The Glorious Cause: The American Revolution, 1763-1789 (33 page)

In Massachusetts, Bernard in his usual tactless way told the House to vote the money as an act of justice before it was requisitioned -presumably by the Crown. The House asked who had the authority to requisition the people's money and then blandly suggested that any compensation would be an act of generosity, not of justice. Shortly after the exchange, towns outside began to ask why they should pay anything since the riots had occurred in Boston. Faced with the unappealing prospect of paying the whole bill, the Boston meeting flip-flopped and agreed that the colony should compensate the sufferers from the riots. Somehow Boston's leaders persuaded the House that the issue was not a local matter but that all towns should contribute. The House then agreed to pay and coupled payment to a pardon for those charged with riot. In December 1766 a statute providing both compensation and pardon passed and was sent to Governor Bernard.
The legislature lacked

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the power to pardon, traditionally the prerogative of the executive, and Bernard knew it. The legislature had trapped him: Thomas Hutchinson and other victims were friends and stood to get the money. Bernard approved the statute.
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New York also made an issue of compensation. There the legislature agreed to pay Major James, the commander of the fort, for his losses of personal property, and it also compensated the owner of the house where James lived, which had sustained damage in the riots. But Lt.Governor Colden remained uncompensated; as the House coldly remarked, Colden had earned his losses by his own "misconduct."
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Colden did not suffer alone. General Gage, commander of British forces in America, also received a rebuff from the New York legislature in 1766. The occasion was provided by the legislature's refusal to abide by the terms of the Quartering Act (enacted in 1765), which required that the colonies house the troops stationed in settled areas in barracks, taverns, or vacant buildings -- not in private homes, however. The Act also ordered the colonies to supply certain provisions and firewood, candles, and cider or beer. At the time the Act was passed the army had posted most troops in the West, but soon after it removed many to the East, in part to have them available as resistance to the Stamp Act grew violent. Most were assigned to New York, many in the Hudson Valley, especially in and around Albany, where in spring 1766 the great landlords requested that they be used to put down a large-scale uprising of tenant farmers. General Gage, to his credit, disliked using the troops in this way but eventually did so. He was then all the more surprised when the legislature -- which contained a large contingent of landlordscontinued to turn down his requests for compliance with the Quartering Act. What followed had some of the qualities of a farce: the general and.the new governor, Sir Henry Moore, quoting the Quartering Act to the legislature -- the governor sent a complete copy at one point -and the legislature refusing to acknowledge either the army's need or the existence of the statute.
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The issue, however, was not farcical. In the legislature's eyes the Quartering Act represented still another attempt by Parliament at taxing the colonies. Principle and property were again involved, and the legislature was determined not to give over either. In early summer it did provide some support, £3200 from old funds, to equip barracks in Albany

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and New York City, but it refused to supply the drink, salt, and vinegar required by the Quartering Act. And, in fact, the legislature refused to acknowledge that in giving this limited support it was complying with the statute. Appropriating funds which it contended had been available since 1762 allowed the legislature to maintain the fiction that no compliance was involved.
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These events were not known in England in summer 1766 when the king dismissed Lord Rockingham from office. Never very strong in Parliament, Rockingham's administration had begun cracking in the spring as the alliance of merchants trading to North America and the West India merchants parted company. These groups which had meant so much in securing the repeal of the Stamp Act fell out with one another over the proposal to establish a free port in the West Indies, and the West Indies planters deserted Rockingham when he backed the proposal. Weak in Parliament, the ministry was also divided within itself. The Duke of Grafton, discontented because Pitt had not been taken into the government, resigned in the spring; in early July, Lord Northington went to the king and asked for permission to resign the Great Seal. Rockingham desperately wanted Pitt's support, but every application to Pitt had been refused. The ministry might have survived a little longer had it been willing to give Bute's friends more offices; this price, however, was too high. The king did not admire Rockingham, but he feared having to accept Grenville in his stead. In May the king learned that Pitt was willing to form a government, and at the end of July when the opportunity arose, he dismissed Rockingham and summoned Pitt.
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Pitt was fifty-seven years old and still a great national hero despite his aberrant behavior since leaving office five years before. He had been sought after by the king three times and had always found a reason not to serve. He had rarely attended Parliament in these years, and when he did he usually professed ignorance or indifference to the concerns that interested ordinary politicians. He lacked a following, an "interest," in Commons, men tied to him for patronage and influence; indeed, he despised ordinary connections. Yet he could arouse great enthusiasm in Commons with his compelling oratory and of course had done so in the debates over the Stamp Act.
Now, as he agreed to head the

