Page:Cambridge Modern History Volume 7.djvu/195

 -1775] Parliamentary debates and colonial action. 163 can doubt that this would have been treated by the colonists as a total abandonment of all fiscal rights ; it virtually meant the final overthrow of that commercial and colonial policy which had hitherto been un- questioned on this side of the Atlantic. To have frankly adopted this attitude would no doubt have saved Great Britain from much loss and humiliation ; but Burked position would have been logically stronger if he had treated his proposal as one not of compromise but of surrender. He would have shown better judgment had he accepted, as a basis for legislation, the conciliatory proposals made by North himself. In February, 1775, the Prime Minister proposed in the House of Commons that any colony which would make such a contribution for the purposes of common defence and civil government as should satisfy Parlia- ment should be exempt from taxation. This concession was so distasteful to North's own followers that it was only earned by a rigid application of party discipline. Yet it did nothing to pacify the Opposition. There could be no stronger illustration of the evils of the party system than the fact that North's scheme was contemptuously condemned by the Opposition, instead of being treated as a genuine though ineffectual attempt at a pacific solution. While Parliament was discussing suggestions for compromise, the colonists had taken steps which effectually rendered all such solutions impossible. Gage, alarmed by the tone of the Suffolk resolution, refused to call together the Massachusetts Assembly ; but an elective Congress, constituted precisely as the Assembly would have been, met at Salem (October 5, 1774). That its members should pass resolutions severely denouncing the policy of the British government was a matter of course. They also protested against the preparations which Gage was making for fortifying Boston against an invasion from the mainland. They took steps for raising public funds, for providing fire-arms and military supplies, and for securing the alliance of the Indians. Outside the Congress a reign of terror had been organised, under which all who ventured to express any approval of the British government were liable to brutal and humiliating punishments. Massachusetts, though still first, was no longer alone in its display of overt disaffection. There was hardly a colony in which British authority was not openly challenged. In New Hampshire a mob seized the whole supply of arms and ammunition stored in the fort. In Rhode [sland the governor and the Assembly in conjunction, and in direct mtravention of an order from the British government, took steps to jrevent such cannon as there were in the colony from coming into the of British officers, and further proceeded to raise and arm troops. Connecticut the Assembly appointed officers for the militia, and enforced regular drills by fines for non-attendance. In Maryland a convention had pledged the colony to resist any attempt by the British government to carry out the recent Acts in any colony and CH. v. 112