Revolution Against Empire: Taxes, Politics, and the Origins of American Independence 9780300227659

Table of contents :
Contents
Acknowledgments
Key Figures
Introduction Enlightened Empire?
1. Britain’s Controversial Empire
2. Taxing America
3. The Seven Years’ War and the Politics of Empire
4. The Rise and Fall of the Stamp Act
5. Britain’s Authoritarian Ascendancy
6. Sons of Liberty, Sons of Licentiousness
7. English Blood by English Hands
Conclusion
Abbreviations
Notes
Index

Citation preview

Revolution Against Empire


the lewis walpole series in eighteenth- century culture and history

The Lewis Walpole Series, published by Yale University Press with the aid of the Annie Burr Lewis Fund, is dedicated to the culture and history of the long eighteenth century (from the Glorious Revolution to the accession of Queen Victoria). It welcomes work in a variety of fields, including literature and history, the visual arts, political philosophy, music, legal history, and the history of science. In addition to original scholarly work, the series publishes new editions and translations of writing from the period, as well as reprints of major books that are currently unavailable. Though the majority of books in the series will probably concentrate on Great Britain and the Continent, the range of our geographical interests is as wide as Horace Walpole’s.




Revolution Against Empire Taxes, Politics, and the Origins of American Independence

Justin du Rivage

new haven and london

Published with assistance from the income of the Frederick John Kingsbury Memorial Fund, and from the Annie Burr Lewis Fund. Copyright © 2017 by Justin du Rivage. All rights reserved. This book may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, including illustrations, in any form (beyond that copying permitted by Sections 107 and 108 of the U.S. Copyright Law and except by reviewers for the public press), without written permission from the publishers. Yale University Press books may be purchased in quantity for educational, business, or promotional use. For information, please e-mail [email protected] (U.S. office) or [email protected] (U.K. office). Set in Fournier type by IDS Infotech, Ltd. Printed in the United States of America. ISBN 978-0-300-21424-6 A catalogue record for this book is available from the Library of Congress, and also from the British Library. This paper meets the requirements of ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992 (Permanence of Paper). 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

For Amanda

This page intentionally left blank

Contents Acknowledgments

ix

Key Figures, and a Note on the Text

xii

Introduction: Enlightened Empire?

1

1. Britain’s Controversial Empire

24

2. Taxing America

53

3. The Seven Years’ War and the Politics of Empire

77

4. The Rise and Fall of the Stamp Act

101

5. Britain’s Authoritarian Ascendancy

147

6. Sons of Liberty, Sons of Licentiousness

178

7. English Blood by English Hands

205

Conclusion: Republican Empire

243

List of Abbreviations

249

Notes

251

Index

361

This page intentionally left blank

Acknowledgments It is a great pleasure to thank all of those who have helped bring this project to fruition. Revolution Against Empire simply would not exist without the advice, criticism, and support of a great many people and institutions. Indeed, the words that follow cannot possibly repay the debts that I have incurred. Yale was an exceptionally rewarding place to research both a dissertation and a book that crosses geographic and disciplinary boundaries. I was particularly fortunate to have advisors whose interests were as expansive as their intellectual generosity. Steve Pincus taught me to keep asking, “Why?” while Joanne Freeman showed me how recovering fears and passions can help us answer the big questions of political history. Holly Brewer and Julian Hoppit both helped guide the dissertation on which this book is based, while Claire Priest showed me how important legal institutions are for understanding the origins of the American Revolution. James Vaughn taught me just how important conservatism was in shaping the politics of the eighteenthcentury British Empire. Conversations with Julia Adams, Jon Butler, John Demos, Paul Kennedy, Naomi Lamoreaux, Ed Rugemer, Keith Wrightson, and Charles Walton likewise shaped the way I think about the past. All of you have made me a better thinker and a better historian. In many ways, Revolution Against Empire began even before I arrived in New Haven. The faculty of the Pomona College History Department, particularly Ron Cluett, Gary Kates, Helena Wall, and Sam Yamashita, taught me how history can help make sense of the world we inhabit. At Cambridge, Mike Sonenscher and Istvan Hont introduced me to the myriad ways in which eighteenth-century political economy can shed light on enduring problems of inequality, government, and international relations. Together, these scholars and mentors have given me a compelling sense of why history matters. ix

x acknowledgments

The story that follows is the product of years of searching for documents on both sides of the Atlantic, a task that would have been impossible without the generosity of librarians, archivists, and institutions. The Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, the Lewis Walpole Library, the Huntington Library, the American Philosophical Society, and the Clements Library all offered their exceptional collections as well as their financial support to make this book a reality. Essential though these resources were, I would have been lost without the keen advice of Greg Eow, Kathryn James, Olga Tsapina, and countless other librarians and curators. Moreover, the Smith Richardson Foundation, Yale International Security Studies, the Leitner Program in International Political Economy, the Macmillan Center for International and Area Studies, the Fox International Fellowship, and the Stanford History Department all offered invaluable financial assistance to make my many research expeditions possible. I could not be more grateful for the encouragement and advice that I received as I transformed my Ph.D. dissertation into this book. At Stanford, Caroline Winterer was both a keen critic and exceptionally generous with her vast knowledge of the Enlightenment. Nancy Kollmann and Ali Yaycioglu broadened my intellectual horizons by welcoming me into their seminar on Eurasian empires. Jennifer Burns, Jim Campbell, David Como, Paula Findlen, Ana Minian, Jack Rakove, Jessica Riskin, Richard White, Kären Wigen, and Gavin Wright all made my time in Palo Alto as enjoyable as it was productive. At Yale University Press, my editor Erica Hanson saw the potential of this project from the very beginning and worked tirelessly to improve it, while Phillip King and Andrew Frisardi did a brilliant job of transforming the manuscript into a finished product. William Ashworth shared his knowledge of eighteenth-century taxation with me while Peter Onuf and George William Van Cleve offered suggestions that greatly improved both chapter 7 and the conclusion. Thank you all. Colleagues and friends at Yale, Stanford, and around the world read chapters, offered guidance, and shared their knowledge with me. Lucy Kaufman provided her keen editorial eye with unstinting generosity and good humor. Richard Huzzey and Christian Burset read the manuscript and rescued me from a great many errors. David Lydon, my sister Nathalie, and my parents Kent and Françoise all gave me phenomenal advice for how to make a book about eighteenth-century taxation accessible to a wide audience. Thank you as well to Catherine Arnold, Teresa Bejan, Michael Blaakman, Bill Bullman, William

acknowledgments

xi

Derringer, Chris Desan, Amy Dunagin, Allison Gorsuch, Penny Green, Andy Hammann, Michael Hattem, Elizabeth Herman, Todd Holmes, Tom Hopkins, Tony Hopkins, Robert Ingram, Sarah Kinkel, Megan Lindsay, Jim Livesey, Matt Lockwood, Noah Millstone, Lindsay O’Neil, Ken Owen, Mark Peterson, Allyssa Reichhardt, Sophus Reinert, John Shovlin, Phil Stern, Leslie Theibert, Matthew Underwood, Heather Welland, Jennifer Wellington, Carl Wennerlind, Nick Hoover Wilson, Alice Wolfram, and Nick Wrightson. Our conversations have been at times thoughtful and profound, at others blithe and frivolous, but they have brightened my life and made this a far better book. Finally, and most of all, I thank Amanda Behm. She offered not only her invaluable counsel, but repaid my writerly obsessions and neuroses with love and grace. Having her in my life has been my greatest joy.

Key Figures These names are organized by ideological group to help guide the reader through the debates that follow. Keep in mind, however, that eighteenthcentury opinion existed on a continuum, and people often changed their political stripes.

Authoritarian Reformers barrington, william wildman barrington, second viscount. Secretary at War who increasingly supported the use of military force to quell British and colonial disorder. bedford, john russell, fourth duke of. An early Whig supporter of authoritarian reform, he advocated both austerity and strengthening Britain’s North American empire. bernard, francis. Governor of New Jersey and then Massachusetts who urged British leaders to assert greater authority in the colonies. bute, john stuart, third earl of. Childhood tutor of George III and the king’s favorite, he spearheaded controversial austerity policies as prime minister. clive, robert. Governor of Bengal and an ally of George Grenville who advocated reforming East India Company government and using Bengali tax revenue to pay Britain’s debts. colden, cadwallader. Enlightened physician and natural philosopher who defended royal authority as New York’s lieutenant governor. decker, matthew. East India Company Director and political economist whose single tax on houses inspired many proposals for authoritarian reform.

xii

key figures

xiii

eden, william. Spymaster and member of the Carlisle Commission that attempted to negotiate peace with the rebellious American colonies in 1778. gage, thomas. Commander in chief for North America and governor of Massachusetts from 1774 to 1775, he was a long-standing critic of colonial insubordination. galloway, joseph. Benjamin Franklin’s protégé and a loyalist advocate of British and American reconciliation. george iii. King of Great Britain who supported strengthening the monarchy and increasing Britain’s control over its colonies. germain, george. Military veteran and secretary of state for the colonies during the American War of Independence who urged force as a way of securing colonial allegiance. grenville, george. Prime minister who advocated the Stamp Act as a means of rescuing Britain from constitutional and financial collapse. halifax, george montague dunk, second earl of. President of the Board of Trade between 1748 and 1761, he was an early advocate for strengthening Britain’s empire and bringing it under tighter metropolitan control. hillsborough, wills hill, earl of. Secretary of state for the colonies in the North administration, he clashed with Benjamin Franklin and his cabinet colleagues over creating a new colony in the Ohio Valley. howard, martin. Newport, Rhode Island, lawyer whose fear of colonial disorder led him to support both the Stamp Act and increased enforcement of British customs regulations. jenkinson, charles. Treasury lord and George Grenville protégé who advocated unprecedented colonial reforms and taxes in response to American resistance. johnson, william, first baronet. Superintendent of Indian affairs, whose abhorrence of colonial violence toward Native Americans led him to advocate greater exertions of British authority in North America. kennedy, archibald. New York official who condemned mobs, profligacy, and colonial legislatures as a threat to American liberty.

