisted by force; but Otis and some of the other popular leaders held back from the conflict, and in several colo nies a clear sense of the serious nature of the struggle that was impending exercised a sobering influence. Georgia, which had been inclined to follow the example of New York, was brought to reason by the prospect of being left without the protection of English troops in the midst of the negroes and the Indians.' The central and southern colonies hesitated for some time to follow the lead of New England. Hutchinson wrote to the Government at home that Boston would probably find no other town to follow her in her career of violence; and De Kalb, the secret agent of Choiseul, who was busily employed in fomenting rebellion in the colonies, appears for a time to have thought it would all end in words, and that England, by keeping her taxes within very moderate limits, would maintain her authority. Massachusetts, however, had thrown herself with fierce energy into the conflict, and she soon carried the other provinces in her wake. Non-importation agreements binding all the inhabitants to abstain from English manufactures, and especially from every article on which duties were levied in England, spread from colony to colony, and the Assembly of Massachusetts issued a circular addressed to all the other colonial Assemblies denouncing the new laws as unconstitutional, and inviting the different Assemblies to take America.'-Cavendish Debates, L. 91. Hildreth, ii. 540. united measures for their repeal. The Assembly at the same time drew up a petition to the King and addresses to the leading English supporters of the American cause. These addresses, which were intended to act upon English opinion, were composed with great ability and moderation; and while expressing the firm resolution of the Americans to resist every attempt at parliamentary taxation, they acknowledged fully the general legislative authority of Parliament, and disclaimed in the strongest language any wish for independence. In America the language commonly used was less decorous. One of the Boston newspapers dilated furiously upon the obstinate malice, diabolical thirst for mischief, effrontery, guileful treachery, and wickedness' of the Governor 2 in such terms that the paper was brought before the Assembly, but that body would take no notice of it, and the grand jury refused to find a true bill against its publisher. The Commissioners of the revenue found that it was idle to attempt to enforce the Revenue Acts without the presence of British troops. Riots were absolutely unpunished, for no jury In their petition to the King they say, 'With great sincerity permit us to assure your Majesty that your subjects of this province ever have, and still continue to acknowledge your Majesty's High Court of Parliament, the supreme legislative power of the whole Empire, the superintending authority of which is clearly admitted in all cases that can consist with the fundamental rights of nature and the Constitution.' 'Your Lordship,' they wrote to Shelburne, is too candid and just in your sentiments to suppose that the House have the most distant thought of in dependency of Great Britain.' 'So sensible are the members of this House,' they wrote to Rockingham, of their happiness and safety in their union with and dependence upon the mothercountry, that they would by no means be inclined to accept of an independency if offered to them.' The true Sentiments of America, as contained in a Collection of Letters sent from the House of Representatives of Massachusetts Bay to several Persons of High Rank in this Kingdom London, 1768. Bancroft. Hutchinson. would convict the rioters. Bernard wrote that his position was one of utter and humiliating impotence, and that the first condition of the maintenance of English authority in Massachusetts was to quarter a powerful military force at Boston. While these things were happening in America, the composition of the Ministry at home was rapidly changing. On September 4, 1767, after a short fever, Charles Townshend died, leaving to his successors the legacy of his disastrous policy in America, but having achieved absolutely nothing to justify the extraordinary reputation he possessed among his contemporaries. Nothing of the smallest value remains of an eloquence which some of the best judges placed above that of Burke and only second to that of Chatham,' and the two or three pamphlets which are ascribed to his pen hardly surpass the average of the political literature of the time. Exuberant animal spirits, a brilliant and ever ready wit, boundless facility of repartee, a clear, rapid, and spontaneous eloquence, a gift of mimicry which is said to have been not inferior to that of Garrick and of Foote, great charm of manner, and an unrivalled skill in adapting himself to the moods and tempers of those who were about him, had made him the delight of every circle in which he moved, the spoilt child of the House of Commons. He died when only forty-two, but he had already much experience of official life. He had been made a Lord of the Admiralty in 1754, Treasurer of the Chamber and member of the Privy Council in 1756, Secretary of War in 1761, President of the Board of Trade in 1763, Paymaster-General in 1765, Chancellor of the Exchequer in 1766. The extraordinary quickness of apprehension which was his most remarkable intellectual gift, soon made him a perfect master of official business, and no man knew so well how to apply his knowledge to the exigencies of debate, and how to pursue every topic to the exact line which pleased and convinced without tiring the House. Had he possessed any earnestness of character, any settled convictions, any power of acting with fidelity to his colleagues, or any self-control, he might have won a great name in English politics. He sought, however, only to sparkle and to please, and was ever ready to sacrifice any principle or any connection for the excitement and the vanity of a momentary triumph. In the absence of Chatham, whom he disliked and feared, he had been rapidly rising to the foremost place. He had obtained a peerage for his wife, and the post of Lord Lieutenant of Ireland for his brother; he had won the favour of the King, and was the idol of the House of Commons, and he had forced the Government into a line of policy which was wholly opposed to that of Camden, Grafton, and Shelburne. In a few months, or perhaps weeks, he would probably have been the head of a new ministry. Death called him away in the full flush of his triumph and his powers, and he obeyed the summons with the same good-humoured levity which he had shown in so many periods of his brief and agitated career.' 1 Townshend is now chiefly remembered by the singularly beautiful character of him in Burke's speech on American CHANGES IN THE MINISTRY. 117 He was replaced by Lord North, the favourite minister of the King, and one of the strongest advocates of American taxation, and in the course of the next few months nearly all those who were favourable to America disappeared from the Government. Conway, Shelburne, and Chatham successively resigned, and though Camden remained for a time in office he restricted himself exclusively to his judicial duties, and took no part in politics. Lord Hillsborough was entrusted as Secretary of State with the special care of the colonies, and the Bedford party, who now joined and in a great measure controlled the Government, were strenuous supporters of the policy of coercing America. The circular of the Massachusetts Assembly calling the other provincial Assemblies to assist in obtaining the repeal of the recent Act was first adverted to. Hillsborough, in an angry circular addressed to the governors of the different provinces, urged them to exert their influence to prevent the Assemblies of their respective provinces from taking any notice of it, and he characterised it in severe terms as • a flagitious attempt to disturb the public peace' by promoting an unwarrantable combination and exhibiting an open opposition to and denial of the authority of Parliament.' He at the same time called on the Massachusetts Assembly taxation. Horace Walpole says of him, 'He had almost every great talent and every little quality.... With such a capacity he must have been the greatest man of this age, and perhaps inferior to no man in any age, had his faults been only In a moderate proportion.'Memoirs of George III. iii. 100. See, too, Sir G. Colebrooke's character of him. Ibid. pp. 100102. In an able paper in the North Briton (No. 20) it is said of him, 'He joins to an infinite fire of imagination and brilliancy of wit, a cool and solid judg ment, a wonderful capacity for business of every kind, the most intense application to it, and a consummate knowledge of the great commercial interests of this country, which I never heard were before united in the same person.' |