But the time came at the close of the French War when the mercantile system was subordinated to a revenue system, and the enforcement of the navigation laws and acts of trade, made more stringent by some new ones, became the policy of the government. Its instruments were admiralty courts with enlarged jurisdiction, commissioners of customs, writs of assistance, and an adequate naval force. When that time came, the Revolution was not far off![26]
In 1755, Shirley, then governor of Massachusetts, had persuaded the General Court to attempt by a stamp act to meet the expenses of the French War. This produced an irritation like that which followed in 1765 the act of the British ministry;[27] and to Shirley, as much as to any other man, perhaps, was due the suggestion of those parliamentary measures which led to the Revolution. Long residence in Boston and his profession as a lawyer had made him familiar with the evasions of the navigation laws; and his larger duties as commander-in-chief, in which he found much difficulty in bringing the colonial assemblies into concerted and efficient action, doubtless suggested measures which were adopted by the British ministry. However this may have been, the enforcement of the navigation laws was taken in hand for the first time by the government, and no longer left to depend upon private interests. This unwonted activity was shown as early as 1754. Its most formidable weapon was the Writ of Assistance.
More than four years before the passage of the Stamp Act, James Otis had resisted the granting of these writs before the Superior Court of Massachusetts. John Adams, then a student of law, took notes of Otis's argument, and fifty-six years later wrote: "Then and there was the first scene of the first act of opposition to the arbitrary claims of Great Britain. Then and there the child Independence was born."[28] This was no mere rhetorical phrase.[29] The influence of this controversy in producing the Revolution is not wholly due to the fiery eloquence of Otis, whose words, said John Adams, "breathed into the nation the breath of life", nor to the range of his argument, which called in question the mercantile and political systems of Great Britain, but to their effect upon the commercial interest—then the leading one—of New England; for if the latent powers of these writs were set free, and used by the revenue officers, the commerce of Boston, Salem, and Newport would have been effectually crippled. Authorized in England, they were extended to the colonies by an act of William III.[30] The officers of customs, however, instead of applying to the courts for them, relied upon the implied powers of their commissions, and forcibly entered warehouses for contraband goods. The people grew uneasy, and some stood upon their rights against the officers, whose activity was stimulated by documents like that given in the note below.[31]
Governor Shirley issued these writs, though the power to do so was solely in the court.[32] But they would have held a less important place in the history of the Revolution had it not been for the concurrence of several circumstances. All writs become invalid on the demise of the crown and six months thereafter. George II. died October 25, 1760, and the news reached Boston December 27th. The government had already resolved upon a more vigorous enforcement of the revenue laws. The king had instructed Bernard, the newly appointed governor of Massachusetts, to "be aiding and assisting to the collectors and other officers of our admiralty and customs in putting in execution" the acts of trade. Pitt also directed the colonial governors to prevent trade with the enemy and a commerce which was "in open contempt of the authority of the mother country, as well as to the most manifest prejudice of the manufactures and trade of Great Britain."[33] Seizures of uncustomed goods were frequent. The third part of the forfeiture of molasses which belonged to the province amounted before 1761 to nearly five hundred pounds in money. Bernard arrived in August, 1760. Chief Justice Sewall, who had expressed doubts as to the legality of writs of assistance, died September 11th; and Hutchinson, his successor, took his seat January 27, 1761. As the outstanding writs had become invalid, their renewal became necessary. But when Charles Paxton, the surveyor at Boston, appeared for that purpose in the Superior Court, February term, 1761, he was confronted by a petition signed by sixty inhabitants of the province, chiefly merchants of Boston, who desired to be heard in opposition, in person and by their counsel, James Otis and Oxenbridge Thacher. Otis, Advocate-General for the crown, had resigned his office to avoid supporting the writ.[34] Gridley, the Attorney-General, appeared in his stead. No complete report of the arguments has been preserved.[35] Gridley, who treated the question as purely one of law, to be determined by statutes and precedents, said of Otis's argument, that "quoting history is not speaking like a lawyer;" and as to the arbitrary nature of the writ which allowed the entry of private houses in search of uncustomed goods, he reminded him that by a province law a collector of taxes, without execution, judgment, or trial, could arrest and throw a delinquent taxpayer into prison. "What! shall my property be wrested from me? Shall my liberty be destroyed by a collector for a debt unadjudged, without the common indulgence and lenity of the law? So it is established; and the necessity of having public taxes effectually and speedily collected is of infinitely greater moment to the whole than the liberty of any individual."
