CHAPTER VIII

afterwards

UNHAPPILY, whatever the upright Conway might will, The power lay elsewhere-with the King and his Parliamentary of ChatMinistry myrmidons. The Rockingham administration was an acci- ham and dent, due to the royal disgust at Grenville. As soon as of Lord another Ministry could be got together, Rockingham was North. contemptuously dismissed. It is one of the most melancholy facts of English history that the Ministry, which did more by their incapacity and blindness to ruin England than any Ministry before or since, should have entered office under the mighty wing of Pitt. Grenville was doubtless mistaken; but at least he knew his own mind, and the Stamp Act wears a dignified aspect compared to the patch-work of shilly-shally legislation which finally lost America. It must be remembered, however, that at first the new Ministry appeared as one favourable to the American colonists. Its chief opponent was Grenville, their implacable enemy. In America the fame of Pitt smelt as sweet under the name of Chatham. Conway continued in the Government, though the American department was undertaken by Shelburne. As late as the beginning of 1768 we find Franklin saying that there had been a talk of getting him appointed Under Secretary to Lord Hillsborough. But just in proportion as their intentions were good, was the result insidious. When all is said and done, the most malignant policy is less mischievous probably in its results than a policy of drift. But it was a policy of drift, tempered by royal obstinacy, which ended in the Declaration of Independence. The fountain and origin of all the evil that followed lay in the extraordinary attitude of Chatham. It is impossible, I think, to account for his conduct on any hypothesis, except that he was for the time practically insane,

1 Works, Vol. VII. Letter, Ju. 9, 1768.

Some remedy, which drove the gout into his system, may well have affected his nerves, so as to make him hardly responsible for his actions. We have already noted his fatal affectation of superiority to the party system. His plan of forming a Ministry has been inimitably described by Burke: "Here a bit of black stone and there a bit of white, patriots and courtiers, king's friends and republicans, Whigs and Tories, treacherous friends and open enemies." With this kind of administration it was obvious that the only bond of union could be the presence of a master mind, and yet this was the moment chosen by Chatham to fly from his colleagues to neglect all business, and, in effect, to insult his King. The consequences could easily be foreseen, and the wretched spectacle was witnessed of Pitt remaining a sleeping partner in a firm which openly avowed that taxation of America, the opposition to which his own eloquence had so greatly inflamed. In January 1767 Charles Townsend, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, one of those dangerous prodigies who conceal by their inexhaustible readiness and brilliancy their total absence of all depth and consistency of thought, surprised the House of Commons and his colleagues by jauntily describing the distinction between external and internal taxation as ridiculous, and by pledging himself to find a revenue in America. It is clear that now, if ever, was the time for the friends of America in the Government to act, and, by insisting on either themselves resigning or on Townsend recanting, they might have forced the hands of the King, and modified subsequent history.

The news, however, from America was serious, and served to 6 G. III., complicate the situation. The Quartering Act, as at first drafted, c. 18. had empowered officers to quarter their soldiers in private

houses. This provision was omitted to gratify the colonists, but a clause was substituted, enacting that empty houses, barns, &c. should be hired for the troops in the Colonies, and that the Colonies should pay these expenses and furnish firing, &c. This, of course, presumed that the Colonial Assemblies would pass laws to raise the money. The Pennsylvania Assembly complied, but New York obstinately refused. In

this state of things, even Chatham 1 foresaw that the "torrent of indignation in Parliament would become irresistible." For this reason, or without reason, no attempt was made to check Townsend, and in May he introduced the measures which were to make good his promise. The Act dealing with the particular case of New York requires little comment. It may be doubtful how far, even though Parliament had an absolute and superintending power to take any measures itself, it was within its rights in dictating to the Colonial legislatures the measures to be taken by them. But it was obviously impossible to allow defiance, and the Act for "re- 7 G. III., straining and prohibiting the Governor, Council, and House of Representatives of New York, until provision shall have c. 59. been made for furnishing the King's troops with all the necessaries required by law from passing or assenting to any Act of Assembly, vote or resolution, for any other purpose" was justified by its practical success. Something might also be said for the Act establishing a Board of Commissioners in 7 G. III., America, with extensive powers for the enforcement of the c. 41. execution of the laws relating to trade. How lucrative the business of smuggling still continued may be shown by the following case. Colden affirms 2 that his grandson on becoming Surveyor of the Port of New York, was given to understand that if he would not be officious in his duty he might depend upon receiving fifteen hundred a year. It never occurred to English politicians to reflect that, when public opinion is wholly against the enforcement of laws, they will somehow or other be evaded. If, however, the trade laws were to remain upon the statute book, the Ministry can hardly be blamed for yet another attempt to render them effectual; though the measure, by its interference with trial by jury, and its foisting upon the Colonies a new body of civil servants, did almost as much as anything to foster the growth of discontent. Nothing, however, but condemnation 7 G. III., is deserved by the Act which purported to secure an American c. 46. Revenue. Duties were imposed upon glass, red and white lead, painters' colours, and tea imported into the Colonies.

