III. “SOFT WORDS BUTTER NO PARSNIPS”
For several reasons, the Southern colonies fared much better than the Northern colonies, and were, therefore, not stirred to such feelings of violent opposition. The spirit of the Puritans, their severe economy, rigid form of piety, and their hatred of Kings, animated the Northern people in private and in public. Their ancestors had been refugees from the tyranny of English Kings, and there was not that respect for England which would cause them to be patient under bad treatment. Besides that, they had seen most of the arrogance and insolence of the English officers during the French and Indian wars, and had suffered longest from the presence of war. The officers of the King came to the Northern colonies with the idea that nothing would serve the purpose but severity and coertion. On the contrary, the people of the Southern colonies were believed at the King’s court to be vain and luxurious. They were represented as being easily pleased by showy parade. Accordingly, a court favorite, Lord Botetourt, was chosen to win the admiration of Virginia. The descendants of the Puritans were to be overawed into subjection by military force, the Cavaliers of Virginia were to be overawed into compliance by aristocratic splendor.
Lord Botetourt was supplied with a dazzling equipment. He arrived in Virginia with glittering pomp and circumstance. On the opening of the Virginia legislature, he arranged a brilliant procession, in which he was conspicuous in gorgeous uniform, riding in a state-coach drawn by six milk-white horses. He opened the session of the Virginia legislature as if it were a royal parliament and he were the King. Then the ostentatious parade returned him to the governor’s mansion.
But to the amazement of Lord Botetourt, this grand display did not work. The House of Burgesses drafted some drastic demands to be sent to the British King. At noon of the day after these resolutions were passed, the governor in dismay went in haste to the Capitol, and appeared before the assembly.
“Mr. Speaker, and gentlemen of the House of Burgesses,” he cried, “I have heard of your resolves, and auger ill of their effects. You have made it my duty to dissolve you, and you are dissolved accordingly.”
But his brain-storm had only the effect to cause them to be called to order by their Speaker, Paton Randolph, in another house. Washington brought forward the draft of an association pledged not to buy anything from Great Britain on which there was a tax. This could not be enacted into a law, because they were no longer a legislative body, but, as a voluntary pledge, it was just as effective.
But, wonderful to relate, Lord Botetourt appeared to have a better ordered intelligence than most of the governors sent over from England. He saw at once the folly of his first ideas about the Southern colonies, and he set about at once to pacify them in more reasonable ways. He put away his royal show, actually addressed himself to the grievances of the people, became a strong opponent to the taxes, did what he could to have them repealed, and assured the Virginians that this would be speedily done. The people soon had full confidence in him, and the scenes of excitement so common in the Northern colonies were unknown in Virginia.
But there was one thing after another of repression and retaliation in the Northern colonies. Such was the opposition in the colonies and the unpopularity of it all among the ruling classes in England, that the King’s Manager, the Duke of Grafton, resigned and a favorite of the King, Lord North, took his place, as chief councillor in England. Now, the King gave up the fight for the taxes, but he still held to his right to tax the people as something that was none of their business. The tax was taken off of everything except tea. This one tax was kept up, though a very light one, merely as the King said, “to maintain the parliamentary right of taxation.” Even the duty was taken off of tea, so that it was sold in America ninepence cheaper a pound than it could be bought in England.
“Now,” said the King, “if the colonists object to this, it proves that they are determined to rebel against our government.”
He could not conceive of such a thing as a principle against which they were opposed, and many a mind since his has been as blind to principle and as full-eyed toward the question of profit and loss. It is this indescribable thing that usually divides people on public affairs. It likewise defends the Makers of America against the historical interpretation that their revolution was for any such sordid origins as “economic necessity.”
There was strong opposition in parliament, not only against all such taxation but also against asserting the right of such taxation. Lord North, however, reflecting the will of King George, said, “The properest time to exert our right of taxation is when the right is refused.”
So it is with all set wills. The colonists thought the same thing from an opposite point of view. It was an irresistible body meeting an immovable body. Something had to break.
Lord North declared that “a total repeal can not be thought of, till America is prostrate at our feet.” That is, the master determines not to hear the complaint of the slave until the slave’s will is broken at his owner’s feet. The wilderness-made minds with their self-made freedom were not built that way. The King’s mind-evil could not be met by resistence, but, as it emerged into colonial wrongs, the only way to defeat them and save the freedom of moral law was through revolutionary war. The evil mind using coertion to enforce its slave-making wrongs went out of the mental regions of non-resistence into the physical regions of wrongs where nothing but force can save.
Lord North’s promise could have nothing to do with the case. The colonists had no idea of taking such a position as being prostrate at the feet of the King. They had felt the freedom that is born of the wilderness and that freedom was life. It was American and it remains the hope of the world.