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of the enormous tracts added to our dominions, in face of the jealousy and resentment of those from whom they had been wrested.

In the East the little handful of British adventurers were starting on their aggressive advance against the native rulers which has ended in our control of the continent. But their numbers were very few, the difficulties of government and of discipline over the European garrison very great; there was sufficiency of neither men, money nor ships for the growing wants; and, over all, the perpetual call across the seas for the bulk of the money wrung from the native or gained by trade. So far as the East was concerned, a greater drain of men and of ships for internal wars and for defence against French and Dutch intrigue was all that was to be expected. The African possessions, though the trade in negroes and other local products might give wealth to individuals, brought little revenue to the crown.

As to America, the immediate result of our immense accession of territory was a proportionate increase in the cost of administration which was to be met by fresh taxation on a people already overburdened with debt. The charges of the Army, Navy and ordnance of Africa and America were about £3,000,000 per annum. The Army in the plantations was increased from 3,705 to 10,009, a great part of it stationed in the new territories acquired, as it was considered that the security of the old colonies depended on the safety and subjection of these lands, so lately enemy. The French were beyond the Mississippi, the loyalty of Canada was doubtful, the great territories to the south of a hostile Spain always threatened the West Indies and American colonies, and the Indians, as evidenced by Pontiac's rebellion, of which a most instructive account is given in Fortescue, Vol. III., remained an ever-present and constant danger.*

It was under these conditions that Grenville, as part of his design to relieve the exhausted islands, proposed to extend

*The army, on the conclusion of peace, was fixed at:

17,500 men for Great Britain,

12,000 on the Irish establishment,

10,000 for the colonies,

and rather more than 4,000 for Minorca and Gibraltar.

Yet Burke and others

were complaining bitterly of the huge increase of the military establishment.

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the stamp duties paid in Great Britain to the American continent, the moneys to be raised to be expended with the customs duties in providing for the defence of the colonies. There was, it would seem, no thought of difficulty or of opposition. On the one hand, the British Parliament was profoundly ignorant of the American plantations, of the population who had fought by their side against the " turbulent Gallicks"; on the other hand, the true and extended liberty which they and the colonies enjoyed under King George blinded them all to the intensity of the conflict going on in continental Europe between the existing civility, as expressed by the absolute monarchy and the Roman Church, and the vague new floating theories of freedom of thought and action in all the ways of life, theories which, as they had no foothold in past history, stood upon an imaginary foundation of natural right, originating in an equally imaginary social contract destructive of the conditions of the existing civilization. Concerned as they were with their party squabbles, the British politicians did not see that the American colonists were looking beyond Britain to the Continental conditions, to the actual want of freedom there existing instead of the silly fears of British tyranny with which the Whigs entertained the mob in England. Pownall, speaking on May 8th, 1770, on the fear of military rule by the colonists of Boston, says: "Have they not foundation, sir, for those fears, when they look on those governments on the continent of Europe which have already lost their liberties by this very mode of government; have they not some cause of fear, some cause of apprehension ? Les États du Pais in France, the equivalents in Hanover and other parts of Germany, are as complete as to justice and civil jurisdiction as the constitution of Great Britain. But by separating the power of the supreme military command from the supreme civil magistrate the constitution is palsied and the military only act and execute."

When the struggle matures, while Chatham is declaiming against colonial independence and encouraging rebellion, and Burke weaving theories on present discontents which he had done so much to increase, the American colonists were being moved by a nervous fear lest the conditions of oppression which they saw in continental Europe should spread to Britain and,

through it, to them. Gouverneur Morris writes from Paris in 1794, soon after the murder of Louis XVI. and just when the Polish insurrection was completely subdued: “In judging the French we must not recur to the feelings of America during the last war. We were in the actual enjoyment of freedom and fought not to obtain but to secure its blessings. In France they have been lured by one idle hope after another until they are plunged in the depth of misery and servitude." The men who came from Europe to the assistance of the colonials are such as Lafayette from France and Kosciusko from Poland.

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Yet apart from the effect of these theories which were overwhelming Europe, and the band of demagogues who advocated rebellion in America, the case for this taxation was a very strong one. We are not yet recovered," says Whately, of the colonies, "from a war undertaken for their protection; every object for which it was begun is accomplished; and still greater are obtained than at first was even thought of; but whatever may be the value of the acquisitions in America the immediate benefit of them is to the colonies, and this country feels it only in their prosperity; for the accessions of trade and territory, which were obtained by the peace, are so many additions to the empire and commerce of Great Britain at large, yet they principally affect that part of her dominions and that branch of her trade to which they immediately relate. To improve these advantages and forward still further the peculiar interests of our colonies was, says he, the chief aim of the Grenville administration.

