Decisive Battles of America

by Unknown

As the resistance of the colonies to this taxation led straight to open war and final independence, it will be worth while to look rather closely at the stamp tax, and at the subject of representation, which was at once linked with it. The terms of the Stamp Act are not of great importance, because, though it did have at least one bad feature as a law, the whole opposition was on the ground that there should be no taxation whatever without representation. It made no difference to its enemies that the money obtained by the sale of stamps was to stay in America to support the soldiers needed for colonial protection. Nothing would appease them while the taxing body contained no representatives of their own choosing.

To attain this right, they made their fight upon legal and historical grounds—the least favorable they could have chosen. They declared that, under the British constitution, there could be no taxation except by persons known and voted for by the persons taxed. The wisest men seemed not to see the kernel of the dispute. A very real danger threatened the colonies—subject as they were to a body unsympathetic with the political and economic conditions in which they were living—but they had no legal safeguard.[54] They must either sever the existing constitutional bond or get Parliament of its own will to limit its power over the colonies. All unwittingly the opponents of the Stamp Act were struggling with a problem that could be solved only by revolution.

Two great fundamental questions were at issue: Should there be a British empire ruled by Parliament in all its parts, either in England or oversea? or should Parliament govern at home, and the colonial assemblies in America, with only a federal bond to unite them? Should the English understanding of representation be imposed upon the colonies? or should America’s institution triumph in its own home? If there was to be a successful imperial system, Parliament must have the power to tax all parts of the empire. It was of no use to plead that Parliament had never taxed the colonies before, for, as Doctor Johnson wrote, “We do not put a calf into the plough: we wait till it is an ox.”[55] The colonies were strong enough to stand taxation now, and the reasonable dispute must be as to the manner of it. To understand the widely different points of view of Englishmen and Americans, we must examine their systems of representative government.

In electing members to the House of Commons in England certain ancient counties and boroughs were entitled to representation, each sending two members, regardless of the number of people within its territory. For a century and a half before the American Revolution only four new members were added to the fixed number in Parliament. Meanwhile, great cities had grown up which had no representation, though certain boroughs, once very properly represented, had become uninhabited, and the lord who owned the ground elected the members to Parliament, taking them, not from the district represented, but from any part of the kingdom. The franchise was usually possessed either by the owners of the favored pieces of land or in the boroughs chiefly by persons who inherited certain rights which marked them as freemen. A man had as many votes as there were constituencies in which he possessed the qualifications.

In the colonial assemblies there was a more distinct territorial basis for representation, and changes of population brought changes of representation. New towns sent new members to the provincial assembly, and held the right to be of great value. All adult men—even negroes in New England—owning a certain small amount of property could vote for these members. In the South only the landholders voted, but the supply of land was not limited, as in England, and it was easily acquired. Finally, the voter and the representative voted for must, as a rule, be residents of the same district. From the first the colonial political ideals were affected by new conditions. When they established representative government they had no historic places sanctified by tradition to be the sole breeding-places of members of Parliament.

Backed by such divergent traditions as these, the two parts of the British empire, or, more accurately, the dominant party in each section of the empire, faced each other upon a question of principle. Neither could believe in the honesty of the other, for each argued out of a different past. The opponents of the Stamp Act could not understand the political thinking which held them to be represented in the British Parliament. “No taxation without representation” meant for the colonist that taxes ought to be levied by a legislative body in which was seated a person known and voted for by the person taxed. An Englishman only asked that there be “no taxation except that voted by the House of Commons.” He was not concerned with the mode of election to that house or the interests of the persons composing it. The colonists called the Stamp Act tyranny, but the British government certainly intended none, for it acted upon the theory of virtual representation, the only kind of representation enjoyed by the great mass of Englishmen either at home or in the colonies. On that theory nothing was taxed except by the consent of the virtual representatives of those taxed. But, replied an American, in England the interests of electors and non-electors are the same. Security against any oppression of non-electors lies in the fact that it would be oppressive to electors also; but Americans have no such safeguard, for acts oppressive to them might be popular with English electors.[56]

When the news of the Stamp Act first came oversea there was apparent apathy. The day of enforcement was six months away, and there was nothing to oppose but a law. It was the fitting time for an agitator. Patrick Henry, a gay, unprosperous, and unknown country lawyer, had been carried into the Virginia House of Burgesses on the public approval of his impassioned denial, in the “Parson’s Cause” (1763), of the king’s right to veto a needed law passed by the colonial legislature. He now offered some resolutions against the stamp tax, denying the right of Parliament to legislate in the internal affairs of the colony.[57] This “alarum bell to the disaffected,” and the fiery speech which secured its adoption by an irresolute assembly, were applauded everywhere. Jefferson said of Henry, that he “spoke as Homer wrote.”

As soon as the names of the appointed stamp-distributers were made known (August 1, 1765) the masses expressed their displeasure in a way unfortunately too common in America. Throughout the land there was rifling of stamp-collectors’ houses, threatening their lives, burning their records and documents, and even their houses. Their offices were demolished and their resignations compelled—in one case under a hanging effigy, suggestive of the result of refusal. The more moderate patriots cancelled their orders with British merchants, agreed not to remit their English debts, and dressed in homespun to avoid wearing imported clothes.

On the morning that the act went into effect (November 1, 1765) bells tolled the death of the nation. Shops were shut, flags hung at half-mast, and newspapers appeared with a death’s-head where the stamp should have been. Mobs burned the stamps, and none were to be had to legalize even the most solemn and important papers. The courts ignored them and the governors sanctioned their omission. None could be used, because none could be obtained. All America endorsed the declaration of rights of the Stamp-Act Congress, which met in New York, October, 1765. It asserted that the colonists had the same liberties as British subjects. Circumstances, they declared, prevented the colonists from being represented in the House of Commons, therefore no taxes could be levied except by their respective legislatures.[58]

This great ado was a complete surprise to the British government. On the passage of the Stamp Act, Walpole had written,[59] “There has been nothing of note in Parliament but one slight day on the American taxes.” That expressed the common conception of its importance; and when the Grenville ministry fell (July, 1765), and was succeeded by that of Rockingham, the American situation had absolutely nothing to do with the change. The new ministry was some months in deciding its policy. The king was one of the first to realize the situation, which he declared “the most serious that ever came before Parliament” (December 5, 1765). Weak and unwilling to act as the new ministry was, the situation compelled attention. The king at first favored coercion of the rebellious colonies, but the English merchants, suffering from the suspended trade, urged Parliament to repeal the act. Their demand decided the ministry to favor retraction, just as formerly their influence had forced the navigation laws and the restrictions on colonial manufactures. If the king and landed gentry were responsible for the immediate causes of the Revolution, the influence of the English commercial classes on legislation was the more ultimate cause.