With the conclusion of the French and Indian War, however, conditions were materially changed, (1) The fear of the French was no longer present to bind the colonies to the mother country. (2) During the wars the colonies had grown not only more populous (they numbered about 2,000,000 inhabitants in 1763) and more wealthy, but also more self- confident. Recruits from the northern colonies had captured Louisburg in 1745 and had helped to conquer Canada in the last French war. Virginia volunteers had seen how helpless were General Braddock's redcoats in forest-warfare. Experiences like these gave the provincial riflemen pride and confidence. Important also was the Albany Congress of 1754, in which delegates from seven colonies came together and discussed Benjamin Franklin's scheme for federating the thirteen colonies. Although the plan was not adopted, it set men to thinking about the advantages of confederation and so prepared the way for subsequent union.
[Sidenote: More Rigorous Attitude of Great Britain toward the Colonies after Accession of George III, 1760]
Not only were the colonists in a more independent frame of mind, but the British government became more oppressive. During two reigns—those of George I and George II—ministers had been the power behind the throne, but in 1760 George III had come to the throne as an inexperienced and poorly educated youth of twenty-two, full of ambition to be the power behind the ministers. Not without justice have historians accused George III of prejudice, stubbornness, and stupidity. Nevertheless, he had many friends. The fact that he, the first really English king since the Revolution of 1688, should manifest a great personal interest and industry in affairs of state, endeared him to many who already respected his irreproachable private morality and admired his flawless and unfailing courtesy. Under the inspiration of Lord Bute, [Footnote: The earl of Bute (1713-1792) became prime minister in 1762, after the resignations of Pitt, who had been the real head of the cabinet, and the duke of Newcastle, who had been the nominal premier. Bute in turn was succeeded by George Grenville (1712- 1770).] the "king's friends" became a political party, avowedly intent on breaking the power of the great Whig noblemen who had so long dominated corrupt Parliaments and unscrupulous ministries.
[Sidenote: Grenville, Prime Minister, 1763-1765, Executor of the
Colonial Policies of George III]
George III attempted at the outset to gain control of Parliament by wholesale bribery of its members, but, since even this questionable expedient did not give him a majority, he tried dividing the forces of his Whig opponents. This was somewhat less difficult since Pitt, the most prominent Whig, the eloquent Chauvinist [Footnote: Chauvin, a soldier in Napoleon's army, was so enthusiastic for the glory of the great general that his name has since been used as an adjective denoting excessive patriotism and fondness for war.] minister, "friend of the colonies," and idol of the cities, had lost control of the ministry. England, too, felt the burdensome expense of war, and the public debt had mounted to what was then the enormous sum of £140,000,000. George III, therefore, chose for prime minister (1763- 1765) George Grenville, a representative of a faction of Whig aristocrats, who, alarmed by the growth of the public debt, and jealous of Pitt's power, were quite willing to favor the king's colonial policies. Great Britain, they argued, had undergone a costly war to defend the colonists on the Atlantic coast from French aggression. The colonies were obviously too weak and too divided to garrison and police the great Mississippi and St. Lawrence valleys; and yet, in order to prevent renewed danger from French, Spaniards, or Indians, at least ten thousand regular soldiers would be needed at an annual expense of £300,000. What could be more natural than that the colonists, to whose benefit the war had redounded, and to whose safety the army would add, should pay at least a part of the expense? This idea, put forward by certain Whig statesmen, that the colonists should bear part of the financial burden of imperial defense, was eagerly seized upon by George III and utilized as the cornerstone of his colonial policy. To such a policy the Tories, as ardent upholders of the monarchy, lent their support.
[Sidenote: The Sugar Act, 1764]
Grenville, the new minister, accordingly proposed that the colonists should pay about £150,000 a year,—roughly a half of the estimated total amount,—and for raising the money, he championed two special finance acts in the British Parliament. The first was the Sugar Act of 1764. Grenville recognized that a very high tariff on the importation of foreign sugar-products into the colonies invited smuggling on a large scale, was therefore generally evaded, and yielded little revenue to the government. As a matter of fact, in the previous year, Massachusetts merchants had smuggled 15,000 hogsheads of molasses [Footnote: Large quantities of molasses were used in New England for the manufacture of rum.] from the French West Indies. Now, in accordance with the new enactment, the duty was actually halved, but a serious attempt was made to collect what remained. For the purpose of the efficient collection of the sugar tax, the Navigation Acts were revived and enforced; British naval officers were ordered to put a peremptory stop to smuggling; and magistrates were empowered to issue "writs of assistance" enabling customs collectors to search private houses for smuggled goods. The Sugar Act was expected to yield one- third of the amount demanded by the British ministry.
[Sidenote: The Stamp Act, 1765]
[Sidenote: Opposition in the Colonies]
The other two-thirds of the £150,000 was to be raised under the Stamp Act of 1765. Bills of lading, official documents, deeds, wills, mortgages, notes, newspapers, and pamphlets were to be written or printed only on special stamped paper, on which the tax had been paid. Playing cards paid a stamp tax of a shilling; dice paid ten shillings; and on a college diploma the tax amounted to £2. The Stamp Act bore heavily on just the most dangerous classes of the population— newspaper-publishers, pamphleteers, lawyers, bankers, and merchants. Naturally the newspapers protested and the lawyers argued that the Stamp Act was unconstitutional, that Parliament had no right to levy taxes on the colonies. The very battle-cry, "Taxation without Representation is Tyranny," was the phrase of a Boston lawyer, James Otis.
At once the claim was made that the colonists were true British subjects and that taxation without representation was a flagrant violation of the "immemorial rights of Englishmen." Now the colonists had come to believe that their only true representatives were those for whom they voted personally, the members of the provincial assemblies. Each colony had its representative assembly; and these assemblies, like the parent Parliament in Great Britain, had become very important by acquiring the function of voting taxes. The colonists, therefore, claimed that taxes could be voted only by their own assemblies, while the British government replied, with some pertinency, that Parliament, although elected by a very small minority of the population, was considered to be generally representative of all British subjects.