Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 8.djvu/377

Rh THE QUARREL WITH AA1KRICA. ENGLAND 357 ce in nerica. &amp;gt;cking- .m inistrv. iratory ot and peal of Amp ct easily allayed. The king s premature attempt to secure a prime minister of his own choosing in Lord Bute (1761) came to an end through the minister s incapacity (1763). George Grenville, who followed him, kept the king in leading-strings in reliance upon his parliamentary majority. Something, no doubt, had been accomplished by the in corruptibility of Pitt. The practice of bribing members of parliament by actual presents in money came to an end, though the practice of bribing them by place and pension long continued. The arrogance which Pitt displayed towards foreign nations was displayed by Grenville towards classes of the population of the British dominions. It was enough for him to establish a right. He never put him self in the position of those who were to suffer by its being put in force. The first to suffer from Grenville s conception of his duty were the American colonies. The mercantile system which had sprung up in Spain in the 16th century held that colonies were to be entirely prohibited from trading, except with the mother country. Every European country had adopted this view, and the acquisition of fresh colonial dominions by England, at the peace of 1763, had been made nut so much through lust of empire as through love of trade. Of all English colonies, the American were the most populous and important. Their proximity to the Spanish colonies in the West Indies had naturally led to a coutrabrand trade. To this trade Grenville put a stop, as fur as lay in his power. Obnoxious as this measure was in America, the colonists had acknowledged the principle on which it was founded too long to make it easy to resist it. Another step of Gren ville s met with more open opposition. Even with all the experience of the century which followed, the relations between a mother country and her colonies are not easy to arrange. If the burthen of defence is to be borne in common, it can hardly be left to the mother country to declare war, and to exact the necessary taxation, without the consent of the colonies. If, on the other hand, it is to be borne by the mother country alone, she may well complain that she is left to bear more than her due share of the weight. The latter alternative forced itself upon the attention of Grenville. The British parliament, he held, was the supreme legislature, and, as such, was entitled to raise taxes in America to support the military forces needed for the defence of America. The Act (1765) im posing a stamp tax on the American colonies was the result. As might have been expected, the Americans resisted. For them, the question was precisely that which Hampden had fought out in the case of ship-money. As far as they were concerned, the British parliament had stepped into the position of Charles I. If Grenville had remained in office he would probably have persisted in his resolution. He was driven from his post by the king s resolution no longer to submit to his insolence. A new ministry was formed under the marquis of Rockiiigham, composed of some of those leaders of the Whig aristocracy who had not followed the Grenville ministry. They were well-intentioned, but weak, and without political ability ; and the king regarded them with distrust, only qualified by his abhorrence of the ministry which they superseded. As soon as the bad news came from America, the ministry was placed between two recommendations. Gren ville, ou the one hand, advised that the tax should be enforced. Pitt, on the other, declared that the British parliament had absolutely no right to tax America, though he held that it had the right to regulate, or in other words to tax, the commerce of America for the benefit of the British merchant and manufacturer. Between the two the Government took a middle course. It obtained from parliament a total repeal of the Stamp Act, but it also passed a Declaratory Act, claiming for the British parlia ment the supreme power over the colonies in matters of taxation, as well as in matters of legislation. It is possible that the course thus adopted was chosen simply because it was a middle course. But it was pro bably suggested by Edmund Burke, who was then Lord Burke s llockingham s private secretary, but who for some time to political come was to furnish thinking to the party to which he tlieory&amp;gt; attached himself. Burke carried into the world of theory those politics of expediency of which Walpole had been the practical originator. He held that questions of abstract right had no place in politics. It was therefore as absurd to argue with Pitt that England had a right to regulate commerce, as it was to argue with Grenville that England had a right to levy taxes. All that could be said was that it waa expedient in a wide-spread empire that the power of final decision should be lodged somewhere, and that it was also expedient not to use that power in such a way as to irritate those whom it was the truest wisdom to conciliate. The weak side of this view was the weak side of all Argu- Burke s political philosophy. Like all great innovators, ments * he was intensely conservative where he was not an ^ ir ^ e advocate of change. With new views on every subject relating to the exercise of power, he shrunk even from entertaining the slightest question relating to the distribu tion of power. He recommended to the British parliament the most self-denying wisdom, but he could not see that in its relation to the colonies the British parliament was so constituted as to make it entirely unprepared to be either wise or self-denying. It is true that if he had thought out the matter in this direction he would have been led further than he or any other man in England or America was at that time prepared to go. If the British parliament was unfit to legislate for America, and if, as was undoubtedly the case, it was impossible to create a representative body which was fit to legislate, it would follow that the American colonies could only be fairly governed as practically independent states, though they might possibly remain, like the great colonies of our own day, in a position of alliance rather than of dependence. It was because the issues opened led to changes so far greater than the wisest statesman then perceived, that Pitt s solution, logi cally untenable as it was, was preferable to Burke s. Pitt would have given bad reasons for going a step in the right direction. Burke gave excellent reasons why those who were certain to go wrong should have the power to go right. Scarcely were the measures relating to America passed when the king turned out the ministry. The new minis- Ministry try was formed by Pitt, who was created Lord Chatham of Lonl (1766), on the principle of bringing together men who at ltilu had shaken themselves loose from any of the different Whig cliques. Whatever chance the plan had of succeed ing was at an end when Chatham s mind temporarily g:ive way under stress of disease (1767). Charles Townshend, a brilliant headstrong man, led parliament in the way which had been prepared by the Declaratory Act, and laid duties on tea and other articles of commerce entering The tea the ports of America. duties. It was impossible that the position thus claimed by the British parliament towards America should affect America alone. The habit of obtaining money otherwise than by Home the consent of those who are required to pay it would be politics, certain to make parliament careless of the feelings and interests of that great majority of the population at home which was unrepresented in parliament. The resistance of America to the taxation imposed was therefore not with-
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