1 Chatham Correspondence.

2 N. Y. Docs. Vol. VIII.

So improvidently were the duties chosen that they were all, 1770. except the duty on tea, afterwards taken off by Lord North, on the ground that they interfered with English manufactures. No greater sum than £40,000 per annum was expected to arise from these duties, which sum was to be devoted primarily to secure the salaries of the Governors and judges, thereby, of course, rendering these officers additionally unpopular. Hutchinson afterwards pointed out that, if these duties had been paid on exportation from England and applied to the same purposes, there would have been no opposition made to them in America. Never from first to last was any business so hopelessly mismanaged. Never was there so striking an illustration of Aristotle's maxim γίγνονται μεν αι στάσεις οὐ περὶ μικρῶν ἀλλ' ἐκ μικρῶν, στασιάζουσι δε περὶ μεγαλῶν, than the case of the Boston tea. duty upon tea had been fixed at threepence per pound, and it was excused the duty of nearly twelvepence a pound paid in England, so that the practical effect of the measure was that people in America drank tea for three shillings a pound for which people in England gave six shillings. Leonard,2 some years later, stated that a calculation had "been lately made both of the amount of the revenue arising from the duties, with which our trade is at present charged, and of the bounties and encouragements paid out of the British revenue, upon articles of American produce, imported into England, and the latter is found to exceed the former more than fourfold." And yet it was to achieve this amazing result that

The

2 Writing as Massachuchettensis.

1 Hist. of Mass., 1749-1774. 3 We have already noted some of these bounties. Additional ones were granted in 1769 upon the importation of raw silk (9 G. III. c. 38) and in 1771 upon the importation of pipes, hogsheads, barrel staves (11 G. III. c. 50). In the matter of 'drawbacks,' the commercial Policy of England compared very favourably with that of other nations. Having assumed the exclusive right of supplying the Colonies with European goods, Great Britain might have forced them to receive such goods loaded with the same duties which they paid in England. But, on the contrary, till 1763, the same 'drawbacks' were paid upon the exportation of the greater part of foreign goods to our Colonies as to any independent Foreign Country.' The statute 4 G. III. c. 15, to some extent altered this, but even afterwards A. Smith affirms that some sorts of foreign goods might be bought cheaper in the Colonies than in England.

England estranged her colonists, lost America and well-nigh ceased to exist as a great Power.

Having set the match to the stack, Townsend died in the following September, leaving to his successors to deal with the fire. He was succeeded by Lord North, an able man, but from whose entry into an important office dates the final triumph for fifteen years of George the Third's policy. Within a short time, Conway, Shelburne, and Chatham resigned. In 1768 Lord Hillsborough became Secretary of State for the American department, and the opposition to America in the Ministry was further strengthened by the accession to office of members of that Bedford party, which had always advocated strong measures against the Colonies. A very hostile account is given of Lord Hillsborough by Franklin,1 but his despatches seem to testify to the substantial accuracy of Franklin's picture. He appears to have belonged to that very numerous class of politicians who seek to disguise their real weakness under a fluttering assumption of firmness. By a curious irony, this time, when the American Colonies were so soon to be a thing of the past, was the time chosen for the definite appointment of a separate Secretary of State for American affairs. We have seen how, from its first inception, the absence of independent authority in the Board of Trade had led to delay and confusion, and we have noticed some complaints on the subject. We have seen also how, in 1752, the difficulty had been partly met by some extension of the functions of the Board of Trade. The settlement of 1752 had been again modified in 1761, and in 1766 the old plan of Colonial authorities, corresponding both with the Secretary of State and the Board of Trade, was once more revived. In that year there had been some question of a separate Secretary of State for America, and we find Lord Chesterfield writing to Lord Dartmouth,2 "If we have no Secretary of State with full and undisputed powers for America, in a few years we may as well have no America." At the time, however, the King was opposed to such a change.

1 Works, Vol. VII., Letter of Feb. 5, 1771.

2 Hist. MSS. Com., Dartmouth Corr.