xiv k e y f i g u r e s

knox, william. Governor of Georgia who later advocated using Parliament’s sovereignty to limit colonial growth and to create an American aristocracy. loudoun, john campbell, fourth earl of. Commander in chief for North America during the Seven Years’ War, he repeatedly clashed with colonial assemblies. mcculloh, henry. London merchant whose writings urged Parliament to tax the colonies and more tightly regulate their trade. north, frederick, lord north. Prime minister whose commitment to both peace and authoritarian reform led to numerous unsuccessful attempts at reconciliation with Britain’s rebellious colonies. oliver, peter. Chief justice of Massachusetts who advocated greater military force to quell colonial insubordination. shebbeare, john. Tory pamphleteer who condemned Britain’s moral decay and urged low taxes and low wages as a way of restoring order. shirley, william. Governor of Massachusetts during the Seven Years’ War, he was critical of both the independence of colonial legislatures and the 1754 Albany Plan of Union. townshend, charles. Chancellor of the exchequer who defied his cabinet colleagues by proposing taxes on colonial imports of British glass, paper, lead, paint, and tea. tucker, josiah. Welsh clergyman and political economist who urged consumption taxes to curb the insubordination of Britain’s lower class and later advocated abandoning Britain’s American colonies. wedderburn, alexander. Solicitor and then attorney general with a deep fear of disorder, he believed that Congress’s disastrous government offered an opportunity for reconciliation with the colonies. whately, thomas. Grenville’s right-hand man at the Treasury, he wrote pamphlets defending both the Stamp Act and the administration’s austerity policies.

key figures

xv

Establishment Whigs burke, edmund. Parliamentarian, theorist, and chief mouthpiece for the Rockingham Whigs who argued for elitist government and against colonial taxation. dartmouth, william legge, second earl of. Secretary of state for the colonies in the North administration, he sought to heal divisions between America and Britain. fox, henry. A reliable defender of the Whigs in Parliament during the 1740s and 1750s, his politics grew increasingly conservative during the 1760s. grafton, augustus henry fitzroy, third duke of. Prime minister who had much sympathy for radical Whig politics but who nonetheless advocated taking a strong stand against disorder in both Britain and its colonies. hardwicke, philip yorke, first earl of. Britain’s lord chancellor for nearly two decades, he was an important ally of the Pelham brothers in the House of Lords. hartley, david. Statesman, scientist, and friend of Benjamin Franklin, he was a fierce critic of both Grenville’s fiscal policy and North’s efforts at American reconciliation. newcastle, thomas pelham- holles, first duke of. Prime minister during the Seven Years’ War and strong supporter of Britain’s engagement in European diplomacy, he was a fierce critic of taxing the American colonies. pelham, henry. Newcastle’s brother, he served as prime minister during the War of Austrian Succession and was a staunch defender of both Britain’s fiscal-military state and of government by and for Britain’s most prominent families. rockingham, charles watson- wentworth, second marquess of. Prime minister during the Stamp Act crisis, he opposed colonial taxation and convinced Parliament to repeal the act.

xvi k e y f i g u r e s

Radical Whigs adams, john. Massachusetts lawyer and supporter of colonial independence who argued that the purpose government was to promote the happiness of its citizens. adams, samuel. Boston radical who promoted nonimportation as a means of colonial resistance and eventually advocated American independence. almon, john. Britain’s leading radical printer, he published dozens of American and British pamphlets critical of authoritarian reform. barré, isaac. Irish MP who lost an eye fighting in Quebec, he was known on both sides of the Atlantic for his fierce defense of colonial liberties. beckford, william. Jamaica’s richest slave owner and founder of the Monitor, he was known for his defense of the West India interest and for his support of William Pitt. burke, thomas. Delegate to Congress from North Carolina who was extremely critical of the Articles of Confederation for granting Congress too much power. camden, charles pratt, first earl of. Lawyer, judge, and close ally of Chatham, he was a defender of both popular sovereignty and colonial liberties. chatham, william pitt, first earl of. The “Great Commoner” encouraged Britain to fight a world war against France and was feted by radical Whigs on both sides of the Atlantic for his powerful advocacy of British liberty. conway, henry seymour. Former general who entered office with Rockingham, he was a major advocate for the repeal of the Stamp Act. cooper, samuel. Minister of Boston’s Brattle Street Church, he was a keen analyst of political economy and corresponded with both Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Pownall. dickinson, john. Philadelphia lawyer and merchant, he spearheaded resistance against the Townshend Duties with his of Letters from a Farmer in Pennsylvania.

key figures

xvii

fothergill, john. Physician and Quaker minister who was deeply critical of the Stamp Act but also sought to reconcile Britain with its rebellious colonies. franklin, benjamin. Colonial Philadelphia’s most prominent printer, intellectual, and politician, he spent much of the decade before independence in London defending the colonies. jay, john. New York lawyer and delegate to Congress, he advocated both American independence and energetic government. jefferson, thomas. Member of the Virginia House of Delegates and author of A Summary View of the Rights of British America, he helped draft the Declaration of Independence. lee, arthur. Lawyer and physician from a wealthy Virginia family, he spent more than two decades living in Britain, where he wrote dozens of newspaper articles attacking authoritarian imperial reform. lee, richard henry. Member of the Virginia House of Burgesses and an early advocate for American independence. mason, george. The writer of both the Fairfax Resolves and Virginia Declaration of Rights, he rejected Parliament’s supremacy over the colonies and was a strong supporter of colonial manufacturing. massie, joseph. A political economist who was deeply critical of both Matthew Decker’s fiscal reforms and of efforts to exert Parliament’s supremacy over the colonies. otis, james. Boston lawyer and member of the Massachusetts Assembly who helped organize resistance to British taxation as a member of the Sons of Liberty. paine, thomas. Former excise tax collector whose radical writings made the case for American economic and political independence. pownall, thomas. Governor of Massachusetts during the Seven Years’ War who collaborated with the colony’s assembly to fight the French, he was also an ardent imperial reformer and a critic of taxing the American colonies. price, richard. Dissenting minister and political economist who vigorously supported colonial rights while also advising the Earl of Shelburne on matters of state.

xviii k e y f i g u r e s

ramsay, david. Doctor and member of the South Carolina legislature who outlined an expansive vision for the meaning of American independence. rush, benjamin. Philadelphia physician who studied medicine in Edinburgh, he served in the Continental Congress and advocated strengthening American government. shelburne, william petty, second earl of. A close ally of Pitt and prime minister at the end of the American war, he was a generous patron of Enlightenment thinkers and a strong advocate for reconciliation with the colonies. stiles, ezra. Newport, Rhode Island, minister whose studies of political economy and demography led him to support both colonial manufacturing and liberal imperial government. warren, joseph. President of the Massachusetts Provincial Congress who insisted on both popular government and that Britain owed its prosperity to the colonies, he died at the Battle of Bunker Hill. warren, mercy otis. Leading Boston playwright and political writer who advocated an American empire based on reciprocity and equality. wilkes, john. London rabble rouser, MP, and colonial sympathizer, his persecution was a radical cause célèbre throughout the British Empire. witherspoon, john. Presbyterian minister and president of the College of New Jersey, he was both an advocate for stronger American government and a critic of wartime price fixing. For the sake of readability, spelling and capitalization in eighteenth-century quotations have been modernized in most cases. Original punctuation has been preserved wherever possible; however, serial commas were added for clarity. Standard manuscript abbreviations have been spelled out; for example, “wch” becomes “which,” and “yt” becomes “that.” The spelling of eighteenthcentury names was often erratic, so these have been standardized. “Dennys De Berdt,” for example, was also spelled “Dennis Deberdt.” To avoid confusion, a single spelling is used throughout the text.

Revolution Against Empire

This page intentionally left blank

Introduction Enlightened Empire?

The American Revolution was a world movement. . . . Its causes must be sought for deep down in the hearts and minds of a people, and not of one people only, but of two, for there are always two sides to a revolution. —Charles Andrews, The Colonial Background of the American Revolution If you know the position a person takes on taxes, you can tell their whole philosophy. The tax code, once you get to know it, embodies all the essence of life: greed, politics, power, goodness, charity. —Sheldon S. Cohen, former IRS commissioner

For many of the Enlightenment’s finest minds, the shots fired at Lexington and Concord, the storming of Bunker Hill, and the signing of the American Declaration of Independence signaled that the age of imperial exploitation was coming to an end. Adam Smith, Benjamin Franklin, and the French minister and philosophe Anne-Robert Jacques Turgot were all convinced that the crisis that split the British Empire was a transformative moment in world history. Having spent decades debating the social, economic, and political consequences of increasingly expensive European warfare, they believed the battle over American independence was ultimately a fight about what kind of empire the British Empire would become. Colonists’ resistance proved beyond a doubt that colonies and trade restrictions, which had long seemed the source of Europe’s power and grandeur, were, in fact, its undoing. Britain’s rebellious colonies had sent an unmistakable message to Europe’s 1

