Canada on England, the first epoch of AngloAmerican History may be said to terminate. The period of colonisation, and of the slow and difficult formation of self-governing commonwealths in what had previously been a savage desert, is at an end.

We stand on the threshold of an independent national life, and have now to consider, not the experiments and trials of a number of provincial communities, but the struggles of a youthful people with the Power which had called it forth.

THE peace with France and Spain left Great Britain in possession of nearly all on the North American continent which had been disputed with her by foreign Powers. The prospect henceforth of a

secure and unchecked dominion in that vast territory of the Western World was offered to the political ambition of English statesmen. It naturally led them to entertain fresh schemes for consolidating and centralising the offices of colonial administration, and augmenting the powers of the Imperial Government over its separate provinces in America.

This intention, though seldom openly avowed, had been cherished during the late war by active politicians of different party connections, whose habits or turn of mind disposed them to magnify the official element in State affairs. Among the most prominent and persistent, though unhappily mistaken, representatives of such a characteristic tendency was George Grenville, brother of Lord Temple, and brother-in-law to Pitt; a diligent man of business, skilled in legal and parliamentary forms, and tolerably honest in his dealings with those around him. His great fault was that practical bigotry and stolid obstinacy which men who lack imagination are too apt to contract from their incapacity of feeling with other people, or of seeing matters from different points of view. It is by these austere, inflexible, narrowminded rulers, with all their presumable rectitude of purpose, that revolutions are provoked.

The King's favourite Minister, the Earl of Bute,

had immediately appointed George Grenville Secretary of State for the Northern Department; while to Lord Egremont, the brother-in-law of Grenville, was confided the office of Secretary of State for the Southern Department, which, as the reader is aware, comprised the colonies. Lord Halifax, who had already, at the Board of Trade and Plantations, shown his eagerness to force arbitrary measures upon the King's subjects in America, now became First Lord of the Admiralty, to harass them in another way.

The Bute Administration included also the clever but fickle Charles Townshend, second son of Viscount Townshend, and Frederick, Lord North, a son of the Earl of Guildford. These two men were destined, within a short time, one after another, to carry on the mischievous work to its natural consummation in the permanent separation of political interests, further signalised by an unhappy war, resulting, under Lord North, in the utter defeat of those sovereign pretensions which they had chosen to set up. But though every one of the persons just named must bear his own share of the blame due to the side which chiefly erred in this great quarrel, it seems certain that the Earl of Halifax, some years before the period now in question, was the first to conceive that disastrous policy, and to prepare for its adoption. He had repeatedly suggested that, upon the termination of the foreign war, Parliament should take in hand the government of America; that it should restrain the powers of the Provincial Houses of Assembly,

1763.]

and should provide for the maintenance of the Civil Service, and of the magistracy, as well as for a standing military force, by some permanent revenue, to be levied in America under an Act of Parliament. There is no doubt whatever that these intentions were cherished at the Board of Trade, though not encouraged by the chiefs of the Ministry, during the whole course of the French war. Some of the colonists then residing in London, too complaisant either to offer a timely remonstrance or to sound an alarm, were perfectly well aware of the measures designed.* Some of them had even officiously tendered their advice to Ministers upon the kind and method of taxation by the British Parliament which could be imposed with least chance of resistance. So far back as 1755, for instance, in a pamphlet by Mr. Huske, of Massachusetts, who afterwards got into the House of Commons, we find the proposal for the Stamp Act. Not only Pitt during the late war, but Sir Robert Walpole at an earlier period, had met the dangerous proposal to tax the colonists with a decided refusal. But Pitt, though a great presence and power in debate, was not always able to control the private action of his subordinate colleagues. They ceased not to intrigue with the Governors of the colonies-men selected by the Board of Trade, as in the case of Francis Bernard, for that very purpose-who were allowed to urge perpetual complaints against the provincial Legislatures (complaints which were not invariably without reason), and to recommend the substitution of a more peremptory rule by Great Britain. Some of the clergy, amongst whom was Sherlock, Bishop of London, were prompted by their impatient zeal for an Episcopalian establishment in America to meddle with this constitutional question; and it was regarded with interest, upon the same ground, by Archbishop Secker. As the events of the war, in the conquest of Canada and of the Ohio and Tennessee valleys, drew public attention to America, it became a popular topic of writers and speakers in England to insist on

