144 INDIAN WARFARE. CH. V. easily persuaded to view with jealousy and apprehension the triumphs of these formidable settlers over a kindred race, as well as over themselves. Silent and crafty in design, rapid and merciless in execution, the Indians accommodated or suspended their internecine conflicts, and prepared to make common cause against the foreign foe. At the approach of harvest, a simultaneous attack was made upon the principal provinces in the middle and southern parts of the continent, and upon the Canadian forts. The travelling traders were everywhere robbed and murdered; merchandise, to the amount of one hundred thousand pounds, was plundered-a loss which fell chiefly on the towns which carried on their internal trade by sending their goods round the country. The back settlements of Virginia, Maryland, and Pennsylvania, were, for several miles, laid waste and depopulated. Many forts were taken, and the garrisons butchered. At length, after a cruel destruction of life and property, the savages were reduced by an army composed of regular troops and colonial militia. It was just when they had escaped from this struggle for existence, that the colonists were harassed by the still more grievous, because unprovoked, attack on their trade, their commerce, and their freedom, by that sovereign power to which they had a right to look for favour and protection. The last and most formidable blow was, indeed, withheld for the present. The stamp duty having obtained the sanction of Parliament, the minister was content to postpone carrying it into effect until the ensuing year, in order that the colonial assemblies might have an opportunity of considering his proposition, and if it should prove, objectionable, of suggesting some equivalent form of taxation. It conduct of the may be doubted whether any scheme of finance, or any capital measure of policy could be carried, even in England, after having Procrastinating Executive. 1764. ORIGIN OF CUSTOMS' DUTIES. Theory of 145 been subjected to the ventilation of public opinion for a year. Certainly such a course of proceeding would be ill calculated at any time to strengthen the hands of administration. The tone and tendency of public opinion in a free country can, for the most part, be ascertained by ordinary observation; and with the peculiar means of information which Government possesses, it is in a condition to mould its policy. In a country where the utmost degree of freedom obtains, there must still be a ruling power whose duty it is to give a practical exposition of its policy. A government which invites the people to suggest measures, deserts its proper functions, and creates disorder in the Commonwealth. Yet, had this tax, novel as it was, been imposed in the ordinary course, without formally consulting the assemblies, or had the experiment been tried at a more convenient season, it is not improbable that the colonies would have quietly submitted. taxation. It has been usual to represent the Americans as driven to revolt from British rule by the attempt to impose taxation upon them, contrary to the theory and practice of the constitution, which permit the people to be taxed only by their representatives. But the position of the people of Great Britain and that of the colonists widely differed in this respect. Lord Coke has demonstrated that Customs' duties originated in England opinion. with a grant of Parliament early in the reign of Edward the First, and that monarch afterwards expressly renounced the right of imposing these taxes without the sanction of Parliament. The illegal exaction of tonnage and poundage by Charles the First were charged as capital offences against the fundamental laws of the realm. But in the charters granted to Virginia and the first New England * Lord Coke's † 25 Edward I. c. 7. 146 RUINOUS EFFECTS OF THE STAMP ACT. CH. V. settlement of Massachusetts bay, while the rights of the emigrants to the privileges of natural-born subjects were conceded in the fullest terms, a temporary exemption from taxation, both external and internal, was alone granted. Even the Long Parliament, though in the warmest sympathy with the Puritan adventurers of New England, took care to reserve the same right of sovereignty, by granting these colonists exemption from export and import duties only until the House should take further order to the contrary.* It is true that the colonial assemblies frequently passed declaratory acts asserting the immunity of the colonies from taxation, except by their own representatives; but these acts were always disallowed by the Imperial Government. The Navigation Laws, which placed the trade of the colonies under the restrictions of import and export duties for the benefit of Great Britain, had ever been regarded as an oppressive code,† and, had they been strictly enforced, would probably have encountered similar opposition to that which met the Stamp Act. Those restrictive laws which so materially retarded the prosperity of the colonies, and failed to effect that selfish and short-sighted object of aggrandising the mothercountry in the same proportion, must eventually have produced a rupture between England and America. * Vote of the House of Commons, 1642. † Robertson's History of America, book 9, passim. Franklin states the real grievance of these laws,-'It is not that Britain puts duties upon her own manufactures exported to us, but that she forbids us to buy the like manufactures from any other country.' Franklin was much pressed in his examination by questions having reference to the futility of the distinction between the right to impose external and internal taxation. At length he makes a significant reply,-' Many arguments have been lately used here, to show that there is no difference, and that, if you have no right to tax them internally, you have no right to tax them externally. At present they do not reason so, but in time they may possibly be convinced by those arguments.' 1764. PASSIVE RESISTANCE. 147 The Stamp Act was but the consummation of a perverse and intolerable policy. Their coasts blockaded 1 with a British fleet armed with the autho- Despair of the rity of the Custom House, more formidable colonists. than letters of marque—their only profitable trade entirely stopped-their country threatened with an utter drain of specie ;-all this, surely, was enough to stir the spirit of men, whose English ancestors had abandoned the land of their fathers, and sought a home in the unknown deserts of a new world, rather than endure the loss of their civil and religious liberties. And all this had been done long before the Stamp Act arrived in America. That act found the colonies already in a state of passive resistance. They were prepared to retaliate upon England her selfish policy, by abstaining from the use of her manufactures, and taking measures to supply their place by native industry. Had Grenville indulged them in their lucrative trade with the Spanish settlements; could he have abstained from meddling with their monetary system; and been content that the money raised and intended to be applied to their military defence, should be disbursed in the colony, instead of being paid in specie into the British exchequer, he might easily have imposed his stamp duty, or an equivalent, with no more danger of opposition than had attended another inland duty, that of the post-office, which had been submitted to without murmur. It is easy to state the difference between a port and an inland duty; but the English constitution, which was appealed to, recognised no such distinction in regard of the right of the people to be taxed only by their representatives. The great democratic principle, as it exists in the British constitution, is compromised by an admission of the right of the Government to levy any tax whatsoever. Yet the 148 Innocence of GRENVILLE'S MISCONCEPTION. * сн. г. American patriot admits the validity of a Customs' duty, and attempts to distinguish such a tax, by showing that it is paid by the consumer. It is plain, however, that the incidence of a tax is a purely economical question, quite separate from that of the right to impose it; but the reason assigned by this intelligent and well-informed advocate of the colonies shows that the real character of their opposition did not arise from regard to a political punctilio, but from a sense of oppression and practical injustice. It is perhaps hardly necessary to acquit the minister of any wanton purpose of insult or oppression in thus dealing with the colointentions. nies. The most grievous injury which he inflicted on them, the suppression of their contraband trade, was merely part of a system which he had established for the enforcement of the revenue laws indiscriminately throughout the Empire; and his formal understanding, looking only to the statute book, could see no difference between a smuggler at Liverpool and a smuggler at New York. It was just that America should bear a proportion of the charges necessary for her protection and security; but this claim, which had never been disputed, must be asserted as a right, because the Imperial Government had sovereign authority over its dependencies. The minister said he could not understand the difference between external and internal taxes. They were the same in effect, and different only in name.'t That principle conceded, he thought the argument was at an end. If the colonies urged that they were accustomed to duties for the purpose of regulating commerce, but that they objected to taxes directly The authority of Parliament was allowed to be valid in all laws, except such as should lay internal taxes. It was never disputed in laying duties to regu late commerce.'-FRANKLIN's Examination. + Grenville's Speech on the Address, Jan. 14, 1766. |