2 introduction

sovereigns and states. Power through conquest and violence, extraction and slavery, was no longer viable in a modern, enlightened world. Statesmen and thinkers would have to find new models for governance and growth, models that were more economically and morally sound than those that had guided European politics for the past three centuries. Benjamin Franklin was perhaps European colonialism’s most surprising apostate. He had spent decades defending what he called the “fine and noble china vase” of the British Empire. But the mother country’s violence had turned him into a sharp critic. “The true and sure means of extending and securing commerce” was not force and violence, domination and territory, but “the goodness and cheapness of commodities.” Ultimately, Franklin observed, “empires, by pride and folly and extravagance, ruin themselves like individuals.”1 Adam Smith came to a similar conclusion. The Scottish professor of moral philosophy decried the irrationality that kept Europeans in thrall to the “mercantile system” of exclusive trade privileges. That scheme meant that Britain possessed, “not an empire, but the project of an empire; not a gold mine, but the project of a gold mine.” Britain, Smith believed, ought to awaken from the “golden dream” of empire and “accept the mediocrity of its circumstances.”2 Thomas Pownall, a former governor of Massachusetts and a cogent critic of The Wealth of Nations, also agreed that colonial independence marked the beginning of a “new system,” in North America. That burgeoning world was one in which free American markets, boundless territory, and cheap goods would force European leaders to liberalize their own societies. With an independent America refusing to defer to European imperialism, the selfdefeating scramble for monopolies and foreign territory would become a thing of the past.3 Across the channel, France’s reforming finance minister played a similar tune. Turgot advised Louis XV that if Britain’s colonies secured their independence it would be the “greatest revolution in commerce and politics, not just in England but in all of Europe.” The political earthquake in North America left France no choice but to abandon its colonies. While the sugar islands of Martinique, Guadeloupe, and Saint-Domingue had brought France staggering wealth, they would never remain loyal in the shadow of an independent American republic. “Wise and happy will be the nation that bends its politics to the new circumstances, who will convince itself to see nothing but allied provinces and not dependents on the metropole,”

introduction

3

Turgot told the French king. Power and prosperity would go to “the first nation convinced that all the politics of commerce consists of its using land in the most advantageous way for the proprietor, and labor in the most productive way for the worker, that is to say in the gentlest manner.” American independence demanded that the nations of Europe recognize that economic aggrandizement through exclusive trade was a losing strategy, one based on “illusion and vanity.”4 The race for empire had increased violence while saddling European powers with unsustainable taxes and debts. The future belonged to the first nation that abandoned this chimera and cut loose its colonies. Brilliant though they were, Franklin, Pownall, Smith, and Turgot were wrong that American independence had sounded the death knell of imperial exploitation and the dawn of a more peaceful world. They were, however, right that the American Revolution was part of a transformation in politics every bit as significant as the system of European states that emerged from the Thirty Years’ War.5 Although it fractured the British Empire and offered hope to independence movements all over the planet, it also marked the beginning of an age in which colonialism dominated much of the planet. Europe’s empires would become more extensive, extractive, and authoritarian than they had ever been.6 Indeed, Britain, which seemed crippled by the loss of its North American colonies, became the greatest empire of them all. By 1818, its East India Company controlled £22 million of Indian tax revenue (more than the United Kingdom spent on defense), and by 1850 it had conquered most of the subcontinent. Europe’s empires expanded so much that on the eve of World War I, they ruled more than half of the world’s surface and more than half a billion people.7 That transformation came with real economic consequences, allowing Europeans to grow increasingly wealthy, even as they consumed more than they produced.8 Between 1757 and 1957, Britain’s per capita GDP increased by 347 percent while India’s barely budged. And by 1900, the United Kingdom exported 40 percent of its iron and steel, 56 percent of its railway carriages, and 81 percent of its clothing to colonial dependents. As diverse and ramshackle as this empire was, nineteenth-century Britain’s industrial economy, dominance of international finance, and military might were sustained by its control of people, money, and resources all over the world.9 The United States followed a different path from the dramatic transformation that painted the globe French blue and British red, one far closer to

4 introduction

the route suggested by Franklin, Smith, and Turgot. That path reflected the fact that the American Revolution was a revolution not for or against monarchy, but against the authoritarian transformation of the British Empire.10 America’s revolutionaries created a genuinely new kind of empire, one that still challenges our understanding of what empires are.11 Their vision was an imperium without a center, a federation of settlers whose improvement of North America would enrich both themselves and those who traded with them.12 In embracing many of these ideas, the United States created an empire that rejected many of the defining features of European colonialism. It did away with distinctions of birth and geography, abjuring both aristocracy and the notion that those who settled on the fringes of the empire were second-class citizens. It created a national union, one that apportioned political power by balancing the equality of the states with their population.13 And it embraced the republican conviction that government belonged to the people and was beholden to public rather than private interests. Yet, as many scholars have observed, independence created a new nation whose expansion implied not only the dispossession of Native Americans but also the growth of slavery.14 Chauvinism and self-interest, as much as equality and the common good, shaped the legacy of independence. They informed conflicts over the place of slavery in the new republic and ultimately produced a cohesive and powerful state rather than an equal one. Nevertheless, in largely rejecting colonialism and the dependent peripheries that made Britain wealthy, the United States charted a different course.15 The divergent trajectories of the United States and Britain are in many respects well known.16 What is less clear is why they took place. Americans like to think of themselves as fundamentally different than Europeans—both more democratic and more libertarian. But during the eighteenth century, Britain and its North American colonies were actually becoming more alike. Together, they shared an affection for Georgian monarchs, a ravenous demand for British goods, and a celebration of the British Empire as a force for liberty and Protestantism around the world.17 They also devoured pamphlets and newspapers, debated politics, often over coffee or too much wine, and engaged Enlightenment ideas about science, economics, and liberty.18 And they both experienced a century of nearly continuous warfare that led to a growing state, rising taxation, and mounting public debts.19 These common experiences and deepening connections leave us with a puzzle: why did British American colonists break from an empire that they

introduction

5

had long revered? The usual answer is because Parliament tried to tax them without representation. But this seemingly simple answer provokes two questions. Why did Parliament insist on colonial tax revenue even after it became clear that taxing the colonies would lead to an imperial civil war? And why were colonists so terrified of parliamentary taxation that many of them would rather die than pay what was asked of them? This book answers these questions by showing how the American Revolution was the outcome of a fierce debate over what kind of empire the British Empire would become. The clash over empire was about much more than whether colonists would acknowledge Parliament’s sovereignty or be taxed by their own representatives: it turned on what taxes Americans would pay and on whose terms. At stake were power and property, equality and inequality, sovereignty and subordination. That contest took on particular urgency as people from Boston to Bengal grappled with the difficult realities of commercial competition and fantastically expensive warfare.20 Both policy makers and the public turned to empire as a means of sustaining those growing burdens, and they engaged in fierce debates about how to preserve the empire’s prosperity and freedom. Throughout the British world, a wide array of statesmen and scribblers, intellectuals, and activists came to radically different conclusions about colonists’ constitutional rights, how colonies ought to be governed, and the economic implications of imperial expansion. That ensemble included familiar figures like Benjamin Franklin and Edmund Burke, as well as forgotten characters like the one-eyed orator Isaac Barré and the economic pugilist Thomas Whately. Some of these men (and a few women) believed that Britain’s imperium ought to remain a loosely governed commercial project while others insisted that Britain could only survive if it asserted its authority over its colonies and mined them for resources and revenue. Yet others insisted that British liberty and prosperity required territorial expansion and a federation of relative equals. Each of those models could trace their origins back to antiquity, even as they drew on Enlightenment ideas about government and the economy.21 And while this debate was fierce—culminating in civil war—its participants agreed that both Britain’s and America’s future depended on getting empire right. Britain’s battle over empire took place in a country that had long grappled with partisan conflict. However, by the mid–eighteenth century, the Whig and Tory parties no longer resembled their former selves. As Richard Price observed, the Tories had begun as the party of “court favor,” while the

6 introduction

Whigs contended for “commercial freedom.” But George I and George II excluded the Tories from government, and this reversed the parties’ traditional roles, leading to the “Whig creed being carried to court” and to the “Tory creed having been in great measure adopted in towns and cities.”22 Although Whigs did not give up their enthusiasm for parliamentary government and commerce, Tories embraced their role as opponents of ministerial power and mobilized urban radicals.23 Indeed, decades of Whig dominance created a political world in which some Whigs found that they had more in common with their Tory rivals. By the 1750s, it was possible to describe a single individual, Sir Francis Dashwood, as a “Tory,” an “independent Tory,” a “Jacobite,” and an “opposition Whig.”24 Politics became only marginally clearer after George III became king in 1760. The new monarch vowed to rule above party and without the constraint of politicians. But his decision to rehabilitate Tories who had long been excluded from government and to make his childhood tutor Charles Stuart, third Earl of Bute, chief minister led to a splintering of the Whig Party. As new “proprietary” parties formed around opposition leaders such as Lord Rockingham, William Pitt, and the Duke of Bedford, each claimed a piece of the Whig inheritance.25 This blurry political scene meant that even people who nominally belonged to the same party often disagreed fiercely. For this reason, Revolution Against Empire looks beyond partisan labels and analyzes imperial politics in terms of competing ideologies. Such an approach shows that individuals throughout the British Empire shared aspirations and built alliances that extended far beyond the mother country’s borders. In so doing, this book argues that three distinct groups emerged on both sides of the Atlantic: establishment Whigs, authoritarian reformers, and radical Whigs. Establishment Whigs defended both their stewardship of parliamentary government and the concentration of wealth and influence in a small elite. They advocated commercial empire, European engagement, and a professional military funded by excise taxation and public debt. Figures like the Pennsylvania proprietor Thomas Penn believed that this fiscal-military state, while having a constitutional right to tax the colonies, should not do so lest it interfere with British trade.26 The Whig establishment’s approach to governance was not, however, without its critics. Many disaffected Whigs and Tories drew upon “country” arguments to attack the government for its profligacy and for failing to maintain order.27 These authoritarian reformers sought both patriotic

