The Wars Between England and America

by Theodore Clarke Smith

The American of 1763 was thus a different kind of man from the Englishman. As a result of the divergent development on the two sides of the Atlantic from a common ancestry, their political habits had become mutually incomprehensible. To the Englishman, the rule of the nobility was normal—the ideal political system. He was content, if a commoner, with the place assigned to him. To the colonist, on the other hand, government in which the majority of adult male inhabitants possessed the chief power was the only valid form,—all others were vicious. Patriotism meant two contradictory things. The Englishman's patriotism was sturdy but unenthusiastic, and showed itself almost as much in a contempt for foreigners as in complacency over English institutions. The colonist, on the contrary, had a double allegiance: one conventional and traditional, to the British crown; the other a new, intensely local and narrow attachment to his province. England was still the "old home," looked to as the source of political authority, of manners and literature. It was for many of {19} the residents their recent abode and, for all except a few of Dutch, German, or French extraction, their ancestral country. But already this "loyalty" on the part of the colonists was dwindling into something more sentimental than real. The genuine local patriotism of the colonists was shown by their persistent struggle against the representatives of English authority in the governors' chairs. There had developed in America a new sort of man, an "American," who wished to be as independent of government as possible, and who, while professing and no doubt feeling a general loyalty to England, was in fact a patriot of his own colony.

The colonists entered very slightly into the thoughts of the English noblemen and gentry. They were regarded in a highly practical way, without a trace of any sentiment, as members of the middle and lower classes, not without a large criminal admixture, who had been helped and allowed to build up some unruly and not very admirable communities. Nor did the English middle classes look upon the colonists with much interest, or regard them as, on the whole, their equals. The prevailing colonial political habits, as seen from England, suggested only unwarrantable wrangling indicative of political incompetence and a spirit of disobedience. Loyalty, to an {20} Englishman, meant submission to the law. To men trained in such different schools, words did not mean the same thing. The time had come when the two peoples were scarcely able to understand each other.

A second cause for antagonism, scarcely less fundamental and destined to cause equal irritation, is to be found in the conflict between the economic life of the American communities and the beliefs of the mother country concerning commercial and naval policy. Great Britain, in 1763, was predominantly a trading country. Its ships carried goods for all the nations of Europe and brought imports to England from all lands. Although the manufacturers were not yet in possession of the new inventions which were to revolutionize the industries of the world, they were active and prosperous in their domestic production of hardware and textiles, and they furnished cargoes for the shipowners to transport to all quarters. To these two great interests of the middle classes, banking and finance were largely subsidiary. Agriculture, the mainstay of the nobility and gentry, continued to hold first place in the interests of the governing classes, but the importance of all sources of wealth was fully recognized.

In the colonies, on the contrary, manufacture scarcely existed beyond the domestic {21} production of articles for local use; and the inhabitants relied on importations for nearly all finished commodities and for all luxuries. Their products were chiefly things which Great Britain could not itself raise, such as sugar in the West Indies; tobacco from the islands and the southern mainland colonies; indigo and rice from Carolina; furs, skins, masts, pine products; and, from New England, above all, fish. The natural market for these articles was in England or in other colonies; and in return British manufactures found their natural market in the new communities. When the Economic Revolution transformed industry, and factories, driven by steam, made England the workshop of the world, the existing tendency for her to supply America with manufactured products was intensified regardless of the political separation of the two countries. Not until later economic changes supervened was this normal relationship altered.

The traditional British policy in 1763 was that of the so-called Mercantile System, which involved a thoroughgoing application of the principle of protection to the British shipowner, manufacturer, and corn-grower against any competition. An elaborate tariff, with a system of prohibitions and bounties, attempted to prevent the landowner from being undersold by foreign corn, and the {22} manufacturer from meeting competition from foreign producers. Navigation Acts shut out foreign-built, -owned, or -manned ships from the carrying trade between any region but their home country and England, reserving all other commerce for British vessels. Into this last restriction there entered another purely political consideration, namely, the perpetuation of a supply of mariners for the British navy, whose importance was fully recognized. So far as the colonies were concerned, they were brought within the scope of mercantilist ideas by being considered as sources of supply for England in products not possible to raise at home, as markets which must be reserved for British manufacturers and traders, and as places which must not be allowed to develop any rivalry to British producers. Furthermore, they were so situated that by proper regulations they might serve to encourage British shipping even if this involved an economic loss.

The Navigation Acts accordingly, from 1660 to 1763, were designed to put this theory into operation, and excluded all foreign vessels from trading with the colonies, prohibited any trade to the colonies except from British ports and enumerated certain commodities—sugar, cotton, dye woods, indigo, rice, furs—which could be sent only to England. To ensure the carrying out of these {23} laws, an elaborate system of bonds and local duties was devised, and customs officers were appointed, resident in the colonies, while governors were obliged to take oath to enforce the Acts. As time revealed defects or unnecessary stringencies, the restrictions were frequently modified. The Carolinas, for instance, were allowed to ship rice not only to England, but to any place in Europe south of Cape Finisterre. Bounties were established to aid the production of tar and turpentine; but special Acts prohibited the export of hats from the colonies, or the manufacture of rolled iron, in order to check a possible source of competition to British producers. In short, the Board of Trade, the administrative body charged with the oversight of the plantations, devoted its energies to suggesting devices which should aid the colonists, benefit the British consumer and producer, and increase "navigation."

