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Rh facilitated its extension over large areas. The county system of the provinces along the middle and southern coast was not so well adapted to these purposes, and their population was more dispersed. The intense Puritan spirit, with its century and a half of pronounced independence, both in polity and temper, was also lacking outside New England; though on the frontiers of the provinces from Pennsylvania southward was a Scottish-Irish population which exhibited many of the New England characteristics. But the tenant farmers of New York, the German pietist sects of Pennsylvania, the Quakers wherever they had settled, and in general the adherents of the English Church were inclined toward indifference or, as the controversy progressed, toward positive loyalism. Hence the mixture of nationalities in the Middle Colonies greatly increased the difficulty of rousing that section to concerted action. In Pennsylvania the issues were obscured by a struggle on the part of the western counties to secure equal representation with those of the east. This helped to make loyalists of the Quakers. Special grievances also produced among the frontier settlements of North and South Carolina quite as much dislike of the officials and social leaders of the tide-water region as they could possibly feel toward Crown and parliament. Throughout the struggle New England and Virginia exhibited a unity and decision in action which were not equalled elsewhere.

49. But to return to the Stamp Act. Before the meeting of the Congress at New York outbreaks of mob violence in

Boston had forced the stamp distributor there to resign, and had wrecked the house of Thomas Hutchinson, the chief justice. Owing largely to the indecision of the elective council, the government had proved powerless to check the disorder. The resolutions passed by the Congress, as well as its petitions to the home government, gave authoritative form to the claims of the colonial opposition in general, though the body which issued them, like all the congresses which followed until 1776, was extra-legal and, judged by the letter of the law, was revolutionary. In these utterances, as later, the colonists sought to draw their arguments from British precedents and their own history. As they owed allegiance in common with subjects within the realm, so the rights of the two were the same. The two British rights which, it was claimed, were violated by the Stamp Act were the right to trial by jury and the right to be taxed only by an assembly in which they were represented. The former grievance was simply an incident of the latter, and was occasioned by the extension of the jurisdiction of the admiralty courts. The tax was a direct grievance. Therefore, for purposes of legislation like this these bodies denied that parliament was representative of the whole empire (so-called virtual representation), and asserted that it represented only the realm. For purposes of taxation, their assemblies, they affirmed, were the only representative bodies they had known. Therefore, ignoring the earlier and tentative measures by which parliament had actually taxed the colonies, and falling back upon the sweeping declarations of their assemblies, they denied the right of parliament to tax them. They declared that the recent policy of parliament was wholly an innovation and insisted upon a return to the Constitution as it was before 1763. The doctrine of natural right and compact was also resorted to with increasing emphasis in New England utterances. For purposes of government they had all along acknowledged—and now did so expressly—that parliament bound them; and the inference would have been fair that they were represented in it. But they did not draw this inference, nor did they seek by any scheme of reform to secure representation in the imperial legislature. James Otis was the only colonial leader who ever contemplated the possibility of such a solution. Adams early declared it to be undesirable. The British never proposed it, and therefore it played practically no part in the discussion.

50. The decisive blows, however, were struck by the mobs in the colonies and by the government itself in England. As the time for the execution of the Stamp Act approached, more

or less violent demonstrations occurred in New York and in many other localities. The stamp distributors were forced to resign. Everywhere in the original continental colonies the use of stamped papers was prevented, except to a slight extent in Georgia. Business requiring the use of stamps was in part suspended, but far more generally it was carried on without their use. Without the aid of the militia, which in no case was invoked, the colonial executives proved indisposed or powerless to enforce the act and it was effectively nullified. In England the petitions of the colonists produced little effect. There the decisive events were the accession of the Rockingham ministry to power and the clamours of the merchants which were caused by the decline in American trade. What might have happened if Grenville had remained in office, and if the duke of Cumberland had not been suddenly removed by death, it would be impossible to tell. But the serious lack of adjustment between British politics and colonial government is illustrated by the fact that, more than three months before the Stamp Act was to go into effect, the ministry whose measure it was resigned, and a cabinet which was indifferent, if not hostile, to it was installed in office. Preparations were soon made for its repeal. The slight extent to which relations with the colonies had been defined is indicated by the fact that the debates over the repeal contain the first serious discussion in parliament of the constitution of the British Empire. While the colonies were practically united in their views a great variety of opinions was expressed in parliament. On the question of right Lord Mansfield affirmed the absolute supremacy of parliament in realm and dominions, while Camden and Pitt drew the same sharp line of distinction between taxation and legislation upon which the colonists insisted, and denied the right of parliament to tax the colonies. The debates at this time gave rise to the fancied distinction between internal and external taxes, of which much was made for a few months and then it was dropped. But motives of expediency, arising both from conditions in the colonies and in England, proved decisive, and in the spring of 1766 the Stamp Act was repealed, while its repeal

was accompanied with the passage of a statute (The Declaratory Act) affirming the principle that Great Britain had the right to bind the colonies in all cases whatsoever. This measure was received with demonstrations of joy in the colonies, but the prestige of the home government had received a severe blow, and the colonists were quick to resent further alleged encroachments.

51. These soon came in the form of a colonial Mutiny Act and of the so-called Townshend Acts (1767). The former was intended

largely to meet the needs of the troops stationed in the West and in the new colonies, but it also affected the older colonies where garrisons of regular soldiers existed. The act provided for a parliamentary requisition for barrack supplies, and partly because it included certain articles which were not required for the soldiers in Europe, the New York legislature at first refused to make the necessary appropriation. Partly through the influence of the governor, it later came to think better of it and in a non-committal way appropriated the supplies required. But meantime in England the Pitt-Grafton ministry had come into office, in which the brilliant but reckless Charles Townshend was chancellor of the exchequer, Pitt himself was disabled by illness, and the ministry, lacking his control, steadily disintegrated. Townshend availed himself of this situation to spring upon his colleagues and upon parliament a new measure for colonial taxation, and with it a bill legalizing writs of assistance and establishing a board of commissioners of the customs in America, and a third bill suspending the functions of the assembly of New York until it should comply with the terms of the Mutiny Act. These Bills all became law. Before the last-mentioned one reached the colonies, the New York Assembly had complied, and therefore the necessity for executing this act of parliament was avoided. The establishment of a customs board at Boston, of itself, did not provoke much criticism. But the Act of Trade and Revenue, which provided for the collection in the colonies of duties on glass, lead, painters' colours, paper and tea, and that out of the revenue