1763.
The Parsons' Cause—Patrick Henry's Speech.
In the year 1763 occurred the famous "Parsons' Cause," in which the genius of Patrick Henry first shone forth. The emoluments of the clergy of the established church for a long time had consisted of sixteen thousand pounds of tobacco, contributed by each parish. The tobacco crop of 1755 failing, in consequence of a drought, and the exigencies of the colony being greatly augmented by the French and Indian war, the assembly passed an act, to endure for ten months, authorizing all debts due in tobacco to be paid either in kind or in money, at the rate of sixteen shillings and eight pence for every hundred pounds of tobacco. This was equivalent to two pence per pound, and hence the act was styled by the clergy the "Two Penny Act." As the price of tobacco now rose to six pence per pound, the reduction amounted to sixty-six and two-thirds per cent. At two pence the salary of a minister clergy was about one hundred and thirty-three pounds; at six pence, about four hundred pounds. Yet the act must have operated in relief of the indebted clergy equally with other debtors, and many of the ministers were in debt. It was by no means the intention of the assembly to abridge the maintenance of the clergy, or to bear harder upon them than upon all other public creditors; and as they, under the new act, in fact, received in general a larger salary than they had received in any year since it was first regulated by law, they, above all men, ought to have been content with it in a year of so much distress.[507:A] The taxes were enormous, and fell most heavily upon planters of limited means; and the tobacco-crop was greatly fallen off. The Rev. James Maury, in whose behalf the suit was afterwards brought, had himself at the time expressly approved of the Two Penny Act, and said: "In my own case, who am entitled to upwards of seventeen thousand weight of tobacco per annum, the difference amounts to a considerable sum. However, each individual must expect to share in the misfortunes of the community to which he belongs."[508:A] The law was universal in its operation, embracing private debts, public, county, and parish levies, and the fees of all civil officers. Its effect upon the clergy was to reduce their salary to a moderate amount in money, far less, indeed, than the sixteen thousand pounds which they were ordinarily entitled to, yet still rather more than what they had usually received. The act did not contain the usual clause, by which acts altering previous acts approved by the crown were suspended until they should receive the royal sanction, since it might require the entire ten months, the term of its operation, to learn the determination of the crown. The king had a few years before expressly refused to allow the assembly to dispense with the suspending clause in any such act. The regal authority was thus apparently abnegated; necessity discarding forms, and the safety of the people being the supreme law. Up to the time of the Revolution the king freely exercised his authority in vetoing acts of the assembly when they had been approved by large majorities of the house of burgesses and of the council. The practice was to print all the acts at the close of each session, and when an act was negatived by the king, that fact was written against the act with a pen.[508:B]
No open resistance was offered to the Two Penny Act; but the greater number of clergy petitioned the house of burgesses to grant them a more liberal provision for their maintenance. Their petition set forth: "That the salary appointed by law for the clergy is so scanty that it is with difficulty they support themselves and families, and can by no means make any provision for their widows and children, who are generally left to the charity of their friends; that the small encouragement given to clergymen is a reason why so few come into this colony from the two universities; and that so many, who are a disgrace to the ministry, find opportunities to fill the parishes; that the raising the salary would prove of great service to the colony, as a decent subsistence would be a great encouragement to the youth to take orders, for want of which few gentlemen have hitherto thought it worth their while to bring up their children in the study of divinity; that they generally spent many years of their lives at great expense in study, when their patrimony is pretty well exhausted; and when in holy orders they cannot follow any secular employment for the advancement of their fortunes, and may on that account expect a more liberal provision."[509:A] Another relief act, similar to that of 1755, fixing the value of tobacco at eighteen shillings a hundred, was passed in 1758[509:B] upon a mere anticipation of another scanty crop.[509:C] Burk[509:D] attributes the rise in the price of tobacco to the arts of an extravagant speculator; but he cites no authority for the statement, and the acts themselves expressly attribute the scarcity, in 1755, to "drought," and in 1757 to "unseasonableness of the weather."[509:E] The crop did fall short, and the price rose extremely high; and contention ensued between the planters and the clergy. The Rev. John Camm, rector of York Hampton Parish, assailed the "Two Penny Act" in a pamphlet of that title, which was replied to severally by Colonel Richard Bland and Colonel Landon Carter. An acrimonious controversy took place in the Virginia Gazette; but the cause of the clergy became at length so unpopular, that a printer could not be found in Virginia willing to publish Camm's rejoinder to Bland and Carter, styled the "Colonels Dismounted," and he was obliged to resort to Maryland for that purpose. The colonels retorted, and this angry dispute threw the colony into great excitement. At last the clergy appealed to the king in council. By an act of assembly passed as early as the year 1662, a salary of eighty pounds per annum was settled upon every minister, "to be paid in the valuable commodities of the country—if in tobacco, at twelve shillings the hundred; if in corn, at ten shillings the barrel." In 1696 the salary of the clergy was fixed at sixteen thousand pounds of tobacco, worth at that time about eighty pounds. This continued to be the amount of their stipends until 1731, when, the value of tobacco being raised, they increased to about one hundred or one hundred and twenty pounds, exclusive of their glebes and other perquisites. In Virginia, besides the salaries of the clergy, the people had to bear parochial, county, and public levies, and fees of clerks, sheriffs, surveyors, and other officers, all of which were payable in tobacco, the paper currency of the colony having banished gold and silver from the colony.