The Glorious Cause: The American Revolution, 1763-1789 (34 page)

acquired territories. Chatham wished to deprive the company of its territorial holdings, which were especially large in Bengal; these lands, he pointed out, had been acquired with the help of the army. Why then should the company enjoy revenue from lands conquered by the king's troops? Conway and Townshend opposed taking over the company's territories, and there were many in Parliament who agreed with them. The motives of many members were hardly pure, for many owned and speculated in East India stock, Townshend among them. Townshend proposed that the territories remain the company's property and that negotiations for a share of the revenue be undertaken.
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As seen by the ministry, American problems came down to matters of making government in the colonies responsible and finding the resources to pay for royal expenditures there. New York's defiance of the Quartering Act became known during the year, and the reluctance of Massachusetts and New York to compensate sufferers from Stamp Act riots was also recognized. Awareness of problems in the West grew more slowly.

Since the Proclamation of 1763 the West had proved virtually ungovernable. Royal officials, most notably the superintendents of Indian Affairs, found themselves helpless to regulate the fur trade and consequently to prevent frauds against the Indians. And settlers defied the ban against settlement and encroached upon lands supposedly reserved to the Indians. Shelburne, as Secretary of State for the Southern Department whose responsibility it was to make recommendations about the West, delayed any action for a year while he studied the issues. The pressures on him were enormous: fur traders in Canada, Pennsylvania, and the southern colonies wanted a free hand and hoped to prevent the intrusion of thousands of land-hungry colonists from the East. Other business interests, among them the Illinois Company, one of whose promoters was Benjamin Franklin, urged that large grants of land be made to them and that at least two colonies be carved out of the West to assure orderly settlement and the protection of profits. There was still another interest to contend with -- those men in and out of Parliament who insisted that expenses in America be cut, or at least made an American responsibility.
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Money indeed connected all the various problems of America and the East India Company.
Beyond extracting revenue from the company,

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Chatham had no clear ideas on how to strengthen the finances of the government. His refusal to try to persuade Townshend and Conway to support his plan for the company killed whatever chances it had. And his withdrawal to Bath, followed by his collapse in March 1767, after a brief foray into London and the government once more, opened the way for Townshend to take the lead.
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Townshend's manner of taking the lead evidently caught his colleagues by surprise. In January 1767 debate began on the army estimates; for America, the army proposed costs of some £400,000. During the discussions of this sum George Grenville moved that it be halved and that the colonies bear the expense of troops stationed in America. The government beat back this proposal, but Townshend in the course of the debates pledged that the government would raise at least a part of the revenue from the colonies. Although this promise distressed Conway and others in the government, it did not attract great attention in Parliament. Grenville did not respond, nor did others, probably because all agreed that Parliament possessed the authority to tax the colonies, a view which they believed had been embodied in the Declaratory Act.

If Townshend had rather casually committed the government to raise money in America, the necessity to do so soon appeared anything but casual. For in February the Rockingham Whigs with the support of much of the opposition pushed through a reduction in the land tax from four shillings on the pound to three. This cut forced the government to look for an additional £500,000.

Chatham still withheld himself from the struggles in Parliament. A despairing Grafton wrote him of the reduction of the land tax and begged him to return to defend his position on the East India Company. The king indicated his support, were it to be called for, but still Chatham remained aloof. By mid-February it looked as though Townshend would settle the East India business in his own way, but two weeks later Chatham exerted himself to pull his administration together. He saw he must rid the government of Townshend; hence on March 4 he offered Townshend's place at the Exchequer to Lord North. North refused. Chatham sank back into himself and did not take part in the affairs of the government for the next two years.

Grafton simply lacked the drive and the experience, and perhaps the intellect, to replace Chatham. Townshend possessed these qualities in abundance though his temperament sometimes disabled him, but for

