The Glorious Cause: The American Revolution, 1763-1789 (25 page)

Following, evidently, the example of Boston's treatment of Andrew Oliver, the crowd usually tied Ingersoll's effigy in some fashion to the devil's, or the connection of the two was described by a speaker at a large meeting. The Earl of Bute also figured prominently in these pageants, usually as a prime instigator of the Stamp Act -- in New London, for example, where an orator referred to Pitt as Moses and Stamp Distributor Ingersoll as "the Beast that Lord Bute set up in this Colony to be worshipped" -- a confused but effective evocation of the fear of the Antichrist.
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The Boston Sons had set this pattern; now the Connecticut wing added its own innovations. The Sons of Liberty of several towns held mock trials with elaborate proceedings, forceful prosecutions, and farcical defenses. In Lyme, for example, the Sons charged J -- d Stampman with conspiracy "to kill and destroy his own mother, Americana"; the murder weapon was to be a "Stamp, which came from an ancient and lately Bute-fied Seat in Europe."
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The defense was that as his mother's fate was "absolutely determined, and could not possibly be avoided, he had good right himself to be the Executioner, since he should by that means save 8 per cent out of her Estate, to himself (which probably

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would be a living worth 5 or 600 per ann.) which might as well be put into his Pocket as another's." With such a defense, guilt was a foregone conclusion. The sentence prescribed that the prisoner should be tied "to the tail of a Cart, and drawn through all the principal streets in Town, and at every corner and before every House should be publicly whipped; and should be then drawn to a Gallows erected at least 50 feet high, and be there hanged till he should be dead."

Ingersoll was tried in absentia in Lebanon. The trial contained the only subtle touch in all these affairs, an argument by the prosecution that the trial in absentia was legal because Ingersoll was "virtually represented" and thus was denied none of the sacred rights of Englishmen.
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While resistance gathered in America, sentiment for both enforcing and repealing the Act built in England. Had the Grenville ministry succeeded in remaining in office, an attempt would have been made to collect the stamp tax everywhere in the colonies, but George Grenville had been dismissed from office on July 10, three and a half months before the Act was to take effect. Grenville had been forced out for several reasons. He had become personally unacceptable to the king for his part in the attempt in Parliament to exclude the king's mother from the regency council. This council was set up to govern in event of the king's illness and was to exercise the monarch's power until he recovered or, in case of his death, until his heir reached maturity. George III had fallen sick in early 1765 -- he was not insane as later rumored -and the bill establishing the council was proposed because his death was feared for a time. Members of the ministry persuaded him that the House of Commons would not agree to his mother's membership in the council. When the bill reached Commons, it was amended to include his mother's name and then approved. The king was embarrassed and annoyed and blamed his chief minister, George Grenville, who in fact had declined to make any recommendations about appointments to the regency council. This affair plus a series of unhappy experiences with Grenville set the king's mind, and when the opportunity presented itself he got rid of the ministry.
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The new ministry stood on wobbly legs. Lord Rockingham, heading

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it as first lord of the Treasury, possessed a following -- the so-called " Rockingham Whigs"-but it was neither very stable nor strong. Rockingham himself lacked experience, and he was virtually incapable of making himself understood in Parliamentary debate. Although his ministry was not to be one of great principles or policies, he did have some idea bout what should be done in colonial affairs. Moreover, he could call on Edmund Burke, member from Bristol and his private secretary, for advice. Yet this source of strength could do little to keep the government in office or Rockingham at its head, which posed a problem, for two of Rockingham's new colleagues, Secretaries of State Conway and Grafton, wanted Pitt to replace him. And two other ministers, the Lord Chancellor, Northington, and the Secretary at War, Barrington, were King's Friends and carry-overs from the previous ministry. Altogether, it would be hard to imagine a more unpromising beginning.
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The problem of America fell on the Rockingham Whigs even as they took office. Trade had been depressed for months as the Americans cut back on the consumption of British goods in an attempt to get the Sugar Act repealed. And British merchants discovered just how difficult it is to collect debts in a period of economic depression. These merchants soon announced these facts to the country in a series of complaints about trade and public policy.

