Acting on these reports, Hillsborough, early in June, 1768, ordered Gage to send troops to Boston to protect the king's officers. It was full time. On the 10th a sloop belonging to Hancock, a merchant of Boston, arrived in the harbour laden with wine from Madeira. The tide-waiter who boarded her was forcibly detained, and an attempt was made to defraud the revenue by a false declaration. On this the commissioners seized the sloop and laid her under the stem of the Romney, a man-of-war, in the harbour. A riot ensued; the revenue officers were mobbed, one of their boats was burned, and they were forced to take refuge in the castle. On September 29 seven ships carrying the 14th and 29th regiments, and a company of artillery, in all about 1,000 men, arrived in the harbour. The Bostonians refused to assign quarters for the troops, and they suffered some hardships. On receiving the news of the riot in June the ministers despatched the 64th and 65th regiments to Boston. These reinforcements arrived in January, 1769. The people were indignant; but in the face of so large a force remained quiet.
CHATHAM RESIGNS OFFICE.
On American, as well as on other measures, Shelburne, who desired conciliation, differed from his colleagues. In the autumn of 1768 the king and the Bedford party urged his dismissal, and Grafton acquiesced. Chatham was annoyed by this decision, and still more by the dismissal of Sir Jeffrey Amherst, governor of Virginia. He resigned the privy seal in October, and Grafton was thenceforward considered as head of the ministry. A few days later Shelburne resigned. He was generally disliked and distrusted. He had acted as a go-between in the early days of his career, and while in office was believed to be false to his colleagues; his face answered to the popular idea of a Jesuit, and his manners were artificial. He was given the nickname of Malagrida, a Portuguese Jesuit who had been executed for conspiracy in 1761. Weymouth took his place in the southern, and Lord Rochford became secretary of state for the northern department. When parliament met in December, Bedford moved a petition to the crown to apply to Massachusetts an act of 35 Henry VIII., by which offenders outside the kingdom were liable to be brought to England for trial. This motion and eight resolutions on American affairs moved by Hillsborough passed both houses without a division, though not without opposition, the cause of the colonists being advocated in the commons by Pownall, an ex-governor of Massachusetts, Burke, and others.
To recommend the revival of an obsolete statute, made in a tyrannical reign and to meet different circumstances, in order to enable a government to deport offenders from a distant colony and try them by juries certain to be prejudiced against them, was so contrary to the spirit of the constitution as to be defensible only on the ground of necessity. That it would have been impossible to secure a verdict in the province against a rioter can scarcely be doubted. The government, however, advocated this measure, not because it was necessary, but merely to frighten the colonists. This became known in America, and the colonists learned that England had made an empty threat, and was about to adopt a conciliatory policy. The only effect of the threat was to excite Virginia and North Carolina to non-importation. The non-importation agreements, which were enforced by advertising the names of offending tradesmen, caused heavy loss to British trade. Between Christmas 1767 and 1769 the value of exports to America decreased by about £700,000. The cabinet inclined to conciliatory measures, and the Massachusetts assembly was again summoned, though it professed no regret for its past conduct. On May 1, 1769, the cabinet resolved to bring in a bill during the next session for taking off all the new duties except that on tea. Grafton proposed to give them all up, and was supported by Camden, Conway, and Granby. North was inclined to a total repeal, but yielded to the king's influence, and declared for retaining the tea duty as a manifestation of right; Gower, Hillsborough, Weymouth and Rochford voted with him. Grafton, though outvoted in the cabinet, remained in office; he desired to resign, but found no "good ground for retirement," for though the king henceforward dictated his orders to him rather than asked his advice, he did not, so Grafton writes, withdraw his personal favour. So completely was the position of a prime minister of our own day unknown at that time.
Hillsborough informed the colonies of the partial repeal of the duties, and of the intention of the government not to lay any further taxes on America for the purpose of revenue. In its amount, namely, threepence on the pound, the tea duty was not a grievance, for the duty of one shilling paid in England was returned on re-exportation, so that the Americans could buy their tea ninepence per pound cheaper than in England. The colonial agitators, however, denied the right of taxation and the authority of parliament, and these the king and the English people generally were determined to maintain. Hillsborough's letter was ungracious, but its tone was probably of no consequence; the quarrel was not of a sort to be allayed by smooth words. Further attempts at conciliation were made. In compliance with a petition from Massachusetts, Bernard was recalled, and his place was taken by Hutchinson. Boston complained bitterly of the presence of the troops, and half of them were moved away. So long as the British force was strong the town was fairly quiet. When it was reduced the people began to abuse and irritate the soldiers, until the insults heaped upon them led, as we shall see, to an untoward encounter. Thus did the ministry strengthen the spirit of resistance and bring contempt upon Great Britain. For its refusal to make its concessions complete, the king is mainly responsible. A complete surrender would have humiliated him and his realm in the eyes of the world. Whether such humiliation, surely not tamely to be accepted by a great nation, would in the end have prevented the Americans from finding cause for quarrel and separation may possibly be matter for discussion. It is certainly not so with the policy of the ministers, that, if it can be called a policy at all, was clearly the worst they could have adopted.
