The Glorious Cause: The American Revolution, 1763-1789 (29 page)

Whatever confusion these paradoxical assertions engendered was eliminated in 1765 when these five colonies and four others produced unequivocal denials of Parliament's right to levy any sort of taxes for revenue in America. The Virginia Resolves, of course, began this process of clarification; their strong rejection of Parliament's claims inspired other colonial assemblies. In a sense, the most impressive action of all came in October 1765, when the Stamp Act Congress, a gathering in New York City of delegates from the colonial assemblies of Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, and South Carolina, issued resolutions and petitions

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to the king, the Lords, and the Commons, all rejecting any claim of Parliament to tax the colonies.
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Neither the Stamp Act Congress nor the assemblies suggested that Parliament had no authority over the colonies. The Stamp Act Congress in fact offered as a leading premise the statement "That his Majesty's Subjects in these Colonies, owe the same Allegiance to the Crown of
Great-Britain,
that is owing from his Subjects born within the Realm, and all due Subordination to that August Body the Parliament of
GreatBritain.
"
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Maryland referred to its long history of self-government, noting in particular the rights of its citizens to give their consent to measures of taxation and "internal Polity." The implication was that in the sphere of "external" polity, Parliament might legislate for the colonies. This was elaborated upon elsewhere to mean the right to take such action, including enacting legislation on matters of common concern in the empire, the most notable being, of course, the commerce of the colonies and Great Britain.
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Because the colonists were primarily concerned at this time in resisting Parliament's claim to a right to tax them, they did not fully work out the implications of their ideas about separate, or internal and external, jurisdictions. The question was incredibly complicated in any case, and the legislatures did not attempt to explore it in depth. They concentrated on taxes, the immediate issue at hand, and may have skirted broader considerations for fear of diverting attention from what seemed absolutely essential.

Pamphleteers dared more, perhaps because they had less to lose, but even their productions only grazed the target rather than boring in on it. This "unofficial" colonial position was a good deal clearer when it dealt with the internal sphere than the external. It held that since the colonials as Englishmen were born free, a contention with Lockeian overtones, they were subject only to laws made with their own consent. Moreover, their rights had received royal approval through the various charters issued to the colonies. Although these charters amplified and extended these rights, they did not provide an absolute basis for them. The colonists were English, and Englishmen could be governed only by their own consent given through their own representatives.

The question of why the colonists were subject to any regulation by

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Parliament, or just what constituted the external sphere, interested these colonial writers much less. Every tract assumed that the colonists were subject to Parliament, an assumption which obviously followed from the argument that the colonists were English subjects. All English subjects were in some sense under Parliament. The right of Parliament to regulate trade seemed just as clear -- it was a matter of "necessity," Stephen Hopkins wrote. The empire had a center, England, and it had constituent parts, the colonies. To pull it together, superintend its commerce, and make decisions relating to matters of common concern were necessary, and Parliament seemed the only agency capable of so doing.
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These abstractions of constitutionalism and political theory carry an antiseptic flavor; by themselves they seem bland and juiceless, and uncontaminated by human feeling or passion. We have to remind ourselves as we read such words as rights, sovereignty, and representation that they pertain to human affairs, and never more so than in these eighteenthcentury struggles. For in the reality of the controversy over the Stamp Act these terms were anything but disembodied and detached; rather, they were set out in a framework which conveyed profound fears and anxieties.

The fear and anxiety arose from one compelling conviction: a conspiracy existed to deprive Americans of their liberties and to reduce them to slavery, and the Stamp Act was merely the "first step to rivet the chains of slavery upon us forever."
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These notions were much too widely disseminated and accepted to be dismissed as propaganda; and virtually every sort of colonial leader -- ministers, merchants, lawyers, and planters -- sounded them through all the available means. There was John Adams, in the privacy of his diary branding the Stamp Act as "That enormous Engine, fabricated by the british Parliament, for battering down all the Rights and Liberties of America"; and Stephen Johnson, pastor of the Lyme ( Connecticut) church, writing anonymously in the
New London Gazette
of the purpose of the Act to bring the colonists to "slavish nonresistance and passive obedience"; Andrew Eliot, informing Thomas Hollis in England of the plot against the colonies in which the Stamp Act was "calculated" to enslave the colonies; Landon Carter,

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a great Virginia planter, assailing it in the
Virginia Gazette
as "the first resolution to enslave us." These charges were typical of hundreds of others, all marked by varying degrees of anger and outrage, but to the greater extent suspicion and fear.
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These charges appeared clear on the surface. What made them sinister were the murky details -- the specifications of the plot -- surrounding them. A natural question to ask was who conspired? The ministry drafted the statute, the Parliament passed it, and the king gave his approval. Did they conspire together? Were they in league against the American colonies? No one suggested that they were; indeed, the king was "the best in the world," and the Americans were his loyal subjects who never tired of professing their loyalty; and the Parliament furnished the model of their own representative assemblies. The ministry, however, could not draw on such affection in America.

In the attacks on the stamp masters, one minister absorbed more abuse than any other. He was, of course, George Grenville, and behind him lurked the dastardly
"Thane,"
the Earl of Bute, with his constant companion, apparently a minister-without-portfolio, the Devil. The pamphleteers relayed some of the same information to their readers, but ordinarily contented themselves with an inclusive indictment of the entire ministry, which was grasping, aspiring, and ambitious for power and dominion. Beyond these generalities few ventured, though Jonathan Mayhew included the king and Parliament among those ensnared by the plotters. The suggestion of conspiracy imputed a larger design than the enslavement of America: the plotters aimed to destroy liberty in both Britain and America. Most American writers agreed the ministry had actually advanced their malignity further in England than in America.
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There were local variations on these charges. Where Protestant zeal burned fiercely and where the Catholic presence in Canada seemed ominous, the conviction grew that the threat against civil liberty posed

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by unconstitutional taxation was partly a papist conspiracy to subvert Protestantism. In New England and to some extent New York, this fear attached itself to the rumors, the gossip, the baleful stories about the Anglican hierarchy's intention of importing a bishop into America. When the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel established a mission in Boston the stories gained credence, and a pamphlet campaign broke into print and continued long after the repeal of the Stamp Act. Even after agitation against the Stamp Act subsided and amid celebrations on its repeal, the tale was spread that a Frenchified, Catholic party in England had designed it in the interests of the House of Bourbon and the Catholic Church.
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A single act of Parliament led by an evil ministry would not immediately fasten chains on colonial wrists, of course. As far as the American writers were concerned, the Stamp Act was simply the visible edge of the dark conspiracy. If the Act were accepted, they asked, what guarantee did the colonists have that their lands, houses, indeed the very windows in their houses, and the air breathed in America would not be taxed? A people virtually represented in Parliament would have no choice once they swallowed that pernicious doctrine which was in reality shackles for the enslaved. And there would be many hungry men in England eager to do the work of the enslavers. Colonial accounts of the conspiracy lingered over long and horrified descriptions of the officeholders, placemen, taskmasters, and pensioners who would descend upon the colonists ostensibly to serve His Majesty but in reality to eat out the colonial substance. The corruption they would bring would complete the ruin of the colonies.
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What accounts for the elaboration of these fears into almost paranoid delusions of covert designs and evil conspiracies against colonial liberty? Only recently have historians begun to take these charges seriously, though not as descriptive of the realities of English politics and government, but as indicative of a genuine -- and pervasive -- belief in America about English intentions. As rhetorically extravagant as the colonists' responses may appear, they were not contrived; they were not what we call propaganda.
Rather, they were deeply felt and honest reactions.
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