It does not appear that the Acts of Trade were, in general, a source of loss to the colonies. Their vessels shared in the privileges reserved for British-built ships. The compulsory sending of the enumerated commodities to England may have damaged the tobacco-growers; but in other respects it did little harm. The articles would have gone to England in any case. The restriction of importation to goods from England was no {24} great grievance, since British products would, in any case, have supplied the American market. Even the effort, by an Act of 1672, to check intercolonial trade in enumerated commodities was not oppressive, for, with one exception noted below, there was no great development of such a trade. By 1763, according to the best evidence, the thirteen colonies seem to have adjusted their habits to the Navigation Acts, and to have been carrying on their flourishing commerce within these restrictions.

To this general condition, however, there were some slight exceptions, and one serious one. The colonists undoubtedly resented the necessity of purchasing European products from English middlemen, and were especially desirous of importing Spanish and Portuguese wines and French brandies directly. Smuggling in these articles seems to have been steadily carried on. Much more important—and to the American ship-owners the kernel of the whole matter—was the problem of the West India trade. It was proved, as the eighteenth century progressed, that the North American colonies could balance their heavy indebtedness to the mother country for excess of imports over exports only by selling to the French, as well as the British West Indies, barrel staves, clapboards, fish and food products. In {25} return, they took sugar and molasses, developing in New England a flourishing rum manufacture, which in turn was used in the African slave trade. By these means the people of the New England and Middle colonies built up an active commerce, using their profits to balance their indebtedness to England. This "triangular trade" disturbed the British West India planters, who, being largely non-residents and very influential in London, induced Parliament, in 1733, to pass an Act imposing prohibitory duties on all sugar and molasses of foreign growth. This law, if enforced, would have struck a damaging blow at the prosperity of the Northern colonies, merely to benefit the West India sugar-growers by giving them a monopoly; but the evidence goes to show that it was systematically evaded and that French sugar, together with French and Portuguese wines, was still habitually smuggled into the colonies. Thus the Navigation Acts, in the only points where they would have been actually oppressive, were not enforced. The colonial governors saw the serious consequences and shrank from arousing discontent. It is significant that the same colonists who contended with the royal governors did not hesitate to violate a parliamentary law when it ran counter to their interests.

The only reason why the radical difference {26} between the colonies and the home government did not cause open conflict long before 1763 is to be found in the absorption of the English ministries in parliamentary manoeuvring at home, diplomacy, and European wars. The weakness of the imperial control was recognized and frequently complained of by governors, Boards of Trade, and other officials; but so long as the colonies continued to supply the sugar, furs, lumber and masts called for by the Acts, bought largely from English shippers and manufacturers, and stimulated the growth of British shipping, the Whig and Tory noblemen were content. The rapidly growing republicanism of the provincial and proprietary governments was ignored and allowed to develop unchecked. A half-century of complaints from thwarted governors, teeming with suggestions that England ought to take the government of the colonies into its own hands, produced no results beyond creating in official circles an opinion unfavourable to the colonists.

In the years of the French war, 1754-1760, the utter incompatibility between imperial theories on the one hand and colonial political habits on the other, could no longer be disregarded. In the midst of the struggle, the legislatures continued to wrangle with governors over points of privilege; they were slow to vote supplies; they were {27} dilatory in raising troops; they hung back from a jealous fear that their neighbour colonies might fail to do their share; they were ready to let British soldiers do all the hard fighting. Worse still, the colonial shipowners persisted in their trade with the French and Spanish West Indies, furnishing their enemies with supplies, and buying their sugar and molasses as usual. When, in Boston, writs of assistance were employed by the customs officials, in order that by a general power of search they might discover such smuggled property, the merchants protested in the courts, and James Otis, a fiery young lawyer, boldly declared the writs an infringement of the rights of the colonists, unconstitutional, and beyond the power of Parliament to authorize. To Ministers engaged in a tremendous war for the overthrow of France, the behaviour of the colonies revealed a spirit scarcely short of disloyalty, and a weakness of government no longer to be tolerated. The Secretaries, the Board of Trade, the customs officials, army officers, naval commanders, colonial governors, and judges all agreed that the time had come for a thorough and drastic reform. They approached the task purely and simply as members of the English governing classes, ignorant of the colonists' political ideas and totally indifferent to their views; and their measures were framed in the spirit {28} of unquestioning acceptance of the principles of the Acts of Trade as a fundamental national policy.