CHAPTER XII.
Scotch Hostility to America.
The causes which led to the American Revolution have been set forth in works pertaining to that event, and fully amplified by those desiring to give a special treatise on the subject. Briefly to rehearse them, the following may be pointed out: The general cause was the right of arbitrary government over the colonies claimed by the British parliament. So far as the claim was concerned as a theory, but little was said, but when it was put in force an opposition at once arose. The people had long been taught to act and think upon the principle of eternal right, which had a tendency to mould them in a channel that looked towards independence. The character of George III. was such as to irritate the people. He was stubborn and without the least conception of human rights; nor could he conceive of a magnanimous project, or appreciate the value of civil liberty. His notions of government were despotic, and around him, for advisers, he preferred those as incompetent and as illiberal as himself. Such a king could not deal with a people who had learned freedom, and had the highest conceptions of human rights. The British parliament, composed almost entirely of the ruling class, shared the views of their master, and servilely did his bidding, by passing a number of acts destructive of colonial liberty. The first of these was a strenuous attempt to enforce in 1761 THE IMPORTATION ACT, which gave to petty constables the authority to enter any and every place where they might suspect goods upon which a duty had not been levied. In 1763 and 1764 the English ministers attempted to enforce the law requiring the payment of duties on sugar and molasses. In vain did the people try to show that under the British constitution taxation and representation were inseparable. Nevertheless English vessels were sent to hover around American ports, and soon succeeded in paralyzing the trade with the West Indies.
The close of the French and Indian war gave to England a renewed opportunity to tax America. The national debt had increased from £52,092,238 in 1727 to £138,865,430 in 1763. The ministers began to urge that the expenses of the war ought to be borne by the colonies. The Americans contended, that they had aided England as much as she had aided them; that the cession of Canada had amply remunerated England for all her losses; and, further, the colonies did not dread the payment of money, but feared that their liberties might be subverted. Early in March 1765, the English parliament, passed the celebrated STAMP ACT, which provided that every note, bond, deed, mortgage, lease, licence, all legal documents of every description, every colonial pamphlet, almanac, and newspaper, after the first day of the following November, should be on paper furnished by the British government, the stamp cost being from one cent to thirty dollars. When the news of the passage of this act was brought to America the excitement was intense, and action was resolved on by the colonies. The act was not formally repealed until March 18, 1766. On June 29, 1767, another act was passed to tax America. On October 1, 1768, seven hundred troops, sent from Halifax, marched with fixed bayonets into Boston, and quartered themselves in the State House. In February 1769 parliament declared the people of Massachusetts rebels, and the governor was directed to arrest those deemed guilty of treason, and send them to England for trial. In the city of New York, in 1770, the soldiers wantonly cut down a liberty pole, which had for several years stood in the park. The most serious affray occurred on March 5th, in Boston between a party of citizens and some soldiers, in which three citizens were shot down and several wounded. This massacre inflamed the city with a blaze of excitement. On that day lord North succeeded in having all the duties repealed except that on tea; and that tax, in 1773, was attempted to be enforced by a stratagem. On the evening of December 16th, the tea, in the three tea-ships, then in Boston harbor, was thrown overboard, by fifty men disguised as Indians. Parliament, instead of using legal means, hastened to find revenge. On March 31, 1774, it was enacted that Boston port should be closed.
The final act which brought on the Revolution was the firing upon the seventy minute men, who were standing still at Lexington, by the English soldiers under Major Pitcairn, on April 19, 1775, sixteen of the patriots fell dead or wounded. The first gun of the Revolution fired the entire country, and in a few days Boston was besieged by the militia twenty thousand strong. Events passed rapidly, wrongs upon wrongs were perpetrated, until, finally, on July 4, 1776, the Declaration of Independence was published to the world. By this act all hope of reconciliation was at an end. Whatever concessions might be made by England, her own acts had caused an impassable gulf.
America had done all within her power to avert the impending storm. Her petitions had been spurned from the foot of the English throne. Even the illustrious Dr. Franklin, venerable in years, was forced to listen to a vile diatribe against him delivered by the coarse and brutal Wedderburn, while members of the Privy Council who were present, with the single exception of lord North, "lost all dignity and all self-respect. They laughed aloud at each sarcastic sally of Wedderburn. 'The indecency of their behaviour,' in the words of Shelburne, 'exceeded, as is agreed on all hands, that of any committee of elections;' and Fox, in a speech which he made as late as 1803, reminded the House how on that memorable occasion 'all men tossed up their hats and clapped their hands in boundless delight at Mr. Wedderburn's speech.'"[143]
George III., his ministers and his parliament hurled the country headlong into war, and that against the judgment of her wisest men, and her best interests. To say the least the war was not popular in England. The wisest statesmen in both Houses of Parliament plead for reconciliation, but their efforts fell on callous ears. The ruling class was seized with the one idea of humbling America. They preferred to listen to such men as Major James Grant,—the same who allowed his men, (as has been already narrated) to be scandalously slaughtered before Fort du Quesne, and had made himself offensive in South Carolina under Colonel Montgomery. This braggart asserted, in the House of Commons, "amidst the loudest cheering, that he knew the Americans very well, and was certain they would not fight; 'that they were not soldiers and never could be made so, being naturally pusillanimous and incapable of discipline; that a very slight force would be more than sufficient for their complete reduction'; and he fortified his statement by repeating their peculiar expressions, and ridiculing their religious enthusiasm, manners and ways of living, greatly to the entertainment of the house."[144]
The great Pitt, then earl of Chatham, in his famous speech in January 1775, declared:
"The spirit which resists your taxation in America is the same that formerly opposed loans, benevolences, and ship-money in England. * * * This glorious spirit of Whiggism animates three millions in America who prefer poverty with liberty to gilded chains and sordid affluence, and who will die in defence of their rights as freemen. * * * For myself, I must declare that in all my reading and observation—and history has been my favorite study; I have read Thucydides, and have studied and admired the master states of the world—that for solidity of reasoning, force of sagacity, and wisdom of conclusion under such a complication of difficult circumstances, no nation or body of men can stand in preference to the General Congress at Philadelphia. * * * All attempts to impose servitude upon such men, to establish despotism over such a mighty continental nation, must be vain, must be fatal. We shall be forced ultimately to retreat. Let us retreat while we can, not when we must."
In accordance with these sentiments Chatham withdrew his eldest son from the army rather than suffer him to be engaged in the war. Lord Effingham, finding his regiment was to serve against the Americans, threw up his commission and renounced the profession for which he had been trained and loved, as the only means of escaping the obligation of fighting against the cause of freedom. Admiral Keppel, one of the most gallant officers in the British navy, expressed his readiness to serve against the ancient enemies of England, but asked to be released from employment against the Americans. It is said that Amherst refused to command the army against the Americans. In 1776 it was openly debated in parliament whether British officers ought to serve their sovereign against the Americans, and no less a person then General Conway leaned decidedly to the negative, and compared the case to that of French officers who were employed in the Massacre of St. Bartholomew. Just after the battle of Bunker Hill, the duke of Richmond declared in parliament that he "did not think that the Americans were in rebellion, but that they were resisting acts of the most unexampled cruelty and oppression." The Corporation of London, in 1775, drew up an address strongly approving of the resistance of the Americans, and similar addresses were expressed by other towns. A great meeting in London, and also the guild of merchants in Dublin, returned thanks to lord Effingham for his recent conduct. When Montgomery fell at the head of the American troops before Quebec, he was eulogized in the British parliament.