Yet in 1769 the Ministry could not avoid recognizing that as financial measures the Townshend duties were a hopeless failure, since their net proceeds were less than 300 pounds and the increased military expenses were {47} declared by Pownall to be over 170,000 pounds. On May 1, 1769, the Cabinet voted to repeal the taxes on glass, colours, and paper, but by a majority of one determined to keep the tea duty. This decision was due to the complaisance of Lord North, who saw the unwisdom of the step, but yielded to the King's wish to retain one tax in order to assert the principle of parliamentary supremacy. A year later, the Grafton Ministry finally broke up; and Lord North assumed control, with a Cabinet composed wholly of Tories and supported by George III to the full extent of his power, through patronage, bribes, social pressure, and political proscription. North himself was inclined to moderation in colonial matters. He carried the promised repeal of all the duties but the tea tax, and in 1772 replaced the arrogant and quarrelsome Hillsborough with the more amiable Lord Dartmouth. It looked for a while as though the political skies might clear, for the American merchants, tired of their self-imposed hardships, began to weaken in opposition. In 1769 the New York assembly voted to accept the parliamentary terms; and in 1770 the merchants of that colony voted to abandon general non-importation, keeping only the boycott on tea. This led to the general collapse of the non-importation agreements; but the colonial temper continued to be defiant and {48} suspicious, and wrangling with governors was incessant.
Occasional cases of violence confirmed the English Tories in their low view of the Americans. In March, 1770, a riot in Boston between town rowdies and the soldiers brought on a shooting affray in which five citizens were killed. This created intense indignation throughout the colonies, regardless of the provocation received by the soldiers, and led to an annual commemoration of the "Boston Massacre," marked by inflammatory speeches. The soldiers, however, when tried for murder in the local courts, were defended by prominent counsel, notably John Adams, and were acquitted. Two years later, on June 9, 1772, the Gaspee, a naval schooner, which had been very active in chasing smugglers in Rhode Island waters, was burned by a mob, and its captain taken prisoner. The utmost efforts of the home government failed to secure the detection or punishment of any one of the perpetrators.
Finally, in December, 1773, a still more serious explosion occurred. The North Ministry, desirous of assisting the East India Company, which was burdened with debt, removed practically all restrictions on the exportation of tea to America in hopes of increasing the sale by reducing the price. To the colonial leaders, now in a state of {49} chronic irritation, this measure seemed an insulting and insidious attempt to induce the Americans to forget their principles and buy the tea because it was cheap. It was denounced from end to end of the country in burning rhetoric; and when the cargoes of tea arrived their sale was completely prevented by the overwhelming pressure of public opinion. Consignees, waited on by great crowds, hastened to resign; and the tea was either seized for nonpayment of duties and allowed to spoil, or was sent back. In Boston, however, the Governor, Hutchinson, stiffly refused to let the tea ships depart without landing the tea, whereat the exasperated citizens watched an organized mob of disguised men board the ships and throw the tea into the harbour. Once more the unanimous voice of the colonies defied a parliamentary Act.
Such was the situation in 1773. Thirteen groups of British colonists, obstinately local in their interests, narrowly insistent on self-government, habituated to an antagonistic attitude toward royal governors, but, after all has been said, unquestionably loyal to the Crown and the home country, had been transformed into communities on the verge of permanent insubordination. Incapable of changing all their political habits, they could see in the British policy only a purpose {50} to deprive them of that self-government which was inseparable from liberty. The Crown Ministers, on the other hand, unable to discover anything illegal, oppressive, or unreasonable in any of their measures, found no explanation of the extravagant denunciations of the colonial radicals other than a determination to foment every possible difficulty with a view to throwing off all obedience. While Adams, Dickinson, Henry, Gadsden and the rest demanded their "rights," and protested against "incroachments" on their liberties, Bedford, Hillsborough, North, and Dartmouth insisted on the "indecency," "insolence," and "disloyalty" shown by the Americans. The colonial republicans and the British noblemen were unable to speak the same language. Yet the time had come to face the situation, and it was the duty of the Ministers to assume the task with something more serious than reproofs and legal formulae. The contest for power now begun must lead, unless terminated, straight to a disruption of the Empire.
{51}
CHAPTER III
THE DISRUPTION OF THE EMPIRE, 1773-1776
When the news reached England that the people of the town of Boston had thrown the tea of the East India Company into the harbour, the patience of the North ministry, already severely strained, reached an end. Its members felt—and most of the English people felt with them—that to submit to such an act of violence was impossible. Every consideration of national dignity demanded that Boston and its rioters should be punished, and that the outrage done to the East India Company should receive atonement. Hitherto, they said, the contumacious colonists had been dealt with chiefly by arguments, reproofs, and, as it seemed to most Englishmen, with concessions and kindnesses which had won only insult and violence.
It was resolved to make an example of the delinquent community; and the first step was to humiliate its representative, Benjamin Franklin. Ever since 1765 he had been residing in England, respected as a philosopher and admired as a wit, bearing a sort of diplomatic character through his position as agent for the assemblies of Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, and Georgia. In close {52} association with the Whig opposition, he was undoubtedly the best-known American, and among the most influential. Now, in 1774, having to present a petition from Massachusetts to the Privy Council for the removal of Lieutenant-Governor Hutchinson, Franklin found it an awkward feature of the case that the colony's charges were based on private letters which he himself had in some way acquired and sent to Boston. The Court party determined to crush him, and at the hearing put forward Wedderburn, the Solicitor-General—a typical King's Friend—who passed over the subject of the petition to brand Franklin in virulent invective as a thief and scoundrel. Amidst general applause, the petition was rejected as false and scandalous, and Franklin was dismissed from his position of colonial Postmaster-General.
When Parliament met, it was instantly made clear that the sole idea controlling King, Cabinet, and the majority of Members was to bring the Massachusetts colonists to their senses by severe punitive legislation. The Whig opposition did not attempt to defend the destruction of the tea; but it spared no effort to make the Ministers see the folly of striking at effects and ignoring causes. In a masterly speech of April 19, 1774, Burke showed that the insistence on submission regardless of the grievances and of the nature {53} of the colonists was a dangerous and absurd policy, and Pownall and Chatham repeated his arguments, but without avail. The Ministerial party saw no danger, and felt nothing but the contempt of an irritated aristocracy. The original ideals of a general colonial reform were now lost sight of; the men responsible for them had all passed off the stage; Grenville, Townshend, and Halifax were dead, and North, careless and subservient to George III, Hillsborough, Suffolk, Sandwich, and Rochford—all noblemen, and in many cases inefficient—did not see beyond the problem of coercing noisy and troublesome rioters, indistinguishable from the followers of Wilkes. Over and over again they reiterated that the colonists' resentment was not to be feared, that they would submit to genuine firmness, that they were all cowardly and dared not resist a few regular troops. Lord George Germaine earned the thanks of Lord North by declaring that the colonists were only "a tumultuous and noisy rabble," men who ought to be "following their mercantile employment and not attempting to govern." Not a gleam of any other statesmanship appears in any of the Ministerial speeches than that displayed in the determination to exact complete submission.