1. The British Empire following the Treaty of Paris, 1763. (Map by Bill Nelson)

8 introduction

regeneration and the preservation of British liberty, but they made it clear that their primary political aim was to strengthen the authority of government and elites. In so doing, politicians like Virginia’s future governor Francis Fauquier and political economists such as Malachy Postlethwayt insisted on fiscal austerity, arguing that Britain’s endless continental wars, excessive spending, and unmitigated borrowing had put it on the path to ruin.28 That meant that Parliament had not just a right but an urgent obligation to tax the American colonies. Radical Whigs also drew upon patriotic arguments to attack the Whig establishment, but they dismissed authoritarian reformers’ critique of society and the economy. Drawing support from the British Empire’s growing middle class, they embraced what historians such as Caroline Robbins and Gordon Wood describe as a “real Whig” tradition that “cherished ideas” about checks on government, individual freedom, and leveling society.29 They insisted that Britain’s constitution existed not only to protect property from unjust taxation but also to enhance the well-being of its citizens. This is not to say that radical Whigs necessarily opposed policies that we might today consider authoritarian. American radicals endorsed seizing territory, coercing loyalists, and vesting nearly dictatorial powers in the commander in chief of the Continental Army. Yet intellectuals such as Richard Price and politicians like John Adams nonetheless pressed for a republican empire based on settlement, popular sovereignty, and a comparatively egalitarian economy. The shifting fortunes of these ideological groups explain why Britain and its North American colonies came to blows. Yet there was nothing inevitable about a conflict between an increasingly authoritarian mother country and ever more radical colonies. Not only did nearly everyone claim to be on the side of liberty and empire, but establishment Whigs, authoritarian reformers, and radical Whigs could be found throughout the eighteenthcentury British world. Radicalism flourished in Boston, Bristol, and Bengal while fears of disorder and licentiousness provoked rural elites in both the Hudson Valley and the English shires. Authoritarian reformers spent decades fighting to escape the margins of British politics. In North America, radicals repeatedly clashed with authoritarian reformers, who included not only their governors but also fellow colonists. Under such circumstances, the empire’s politics were highly unstable. Yet authoritarian reformers’ arguments gained strength in Britain throughout the 1760s. They captured the imaginations of

introduction

9

George III and a significant portion of the electorate, who were increasingly anxious about disorder and political dissent. Indeed, many British voters and members of Parliament embraced the project of suppressing licentiousness and shifting the burden of taxation to American colonists. Across the Atlantic, politics moved in the opposite direction. Authoritarian reform, with its goal of subordinating imperial peripheries both economically and politically, proved explosive among a colonial population that was already deeply anxious about its financial future. As radical Whigs gained strength in North America, the political culture of the British Empire became increasingly Janus-faced. The American Revolution was the result. All of this is to say that competing ideologies structured politics throughout the eighteenth-century British Empire.30 Not only did they inform alliances and inflame conflicts during the age of Whig dominance, but they shaped the character of the proprietary parties that emerged following the accession of George III. Ideologies depended (as they still do) on a variety of factors. Some groups proved more amenable to certain political persuasions than others. Protestant dissenters, those who prayed outside the Church of England, were much more likely to be radical Whigs; Britain’s country gentry, on the other hand, were strongly attracted to both Toryism and authoritarian reform. The social foundations of these groups mattered enormously for British politics, but they did not, by themselves, define political commitments. Rather, ideological differences led to factional politics, which were often associated with competing parliamentary leaders, newspapers, and activists. Indeed, these rival political cosmologies were more durable than individual political allegiances, which could and did change in response to events. This meant that while political opinions existed on a continuum and sometimes changed with the passage of time, the politically engaged knew where they and others stood. They recognized that Prime Minister William Pitt’s patriotic supporters had far different convictions than those George Grenville, the Stamp Act’s architect. Indeed, they felt a kind of kinship with those who shared their political values, describing themselves variously as “true Whigs,” “Whigs,” and “friends of government.” And while I largely avoid these terms because they had contested and even contradictory meanings over the course of the eighteenth century, the categories “radical Whig,” “establishment Whig,” and “authoritarian reformer” often had roughly equivalent meanings. Just as today we recognize that liberals, moderates, and

10 i n t r o d u c t i o n

conservatives have very different views, people in the eighteenth century understood the ideological battle lines that shaped their politics. In stressing the ideological nature of eighteenth-century politics, I do not mean that its participants were deluded by irrational beliefs or false consciousness (although they sometimes were). Rather, ideology is the way people understand their political and social world. All human beings have ideologies, which function like maps, providing “structure or organization” for how we “read (and misread) political facts, events, occurrences, actions.”31 Ideology is extremely powerful. It shapes not only our interpretations of events but also our hopes and fears for the future. It informs how we understand the economy and what we believe our economic interests to be. Precisely because economic decisions are shaped by ideology, people, firms, and governments often follow radically different strategies in pursuit of similar goals. Today, most progressives and conservatives support stronger economic growth, even as they disagree fiercely about the consequences of capping emissions, spending public money on health care, and raising the minimum wage. In the eighteenth century, radicals and authoritarian reformers could both agree that Britain’s economy and power depended on fair taxes, overseas trade, and well-governed colonies, even as they sparred over what policies Britain’s imperial state ought to pursue. In that battle, taxes proved a particular point of contention because they were both the lifeblood of the state and a source of power and social control. They paid for wars and bureaucracies, public infrastructure, and vast quantities of public debt. They also shaped the economy, encouraging and discouraging consumption, production, and inequality.32 That last point is critical. While the great age of redistribution through taxation would have to wait until the nineteenth century, eighteenth-century observers were keenly aware of the relationship between taxation and inequality. Not only did certain taxes fall on some people and not on others, but taxation worked to transfer money to the government’s creditors. Given that taxation shaped not only the nature of the state but also economic life more generally, it is no surprise that the debate over taxing the colonies proved particularly intractable. In the argument over empire, colonial radicals and authoritarian reformers found little common ground about what colonial taxes were for and who ought to control them. Every proposal for reconciliation between Britain and its colonies ultimately foundered on radical colonists’ demands for fiscal selfdetermination and authoritarian reformers’ insistence on a reliable source of

introduction

11

colonial revenue. That rift remained unbridgeable because both sides recognized that taxation was the single most powerful means of shaping both society and empire. Whether the colonies would be more or less equal, their legislatures weak or strong, their economies dynamic or dependent, all hinged on taxation. Both colonial and British radicals believed that granting Parliament control of colonial revenue would unleash an extractive imperial state, one that would bleed dry the most vibrant part of the imperial economy. Authoritarian reformers, however, believed that colonial fiscal independence could only lead to a rival American empire whose insubordination would fatally undermine Britain’s commerce and government. When authoritarian reformers finally took control of the British state in the 1770s, they used both legislation and coercion to tax the American colonies. Their tenacity meant that the debate over empire and taxation would be settled by a long and expensive civil war. This is a very different story of the American Revolution than we are accustomed to. Historians largely take the arguments of authoritarian reformers for granted and insist that the Seven Years’ War, known in North America as the French and Indian War, left Britain little choice but to tax its colonies and centralize its empire. Students still learn what the great Yale historian Charles Andrews observed in 1924, that the war forced British ministers to “meet heavy demands for the defense and administration of large additions of territory, without adequate resources except through increased taxation.”33 In his more recent history of the French and Indian War, Fred Anderson argues that “Britain’s dominion over half of North America crystallized competing visions of empire, the contradictions and revolutionary potential of which only gradually became manifest.”34 Indeed, one scholar has even gone so far as to argue that Britain’s decisive victory against France encouraged colonial resistance and unleashed American yearnings for independence.35 Whether the Seven Years’ War forced British statesmen to seek new sources of tax revenue, enabled a more authoritarian vision of empire, or emboldened American nationalism, there is little disagreement that the war set the colonies and the mother country on a collision course. Historians usually tell the story of this postwar clash in one of two ways. Progressive historians, committed to a broader interpretation of American history that emphasizes economic interests and social conflict, usually emphasize the political struggles that took place throughout the

12 i n t r o d u c t i o n

colonies. They explain the resistance of merchants and planters by pointing to the economic burdens of British rule, but they attribute radicalism and independence to the agitation of Native Americans, slaves, workers, and the poor.36 Thus, they conclude that growing colonial inequality and local socioeconomic conflict were far more important in bringing about American independence than “any specific piece of British legislation.”37 Ideological and constitutional accounts, on the other hand, usually highlight the unity of American resistance. Jack P. Greene, for example, contends that colonists were convinced that they and their property were shielded by the English constitution. Parliamentary taxation spurred American resistance because “colonists objected to being taxed or governed in their internal affairs without their consent because such actions subjected them to a form of governance that was at once contrary to the rights and legal protections traditionally enjoyed by Britons and, on the deepest level, denied their very identity as a British people.”38 Another version of this story stresses the conjunction of ideas, sentiments, and fears that colonists imported from England’s radical Whig tradition. This libertarian persuasion, which flourished in the fertile colonial soil of relative equality and an open frontier, led colonists to conclude that Parliament’s taxes and authoritarian imperial reforms were “evidence of a wide-ranging plot” to corrupt government and eliminate liberty.39 While these explanations shed important light on American resistance to British rule, they talk past each other. Economic interpretations downplay radical colonists’ arguments about the legitimacy of parliamentary taxation, ignoring the fact that ideas inform people’s perception of their economic interests and treating the passions and unwritten rules that shape political conflict as unimportant. Thus, they stress social conflicts within the colonies, even though American resistance and independence demanded that people from very different backgrounds come together to reject British rule. Ideological and constitutional explanations, on the other hand, are more influential because resistance to Britain would have been impossible without broad opposition and because colonists repeatedly attacked British imperial policies for violating their rights. Moreover, arguments based on ideology have particular appeal because it is clear that North America was a low tax zone and that colonists were never really oppressed by British taxes or trade restrictions. British North Americans paid about one-fifth the taxes of their English counterparts, and those taxes never collected much money.40 Between

introduction

13

1765 and 1774, the Stamp Act and the Townshend Duties raised a total of about £36,000 from the North American colonies.41 To put this in perspective, that was less than the cost of building and fitting out the HMS Ramillies, a ship of the line, in 1763. It was also a far cry from the viceroyalty of New Spain (modern-day Mexico and the southwestern United States), where the government collected an average of more than £7 million a year during the 1780s, more than eight times what it had gathered a century earlier.42 But while British North America was not oppressed by Parliament’s taxes, constitutional and ideological accounts tend to deemphasize economic concerns and social strife within the colonies, even though radical colonists clearly came into sharp conflict with the structures of colonial power and made it very clear that they believed that authoritarian imperial reforms would imperil their well-being.43 Ultimately, such historians reduce colonial radicalism to either a legal-constitutional argument about rights or a libertarian reaction to the efforts of British statesmen to reform their empire. When taken together, existing accounts of the American Revolution leave us with a clear awareness that resistance took place amid social tensions and economic difficulty but with little understanding of how this shaped colonists’ views about their constitutional rights and political liberties. Most accounts of the American Revolution also fall short because they misunderstand eighteenth-century British politics. Although we sometimes think of Great Britain as a model eighteenth-century state, blessed with a political consensus that supported a representative Parliament, property rights, and vibrant civil society, it experienced wrenching social, economic, and political changes throughout the eighteenth century.44 As cities and commerce expanded, politicians and their supporters attacked, insulted, and debated one another. The maelstrom of British politics was particularly violent because European warfare imposed growing burdens on the public, even as it created new opportunities for those lucky enough to profit from the expansion of Britain’s fiscal-military state.45 At the same time, the liberal reforms of the Glorious Revolution steadily eroded. Urban populations grew and the industrial revolution took its first tentative steps. Although the early-eighteenth-century British electoral system fell far short of what we today would call democracy, it nonetheless was marked by competitive elections, partisanship, and a remarkably wide male franchise.46 But the persistence of “rotten boroughs” and the failure to redistrict based on population shifts meant that Parliament became significantly less representative over the

