Unfortunately there does not exist any history of the commerce of the American colonies, from the Commonwealth to 1774, as affected by navigation laws, acts of trade, and revenue measures. No one who has read the twenty-nine acts which comprise this legislation will recommend their perusal to another; for, apart from their volume, the construction of these acts is difficult,—difficult even to trained lawyers like John Adams, whose business it was to advise clients in respect to them.[140] Nor have special students, like Bancroft, stated their effect with exact precision, as in respect to the Act of 1663;[141] and notably in respect to the Townshend Act of 1767,[142] where his error amounts to a perversion of its meaning. Palfrey has been more successful, though not entirely free from error.[143] The author of the Development of Constitutional Liberty,[144] a work of uncommon research and ability, reads the act of 1672 as though it prohibited the carrying of fish from Massachusetts to Rhode Island except by the way of England, failing to notice that it was not one of the "enumerated articles", or that even those could pass directly from colony to colony upon payment, at the place of export, of duties equivalent to those laid upon their importation to England. To give a monographic treatment to the subject would require familiarity with the construction of statutes, and exact information not only of the shifting conditions of colonial trade, but of the evasions which called forth supplemental acts, or constructions of existing acts by the Board of Trade.[145]
In Burke's Account of the European Settlements in America[146] much may be found respecting colonial products and commerce, and especially those of New England (in ch. vii.), which leaves little to be desired concerning the sources of her wealth, and the complaints of British merchants of the methods by which it had been acquired. But I have found nowhere else so full and clear an account of the course of trade of Boston at the time of the Revolution, and the effect upon it of the enforcement of the navigation laws and acts of trade in 1770, as in an anonymous pamphlet entitled Observations of the Merchants at Boston in N. E. upon Several Acts of Parliament, 1770.[147]
An essential part of this history is that which relates to the medium of exchange, and to the attempts of Parliament to regulate the issue of paper money as a legal tender in the interests of British merchants.[148]
The history of the navigation laws suggests the similarity of the causes which led to the successive revolutions of 1689 and 1775 in Massachusetts. The violation of these laws was a principal reason for the abrogation of the first charter, in 1684, graphically described by Palfrey,[149] and their enforcement by courts of admiralty, under Dudley, Andros, and Randolph, was one cause of the overthrow of the Andros government in 1689.[150] The resistance to the same and additional enactments, when enforced as revenue measures, led to the alteration of the second charter in 1774, and this again led to revolution by the united colonies.
One of the most efficient instruments in the execution of the navigation laws was the writs of assistance granted by the court in Massachusetts in 1761.[151]
If the student of American history finds difficulty in accepting the common accounts of the constitutional opinions and motives of two fifths of the colonists, among whom were many who must be regarded as intelligent and respectable, his doubts as to the accuracy of these narratives receive some confirmation when he becomes familiar with the history of the Congress of 1754, the circumstances which led to it, and the opinions of some of its representative men. A comparison of their views will show how far they were willing to go in the "abridgment of English liberties", for the sake of union, defence, and government. Franklin, Hutchinson, and Pownall formed plans for union, and all were at Albany in 1754, and participated in the discussions, though Pownall, not being a member, explained his views outside the congress.[152]
The difference between Pownall, Hutchinson, and Franklin was this: that while all contemplated the union of the empire under one general government as something dictated by the interest of all the parts, Hutchinson limited the power of the President more than Franklin, and Pownall was unwilling to contemplate the transfer of its seat to America; the prospect of which gave Franklin no concern. "The government cannot be long retained without union. Which is best, to have a total separation, or a change of the seat of government?"[153] Speculations as to the results of such a union are now idle, unless for the interest drawn towards them by Professor Seeley's Expansion of England, and Franklin's belief, expressed in 1789, "that if the foregoing plan [that of 1754], or something like it, had been adopted and carried into execution, the subsequent separation of the colonies from the mother country might not so soon have happened, nor the mischiefs suffered on both sides have occurred, perhaps, during another century."[154]
A comparison of the views of such men as Franklin, Hutchinson, and Pownall, expressed before they were forced into partisan relations to the impending conflict, help us in forming opinions respecting their conduct when affairs, no longer within the control of individuals, were swept onward by an uncontrollable impulse. Neither the colonies[155] nor the ministry approved of the proposed union; and when the new policy of raising a revenue was inaugurated the colonies were without defined integral relations to the mother country, and the government without administrative machinery for their regulation. The result was confusion. The press became heated, and an angry war of pamphlets ensued. At first the controversy was confined to the distinction between internal taxes and commercial regulations, but soon it involved the whole question of parliamentary power. This was elaborately and temperately discussed in the Farmer's Letters, by John Dickinson, but nowhere in America with more fulness (within the period covered by this chapter) than by Governor Hutchinson and the two Houses of the Massachusetts General Court, in messages and answers respectively, in January and February, 1773.[156]