The question, however, was in England "little understood and less attended to";[8] and contemporary memoirs may be ransacked in vain for any reference thereto. Even Walpole, whose letters form so detailed a chronicle of events, dismissed it cavalierly. "There has been nothing of note in Parliament," he wrote to Lord Hertford on February 12, 1765, "but one slight day on the American taxes, which Charles Townshend supporting, received a pretty heavy thump from Barré, who is the present Pitt and the dread of all vociferous Norths and Rigbys, on whose lungs depended so much of Mr. Grenville's power." The fact of the matter was that England had not realized the importance of colonies, and practically nothing was known in the motherland of her possession. "I suppose you are violent for your American friends," Lady Sarah Bunbury, so late as July 6, 1775, wrote to Lady Susan O'Brien. "I hope they are good sort of people, but I don't love Presbyterians and I love the English soldiers, so that I at present have a horror of those who use them ill beyond the laws of war, which scalping certainly is, and I don't believe a word of the soldiers doing more than they ought; you know one is always unreasonable when one's prejudiced."[9]
Now the colonists were, of course, no more addicted to scalping and other practices "beyond the laws of war" than the English; and the knowledge that these and similar ideas prevailed at home undoubtedly infused a feeling of bitterness into their love for the country of their descent. Moreover, very naturally, they resented the almost ostentatious display of their unimportance in the eyes of English ministers, which became known to them when, to give one example from many, on the resignation of the Duke of Newcastle, a whole closetful of American despatches was found unopened.[10] They were English, and proud of their descent, a hardy, frugal, independent folk, determined not to be treated as a subject race; the last people in the world to brook interference, and the first to remember that they were colonies, not conquests, brothers, not slaves. They were simple in their habits and in their ideas, and, in some places, Puritanical to excess—the stool of repentance and the scold's gag were still in use, and they had anticipated the publican's "black list"; but as a nation they were thriving, and the towns of Boston, New York, Charleston, and Philadelphia were so many convincing proofs of their increasing wealth.
The colonists were bound to the motherland by a strong feeling of loyalty, by fear of the French-Canadians, whose aggressions they were not strong (or perhaps, it is more accurate to say did not realize they were strong) enough to repel, and also by the prevailing jealousy between the different provinces which was so strong that Otis in 1765 declared that, if left to itself, "America would be a mere shambles of blood and confusion." England's treatment of the colonies was not harsh, but the tactless treatment aroused even more discontent than an illiberal policy. The Americans were continually being irritated by the attitude of the governors sent out by the committee of the Privy Council responsible for colonial government, but paid by the provinces over which they ruled, who did not understand them, made no attempt to learn their habits, and showed little or no regard for the Assemblies in their districts. "Such wrong-headed people," said one of these officers, "I thank God I never had to do with before." The Americans, on the other hand, complained of many of the people who were sent from England to occupy official positions. "For many years past most of the places in the gift of the Crown have been filled with broken Members of Parliament, of bad, if any, principles, pimps, valets-de-chambre, electioneering scoundrels, and even livery servants." General Huske wrote about 1758: "In one word, America has been for many years made the hospital of Great Britain for her decayed courtiers and abandoned, worn-out dependants. I can point you out a chief justice of a province appointed from home for no other reason than publicly prostituting his honour and conscience at an election; a livery servant that is secretary of a province, appointed from hence; a pimp, collector of a whole province, who got this place of the man in power for prostituting his handsome wife to his embraces and procuring him other means of gratifying his lust. Innumerable are instances of this sort in places of great trust."[11]
These annoyances were but pin-pricks, compared with many restrictions placed upon their trade. There were laws ordaining that all trade between the colonies should be carried in ships built in England or the colonies, and forbidding the exportation of tobacco, sugar, cotton, wool, and other articles except to England and her other colonies, as well as a host of minor regulations, such as that in the woods of Maine no tree with a diameter greater than two feet at a foot above ground should be cut down, except to make a mast for a ship of the royal navy. It is true that on the other hand no Englishman might buy tobacco that was not grown in America or Bermuda, that the export trade to the motherland was encouraged by bounties, and that owing to a system by which duties were remitted on exportation to America they could purchase continental goods more cheaply than they could be obtained in England[12]; but these compensations did not make amends, in the colonists' eyes, for the regulations that cramped their trade.
These restrictions were much resented, and, as the volume of their commerce increased, might well have goaded the colonists into rebellion, had they not chosen the path of least resistance, and evaded them through the simple device of smuggling. The Sugar Act of 1733, designed in the interests of British merchants, forbidding the importation of sugar and molasses from the French West Indies except on payment of a prohibitive duty, aroused the ire of the Americans, who, realizing the uselessness of petitions,[13] only plunged still deeper into the contraband trade. This, in turn, angered those who had expected to benefit by the Act, and many protests to enforce the law were made to the home government, who turned a deaf ear to such representations until after the Peace of Paris, when Bute sent revenue cutters to cruise off the American coast. The officers of these ships were sworn to act as revenue officers and smuggling was somewhat checked at the cost of a vast deal of irritation at the summary methods of the sailors.
The easy passage of the Stamp Act showed that Parliament did not anticipate any considerable opposition from America, and even the agents of the colonies, including Benjamin Franklin, who represented Pennsylvania, thought that a small standing army was desirable, and believed the colonies had no choice but to submit. The colonists themselves, however, were not slow to express a very decided opposition to the Act, and perhaps their objection was not the less vehement because Grenville had prefaced the introduction of the resolutions by stating that they were an "experiment towards further aid." That, though, was but a trifle beside the main issue. Hitherto all taxes in the colonies had been voted by the several Provincial Assemblies: now was asserted the right of England to tax her colonies. Not to protest was tacitly to admit the theory of the absolute dominion of the motherland, and at once a stand was made against the infringement of the doctrine that in free nations taxation and representation go hand in hand. Some attempt was made in England to show that America was virtually represented in Parliament, but this fallacy was exposed by Pitt: "There is an idea in some minds that the colonies are virtually represented in the House. I would fain know by whom an American is represented here. Is he represented by any knight of the shire in this kingdom? Would to God that respectable representation were augmented to a greater number! Or, will you tell him that he is represented by any representative of a borough? a borough which perhaps its own representatives never saw. This is what is called the rotten part of the constitution. It cannot continue a century. If it does not drop it must be amputated. The idea of a virtual representation in this House is the most contemptible that ever entered into the head of man; it does not deserve a serious refutation."[14]
It was not denied by the colonists that the money raised in their country would be spent in their country, but this was only a further aggravation, for they resented the idea of a standing army, perhaps remembering the abuses which in earlier days it had been called upon to support in England. They contended that in time of war they had shown themselves willing and able to raise a force at the request of the governors, for which act they had been thanked by Parliament; and they asserted that in times of peace their militia was sufficient to protect them. The fact that the Stamp Act relaxed certain restrictions on their trades weighed as nothing against a subsequent measure obliging them to provide the British troops stationed amongst them with quarters and also with fire, candles, beds, vinegar and salt. This was an invasion of the privacy of their homes that, in time of peace, they would not endure.
"Sad news in the papers—G——d knows who's to blame!
The Colonies seem to be all in a flame,
This Stamp Act, no doubt, might be good for the Crown,
But I fear 'tis a pill that will never go down."[15]
No sooner did the colonists learn of the passing of the Stamp Act than a cry of protest rang out from all over the country. James Otis, the King's Advocate, resigned his official position in order to be at liberty to denounce the action of the home Government, a task in which he was ably seconded by John Adams; while Patrick Henry, whom Byron described as
"the forest-born Demosthenes,
Whose thunder shook the Philip of the seas,"