The objections to the Act, the denial of the right of the British Parliament to tax, comes as a bolt from the blue to everyone, even to the most patriotic demagogue looking for trouble. Writing in 1804 of the events of 1767, the Duke of Grafton says (Autobiography): "The right of the mother country to impose taxes on the colonies was then so generally admitted that scarcely anyone thought of questioning it, though a few years afterwards it was given up as indefensible by everybody." The Stamp Act was intended in 1764, but a year's delay was allowed in order to hear from America. It was referred to the colonial agents to find a substitute if disapproved of. In December, 1764, the Board of Trade informed the king that the assemblies of Massachusetts Bay

and New York roughly deny the right of taxation which had not hitherto been questioned. They drew their arguments from a pamphlet by Otis, The Rights of the Colonies.

In order to help the West Indian islands, preference was given to their produce by laying heavy duties upon the indigo, coffee, sugar and molasses of the islands belonging to other powers imported into the American colonies, a cause later of deep discontent. The duty was taken off the whale fishery and the restraints from the exportation of rice.

To them, says Whately, the whole gain: we, on the contrary, in many respects entertain a loss; and if the interests of the mother country could be distinguished from those of the colonies, it would be difficult to justify the expense she has thereby incurred. Out of her revenues the bounties have been paid, and a loss incurred in their favour of duties on foreign hemp, flax and timber. Were there no other grounds for requiring a revenue from the colonies than as a return for these obligations, it would alone be a sufficient obligation, As a result of the war they had a vast accession of territory, trade with the Indians, the improvement in the fisheries, the right to cut logwood, and an ease of trade with Spain. But the American colonists, estimated at about a million and a half persons, probably one-fifth of the British subjects, were in no mood to pay taxes to the mother country.

As usual with Acts of Parliament, the means of working the scheme had been but slightly considered. Benjamin Franklin, Postmaster-General, in his examination before the Committee of the House of Commons in 1766, makes a strong case against the Act as it stood, on the ground that in such a sparsely settled country (as you may see by such documents as Alexander Chesney's Diary) the cost to the colonists of travel for long distances to obtain stamps would be either prohibitive of its execution or a burden on the people out of all proportion to the gain. The posts, he says, go only along the sea coast. If they went back into the country, sending for stamps by post would occasion an expense for postage amounting in many cases to much more than that of the stamps themselves. There was only one post in Canada between Montreal and Quebec. The inhabitants scattered and remote from each other, and the English colonies

were

on the frontiers thinly settled. The people of America, he says, would never submit to pay the stamp duty unless compelled by force of arms. A military force cannot carry out the Stamp Act. They cannot force a man to take stamps who chooses to do without them. And he adds the significant threat, "If the Act is not repealed they will take very little of your manufactures in a short time."

There was great force in the arguments, yet the same difficulty must have occurred in the administration of the Stamp Act in remote places in Great Britain, and it should not have been beyond the power of the ministers to modify the Act so as to avoid suffering and loss.

The situation was one of extreme difficulty, which was increased by the factious and intemperate language of the Opposition in the British Parliament, and by the resistance, violent beyond all proportion, to the provocation of the colonists. Pitt and Burke, while using their utmost to encourage rebellion, had no alternative policy to offer. Franklin boasts that "before 1763 the Americans cost nothing for forts, citadels, garrisons or armies. They were governed by this country at the expense only of a little pen, ink and paper. They were led by a thread." But as they made their own laws, claimed their own right of taxation, and made no effort to check the smuggling on their coasts, it is difficult to see in what the "thread" consisted except in the cost of their protection from France and Spain. He draws throughout the inevitable parallel between the colonies and Ireland. "When money is to be raised for the crown upon the subject in Ireland or in the colonies the consent is given in the Parliament in Ireland or in the assemblies of the colonies." Of the Declaratory Law accompanying the Repeal of the Act, asserting the right of the Parliament of Great Britain to bind the colonies in all cases whatsoever, he says, "I think the resolutions of right will give them very little concern if they are never intended to be carried into practice. The colonies will probably consider themselves in the same situation in that respect as Ireland."

When under the Rockingham ministry the question of Repeal comes on, the King, who, it appears to me, always showed a better judgment and more sound common sense than his ministers, said (Grenville Papers, February, 1766)

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