[510:A] The consequence of this state of things was that a failure in the crop involved the people in general distress; for by law if the salaries of the clergy and the fees of officers were not paid in tobacco by the tenth day of April, the property of delinquents was liable to be distrained, and if not replevied within five days, to be sold at auction. Were they to be exposed to cruel imposition and exactions; to have their estates seized and sacrificed, "for not complying with laws which Providence had made it impossible to comply with? Common sense, as well as common humanity, will tell you that they are not, and that it is impossible any instruction to a governor can be construed so contrary to the first principles of justice and equity, as to prevent his assent to a law for relieving a colony in a case of such general distress and calamity."[510:B] Sherlock, Bishop of London, in his letter to the lords of trade and plantations, denounced the act of 1758, as binding the king's hands, and manifestly tending to draw the people of the plantations from their allegiance to the king. It was replied, on the other hand, that if the Virginians could ever entertain the thought of withdrawing from their dependency on England, nothing could be more apt to bring about such a result than the denying them the right to protect themselves from distress and calamity in so trying an emergency. In the year when this relief act was passed, many thousands of the colonists did not make one pound of tobacco, and if all of it raised in the colony had been divided among the tithables, "they would not have had two hundred pounds a man to pay the taxes, for the support of the war, their levies and other public dues, and to provide a scanty subsistence for themselves and families;" and "the general assembly were obliged to issue money from the public funds to keep the people from starving." The act had been denounced as treasonable; but were the legislature to sit with folded arms, silent and inactive, amid the miseries of the people? "This would have been treason indeed,—treason against the state,—against the clemency of the royal majesty." Many landlords and civil officers were members of the assembly in 1758, and their fees and rents were payable in tobacco; nevertheless, they cheerfully promoted the enactment of a measure by which they were to suffer great losses. The royal prerogative in the hands of a benign sovereign could only be exerted for "the good of the people, and not for their destruction." "When, therefore, the governor and council (to whom this power is in part delegated) find, from the uncertainty and variableness of human affairs, that any accident happens which general instructions can by no means provide for, or which, by a rigid construction of them, would destroy a people so far distant from the royal presence, before they can apply to the throne for relief, it is their duty as good magistrates to exercise this power as the exigency of the state requires; and though they should deviate from the strict letter of an instruction, or, perhaps in a small degree from the fixed rule of the constitution, yet such a deviation cannot possibly be treason, when it is intended to produce the most salutary end—the preservation of the people."
The Rev. Andrew Burnaby, who passed some months in Virginia about the time of this dispute, travelling through the colony and conversing freely with all ranks of people, expresses himself on the subject in the following manner: "Upon the whole, however, as on the one hand I disapprove of the proceedings of the assembly in this affair, so on the other I cannot approve of the steps which were taken by the clergy; that violence of temper, that disrespectful behavior toward the governor, that unworthy treatment of their commissary, and, to mention nothing else, that confusion of proceeding in the convention,[512:A] of which some, though not the majority, as has been invidiously represented, were guilty; these things were surely unbecoming the sacred character they are invested with, and the moderation of those persons who ought in all things to imitate the conduct of their Divine Master. If instead of flying out in invectives against the legislature, of accusing the governor of having given up the cause of religion by passing the bill, when, in fact, had he rejected it, he would never have been able to have got any supplies during the course of the war, though ever so much wanted; if instead of charging the commissary[512:B] with want of zeal, for having exhorted them to moderate measures, they had followed the prudent counsels of that excellent man, and had acted with more temper and moderation, they might, I am persuaded, in a very short time have obtained any redress they could reasonably have desired. The people in general were extremely well affected toward the clergy."[512:C]
The following paper exhibits the view maintained by Richard Henry Lee on this mooted topic:—
"Reasons and Objections to Mr. Camm's Appeal.
"Objected, on the part of Mr. Camm: That the law of 1758, as it tended to suspend the act of 1748, which had obtained the royal approbation, and as it was contrary to his majesty's instructions to his governor, was void ab initio, and was so declared by his majesty's order of disapprobation of 10th of August, 1759.
"Answer.—Whatever might be allowed to be the effect of these objections, and however they might affect those who made the law, it would be very hard that they should subject to a heavy penalty two innocent subjects,[512:D] who have been guilty of no offence but that of obeying a law passed regularly in appearance through the several branches of the legislature of the colony while it had the force of a law upon the spot. It would be to punish them for a mistake of the assembly. But the objections do not prove either that the law was a nullity from the beginning by its tending to suspend the act of 1748, or by being assented to by the governor, contrary to his majesty's instructions to him, or that it became void by relation, ab initio, from any retrospective declarations of his majesty. As to the law in question tending to suspend the act of 1748, which had received the royal approbation, a power given by the crown to make laws implies a power to suspend or even repeal former laws which are become inconvenient or mischievous, as the law of 1748 was; otherwise a country at the distance of three thousand miles might be subject to great calamities, before relief could be obtained, for which reason such power is lodged in the legislature of the country.
"As to the governor's consent being contrary to his majesty's instructions to him, it is imagined that his majesty's instructions to the governor are private directions for his conduct in his government, liable to be sometimes dispensed with upon extraordinary emergencies, the propriety of which he may be called to explain. The instructions are not addressed to the people nor promulgated among them; they are not public instruments, nor lodged among the public records of the province. The people know the governor's authority by his commission; his assent is virtually that of the crown, and by his assent the law is in force till his majesty's disapprobation arrives and is ratified, consequently everything done in the colony till then conformably thereto is legal.