The officials dependent on the Crown, in almost every province, had been apprised of the intention of Ministers. Mr. Bancroft, in his History of the United States (Vol. IV., chap. 16), quotes to this effect the letter of Calvert, Secretary of Maryland, in January, 1760. "It has been hinted to me that, at the peace, Acts of Parliament will be moved for amendment of government and a standing force in America; and that the colonies, for whose protection the force will be established, must bear at least the greatest share of charge. This will occasion a tax." Calvert, therefore, prepared himself to supply the Board of Trade with information concerning the safest modes of raising a revenue in America by Act of Parliament. The counsels already offered to the English Government by such men as Ellis, Governor of Georgia, Richard Lyttelton, of South Carolina, and Arthur Dobbs, of North Carolina, are quoted in the same page of Bancroft's History.

17

making the colonies pay for those gains of empire supposed to be acquired on their behalf. Little was known in England of the efforts and sacrifices which the colonists had loyally borne in the seven years' military struggle; for no British Minister cared to raise his voice in Parliament, and speak in their praise. They were on the distant shore of a broad ocean; they had little power to gratify or to assist the ambitious politicians of London.

The respective official functions of his Majesty's Secretary of State, and of the Lords Commissioners for the regulation of Trade and Plantations, with regard to the colonial administration, had become very unsettled. The Board of Trade, though not always represented in the Cabinet, and possessing an imperfectly defined share of responsible authority, had in course of time got beyond the mere transaction of ordinary business in detail with the colonies, and reception of despatches and accounts, to which it was at first restricted. Under the presidency of Lord Halifax, assisted by Charles Townshend since 1749, it had in practice acquired the powers of a Ministry of State for Colonial Affairs. By an Order in Council dated March 11th, 1752, the patronage of all Crown appointments in the colonies was vested in this Board. The colonial Governors were then directed to correspond with the Board alone, except in cases of particular importance, which exception was understood to mean affairs that might touch the relations of the kingdom with foreign States. But when, in 1761, Halifax and Townshend left the Board, the former to become Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland, the latter to be Secretary at War, these colonial matters were summarily transferred, or rather were restored, to the Southern Department of the Secretaries of State. This was done upon Lord Bute's accession to the Ministry, of which both Pitt and the Duke of Newcastle were still the leading members. It was probably arranged by Lord Bute and the King with Lord Halifax and Charles Townshend, in order to prevent any interruption of the persistent intrigue against colonial liberties. A few months later, when Lord Bute himself was placed at the head of the Government, Townshend became President of the Board, with all the powers which Halifax had before enjoyed, and with a seat in the Cabinet. But in April, 1763, the office was given to Lord Shelburne, who proved less docile than had been expected for the purposes in view, and who even disputed with Lord Egremont, the Secretary of State, his proper degree of authority at the Board of Trade. It was quite evident that

The correspondence may be read in the "Life of William, Earl of Shelburne," by Lord Edmond Fitzmaurice, Vol. I.,

Shelburne, who had been useful to Lord Bute, yet was a sincere admirer of Pitt, and a man of liberal sentiments, would not be made the tool of that official clique, namely Halifax, Grenville, and Townshend, already described. Their projects, however, went on apace during these months, notwithstanding the sudden death of Lord Egremont, the King's coolness toward Grenville, and the open hostility of Pitt. The "Great Commoner," as Pitt was still called, was summoned to form a new Ministry on Lord Bute's retirement, but was unable to agree with the King about its composition. Pitt was too full of unforgiving pride and anger, of morose antipathies and morbid self-esteem. Grenville therefore obtained the conduct of the Government in September, 1763; Lord Halifax became Secretary of State for the Southern Department, and Lord Hillsborough, one of the same official clique, took the Presidency of the Board of Trade. The political machinery was thus firmly erected for starting that system of British Parliamentary control of the colonial franchises, and of the civil rights of fellow-subjects abroad, which had so long been designed by statesmen too covetous of power.

