privileges and liberties of the Britons, but, in a degree, had ever been held in bondage under their chartered republican systems, wherein gentlemen of learning and property attain not to equal power with the peasants. The people of New-England were rightly styled republicans; but a distinction should be made between the learned and the unlearned, the rich and the poor. The latter formed a great majority; therefore the minority were obliged to wear the livery of the majority, in order to secure their election into office. These very republican gentlemen were ambitious, fond of the power of governing, and grudged no money or pains to obtain an annual office. What would they not have given for a dignity depending not on the fickle will of a multitude, but on the steady reason and generosity of a king? The merchants, lawyers, and clergy, to appearance were republicans, but not one of them was really so. The truth is, they found necessity on the one hand, and British neglect on the other, to be so intolerable, that they rather chose to risk their lives and fortunes to bring about a revolution, than continue in the situation they were. As to the multitude, they had no cause of complaint: they were accuser, judge, king, and subjects, only to themselves.
The rebellion sprung not from them, but from the merchants, lawyers, and clergy, who were never inimical to the aristocratic branch of the Government, provided they were admitted to share in it according to their merits. It is true, they, like Calvin, the author of their religion, maintained that no man can merit anything of the Great Eternal; nevertheless, they thought they had merited the aristocratic honours which emanate from earthly kings; while kings and nobles of the earth imagine themselves to have merited more than they yet enjoy—even heaven itself—only because they happen to enjoy the honour of being descendants of heroic ancestors.
England had also been as careful to keep to herself her religion and bishops as her civil constitutions and baronies. A million of Churchmen in America had been considered as not worthy of one bishop, while eight millions in South-Britain were scarcely honoured with enough with twenty-six: an insult on common justice,
which would have extinguished every spark of affection in America for the English Church, and created an everlasting schism, like that between Constantinople and Rome, had not the majority of the American episcopal clergy been possessed of less ambition than love and zeal. They had suffered on both sides of the Atlantic in name and property, for their endeavours to keep up a union between the Mother Country and her children; but all their arguments and persuasions were insufficient to convince their brethren that England would in future be more generous towards her colonies. One of the first fruits of the grand continental meeting of dissenting divines at Newhaven was a coalition between the republican and the minor part of the episcopal clergy, who were soon joined by the merchants, lawyers, and planters, with a view of procuring titles, ordination, and government, independent of Great Britain. Such were the real sources of the rebellion in America. The invasion of this or that colonial right, the oppression of this or that act of Parliament, were merely the pretended causes of it, which the ill-humour of a misgoverned people prompted them eagerly to hold up—causes which would never have found existence, whose existence had never been necessary, if a better system of American policy had been adopted; but, being produced, the shadow of complaint was exhibited instead of the substance, pretence instead of reality. Every republican pulpit resounded with invectives against the King, Lords, and Commons, who claimed a power to tax and govern the people of America—a power which their charters and ancestors knew nothing of. “Britons,” they said, “call our property theirs; they consider us as slaves—as hewers of wood and drawers of water to the descendants of those tyrants of Church and State who in the last century expelled and persecuted our fathers into the wilds of America. We have charters sacred as Magna Charta and the Bill of Rights.”
They declared that the liberties of America ought to be defended with the blood of millions; that the Attorney-General ought to impeach the Parliament of Great Britain, and all its abettors, of high treason, for daring to tax the freemen of America; that each colony was a palatinate, and the people a palatine; that
the people of Connecticut had as much authority to issue a writ of quo warranto against Magna Charta, as the King had to order such a writ against the Charter of Connecticut.
By ravings of this kind did the Sober Dissenters manifest their discontents, when the various measures for raising a revenue in America were adopted by the British ministry. That of sending tea to America, in 1773, subject to a duty of three pence on the pound, payable in America, particularly excited their clamour, as designed, they said, to establish a precedent of British taxation in this country; and, notwithstanding all the remonstrances of the loyalists, who strenuously exerted themselves in removing vulgar prejudices and procuring a reconciliation with circumstances rendered unavoidable by the necessity cf the times, they effectually inflamed the minds of the populace by reading, in the meetings on Sunday, letters said to have been sent by Dr. Franklin, I. Temple, and others, representing the danger of paying any tax imposed by Parliament, and the evil protestantism was threatened with by a Roman Catholic King, by Jacobites, tories, and episcopal clergy in both countries, all enemies to liberty and the American Vine; and adding that, if the Americans paid the tax on tea, there were three hundred other taxes ready to be imposed upon them, one of which was “50l. for every son born in wedlock, to maintain the natural children of the lords and bishops of England.”
The moderate counsel of the loyalists had formerly been attended with some effect; but it was forced to give place to the ribaldry just mentioned, and an opposition much more resolute was determined upon against the tea-act than had been made to the Stamp Act.
A provincial congress, committee of correspondence, committee of safety, in every town, &c. &c. now started up for the purpose of setting the colony in an uproar against the Parliament of Great Britain. To this end contributed not a little the falsehoods and artifices of Mr. Handcock, and other Boston merchants, who had in their storehouses nearly 40,000 half-boxes of tea, smuggled from the Dutch; which would never have been sold had the Company’s teas been once admitted into America, as the latter
were not only the better in quality, but, the duty being reduced from one shilling to three pence, would be also the much cheaper commodity. Mr. Handcock and his compatriots, therefore, were by no means wanting in endeavours to procure for the first teas which arrived in New-England the reception they met with in the harbour of Boston.