14 i n t r o d u c t i o n

course of the eighteenth century. Exploiting this evolving political system and fearing the social changes transforming their society, elites increasingly embraced the absolute sovereignty of Parliament and denied the legitimacy of popular protest.47 The material consequences of these political changes were profound. Parliament passed laws forcing the idle into workhouses and prohibiting organized labor. It expanded a great bureaucracy, the excise, to tax and regulate industry. And it multiplied taxes that fell most heavily on workers while sparing the nation’s wealthy landowners.48 These changes reflected an increasingly authoritarian and elitist state. And while the counterrevolution of the eighteenth century was long and gradual, it was nonetheless decisive. Although these social and political changes are well known to historians of Britain, most historians of the American Revolution downplay them. Instead, they reiterate the widespread view that there was a British consensus in favor of asserting Parliament’s sovereignty and taxing the colonies.49 Sir Lewis Namier’s painstaking reconstructions of parliamentary politics still exert enormous influence over how historians tell this story. Insisting that members of Parliament went to Westminster “to make a figure, and no more dreamt of a seat in the House in order to benefit humanity than a child dreams of a birthday cake that others may eat it,” Namier separated politics from statecraft.50 He and his followers argued that before industrialization unleashed the social conflicts of the nineteenth century, preening, scheming politicians were incapable of thinking beyond the narrow doctrines of parliamentary sovereignty and reducing Britain’s tax burden.51 Namier’s dismissal of ideas and his conviction that the only politics that mattered were the cut and thrust of politicians came under increasing pressure in the 1970s and 1980s as historians discovered popular politics. James Bradley, John Brewer, Linda Colley, John Sainsbury, and Kathleen Wilson all describe how patriotic activists opposed the government and its colonial policies both before and during the American Revolution.52 But while scholars now recognize that patriotic discontent was real, many still dismiss popular opposition as weak to the point of irrelevance. Eliga Gould, for example, concludes “for the vast majority of Britons, the spiraling debts, unrealistic expectations, and general lack of direction simply reinforced the case for preserving Parliament’s jurisdiction over every aspect of colonial finance.”53 The problem with these accounts is that even if we accept that a majority of British people supported taxing the colonies and using force to

introduction

15

impose Parliament’s will, we still need to explain why this happened. Parliament’s right to tax the colonies did not necessarily mean that it should. No less an authority than Edmund Burke made this point repeatedly. And while opponents of Lord North’s government were divided and weak during the 1770s, their positions were coherent and powerful. Both radical and establishment Whigs deployed compelling political and economic arguments that insisted that fiscal austerity, colonial taxation, and authoritarian imperial reform were both unjust and ruinous. As we will see, garret writers and rabble rousers, as well as former prime ministers, leading intellectuals, and prominent clergymen, all expressed these views. Making sense of the twists and turns of imperial politics requires pushing the origins of the American Revolution back to the mid–eighteenth century. Understandably, most historians accept Prime Minister George Grenville’s arguments in favor of colonial taxation and explain the change in imperial policy by describing both the growth of Britain’s empire and the enormous debt it contracted during the Seven Years’ War.54 Britain strained every nerve in fighting France and Spain in a war that took its forces from the Mississippi to the Ganges. By the time the Treaty of Paris ended the bloodletting in 1763, Britain’s spending had increased 200 percent and its public debts had risen 86 percent, to nearly £130 million. Staggering though they were, the burdens of the Seven Years’ War were far less novel than we usually assume. The War of Austrian Succession, which took place during most of the 1740s, was also fought on several continents and in defense of empire. All over the world—at Louisbourg in Canada, Fontenoy in Belgium, Madras in India—British soldiers fought and died in the name of liberty and Protestantism. The costs of that struggle were similarly striking. Britain’s spending increased by 140 percent while public debt rose by more than 60 percent. The War of Austrian Succession was, unquestionably, less expensive than the great war that followed, but it nonetheless weighed on Britain’s finances, prompting David Hume to observe ominously in 1752, “either the nation must destroy public credit, or public credit will destroy the nation.”55 Given these enormous fiscal demands, it is not surprising that historians have identified a host of mid-eighteenth-century imperial reformers who insisted on the importance of regulating trade and collecting revenue.56 And yet those efforts proved a dead letter. Their failure demonstrates that war, debt, and empire did not necessarily lead to authoritarian reform and colonial taxation. Britain did not have to tax its colonies in order to maintain its solvency in

16 i n t r o d u c t i o n

1765, any more than it did in 1755.57 Its political leaders, supported by a diverse public, made a choice—one that would have enormous implications for world history. The chapters that follow explain these choices and their consequences on both sides of the Atlantic. Chapter 1 recounts the political-economic debate surrounding the War of Austrian Succession and shows why authoritarian reform initially failed. That debate centered on a critique of Whig government. Those establishment Whigs who led Britain believed that their country could only survive the mortal threats of French absolutism and Jacobitism by building a strong fiscal-military state, one that not only engaged in European warfare but also raised large amounts of revenue through high domestic taxes and extensive public borrowing. Britain’s midcentury prime ministers, Henry Pelham and his brother Thomas Pelham-Holles, Duke of Newcastle, believed that Britain had created a powerful commercial empire, and they had little interest in either taxing the colonies or spending heavily to defend them. This vision of politics, which placed a heavy burden on both country gentry and middling sorts, did not go unchallenged. Both radical Whigs and authoritarian reformers mounted damning, if largely unsuccessful, critiques of Whig government. And they insisted that Britain radically overhaul its fiscal and imperial policies.

2. Public Debt, Spending, and Taxes: Britain, 1754–1763. (Source: B. R. Mitchell, British Historical Statistics [Cambridge, 1988], 576, 579, 600–601)

introduction

17

3. Public Debt, Spending, and Taxes: Britain, 1739–1749. (Source: Mitchell, British Historical Statistics, 576, 579, 600)

The conflict over political economy and empire was particularly intense during the Seven Years’ War. Chapters 2 and 3 show how ideological divisions in both the colonies and in Britain shaped the war effort. As the colonies built their own fiscal-military states, North American radicals and authoritarian reformers clashed over questions of imperial authority, taxation, and consumption. Fierce though these conflicts were, governors and military commanders negotiated with colonists because the Duke of Newcastle’s establishment Whig ministry expected them to. Chapter 3 shows why this was by offering an account of the British debate over the war. Although establishment Whigs were initially reluctant to commit money and men to rebuff French encroachments in North America, military defeats, and angry denunciations from radical Whigs on both sides of the Atlantic eventually led to an alliance with radical Whig leader William Pitt. Pitt’s strategy of colonial reimbursement and global warfare helped make the Seven Years’ War one of the most expensive in Britain’s history, and it led politicians like George Grenville to accuse him of warmongering and demagoguery. Although authoritarian reformers were initially a voice in the wilderness, the accession of George III and the fall of the Pitt-Newcastle ministry gave them the opportunity they needed to enact a sweeping program of reform

18 i n t r o d u c t i o n

and austerity. They cut back the war effort, negotiated peace with France, and stifled dissent—even as radical and establishment Whigs cried out against them. The Stamp Act emerged from this debate over the costs and consequences of warfare. Chapter 4 shows why the same politicians who concluded that Pitt’s war was an expensive boondoggle also pushed for the taxation of the American colonies. The Stamp Act was part of their broader program of authoritarian reform, which promised to restore Britain’s finances and trade through fiscal retrenchment and moral improvement. But it prompted angry denunciations on both sides of the Atlantic. Radical and establishment Whigs accused their leaders of abandoning both the British constitution and the mutually beneficial relationship that had long sustained the empire. They denounced Grenville and his cronies for seeking colonial tax revenue when they should have been encouraging the growth of America’s vast consumer market. Their argument resonated powerfully in the colonies and with Britain’s merchants and manufacturers. When Grenville’s ministry fell, in July 1765, Britain’s new establishment Whig prime minister, the Marquess of Rockingham, seized on the postwar recession to denounce the economic consequences of authoritarian reform. Forging a broad and popular coalition with radical Whigs, Rockingham’s administration rolled back Grenville’s program, including the Stamp Act. The repeal of the Stamp Act did little, however, to settle the ideological debate that divided the British Empire. Chapters 5 and 6 explain why the political cultures of Britain and America diverged along geographical lines in the decade before independence. Chapter 5 examines the political evolution of the mother country as authoritarian reformers exploited the social, political, and economic concerns of the landed elite to seize control of the state. Despite the continuing opposition of radicals and establishment Whigs, authoritarian reformers used their power, not only to pass the Townshend Duties and Massachusetts Government Act, but also to reform British government in India. Chapter 6 shows how colonists responded to this transformation of the British Empire. Radical resistance gained strength from economic anxiety and the fact that authoritarian imperial reform was clearly and explicitly designed to subordinate the colonial economy. American radicals, far from being libertarians, were fully committed to using the power of government to achieve their goals. They used the language of political economy to argue for a boycott of British goods, believing that this not only

