true statesman they are very insufficient. Severe accuracy of definition, refinement and precision of reasoning, are for the most part wholly out of place in practical politics. It might be true that there was a line where internal and external taxation, taxation for purposes of commerce and taxation for purposes of revenue, faded imperceptibly into one another; but still there was a broad, rough distinction between the two provinces which was sufficiently palpable to form the basis of a colonial policy. The theory connecting representation with taxation was susceptible of a similar justification. A Parliament elected by a considerable part of the English people, drawn from the English people,. sitting in the midst of them, and exposed to their social and intellectual influence, was assumed to represent the whole nation, and the decision of its majority was assumed to be the decision of the whole. If it be asked how these assumptions could be defended, it can only be answered that they had rendered possible a form of government which had arrested the incursions of the royal prerogative, had given England a longer period and a larger measure of self-government than was enjoyed by any other great European nation, and had created a public spirit sufficiently powerful to defend the liberties that had been won. Such arguments, however worthless they might appear to a lawyer or a theorist, ought to be very sufficient to a statesman. Manchester and Sheffield had no more direct representation in Parliament than Boston or Philadelphia; but the relations of unrepresented Englishmen and of colonists to the English Parliament were very different. Parliament could never long neglect the fierce beatings of the waves of popular discontent around its walls. It might long continue perfectly indifferent to the wishes of a population 3,000 miles from the English shore. When Parliament taxed the English people, the taxing . XI. TAXATION AND REPRESENTATION. 79 body itself felt the weight of the burden it imposed; but Parliament felt no part of the weight of colonial taxation, and had therefore a direct interest in increasing it. The English people might justly complain that they were taxed by a body in which they were very imperfectly represented; but this was a widely different thing from being taxed by the Legislature of another country. To adopt the powerful language of an Irish writer, no free people will ever admit that persons distant from them 1,000 leagues are to tax them to what amount they please, without their consent, without knowing them or their concerns, without any sympathy of affection or interest, without even sharing themselves in the taxes they impose on the contrary, diminishing their own burdens exactly in the degree they increase theirs.'1 The Stamp Act received the royal assent on March 22, 1765, and it was to come into operation on the 1st of November following. It was accompanied by a measure granting the colonies bounties for the import of their timber into England, permitting them to export it freely to Ireland, Madeira, the Azores, and any part of Europe south of Cape Finisterre; and in some other ways slightly relaxing the trade restrictions. A measure was also passed which obliged the colonists to provide the British troops stationed among them with quarters, and also with fire, candles, beds, vinegar, and salt. Neither of these measures, however, at the time excited much attention, and public interest in the colonies was wholly concentrated upon the Stamp Act. The long delay, which had been granted in the hope that it might lead to some proposal of compromise from America, had been sedulously employed by skilful 1769, p. 75. 1 Considerations on the Dependencies of Great Britain (by Sir Hercules Langrishe), Dublin, 25 Geo. III. c. 45. agitators in stimulating the excitement; and when the news arrived that the Stamp Act had been carried, the train was fully laid, and the indignation of the colonie rose at once into a flame. Virginia set the example by a series of resolutions which were termed 'the alarum bell to the disaffected,' and which were speedily copied in the other provinces. They declared that the colonists were entitled by charter to all the liberties and privileges of natural-born subjects; that the taxation of the people by themselves, or by persons chosen by themselves to represent them, . . . is the distinguishing characteristic of British freedom, without which the ancient constitution cannot exist,' and that this inestimable right had always been recognised by the King and people of Great Britain as undoubtedly belonging to the colonies. A congress of representatives of nine States was held at New York, and in an extremely able State paper they drew up the case of the colonies. They acknowledged that they owed allegiance to the Crown, and all due subordination to that august body, the Parliament of Great Britain;' but they maintained that they were entitled to all the inherent rights and liberties of natural-born subjects; that it is inseparably essential to the freedom of a people, and the undoubted right of Englishmen, that no taxes be imposed on them but with their own consent, given personally or by their representatives;' that the colonists are not, and from their local circumstances cannot be, represented in the House of Commons of Great Britain; ' that the only representatives of the colonies, and therefore the only persons constitutionally competent to tax them, were the members chosen in the colonies by themselves; and that all supplies of the Crown being free gifts from the people, it is unreasonable and inconsistent with the principles and spirit of the British Constitution for the people of Great Britain to grant to 6 a. II. RIOTS IN AMERICA. 81 his Majesty the property of the colonies. A petition to the King and memorials to both Houses of Parliament were drawn up embodying these views.1 It was not, however, only by such legal measures that the opposition was shown. A furious outburst of popular violence speedily showed that it would be impossible to enforce the Act. In Boston, Oliver, the secretary of the province, who had accepted the office of stamp distributor, was hung in effigy on a tree in the main street of the town. The building which had been erected as a Stamp Office was levelled with the dust; the house of Oliver was attacked, plundered, and wrecked, and he was compelled by the mob to resign his office and to swear beneath the tree on which his effigy had been so ignominiously hung, that he never would resume it. A few nights later the riots recommenced with redoubled fury. The houses of two of the leading officials connected with the Admiralty Court and with the Custom-house were attacked and rifled, and the files and records of the Admiralty Court were burnt. The mob, intoxicated with the liquors which they had found in one of the cellars they had plundered, next turned to the house of Hutchinson, the LieutenantGovernor and Chief Justice of the province. Hutchinson was not only the second person in rank in the colony, he was also a man who had personal claims of the highest kind upon his countrymen. He was an American, a Calvinist, a member of one of the oldest colonial families, and in a country where literary enterprise was very uncommon he had devoted a great part of his life to investigating the history of his native province. His rare ability, his stainless private character, and his great charm of manner were universally recognised; he had at one time been one of the most Bee Story's Constitution of e United States, i. 175, 176. * See Tudor's Life of Otis, pp 424-433. popular men in the colony, and he had been selected by the great majority of the Assembly as their agent to oppose in England the restrictive commercial laws of Grenville. Bernard, however, considering this position incompatible with the office of Lieutenant-Governor, which Hutchinson had held since 1758, induced him to decline it; and although Hutchinson was opposed to the policy of the Stamp Act, the determination with which he acted as Chief Justice in supporting the law soon made him obnoxious to the mob. He had barely time to escape with his family, when his house, which was the finest in Boston, was attacked and destroyed. His plate, his furniture, his pictures, the public documents in his possession, and a noble library which he had spent thirty years in collecting, were plundered and burnt. Resolutions were afterwards carried in the town for suppressing riots, but nothing was done, and it was evident that the prevailing feeling was with the rioters. Mayhew, one of the most popular preachers of Boston, had just before denounced the Stamp Act from the pulpit, preaching from the text, 'I would that they were even cut off which trouble you.' A leading tradesman who had been notoriousiy a ringleader was apprehended by the sheriffs, but he was released without inquiry in consequence of a large portion of the civic guard having threatened to disband themselves if he were committed to prison. Eight or ten persons of inferior note were actually imprisoned, but the mob compelled the gaoler to surrender the keys and release them, and not a single person was really punished.' The flame rapidly spread. In the newly annexed provinces, indeed, and in most of the West India islands, the Act was received without difficulty, but in 'Holmes' Annals of America, 1765. Grahame's Hist. iv. An nual Register, 1765. Adams Diary, Works, ii. 156. |