CHAPTER III
CHARLES TOWNSHEND, SAM ADAMS, AND THE MASSACRE
Unfortunately, when the Stamp Act was repealed, the way had been left open for future trouble. The Rockingham ministry, the most liberal which could then be assembled, even in repealing the Stamp Act thought it incumbent upon them to assert, in the Declaratory Act, the right to tax America. The succeeding ministry, called together under the failing Pitt, was the means of reasserting the right. Pitt, too ill to support the labor of leading his party in the Commons, entered the House of Lords as Earl of Chatham, thus acknowledging the eclipse of fame and abilities which in the previous reign had astounded Europe. It was during one of his periods of illness, when he was unable to attend to public affairs, that a subordinate insubordinately reversed his public policy by proceeding once more to tax America.
Charles Townshend was Chancellor of the Exchequer. It was he who had urged the reënactment of the Sugar Act in 1763, and he now saw opportunity to put through a more radical policy. In violation of all implied pledges, disdaining restraint from his colleagues, this brilliant but unstable politician introduced into Parliament a new bill for raising an American revenue. "I am still,"[17] he declared, "a firm advocate of the Stamp Act.... I laugh at the absurd distinction between internal and external taxation.... It is a distinction without a difference; if we have a right to impose the one, we have a right to impose the other; the distinction is ridiculous in the sight of everybody, except the Americans."
"Everybody, except the Americans!" The phrase, from an important speech at a critical moment, marks the fact that a world of thought divided the two parts of the Empire more truly than did the Atlantic. But not as yet so evidently. It is only in unconscious acknowledgments such as these that we find the English admitting the new classification. In studying the years before and after this event we find the Americans often called Puritans and Oliverians, while the possible rise of a Cromwell among them is admitted. Yet the parallel, though unmistakably apt, and containing a serious warning, was never taken to heart, even in America.
Americans were very slow in approaching the conclusion that colonists had irrefragable rights. Caution and habit and pride in the name of Englishman kept them from it; the colonist, visiting England for the first time, still proudly said that he was going "home." There was no reason why this feeling should ever change, if only the spirit of compromise, the basis of the British Constitution, had been kept in mind by Parliament. But the times were wrong. Hesitate as the colonists might before the syllogism which lay ready for completion, its minor and major premises were already accepted. That they were Englishmen, and that Englishmen had inalienable rights, were articles of faith among them. The conclusion would be drawn as soon as they were forced to it. And Townshend was preparing to force them.
Townshend proposed small duties on lead, paints, glass, and paper. Besides this, he withdrew the previous export duty, one shilling per pound, on tea taken from England to America, and instead of this he laid an import duty of threepence per pound. This was ingeniously new, being internal taxation in a form different from that of the Stamp Act. At the same time was abandoned the ancient contention that customs duties were but trade regulations. The new taxes were obviously to raise an English revenue. For the execution of the new laws provision was made in each colony for collectors to be paid directly by the king, but indirectly by the colonies. The head of these collectors was a board of Commissioners of the Customs, stationed at Boston. It will be seen that thus were begun new irritations for the colonies, in the shape of duties for the benefit of England, and of a corps of officials whose dependence on the crown made sure that they would be subservient tools.
While this was done, no change was made in the plan to maintain in America an army at colonial expense. Indeed, New York was punished for refusing to supply to the troops quartered in the city supplies that had been illegally demanded. Its assembly was not allowed to proceed with public business until the supplies should be voted. Thus every other colony was notified what to expect.