introduction

19

would stimulate American manufacturing but would make the colonies less dependent on the mother country. When a majority of colonists, who were keen observers of Britain’s political scene, became convinced that authoritarian reformers had taken control of Westminster and Whitehall, they declared their independence. Even after civil war divided the British Empire, the fate of North America remained an open question. Chapter 7 shows how the ideological conflict over empire and public finance continued throughout the war. The American War of Independence was one of the most controversial wars in Britain’s history, provoking demands for domestic reform and even flashes of republicanism. In the colonies, the difficulties of forging a new and effective American state meant that conflict was endemic. For both sides, common cultural ties and lingering affection for the British Empire prompted repeated attempts to negotiate a settlement. Those efforts ultimately failed because even the most moderate members of North’s administration misread American sentiments and refused to accept colonists as equals. Most colonists, on the other hand, were strongly attached to building a new, republican empire in North America, one made possible by the Articles of Confederation. The war’s ultimate conclusion reveals not only the incompatibility of radicalism and authoritarian reform but also their continued existence on both sides of the Atlantic. When the war finally ended, Britain’s radical Whig prime minister, William Petty, second Earl of Shelburne, not only granted the new United States a generous peace but sought to reunite the empire along radical Whig lines. The chapters that follow take the British Empire as the unit of analysis because the mother country and its colonies were part of a single political community. I am certainly not the first historian to connect the history of Britain to its American colonies. Nearly a century ago, Charles Andrews insisted that the American Revolution was a global event, and a few historians since then have followed in his footsteps.58 Nevertheless, most accounts of the revolution tend to focus on one side of the Atlantic or the other, relying on the work of other historians to complete the story. This book takes a different approach; its arguments are based upon extensive research in both the United States and Europe. To be sure, the founders—Franklin, Jefferson, Adams, and Washington—are all here, as well as innumerable anonymous pamphleteers, newspaper writers, and activists. But their stories are interwoven with many less familiar names—figures like the East India

20 i n t r o d u c t i o n

merchant Matthew Decker and George III’s spymaster, William Eden— whose experiences, while not as well known, were no less important in shaping America’s independence. Stitching American and British history back together allows us to set the American Revolution in the context of world history. Although it has sometimes appeared to lack the éclat of either the French or Russian Revolutions,59 it was clear to observers at the time that the American Revolution was both a radical event and of far more than local importance. Indeed, it was part of a broader story in which the growth of fiscal-military states and empires led to an age of democratic revolution. In eighteenth-century France, monarchs and their ministers worked tirelessly to strengthen the state—fiscally, bureaucratically, and legally—so that it could better compete with its geopolitical rivals, only to face the deluge of the French Revolution when those efforts provoked fierce backlash from workers and consumers.60 In Spain’s American empire, Bourbon reforms that were designed to increase revenue and expand commerce against European foes led to resistance and revolt from Mexico to Peru.61 The British Empire did not escape this fate. As it later did during Europe’s 1848 revolutions, Britain outsourced political crisis to its colonies.62 Thus, neither Britain nor America’s eighteenth-century history was exceptional. No less than in continental Europe, politicians and the public throughout the empire grappled with the Enlightenment question of what kind of social, political, and economic arrangements were necessary to survive in a violent and divided world.63 They turned to political economy, which mixed history and politics, economics and social theory to offer solutions for how states and sovereigns should reform their societies. Their keen awareness that inequality, growth, and prosperity depended on institutions and governance offers a powerful rejoinder to the all too common assumption that the state exists only to hinder economic development. In setting the American Revolution in the context of Enlightenment arguments about governance and the economy, we can also see that conservative ideas were an important part of the Enlightenment. Authoritarian reformers were neither villainous nor stupid. They articulated a distinct vision of politics, one that sought peace and justice through hierarchy and authority. No less than today’s conservatives, eighteenth-century authoritarian reformers mobilized both intellectually and politically to achieve their ends. Enlightened absolutism, even if it was parliamentary absolutism, exerted a powerful influence in Britain. George Grenville read widely and berated American radicals

introduction

21

for misinterpreting Locke.64 George III’s favorite, the Earl of Bute, traveled to Leiden to study botany with Europe’s most famous naturalist, Linnaeus, encouraged the transformation of Kew Gardens into a scientific research center, and tutored the future king in the principles of political economy.65 The great dictionary writer Samuel Johnson and the Scottish philosopher Adam Ferguson condemned radicals throughout the British Empire for their licentiousness and irrationality.66 These authoritarian reformers represented a profoundly conservative version of the Enlightenment, one that foreshadowed the anti-republicanism of the 1790s as well as the rural paternalism that transformed the Scottish highlands and Bengal.67 Theirs was a very different Enlightenment than that of Franklin and Price, but its implications for the American Revolution and for world history were no less profound. Recognizing the importance of conservatism and empire in the history of eighteenth-century Britain has important implications for how we think about the relationship between ideas, politics, and economic growth. In recent years, social scientists have drawn attention to institutions, effectively the rules of economic exchange, to explain why some countries are prosperous while others are poor.68 They often point to Britain’s success over the long eighteenth century, especially when compared with France, to argue that liberal institutions promote growth. While they rightly note Britain’s history of representative government, good public credit, and efficient mechanisms for adjudicating property rights, they often tell an uplifting story of political reform and economic expansion that runs from the Glorious Revolution to the nineteenth century.69 And yet, increasing authoritarianism, inequality, and colonial extraction all marked Britain’s eighteenth century. This suggests that it was not liberalism that fostered its fiscal and economic preeminence, but a strong and effective state. That state funneled wealth into productive enterprises and secured elite interests at home and abroad.70 Moreover, as Thomas Piketty observes, control of colonial capital allowed imperial powers to consume significantly more than they produced, even as they grew increasingly wealthy.71 Thus, British governance was not protective of property as such, but the property of certain groups: landowners and creditors, capitalists and imperialists. Unequal taxation imposed by an unrepresentative Parliament meant that the property of colonial subjects, working people, and debtors received far less deference. When those groups resisted, as they did in North America, Bengal, and the City of London, they were met with bayonets and gunfire. This is not to say that the industrial

22 i n t r o d u c t i o n

revolution required either authoritarianism or imperial conquest, but it does suggest that the British experience was not so different from what took place in Asia during the twentieth century.72 Britain’s eighteenth-century institutions proved effective in securing unprecedented economic growth, but they also imposed significant burdens. The United States also experienced remarkable growth following its break with Britain, and it too depended on both government policy and violence to sustain its expansion. Jefferson’s “empire of liberty” was in fact an empire of slavery and exclusion.73 But it was also an imperial republic that repudiated the widespread belief that the power and prosperity of states depended on the economic and fiscal resources of colonial possessions. In grafting the scale and diversity of an empire with the equality and public spirit of a republic, America’s founding generation created a genuinely new kind of state. Their revolution was about more than simply rejecting deference to authority and social distinction. It insisted that government’s legitimacy depended on both broad political participation and economic opportunity, at least for its white citizens. As a result, American’s revolutionaries forged a government that made both the general welfare and the development of North America its goal.74 Eighteenth-century European empires, with their domineering administrators, trade restrictions, and extremes of wealth and poverty were the antithesis of this republican creed. Far too often, Americans misread revolutionaries’ opposition to the inequities of imperial rule as an abhorrence of government. Ultimately, Revolution Against Empire is about how ideas and politics shape social and economic experience. As we grapple with the aftermath of financial crisis, growing inequality, and the decay of the welfare state, it is clear that the relationship between government and the economy lies at the core of modern politics. Politics is, as it was in the eighteenth century, a struggle for control of the state and its policies. Those battles have profound moral consequences, delivering hope and fear, comfort and pain, life and death. Thus, this book rejects the separation of economics and politics that has made it all too easy to argue that our material well-being is the inevitable consequence of either chance or individual ambition. It also rejects the notion that economic knowledge can ever be split from ideology. Instead, it joins many recent histories of capitalism in observing that markets and business are inseparable from government.75 But it also insists that capitalism has taken many forms, some more exploitative than others. No less than today,

introduction

23

eighteenth-century politicians, intellectuals, and activists marshaled ideas and built ideological networks in order to convince the public that their vision for the economy offered a better future. This was and is especially true of taxation and public debt, which are both the lifeblood of the state and a mechanism for transferring property from some citizens to others. Demands that governments curb inflation, trim debts, and reduce tax burdens or face catastrophic consequences are no less ideological now than they were two and half centuries ago. Despite the claim that public borrowing leads only to misery and destruction, the eighteenth century’s most indebted country launched the Industrial Revolution and defeated France, its larger geopolitical rival. Britain’s crisis—widespread unrest and the fracturing of its empire—was political, not economic. As questions of taxation, public debt, and austerity continue to bedevil our world, the American Revolution serves as a stirring reminder of the repercussions of fiscal policy. Then, as now, prosperity and poverty, war and revolution, depend on politics.

