A History of the United States. Charles Kendall Adams

the fatal blunder of pushing aside the great statesmen he found in office and of surrounding himself with ministers who would aid him in carrying out his own policy.

      120. Independent Spirit among the Colonies.—Another peculiarity of the situation was the prevalence of a decided spirit of independence of one another among the individual colonies. No effort to bring them together for purposes of common action, even against the Indians, had been successful. Even Franklin’s plan in 1754 had failed to unite them (§ 110). On the contrary, they had drawn farther and farther apart, so that a very intelligent traveler, who had visited various parts of the country, wrote in 1760, “Were the colonies left to themselves, there would soon be civil war from one end of the continent to the other.” And James Otis, one of the foremost of American patriots, said in 1765, “Were the colonies left to themselves, to-morrow America would be a mere shambles of blood and confusion before the little petty states could be united.” When George III. ascended the throne, the colonies seemed more afraid of one another than they were of England, and more likely to drift into separate nationalities like those of Europe than they were to unite in a common effort to secure independence of the mother country.

THE QUESTION OF TAXATION.

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      121. Excuse for the Policy.—The energetic and fatal policy of the Crown first showed itself in a determination to impose additional taxes on the Americans. There was some excuse for this policy. The Seven Years’ War had been carried on at heavy expense, and a large debt had been the result. The king claimed that this burden, chiefly incurred in an effort to protect the American colonists, should be borne, in large part, by the colonists themselves. To this claim the colonists might not have objected, if they had themselves been allowed a voice in determining their share of the tax. But the English insisted upon determining it without colonial advice.

      122. The British View of the Matter.—In the course of centuries the British people had come to recognize the principle, “No taxation without representation.” But in the time of George III. representation, even in England, was absurdly imperfect. Boroughs of not more than half a dozen voters sometimes sent two members to the British Parliament, while some large towns like Manchester and Birmingham sent no representatives. The people permitted this bad state of affairs to continue, because the doctrine was held that every member of Parliament, no matter by whom he was elected, represented all the people of the kingdom, and not merely those who had chosen him. According to this theory, the colonies were as much represented in Parliament as Manchester and Birmingham; and if those towns could be taxed without direct representation, there appeared no just reason why Massachusetts and Virginia and the other colonies should complain of the same method.

      123. The Colonial View of the Case.—But the colonists, and a small but very influential minority in Parliament, took another view of the case. Many of the colonies had been settled by men who had come to America for the purpose of escaping from a system which they regarded as unfair and tyrannical. Two revolutions in England had established the authority of Parliament as against the individual will of the king, but the methods of representation had not been changed. Indeed, they were worse than they had been when the Puritans came to New England, more than a hundred years before. During the intervening period the colonists had been receiving a liberal education in matters of government. In their town meetings and their provincial legislatures they had had to consider and decide a vast number of subjects, until they very naturally came to think they could understand the real requirements of the country far better than could a Parliament three thousand miles away. Some of the colonial writers denied that the British had the legal right to tax the Americans, while others claimed that, even if they had the legal right, an enforcement of that right would be contrary to the whole spirit of English liberty, and ought to be resisted.

      124. Folly of the British Government.—If the British government had been wise, these differences might have been reconciled; but George III. and the friends whom he called about him could not see why Boston, New York, and Philadelphia should object to taxation while Birmingham and Manchester did not. The fact remained, however, that the colonies did object, and this important difference any wise government would have seen and taken into account. But George III. stubbornly held that if the colonies resisted the supreme authority of the king and Parliament, they must simply be forced into obedience. This doctrine, for which the king, and the king alone, was responsible, was the fatal error that cost Great Britain the American colonies.

      The Pennsylvania Journal

      125. Grenville’s Scheme of Taxation.—In 1764 Parliament, under the leadership of Lord Grenville, made a formal declaration that it had a right to tax the colonies, and a year later proposed to raise a tax by what was known as the “Stamp Act.” This provided that all transactions, to be lawful, must be printed, or written, on paper furnished by the government and bearing the government stamp. Even newspapers and almanacs had to be printed on this stamped paper. The cost of the stamps varied from a few cents to fifty or sixty dollars. Grenville thought this form of taxation would afford no chance to evade the custom-house, no temptation to smuggle, and would dispense with all disagreeable prying into warehouses and private dwellings in search of smuggled goods. It was believed that the act would enforce itself and produce a large revenue.

      126. Spirit of the Colonies.—This belief shows how generally the spirit of the colonists was misunderstood. Only a few of the greatest and wisest of the British statesmen saw the danger in the policy proposed. These men, of whom Chatham and Burke were the leaders, did not deny the constitutional right of Parliament to tax all British subjects, but they held that it would be madness to try to enforce that right, since such an attempt would probably result in the loss of the colonies. The very thing they feared and predicted took place.

THE RESISTANCE OF THE COLONISTS.

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      Samuel Adams.

127. Organization for Resistance.—The colonists instantly organized a general resistance to the tax. Samuel Adams^[59] and James Otis^[60] in Massachusetts, and Patrick Henry^[61] in Virginia, were the most active of the colonial leaders. Adams sent letters in every direction denouncing the tax; Otis inflamed the people of Boston and the vicinity with his essays and his oratory; and Henry appealed to the Virginians with overpowering eloquence. A general congress representing the colonies met in New York, October 7, 1765, and passed a series of resolutions denouncing the Stamp Act as a violent encroachment on the principle, “No taxation without representation.” Lawyers agreed not to regard paper as made illegal by the absence of a stamp. Newspapers were issued bearing the sign of a skull and crossbones in place of a stamp, and boxes of stamps, on their arrival, were seized and burned.

      James Otis.

      128. Repeal of the Stamp Act.—It was not long before even Grenville was convinced that the Stamp Act was a failure. As it could not be enforced, and as it brought very little revenue, it was repealed the very year after it had become a law. There are, however, two ways of doing an act demanded by the people: to do it with a tact that will convey the largest amount of satisfaction; or to do it with some reservation or qualification that leaves a sting behind it. The latter course was taken by the British government, which said in substance: We repeal the act, because its enforcement will be injurious to our commercial interests, but in