The real motives of this dangerous policy are not difficult to perceive. There was the pedantic satisfaction of narrow opinions concerning the prerogative of the Imperial Legislature, which would inspire such minds as those of Halifax and Grenville; there was also, in men of less integrity than Grenville, a servile wish to please the young King, who seems to have confounded that principle with his own Royal prerogative. This was a powerful consideration with men of restless ambition like Charles Townshend, who hoped some day to be summoned by his Majesty to the highest post of Government. Lords North and Hillsborough, and Mr. Charles Jenkinson, late private secretary to Lord Bute, were influenced by a similar wish to earn Court favours; and they knew that the King had, from courtierlike and clerical instigation, a strong feeling of personal dislike to the provincial Assemblies of America. But there were also, common to the whole Board of Trade and to the Treasury, the interests of official patronage and the distribution of paid employments in the colonies among their lordships' friends. They had always looked forward to an opportunity of converting the entire administrative service out there into an establishment which should derive its appointments directly from the Crown, but which should be

chap. 4. Lord Shelburne resigned his office, which he had taken in April, in the September of that year.

financially supported by a permanent charge, in the way of a Civil List, to be settled upon the colonists or their trade beyond the reach of their representative Legislatures.

It is most important to observe that this design was entertained with great persistency by some departments of the Imperial Government from the time, so far back as 1748, when the Duke of Newcastle exchanged the Southern Secretaryship with the Duke of Bedford, at whose request the Earl of Halifax was then placed at the Board of Trade. That was fifteen years before the occasion, in 1763, when the Tory Ministry made a pretext of the war expenses, incurred meantime in America, to bring forward new projects for taxing the colonies. The pretext was untrue, inasmuch as the colonies had shown their willingness, in a manner to be seen presently, to contribute towards those war expenses, and Parliament was actually repaying the past colonial advances on that behalf. We can hardly fail to discover that the real contention between the British Ministry and the American colonists, during the lifetime of a generation, was for some thing more precious than money. It was for liberty, and the security of ordinary civil rights; that their social life and industry might be free from the prying, meddling, grasping intrusion of a host of irresponsible officials sent out from England, and countenanced by judges subservient to their patrons in England, the whole establishment being kept up at the cost of the oppressed people. This was the danger which the descendants of those English settlers in America, who in the seventeenth century had quitted their native land for the sake of religious freedom, now saw to be imminent over their heads in the middle of the eighteenth cen tury.

We must look at the actual state of provincial institutions and society, to estimate the means of resisting such treatment. British America, without speaking of the provinces recently won from the French, was divided into a dozen separate communities, with different political constitutions. There were the Royal colonies, the Proprietary colonies, and the Charter colonies of freemen. Of the first class were Virginia, New Jersey, New Hampshire (then including Vermont), New York, North and South Carolina, and Georgia, which last had surrendered its charter, in 1751, for the payment of its expenses by the Crown. These Royal colonies were administered almost uniformly by a Governor and Council of Crown appointment, with an Assembly elected by the freeholders. The Government acted under instructions from the Crown, and the acts of the Assembly could be dis

allowed or repealed by his Majesty in Council. We shall presently see the working of this system in New York. But in the Charter colonies there was a very different state of affairs. In Maryland,