1 Britain’s Controversial Empire

On September 18, 1749, a frigate laden with gold sailed into Boston Harbor. Aboard were 215 chests filled with pieces of eight and a hundred casks of coined copper.1 The cash was part of the more than £235,000 reimbursement that Parliament had granted for New England’s audacious assault on the French Canadian citadel at Louisbourg.2 Outnumbered and outgunned, a force of three thousand New Englanders had taken the “Gibraltar of North America” by storm.3 But the expedition also stretched the financial wherewithal of the New England colonies beyond their limits. It cost Massachusetts more than £180,000 sterling, which not only amounted to more than ten times the colony’s spending on civil government but also further depreciated its faltering currency. The Massachusetts House complained that the cost of the expedition had brought “distress, if not ruin upon ourselves.”4 The great sums spent taking Louisbourg and Cape Breton Island from France prompted the New England colonies and their agents in England to lobby Parliament for reimbursement. It was not an easy sell. New England undertook the expedition on Massachusetts governor William Shirley’s initiative and not the Crown’s. To some, like Britain’s secretary of state, John Russell, fourth Duke of Bedford, the expedition only encouraged the independence of the American colonies. And yet, the lobbying of colonial agents, the support of Britain’s merchants and manufacturers, and the possibility that English gold and silver might redeem the depreciated Massachusetts currency persuaded Parliament to repay the colonies for their service to the empire.5

24

b r i ta i n ’ s c o n t r o v e r s i a l e m p i r e

25

Britain’s reimbursement of the New England colonies following the War of Austrian Succession stands in stark contrast to its policy following the Seven Years’ War. Following that later conflict, the colonies received stamps rather than specie for their contribution to Britain’s war effort. Indeed, the midcentury British Empire faced many of the same problems as it would during the 1760s. In the aftermath of the War of Austrian Succession, many British people believed their nation stood on a fiscal precipice. The government’s interest payments rose to nearly half of its budget by 1750, and its citizens saw their tax burden increase by more than 20 percent.6 Even more striking, public debt increased from £48 to £78 million sterling between 1738 and 1749 as military spending far outstripped tax receipts. By the end of the war, Bedford questioned whether it was “possible for us, without absolutely undoing ourselves and mortgaging all we are worth, to raise another eleven millions?” Britain signed the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle amid growing calls for “oeconomy.”7 Fears of economic ruin led to particularly close scrutiny of the colonies and their contribution to the empire. Colonial critics complained of truculent assemblies, riots in New Jersey and Massachusetts, trade with the French sugar colonies, and an untoward fondness for inflationary paper money.8 And while the British government did make some policies that verged on authoritarian during the 1750s, including the Currency Act of 1751 and the creation of a North American commander in chief, they were a far cry from the taxes, restrictions on settlement, and military occupation of the next decade.9 American historians largely explain the trajectory of the British Empire during the 1750s as the work of pragmatic British reformers who struggled against both political apathy at home and American intransigence abroad.10 While these accounts shed considerable light on the efforts of some British politicians and polemicists to reform their empire, they, unfortunately, treat imperial policy as the outcome of either a clash of personalities or of technocratic administration. In so doing, they largely ignore the ways in which British domestic politics shaped imperial governance.11 This is not surprising. The 1750s were a particularly confused period in British political history, one in which the partisan and ideological categories that had divided Britain earlier in the century became increasingly murky. With Britain dominated by the Whig Party, some historians argue that its politics were less a battle over ideas than a struggle for power and position.12 Others, however, emphasize the ideological clash between the governing “court”

26 b r i ta i n ’ s c o n t r o v e r s i a l e m p i r e

party dominated by the Whigs and a patriotic or “country” party with a strong Tory influence.13 The problem with both of these interpretations is that the first ignores sharp disagreements about domestic, foreign, and imperial policy, while the second downplays the profoundly different political values of the regime’s critics. As one recent historian of the period has put it, the patriotic opposition was a “broad umbrella” in which “different ideological traditions, Whig and Tory, Jacobite and Republican, came together, mixed and became intertwined.”14 The challenge for historians of the American Revolution is to understand what this scrambled opposition meant for colonial policy. Britain’s colonies escaped parliamentary taxation and tighter metropolitan control during the 1750s because both the dominant Whig establishment and their radical Whig critics were ideologically committed to a high degree of colonial self-government. Establishment Whigs advocated a high-tax, free-spending fiscal-military state that relied on encouraging colonial trade while Whig radicals offered a principled defense of colonial autonomy and an empire of settlement. Although often at odds with each other, they both opposed extracting money from the colonies. Nevertheless, the costs of war and empire led to sharp conflict about what kind of empire Britain ought to have. Authoritarian reformers, who were often quite sympathetic to patriotic and opposition arguments, attacked the Whig establishment’s fiscal-military state for encouraging disorder in Britain and its colonies, demanding both fiscal austerity and a more centralized empire as a solution. And while their critique of the empire’s political economy convinced both the future King of England and a growing proportion of the political nation during the 1760s, it remained a marginal position throughout the 1740s and 1750s.

Establishment Whigs and Britain’s Fiscal-Military State By the time New Englanders seized Louisbourg, Britain was close to becoming a one-party state.15 But the dominance of the Whig Party led to ideological divisions among its members that ultimately proved to be its undoing. Earlier in the century, Whigs and Tories had developed sophisticated party organizations and engaged in fierce contests to win the affections of voters. Whigs claimed to speak on behalf of commercial freedom, parliamentary supremacy, and Protestant toleration. They challenged Tories who contended for the rule of church and king, land and patriarchy.16 Yet the

b r i ta i n ’ s c o n t r o v e r s i a l e m p i r e

27

accession of George I, two Jacobite rebellions, and the brass-knuckle politics of Sir Robert Walpole had not only shut the Tories out of government but diminished their ranks in Parliament. As Queen Anne’s reign neared its end, there were 358 Tories and 200 Whigs in the House of Commons. By 1754, the number of Tories had fallen to 117. Locked out of power, ambitious Tories were left with limited options, so much so that Horace Walpole famously quipped, “in truth, all sensible Tories I ever knew were either Jacobites or became Whigs; those that remained Tories remained fools.”17 This was perhaps too extreme. Some Tories trimmed their sails and entered government as Whigs, while others embraced patriotic critiques of the governing elite, attacking its corruption, enthusiasm for public borrowing, and European foreign policy.18 Indeed, their condemnations flirted with radicalism and often enjoyed considerable popularity.19 But it was not only Tories who expressed doubts about their country’s leaders; Whigs also attacked the grandees who directed their government. Sometimes these were personal clashes, sometimes they were differences of policy and ideology. But they reflected the factitiousness of a party that had spent decades at the apex of power. Indeed, a small but significant number of Whigs joined the Tories in opposition during the 1740s and 1750s. Many of these opposition Whigs, such as William Pitt, embraced radical arguments about the dangers of an overbearing executive and the need for a foreign policy that would put an end to French absolutism. Others, like Viscount Charles Townshend, became convinced by Tory arguments about the awful consequences of war, taxation, and public debt. Although it still mattered whether someone called themselves a Whig or a Tory, views about what kind of state and empire Britain ought to have increasingly transcended party lines. Under Robert Walpole’s leadership, Whig leaders consolidated power through a combination of patronage, propaganda, and policy.20 Their willingness to engage, co-opt, and crush their opponents explains why Whig rule has long seemed based on pragmatism rather than principle, power rather than popularity. Despite this reputation, establishment Whig politicians and their supporters evinced a distinct ideology. That ideology, which was later articulated by opponents of authoritarian imperial reform such as Edmund Burke and his patron Charles Watson-Wentworth, Lord Rockingham, outlasted the Whig establishment’s dominance as a political party.21 Establishment Whiggery was the political creed of Britain’s great aristocrats, financiers, and merchants. It was essentially conservative—committed to social stability

28 b r i ta i n ’ s c o n t r o v e r s i a l e m p i r e

through a close alliance between wealth and political influence. As firm opponents of absolutism, establishment Whigs defended the Hanoverian succession that had earlier in the century denied Britain’s crown to James II’s Catholic heirs and given it instead to a German Protestant, George I. They advocated parliamentary government, religious toleration, and a commercial empire. Their commitment to social stability at home meant that they also championed patronage politics, taxes on consumption, public debt, and colonial trade restrictions. Establishment Whigs were convinced that their political program was necessary for the survival of Britain’s vaunted balanced constitution, one in which, as H. T. Dickinson observes, property, rather than people, dominated.22 Whatever debt that was owed by establishment Whiggery to lateseventeenth-century radicalism, by the middle of the eighteenth century its leaders were fully committed to the dominance of British political life by a small social and economic elite. Walpole used political patronage extensively and put nearly a third of the members of the House of Commons on the government payroll.23 Whig Parliaments passed legislation that sought to protect elite property and keep wages low. In 1723, Parliament passed the Workhouse Test Act, which aimed to reduce poor rates by forcing the poor to complete a specified amount of work under the supervision of a workhouse. That same year, the Black Act imposed the death penalty for a variety of crimes that threatened elite landowners and their property in the countryside. And in 1725, Parliament approved legislation prohibiting combinations of journeymen demanding higher wages.24 While such legislation was undoubtedly both repressive and regressive, it reflected establishment Whigs’ conviction that it was in the nation’s best interest to support the wealthy and powerful. As Henry Pelham—whose deft political maneuvering allowed him to inherit Walpole’s position as prime minister—told the House of Commons in 1744, “those of the best families and fortunes” were the palladium of the nation’s liberties and its most reliable public servants.25 The well off and the well born had had every incentive, establishment Whigs argued, to use their place in government to oppose arbitrary power. Far from threatening the nation’s liberties, patronage politics prevented “popular frenzy or delusion” by discouraging gentlemen from “joining with popular faction, either at elections or in Parliament.”26 A strong government dominated by elites was necessary, establishment Whigs insisted, because Jacobites and malcontents menaced the nation’s

b r i ta i n ’ s c o n t r o v e r s i a l e m p i r e

29

stability. The pro-government newspaper the True Patriot, for example, condemned the “rage of zealots” and the “clamor of the mob,” insisting “the middle way is safest and best.”27 Maintaining that middle way in a fiercely divided country often required a sharp stick, and Walpole enacted a range of repressive policies that included the Riot Act in 1715 and the suspension of habeas corpus in 1722.28 He maintained an almost obsessive commitment to shaping public opinion, spending tens of thousands of pounds bankrolling newspapers and supervising their efforts to spread his government’s message.29 Walpole’s successors as prime minister, Henry Pelham and his brother the Duke of Newcastle, abandoned his use of censorship and a statesponsored press, but they retained his muscular opposition to Jacobitism and his contempt for the Whig regime’s critics. Both from Sussex, the Pelham brothers were heirs to a political dynasty that had sat in Parliament since the reign of Elizabeth. Despite their long political lineage, they were no strangers to the brass-knuckle partisanship of the early eighteenth century. As a member of the Kit-Cat Club—famous for its toasts to Whig beauties and its stable of literary and political luminaries—Newcastle had organized great demonstrations in favor of the Hanoverian succession.30 The duke often quarreled with his more affable younger brother over foreign policy, but the two were nonetheless united in their staunch advocacy of Whig government. Newspaper and pamphlet writers joined the Pelhams in attacking the “patriot” critics of the regime, mocking them for having no other principle than hating ministers and for suffering from “hypochondriac disorders.” In Parliament, Pelham likewise denounced the government’s opponents for their “schemes of oeconomy” and their “spirit of reformation.”31 Such unfounded opposition was not just naive; it undermined a government that was Britain’s best hope for security and liberty. While establishment Whigs had little patience for popular opposition, the public support they enjoyed demonstrates that those who embraced their vision of politics extended beyond a small aristocratic elite and its hired polemicists. Ministerial Whigs dominated most large urban constituencies between 1715 and 1755 and enjoyed the support of London high finance, more established merchants, and textile manufacturers. The approximately sixty thousand government creditors—mostly merchants and financiers but also tradesmen, craftsmen, artisans, civil servants, and professionals—may not themselves have been establishment Whigs, but they did endorse the regime by lending it their

