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 152 Townshend's tea-duties. [iY66- ignorance and hesitation in the rulers, by persistent and dexterous agitation on the part of the subjects. In most of these disputes Massachusetts was the battle-field. But, in 1767, the legislature of New York incurred the displeasure of the Ministry by refusing to comply with the Mutiny Act by providing the King's troops with quarters and certain necessaries. This act of disobedience was punished by the suspension of the legislature, a procedure of which the policy and the constitutional propriety might alike be doubted. New York however showed no tenacious adhesion to constitutional rights like that which distinguished Massachusetts ; and the Assembly, thus pressed, gave way. In July, 1766, the Rockingham Ministry had fallen, a result largely due to the covert opposition of the King. Then followed a most unhappy state of affairs, when Chatham was nominally Prime Minister, but was so incapacitated by suppressed gout that he could take no part in public business, still less exercise any control over his ill- arranged and discordant Cabinet. If Chatham's acting lieutenant, Graffcon, had but possessed sufficient force of will and fixity of purpose to control his colleagues, all might have gone well. Grafton was imbued with a genuine respect for old Whig principles and with a generous loyalty towards his absent chief; but his influence was fatally under- mined by the looseness of his private life and by his incapacity for continuous application. The result was that the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Charles Townshend, had virtually a free hand in the questions of colonial taxation. He had been a member of the Cabinet with Grenville, and had supported his colonial policy. That alone would have made him an object of suspicion to the Americans and their friends. Not only were his views out of harmony with those of Chatham, but he made no secret of his contempt for Chatham's authority. In 1767 he introduced and carried through Parliament a bill imposing duties on tea and other commodities when imported into the colonies. In thus taxing colonial trade the Ministry were not introducing any new principle. But the proceeds were to be employed in making an American civil list ; and, as we have seen, Massachusetts had continuously and successfully resisted every attempt to make colonial officials directly dependent on the home government. Moreover a measure which at another time might have gone almost unnoticed was sure to be resented when colonial feeling was still sore from the effect of the Stamp Act and the Declaratory Act. Massachusetts at once met this new attack on colonial liberty, as it had met the Stamp Act, by an appeal to the whole body of colonies. A circular letter was drawn up by the Assembly of Massachusetts and sent to each colony. Thereupon Lord Hillsborough, the Secretary of State, sent instructions to Bernard, the Governor of Massachusetts, to dissolve the Assembly unless it would withdraw the circular letters. This they refused to do, and Bernard thereupon dissolved them. They