Parliament in adjournment was enjoying the summer silence while the merchants wept bitter tears, but in October even Parliament had to listen as alarming stories of mob violence in America arrived. As the extent of this violence became known and its effects on the stamp distributors became evident, outrage grew. Even before the Parliament resumed, the words "treason," "anarchy," and "rebellion" were spoken in describing American behavior. And when the session began in December, many members, had set themselves against repeal of the Stamp Act, evidently convinced that repeal would establish a precedent so dangerous as to affect the power to govern.
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The king shared many of their fears, although he seems not to have felt the anger at Americans that was common in Parliament. Rather, the accounts of mobbing and rioting saddened him and filled him with gloomy forebodings.
As he wrote Secretary of State Conway, I am

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more and more grieved at the accounts in America. Where this spirit will end is not to be said."
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George's address on December 17, 1765, to the reconvened Parliament betrayed little of this anxiety. The king did not write the speech of course; the Cabinet council took care of that delicate chore, and in the process took care that the king did not say too much, in particular that he did not reveal the extent of the defiance in America. Hence his address offered a general description of the American situation, stopping well short of concrete examples with a vague reference to "Matters of Importance." The House in its reply matched this vagueness, but only after it put down an amendment by George Grenville, still a member of Parliament, calling upon it to express resentment and indignation at the riots. The House might suppress its own anger, but not Grenville's, and he spoke with bitterness in these December meetings. Edmund Burke, who in private correspondence sardonically referred to Grenville as the "Grand Financier," reported a few days afterwards that Grenville had addressed the House every day "taking care to call whore first." The House listened, voted against Grenville's amendment, and on December 20 adjourned in order that special elections might be held to fill vacancies.
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The ministry in these December days did much more than put vague words in the king's mouth and rebuff George Grenville. Because the ministry was so weak in Parliament and because its continuation in office depended upon meeting the crisis over the Stamp Act successfully, it turned to out-of-doors support -- namely, the merchants and manufacturers in cities all over England who were enduring the depression in business. These merchants themselves proved responsive to Rockingham and had met in London early in December to plan a national campaign for repeal. With the assistance of Rockingham and Burke, the London merchants formed a committee and began writing to friends, associates, and soon to similar committees in England and Scotland. Barlow Trecothick, a rich merchant who had been reared in New England, headed the London group and provided first-rate leadership.
By the end of Janu

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ary 1766 many individual merchants had written their representatives, and several dozen memorials and petitions from large groups had been received by Parliament.
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These appeals for relief were couched in terms calculated not to raise the constitutional scruples of Parliament. The colonists with all their talk about representation had already trampled on these scruples; the merchants, if not wiser at least more prudent, framed their petitions in terms of the health of the economy. The present situation, they forecast, could only worsen should action not be taken; indeed, according to the London committee, it threatened to "annihilate" the trade to North America. Everyone knew something of the commercial depression in progress; the merchants also reported bankruptcies caused by the Sugar Act and Stamp Act and on the difficulty of collecting debts in America. No exact estimate of defaults could be given, but more than one group predicted that losses might reach several million pounds sterling.
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Even with this powerful support from out-of-doors, Rockingham had his work cut out and he knew it. When Parliament reconvened on January 14 of the new year, he and the ministry had resolved to attempt to get the Stamp Act repealed. Earlier in the winter they had played with the idea of amendments -- for example, of allowing each colony to pay the tax in its own currency rather than sterling. Events disabused the ministry that anything short of repeal would end the upheavals in America.

Facing a Parliament angry over the riots and the challenge to its sovereignty, Rockingham decided to tap the discontent of English merchants and manufacturers. If he could demonstrate that the consequence of a failure to repeal would be economic disaster, he had a good chance of ridding the statute books of the Act. His problem was how to deal with the embarrassing defiance of Parliament's authority. The colonies had denied that authority: Parliament had no right to tax Americans, they said, because Americans were unrepresented in Parliament. To be sure, Parliament was the sovereign body in the empire and it might