the Baltimore proprietary, and the Council of its appointment, had the power of making laws, with the assent of the freemen in their Assembly; but the income from quit-rents, fines, and a fixed toll on the export of tobacco, placed the LieutenantGovernor almost above the need of proposing new taxes. In thriving Pennsylvania, which had sent Franklin to England for the purpose of advocating a reform in its proprietary government, the privileges yet enjoyed by Thomas and Richard Penn were obnoxious to the people; but the Assembly had the real legislative power. The Deputy-Governor could reject their measures, but could not dissolve or prorogue the Assembly, whose annual votes furnished his support. The New England provinces, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, and even the Royal colony of New Hampshire, were in the exercise of practical self-government. Some limitations had indeed been put, in the renewal of their charters, on the political and commercial liberties granted by the Stuart Kings. In the last charter framed for Massachusetts, there was an express clause to establish the jurisdiction of the Admiralty Courts, which were meant to serve, as will be seen, for the collection of a Customs' revenue. The Rhode Island new charter had reserved an appeal to the King in Council, in questions "of a public nature," from the acts of the provincial Legislature. These partial encroachments on local self-rule, as well as restrictions of the powers of trade in Maryland and Pennsylvania, showed the disposition of the Crown to increase its authority. But the constitution of Rhode Island and Connecticut was thoroughly democratic; the Assembly, elected by the freemen, appointed the Governor, Deputy-Governor, and twelve Assistants, who in conjunction with the Assembly made the laws and provided the administration, with the appointment of magistrates and judges. In Massachusetts, while the Council was nominated by the Court of General Assembly, which likewise appointed all the civil servants, the Governor, who had a veto on legislation, was appointed by the Crown. Yet the local and municipal public franchises of New England, more especially in Connecticut and Massachusetts, were admirably complete. Every township had the power of holding its meetings at will, to discuss all matters of public concern; to choose its own local officers for the year, and its representatives in the Assembly of the province; to levy and apply rates for the support of highways, of schools, of churches, and of the poor;

and to keep up an armed militia, in which every able-bodied freeman was enrolled.*

The population of the thirteen British colonies, in 1754, before the war with France, amounted to 1,165,000 persons of European race, besides 260,000 negroes. The New England provinces were then estimated to have 425,000 inhabitants; ; the middle provinces, New York, New Jersey, Maryland, and Pennsylvania with Delaware, had 457,000; and the rest, with the greater part of the negroes, belonged to the South. Both population and commerce, had increased during the French war, in spite of the great losses and disturbance it had caused to our countrymen in America. In 1766, when Franklin gave evidence before a committee of the House of Commons, he reckoned the number of white men, between sixteen and sixty years of age, at 300,000. The population of his own province, that of Pennsylvania, was at that time 160,000, one-third being Germans, and one-third Quakers; and it had doubled in sixteen years. New York and Massachusetts had increased in a nearly equal proportion. The import and export trade of the colonies had been growing still more rapidly than their population, as their wealth enabled them to buy English manufactures and other foreign produce. Their yearly imports from Great Britain amounted to upwards of two millions sterling. The efforts they had made during the late war to aid the forces of the mother country were quite as great as what England had done for them. They nobly responded to the summons of William Pitt in 1758, to join in the expedition to Canada. Twenty thousand men of their militia and volunteers, at one time nearly twenty-five thousand, were kept under arms to serve with the Royal army, during five or six years, being equipped and maintained at the cost of the colonies. In the campaigns on the St. Lawrence, on the Lakes, on the Ohio, their sturdy valour was exerted. The building and arming of forts and of guardships, the hire of transports, and many services or supplies to the regular troops, were cheerfully undertaken and performed. Massachu

Bancroft, Vol. III., chap. 6, on the "Old Thirteen Colonies," draws a glowing picture. "New England had been settled under grants to towns, and the institution of towns was its

glory and its strength. It was an aggregate of organised de mocracies. There, each township was also substantially a territorial parish; the town was the religious congregation; the Independent Church was established by law; the minister was elected by the people, who annually made grants for his support. There, too, the system of free schools was carried to great perfection; so that there could not be found a person born in New England unable to read and write. He that will understand the political character of New England in the eighteenth century must study the constitution of its towns, its congregations, its schools, and its militia."