Otis's argument is well known. Carried to its logical results, it was a plea for commercial and political independence of the colonies, and was fully vindicated by the result of the conflict it precipitated. But as a legal argument it is less conclusive.[36]
The majority of the court, however, were with Otis; and had judgment been given at the time, the decision would have been in his favor. But Hutchinson counselled delay until the practice in England could be learned; and as it appeared that such writs were issued, of course, from the Exchequer, on the 18th of November, the court, after re-argument, pronounced them to be legal. Thenceforth they were freely used. Otis's argument, without doubt, secured his election to the General Court in May, in which his influence was second to that of no other in bringing on the struggle which ended in independence. Nor was its effect limited to Massachusetts. It reached the remotest colonies, and, as John Adams said, led to "the revolution in the principles, views, opinions, and feelings of the American people."[37]
Revolution, however, had been long impending. The treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle in October, 1748, which put an end to the long war between England and France, opened with the declaration that "Europe sees the day which the Divine Providence had pointed out for the reëstablishment of its repose. A general peace succeeds to a long and bloody war." But neither the peace, nor the treaty by which it was secured, was satisfactory to one of the belligerents; for England had failed to secure the commercial advantages for which the war had been undertaken, and the terms of the treaty, requiring her to give hostages for the restoration of Cape Breton to France, excited the indignation of the British people. Nor were other causes for the renewal of the war wanting. The aggressive policy of France in respect to the English possessions in Acadia and along the Ohio and the Mississippi, notwithstanding the treaty, soon produced its legitimate results. The Seven Years' War followed. In Asia and in the West Indies, the maritime powers measured their strength by sea. At the same time in North America, England and her colonies on the one side, and France on the other, contended for the empire of the continent. Led by Clive, Wolfe, Amherst, and Rodney, and inspired by the genius of Pitt, the forces of England everywhere prevailed, and she took the first place among the nations.
On the 10th of February, 1763, at Paris, was signed the treaty that recognized the extinction of the French empire in North America. This treaty marks an epoch in the history of America, as well as in that of England and of France. To the latter it was a period of humiliation, not only in the loss of colonies upon which, for nearly a century, she had expended vast sums without any adequate return, but also in the frustration of her purpose of gaining sole possession of the continent.
By England it was regarded as the close of a contest to maintain her power on the same continent, and make it subservient to her commercial and manufacturing interests, which had lasted for nearly a hundred years. Yet there was a well-founded apprehension, expressed at the time, that her colonies, relieved from the fear of French aggressions, would throw off the authority of the mother country.[38] What was the fear of the mother country, on the other hand, was the hope and expectation, more or less remote, of the colonies. For the experience gained in the French wars was of great value to them in the revolutionary struggle. Officers had become familiar with the direction of large bodies of troops, and with the means of their transport and supply; and soldiers had learned that efficiency depended upon discipline. Provincial assemblies also had been taught to look for safety in strategic operations remote from their own territory. But at no time before the assembling of the congress of 1754 had the colonies been called to consider such a union of all as would give unity to military operations, and secure the semblance, at least, of a general government. The union proposed at that time would have involved some loss of independence, without securing any efficient means of enforcing the recommendations of the congress, and so the colonies hesitated, and finally laid it aside. But there can be no doubt that the consideration given to it by the several colonies led them more readily to come together for concerted action in the congress of 1765.
The year 1763 is usually regarded as the beginning of the American Revolution, because in that year the English ministry determined to raise a revenue from the colonies. This led to a contest, which, like most civil wars, was long and embittered. It engendered feelings which have not yet passed away,—feelings which interfere with a calm and dispassionate review of the motives of the parties concerned, and of the circumstances which attended their controversy. It was a war between Britons and the descendants of Britons, who, with a common ancestry, laws, and manners, retained their essential race characteristics in spite of the lapse of time or the change of place: everywhere and always lovers of liberty, but in power haughty, insolent, and aggressive on the weak, and in subjection turbulent and impatient of restraint; proud of ancestry, partial to old customs and precedents, but quick to resist laws which impede the course of equity, and never permitting forms to prevent the accomplishment of substantial justice. Such was the parent and such was the child: and in the light of these facts we are to read the history of the Revolution. It exhibited the race in no new light, nor did the contest involve any new principle. Its sentiments were expressed in the old idiomatic language,—petition, remonstrance, riot, war.