Read The Glorious Cause: The American Revolution, 1763-1789 Online
Authors: Robert Middlekauff
Tags: #History, #Military, #United States, #Colonial Period (1600-1775), #Americas (North; Central; South; West Indies)
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39 | Copeland, ed., |
40 | EHD |
pass statutes affecting the colonies. Legislation was one of its rights as the center of sovereignty, but legislation did not include the right to tax, which belonged to representative bodies. Whatever the distinctions that the colonies made between legislation and taxation, the fact remained that they had challenged a right Parliament had long cherished. How to blunt that challenge, or better yet how to bury it?
How indeed when -- doubtless to Rockingham's despair -- these issues were raised by William Pitt, upon whom the Rockingham Whigs counted to help solve problems, not create them. Pitt entered the debate soon after it began on January 14 -- "entered" does not begin to describe the sensation his speech produced. He began in a voice so low as to be inaudible, and then, explaining that he had not heard the address from the Crown, asked that it be read again. As in the speech of December, the ministry had given the king only vagueness to espouse, a fact Pitt quickly grasped. He could proceed to speak his mind, an opportunity he almost immediately used to announce to the House and to George Grenville, who sat one place away from him, that "every capital measure" taken by the late ministry "has been entirely wrong!"
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Having disposed of the Grenville ministry, Pitt defended the constitutional case made in America. "It is my opinion," he said, "that this Kingdom has no right to lay a tax upon the colonies. At the same time, I assert the authority of this kingdom over the colonies, to be sovereign and supreme, in every circumstance of government and legislation whatsoever." For in Pitt's view the Americans shared all the rights of Englishmen, were bound by England's laws, and were subject to all the protections of its constitution. And the crucial one in this case was the right to be taxed by one's representatives. Taxes after all were "no part of the governing or legislative power." Rather, "taxes are a voluntary gift and grant of the Commons alone. In legislation the three estates of the realm are alike concerned, but the concurrence of the peers and the crown to a tax, is only necessary to close with the form of a law. The gift and grant is of the Commons alone."
Pitt then asked what happened when Commons levied a tax. The answer seemed obvious to him -- "we give and grant what is our own." But in taxing America what did the Commons do? "We your Majesty's Commons of Great Britain, give and grant to your Majesty, what? Our own Property? No. We give and grant to your Majesty, the property of your Majesty's commons of America.
It is an absurdity in terms."
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41 | Cobbett, comp., |
Pitt knew that several Englishmen, among them perhaps George Grenville, had anticipated the objection to taxation without representation by insisting that the Americans were "virtually represented" in Parliament. Pitt dismissed this notion in half a dozen sentences. Who in England represented the Americans, he sneered -- the knights of the shire, the representative of a borough, "a borough, which perhaps, its own representative never saw." Here was another absurdity, "the most contemptible idea that ever entered into the head of man."
The
Parliamentary History
, wherein this speech was printed, reports that a "considerable pause" ensued after Pitt's speech -- members understandably disliked following Pitt -- but Secretary Conway gathered his courage and said that he agreed with Pitt, though in fact he disagreed on several points unrelated to the constitutional argument.
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The House did not want to hear Conway, and no doubt he knew it. Everyone waited for Grenville, who now rose to answer Pitt.
Grenville's answer was brilliant rhetorically, capturing much of the doubt and resentment of the House. He began by censuring the ministry for delay in reporting the rebellion in America and predicted that should Pitt's "doctrine" be upheld the rebellion would become a revolution. And he declared that he could not "understand the difference between external and internal taxes."
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Nor could he understand the difference between legislation and taxation. Taxation, he insisted, was both part of the sovereign power and "one branch of the legislation." Moreover, taxation had long been exercised over many who were unrepresented -the great manufacturing towns, for example. As for America, no member had objected to Parliament's right to tax the colonies when the Stamp Act was introduced.
Up to this point, Grenville had kept his anger in check; now it broke through in a powerful denunciation of the Americans' lack of gratitude for the military protection and economic advantage afforded them by the empire.
Protection and obedience are reciprocal. Great Britain protects America; America is bound to yield obedience. If not, tell me when the ica; Americans were emancipated? When they want the protection of this kingdom, they are always ready to ask for it. That protection has always been afforded them in the most full and ample manner. The nation has run itself into an immense debt to give them their protection;
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42
Ibid.