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government, he accepted elevation to the peerage and became the Earl of Chatham, an advancement that took him out of the House of Commons where any government needed powerful leadership.
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The ministry Chatham formed contained several men whose abilities approached brilliance but whose temperaments and ambitions held them apart. Chatham himself took the Privy Seal, a place without a function. His friend and admirer, the Duke of Grafton, received the Treasury and nominally headed the government. Grafton lacked experience and maturity, and he lacked too a genuine desire to exercise power, but he regarded Pitt with an affection bordering on worship, an attitude of mind that recommended if it did not qualify him for office. The Earl of Shelburne, another warm friend of Chatham, became Secretary of State for the Southern Department. Shelburne had genuine intellectual gifts, but he was disabled by a temperament, aloof and cold, which led him to avoid the political arena, where he was needed to exercise the arts of persuasion and conciliation. Henry Conway remained in the government as Secretary of State for the Northern Department; Camden became Lord Chancellor; Egmont, who despised Chatham, headed the Admiralty, and Northington, a stout King's Friend, became president of the Council.

After Chatham, the most interesting man in the government was Charles Townshend, who became Chancellor of the Exchequer. Townshend, forty-one years of age, was the second son of Charles, Viscount Townshend, a well-connected and formidable man who tried to dominate his son and partially succeeded. Townshend's mother, née Audrey Harrison, was a bright, witty, and promiscuous woman who saw little of her son after she and his father separated. Townshend remained with his father when his parents' marriage collapsed, even though he apparently felt no great love for him. A troubled youth suffering from epilepsy and struggling with his father over money and career, Townshend emerged a troubled adult, brilliant but unpredictable in both private and public conduct.

Townshend has often been described as erratic, yet he remained absolutely faithful to one key conviction about America -- the need to make royal officials there independent of popular control. At the beginning of his career, as a member of the Board of Trade, he drafted instructions

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to the new governor of New York directing that the legislature should be instructed to make a permanent provision for the salary of the governor and other royal officials, thereby establishing the independence of the executive. As a member of Grenville's administration, Townshend favored the Stamp Act but opposed the resolution of December 1765 declaring the colonies in rebellion, and in the debate, according to Burke, he handled George Grenville "very roughly." The following spring he voted for repeal of the Act. By this time he had earned a reputation as a dazzling orator and an amusing but unreliable man.
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With this unlikely collection, Chatham proposed to work a great change in English politics. He would crush faction, end the instability of the previous half-dozen years, and restore peace and harmony to the government of England. By accepting a peerage, which took him out of the Commons into the Lords, Chatham had made attacking his problem all the more cumbersome, for he had removed himself from where the great battles were fought. He had also handicapped Conway, his leader in the Commons, by giving the Treasury to the Duke of Grafton. The Treasury, of course, was the source of much of the patronage that made the Commons amenable to a ministry's desires. Conway had to look to Grafton, in the Lords with Chatham, for this necessary resource.
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The first six months of Chatham's administration brought home to him the difficulties inherent in his design. One of his colleagues, Egmont, first lord of the Admiralty, left the government a few weeks after it took office. In November most of the remaining Old Whigs, loyal to Rockingham, left office, driven out by Chatham, who now turned to the Bedfordites for support. The price in offices asked by Bedford was too high, however, and Chatham was forced to take aboard the King's Friends. Outside the government stood an opposition, now stronger than ever but, happily for Chatham, divided and distrustful of one another. Faction, however, had not been subdued, and in December, Chatham, nursing his gout and his frustration, removed himself to Bath.
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Chatham's two other major purposes -- bringing the East India Company under control and settling colonial problems -- did not prosper either. Before taking himself to Bath, Chatham had begun to push for a Parliamentary inquiry into the affairs of the East India Company. These affairs were in an uncertain state, though rumors abounded of abuses in the management of the company's finances and its recently

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