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the next few months he was in command. He spent a part of this period in graceless flirtation -- a political matchmaking, not an affair of the heart -- as the Rockingham Whigs courted him in a fruitless effort to entice him out of the government. By May, Townshend seems to have had his fill of courtship -- he had more powerful suitors in the ministry, in any case -- and he offered his American program. His proposals were of three sorts: the New York Assembly should be suspended until it agreed to comply with the Quartering Act; import duties should be collected in the colonies on lead, glass, paper, painter's colors, and tea; an American Board of Customs Commissioners with its headquarters in the colonies should be established. By the end of June all three proposals had been embodied in legislation and approved with virtually no opposition. George Grenville wanted to go farther and argued that Parliament should enact legislation requiring colonial officials, including governors, councillors, and representatives, to take an oath upholding the Declaratory Act. The oath included a statement that "the colonies and plantations in America are, and of right ought to be, subordinate unto, and dependent upon the imperial Crown and Parliament of Great Britain," a sentiment that commanded almost unanimous approval in Parliament but which seemed unnecessarily redundant and perhaps provocative at this point. Commons turned it down.
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In the debate over the Revenue Act of 1767, Townshend explained that he did expect the duties on lead, glass, tea, and the other items to return more than £40,000 a year. This admission must have startled some members (but apparently not many), for the sum expected did little to reduce the loss from the reduced tax on land; and in any case this American revenue would be placed at the disposal of the Crown to be 'used to pay the salaries of royal officials in the colonies, thereby removing them from local control. Townshend seemed quite proud that his proposal to raise revenue entailed only what was called in England an "external tax." In the confusion over the repeal of the Stamp Act some members had evidently been persuaded that the colonists did not object to such taxes but only to internal taxes. Of course the colonists made no such distinction and opposed all taxes for revenue, though they conceded the expediency of Parliament's regulation of trade through use of certain duties.
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What Townshend and Parliament had done in the Revenue Act was

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to revive fears and resentments in a people already convinced that a plot against their liberty and property had been hatched in 1765. Moreover, the plan to pay royal officials with the money raised simply made the statute worse. Not only were colonial pockets about to be picked, but another constitutional protection was to be removed.

The suspension of the New York Assembly was to become effective October 1, 1767. It deprived the legislature of its right to pass acts after that date and declared them "null and void" in advance if the legislature persisted. And, in a strange redundancy, the governor was ordered to veto any legislation passed in defiance of the suspension. Once the legislature complied with the Quartering Act these prohibitions would be lifted. Taken with the civil list to be financed by the Revenue Act, this statute seemed to give firmer evidence of Parliament's intentions to destroy constitutional rights in America.
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Along with the statute creating an American customs service, the Revenue Act and the Suspending Act expressed some long-standing attitudes toward the colonies, especially the persuasion that they were somehow subordinate to Parliament and must be brought under control. The Townshend legislation did more, however: it vented an anger and frustration bordering on the emotions parents often feel over rebellious children. Like inexperienced children, the colonies had misbehaved and must be disciplined. To be sure, reason took a part in the internal history of the Townshend program as it had in Grenville's policies. Britain bore a heavy debt and the colonies, lightly taxed, might take over a part of the burden. Yet questions might be raised about how reasonable the taxation of imports was. Reason had always urged the expansion of commerce; given colonial resentments against Parliamentary taxation, how reasonable was it to expect that the duties would not impair commerce? And how reasonable was it to expect the colonies to pay? These questions were not really broached in Parliament.

The irony in this episode is that an administration at least nominally headed by a man who opposed Parliamentary taxation of America approved Townshend's policies. Of course Chatham was sick, or incapable of action, in 1767, but Grafton and Conway, who had pushed the repeal of the Stamp Act, were well. And the ministry included Shelburne and Camden, both of whom had opposed the Declaratory Act the year before. If this ministry were incapable of settling American affairs on a basis of friendship and cooperation, it might at least have managed to avoid

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the explosive mixture Charles Townshend bestowed upon it. Accident and chance seem prominent in the history of this disastrous year. The timing of Chatham's collapse could not have been worse for American affairs. Chatham's removal from the political scene in March left a tired and dispirited leadership -- Grafton, Conway, and Shelburne -- facing a strange, irresponsible, but finally tough and determined man who got his way. Had the Rockinghams succeeded in wooing Townshend to their side, his program probably would not have been proposed; or had his energy encountered an opposing force, he probably would not have won. But the Rockinghams failed to persuade Townshend to leave the ministry, and his colleagues in the ministry went along with his proposals. Townshend did not live to see the consequences; his death on September 4, 1767, like so much in his life, came abruptly and with shocking surprise.
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But before his death Townshend had made his mark on policies affecting England and America. That was the final irony: this man, apparently memorable only for personal eccentricities, succeeded in leaving an impression on public affairs such as few men have ever done.

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