43
Grenville's speech is in
ibid.,
101-3.
and now they are called upon to contribute a small share towards the public expence, an expence arising from themselves, they renounce your authority, insult your officers, and break out, I might almost say, into open rebellion. 44
Grenville said more, but these few words aroused Pitt, who got to his feet at the completion of the speech. Pitt now spoke with extraordinary eloquence and probably carried many members with him -- at least temporarily. In several respects, however, he made the task of the ministry all the more difficult. For Pitt praised American resistance: "I rejoice that America has resisted. Three millions of people, so dead to all the feelings of liberty, as voluntarily to submit to be slaves, would have been fit instruments to make slaves of the rest." He also reasserted that Parliament possessed full authority to legislate for the colonies. England and her colonies were connected and "the one must necessarily govern; the greater must rule the less; but so rule it, as not to contradict the fundamental principles that are common to both." 45
Grenville had given him an opportunity to explain what ruling entailed by asking the question "when were the colonies emancipated?" Pitt's brief reply -- "I desire to know when they were made slaves?" -- struck through all the rhetoric to the central issue of liberty within constitutional order. Of course the Americans could be crushed by armed force, Pitt noted, but the dangers of crushing them would be great. For "America, if she fell, would fall like a strong man. She would embrace the pillars of the state, and pull down the constitution along with her." 46
Pitt's eloquence so thoroughly dazzled several of his listeners that they failed to understand what he was saying. One member wrote in a letter after hearing Pitt:
It seems we have all been in a mistake in regard to the Constitution, for Mr. Pitt asserts that the legislature of this country has no right whatever to lay internal taxes upon the colonys; that they are neither actually nor virtually represented, and therefore not subject to our jurisdiction in that particular; but still as the Mother Country we may tax and regulate their Commerce, prohibit or restrain their manufactures, and do everything but what we have done by the Stamp Act; that in our representative capacity we raise taxes internally and in our legislative capacity we do all the other acts of power. If you understand the difference between representative and legislative capacity it
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44
For Pitt's answer,
ibid.,
103-8
.
45
Ibid.
46
Ibid.
is more than I do, but I assure you it was very fine when I heard it.
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If Pitt created confusion, he also gave offense to many members by his statement approving of colonial resistance. Rockingham did nothing to remove the confusion, but he acted soon to shift the House's attention from the treacherous sand of constitutional theory to the firm ground of economics. Between January 17 and 27 the petitions from merchants from all over the realm were presented and read. These petitions argued against the Stamp Act on economic grounds: they described the decay of trade, the inability of merchants to collect American debts, the hardships resulting to all classes in Britain, and several hinted that the merchants might remove themselves from the islands if repeal were not achieved.
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From this point on, the ministry asserted greater control in the House. First of all, on January 28, it persuaded the House to resolve itself into a committee of the whole and then to consider motions embodying a program of action in response to the crisis. This program made no concessions to Pitt's argument that Parliament had no right to tax the colonies. That right had to be stated at the outset if the ministry was to obtain repeal. Therefore, on February 3, 1766, Conway moved a resolution declaring that Parliament possessed the power to make laws binding the colonies "in all Cases whatsoever."
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In introducing this resolutionwhich was the basis of the Declaratory Act -- Conway explained that while the right to tax was clear, the expediency of it was not. Whether this resolution had any meaning given the ministry's intention to propose repeal of the stamp tax was immediately questioned by Hans Stanley, a highly respected member. Others clearly shared Stanley's doubt -- the declaration did not seem to comport well with repeal. Attorney General Yorke answered as well as he could for the ministry that the resolution did have meaning, and the resolution passed overwhelmingly on the next day with only Pitt, who had displayed unwonted indecisiveness in this debate, and three or four others voting against it.
Over the next
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47 | Historical Manuscripts Commission, |
48 | Morgan, ed., |
49 | For Conway's resolution, see Lawrence Henry Gipson, "The Great Debate in the Committee of the Whole House of Commons on the Stamp Act, 1766, as Reported by Nathanael Ryder", |
two days resolutions passed declaring that the riots in America violated the law, that the legislative assemblies in America had countenanced them, that those persons who suffered injury or damage on account of their desires to comply with the laws should be compensated by their colonies, that such persons who had desired to comply with the laws or assisted in their enforcement would have the protection of the House of Commons, and that anyone suffering penalties because stamped paper was unavailable ought to be compensated.
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