THE CONDITION OF IRELAND.
In Irish, not less than in American, affairs the policy of the ministry was decided by the king. Ireland was governed as a subject country. Shut out from the benefits of the navigation laws, she was only allowed such commerce as would not bring her into rivalry with England. Since the beginning of the century the condition of her people had slightly improved, but in Munster and Connaught there was much terrible misery. Though the severest provisions of the penal code were obsolete, the protestants still remained a dominant caste. Roman catholics were shut out from the bar and the army, and the sons of catholic squires for the most part either spent their youth in idleness or served in foreign armies. The great landowners were generally absentees and their estates were rented by middle-men; the lands were let three or four deep, and the peasants were crushed by exorbitant rents and unjust dealing. Their burdens were increased by the tithe paid to an alien Church which was still rather a secular than a religious power and, though more Irishmen held preferments in it than formerly, had no place in the affections of the people and neglected its duty, while the catholic priests, mostly poor and ignorant men, were active, were adored by their flocks, and ruled them with benevolent despotism. The tithe was specially burdensome to the poor, both because the rich pasture-lands of the wealthy were exempt from payment, while it was levied on little plots worked by the plough or spade of the peasant, and because it was constantly farmed out to men who made their bargains profitable by oppressing the needy with unfair exactions. Chief among the causes of the misery of the peasants was the extent to which arable land was converted into pasture. Commons were unjustly enclosed, villages were depopulated, the starving peasants were forced to flee to the mountains, and black cattle roamed at will round the ruins of their deserted dwellings.
The despair of the wretched found expression in violence. In 1761 a secret society called the Whiteboys was organised in Munster and parts of Leinster to resist, or exact vengeance for, the enclosure of commons, and unjust rents or tithe. The movement was agrarian, not religious, though the Whiteboys were catholics, nor political. It was formidable, for there was no Irish constabulary or militia. The Whiteboys would gather in obedience to some secret mandate, march by night in large and ordered companies, some to the land of one offender, others to that of another, and, making the darkness hideous with their white smocks, fall to houghing cattle, destroying fences, and spoiling pastures. Many cruel deeds were done, though the murders were few. Stern acts were passed against Whiteboyism; volunteers put themselves at the disposal of the magistrates, and the rising was at last crushed, not without cruelty and an unfair administration of the criminal law. The outbreak is a notable event in Irish history, for from that time until now secret societies which have attempted to gain their objects by lawless and bloody means have constantly existed in Ireland. In protestant Ulster the Oakboys, as they called themselves, rose in 1763 against an increase in the demands for tithe and the burdens laid upon them for making and repairing roads. Their rising was not accompanied by the cruelties which disgraced Whiteboyism, and was speedily pacified. Some years later the greediness of Lord Donegal, who for the sake of gain evicted over 6,000 protestant families and replaced them by new tenants, many of them catholics, caused a rising in Antrim and Down. Already numerous presbyterians of Ulster, men of Scottish and English descent, had been driven by the destruction of the woollen trade and the disabilities imposed by the test act to emigrate to America, and many of Donegal's evicted tenantry followed their example. Ireland lost men who should have defended British interests, and America gained some of her best soldiers in the revolutionary war. The feud between the protestants and catholics of Ulster arising out of Donegal's evictions bore bitter fruit in later troubles.
THE IRISH PARLIAMENT.
The Irish house of commons was composed exclusively of protestants, elected exclusively by protestants. Of its 300 members sixty-four were returned for counties and were in some measure elected by the people. Two were returned for Trinity College, Dublin. The remainder sat for cities and boroughs, and of these 172 were nominated by borough-owners. The duration of parliament was only terminated by the demise of the crown. The house was the representative of the protestant aristocracy and was completely out of touch with the mass of the people. It had little control of finance, for the Irish establishments were large. The civil list was burdened with pensions and sinecures, distributed either as a means of parliamentary corruption, or among the supporters of the castle policy and the hangers-on of the English court. By Poyning's law the Irish parliament was subordinated to the English privy council, and could not be summoned until the bills which it was called upon to pass had received the assent of the council. A desire for greater independence was growing up in parliament, and a patriotic party eagerly pressed for reforms, for the extension of the habeas corpus act to Ireland, for securing the judges in office, and for shorter parliaments. The government was in the hands of a party called the "Irish interest" which worked harmoniously with the English ministers. Its chiefs, the "undertakers," undertook the king's business in parliament, administered the country, and dispensed patronage, for the lord-lieutenant only resided in Ireland during the session of parliament, that is for six months every other year. They answered roughly to the whig oligarchy in England at the beginning of the reign, and in spite of some extravagance and corruption used their power not altogether ill.