30 b r i ta i n ’ s c o n t r o v e r s i a l e m p i r e

money.32 In the eighteenth century, buying government debt was often a partisan act, signaling confidence in both political leaders and the state. Such expressions were particularly important for establishment Whigs because they showed that the party stood for more than the naked exercise of power. Establishment Whigs insisted that their government, unlike that of absolutists and Jacobites, derived its legitimacy from a representative Parliament and its respect for property.33 When their government found itself on the wrong side of a clear majority of public opinion, they reversed themselves. For example, they quickly repealed a 1753 law allowing the naturalization of British Jews after it prompted rioting and widespread denunciations of the regime. Despite believing that Jewish naturalization would bring the benefit of religious toleration and expand Britain’s labor force, establishment Whigs were unwilling to sacrifice either stability or power.34 In a divided world in which popular discontent could easily abet Jacobitism and French absolutism, establishment Whigs argued that only a permanent army could preserve British liberty. A professional military force would prevent “seditious mobs, tumults, and riots,” while also deterring Britain’s foreign enemies. Pelham told the House of Commons that if the nation’s “armies had not been kept up and augmented, or if squadrons had not been fitted out, as often as occasion required, I am convinced we should have been invaded, or some of our allies swallowed up, and the balance of power quite overturned.”35 The establishment Whig press came to a similar conclusion. Britain’s “all-grasping and ambitious neighbor” left it no choice but “to keep up a force sufficient to prevent our happy constitution from being subverted by domestic conspiracies or foreign invasion.”36 Such an army facilitated European diplomatic engagement and helped maintain the balance of power. It went hand in hand with subsidies and alliances that prevented France from dominating both European politics and world trade.37 Facing military, commercial, and religious threats all around it, Britain could ill afford to ignore the dangers that lurked across the Channel. While subsidies for allies, a large standing army, and European intervention were shockingly expensive, establishment Whigs showed little interest in colonial revenue because they were confident that Britain’s expenses were manageable. Indeed, they were convinced that Britain’s fiscalmilitary state was the fountainhead of the nation’s growing prosperity. Between 1715 and 1756, the years of establishment Whig dominance, the British government spent more than £250 million sterling on defense, but it

b r i ta i n ’ s c o n t r o v e r s i a l e m p i r e

31

also saw the annual value of English exports surge from £5 million to £8.6 million.38 Even as money poured in and out of the treasury and public debt multiplied to unprecedented levels, establishment Whigs insisted that Britain’s engagement with a violently divided Europe placed manageable burdens on a nation that reaped the benefits of property rights, increased trade, and personal security. Believing “where liberty and property are precarious, labor will languish,” establishment Whigs insisted that safeguarding the nation from French absolutism and Jacobite popery were essential for its prosperity.39 Great armies, high taxes, and an extensive foreign policy were the price of both liberty and greatness. The author of “The Present History of Great Britain” declared that Whig government had “only produced industry, freedom, wealth, property, security, and real power to the people.” And he demanded to know whether it was “so unreasonable as to expect that they [the public] should pay taxes for preserving these paltry things.”40 Establishment Whigs trumpeted their success not just in the public sphere but in Parliament as well. As Henry Pelham told the House of Commons in 1748, “the nation is at present in a very happy situation.”41 Its trade was growing. Its debts were shrinking. And peace prevailed in Europe. While Whig leaders and their supporters advocated a high-tax, highspending state, they nonetheless crafted a domestic tax system that raised enormous sums while minimizing domestic opposition. We usually think of the Whigs as the party of commerce and trade, but their establishment’s desire for stability and power led them to embrace taxes that would avoid antagonizing Britain’s influential country gentry. They did this by insulating British landowners from the full cost of the fiscal-military state. Rather than reform or raise the land tax so that it could collect more revenue, Whig governments multiplied the number of taxes on consumption and worked to bring the taxation of imports under the control of the excise bureaucracy. Between 1715 and 1756, excise tax collection increased from £2.3 million to £3.3 million sterling, while the land tax remained relatively stable.42 The excise was an intrusive and regressive tax on consumer goods, and it provoked widespread public opposition, the most violent of which came in 1733 when Walpole attempted to expand its jurisdiction to wine and tobacco imports.43 Despite the controversy, establishment Whigs dismissed such attacks as the crocodile tears of smugglers and subversives.44 The excise provided Britain with a large and reliable source of revenue, one legitimized both by its parliamentary sanction and by its efficacy.45 Even more important, it guaranteed

32 b r i ta i n ’ s c o n t r o v e r s i a l e m p i r e

Britain’s stability by placating the gentry, whose aversion to the land tax had threatened the Whig regime at the beginning of the eighteenth century.46 The excise gave Britain the revenue it needed for an expansive foreign policy, but it also reflected establishment Whigs’ commitment to a commercial and manufacturing economy dominated by large producers and wealthy merchants. It allowed the state to maintain “close control” of manufacturers and their production techniques, dictating the layouts of businesses and regulating the content of consumer goods.47 Despite the invasive character of the excise and the fact that it increased the price of a variety of products, establishment Whigs insisted that it was sound economic and social policy. Indeed, they argued that higher prices and government regulation were not necessarily bad things. Much of the excise was collected on alcohol, a staple of many family budgets but also a luxury that threatened the nation’s moral and physical health. In 1743, establishment Whigs argued for an excise on spirituous liquors, contending that it was better to increase the cost of vice than to futilely ban it. Not only was this good social policy, it would allow the nation to profit from a distilling industry that competed with France the world over. George Cholmondeley, third Earl of Cholmondeley and Robert Walpole’s son-in law, argued that Parliament ought to do everything it could to promote an industry that was of “much advantage to the nation” and that supported “great numbers of people.”48 Cholmondeley was typical of establishment Whigs, who presented themselves as the champions of Britain’s traders and manufacturers. A vibrant commercial economy was, they believed, entirely compatible with taxes on consumer goods. Taxes might raise prices, but Britain remained competitive because its European rivals also levied taxes on their subjects. Henry Fox, a reliable spear carrier for both Walpole and the Pelhams, was typical of those Whigs who defended the economic consequences of the excise when he argued that Britain’s status as a “trading nation” meant that it “ought not to supply the public expense by taxes which affect our commerce or manufactures.”49 Nevertheless, such views reflected establishment Whigs’ commitment to a commercial economy and the challenge that they faced in maintaining a political coalition dependent on British landowners. One way of meeting that challenge was through the extensive use of public credit. Debt allowed the government to pay wartime expenses without dramatically increasing taxes. Lord chancellor and Newcastle confidant, Philip Yorke, first Earl of Hardwicke told Parliament that the government

b r i ta i n ’ s c o n t r o v e r s i a l e m p i r e

33

had to balance debt reduction with necessary military and diplomatic expenses. The alternative to borrowing, Britain’s highest judge explained, was “laying new or heavier taxes upon the people.”50 And while establishment Whigs faced incessant calls to reduce or eliminate the nation’s debts, they defended credit as the only means by which Britain could both pay its bills and maintain social stability. The government borrowed, Henry Fox explained, because it had to take into account “not only to what the people are able to pay, but what they are willing to pay, and the manner in which they are to pay, without being provoked to a rebellion.”51 And although they supported modest debt reduction following the War of Austrian Succession, establishment Whigs rejected arguments that Britain’s mountain of credit spelled impending ruin.52 Peacetime debt reduction would, they hoped, give Britain the wherewithal to borrow even greater sums when, inevitably, the next war came.53 Rather than shy away from public credit or demand that colonies raise taxes to help Britain pay its obligations, establishment Whigs argued that the national debt supercharged Britain’s economy. In pamphlets such as An Essay upon Publick Credit, The Universal Merchant, and Party Spirit in Time of Publick Danger, Whig pamphleteers argued that the national debt greatly increased the public’s access to credit.54 The author of Party Spirit, for example, informed readers that public borrowing created “a new kind of wealth; a wealth, far from imaginary, as some have called it, since it has the whole strength of this nation to support it.” Rather than destroy wealth by harming Britain’s export economy, the market in exchequer bills drew excess investment from all over Europe. In so doing, it created a new kind of wealth based on the inalienable credit of the nation. Indeed, this explained why, “since the first formation of the national debt, our commerce has been extending, our manufactures improving, our agriculture increasing, and with them, our people multiplying daily.” National borrowing and sound public credit relieved Britain of wartime burdens while at the same time drawing in capital and making credit available for investment. This was why one establishment Whig pamphleteer could say, “there are no trading and free nations, which have not contracted a large debt.”55 Public debt was not only the sinews of power; it was the lifeblood of a modern commercial economy. Establishment Whigs mobilized vast sums for Britain’s military and diplomatic endeavors by forging a close relationship with the City of London’s financial elite. The mid-eighteenth-century British state raised money and

34 b r i ta i n ’ s c o n t r o v e r s i a l e m p i r e

maintained public credit through a financial system in which the great London corporations—the Bank of England, South Sea Company, and East India Company—not only created a community of investors but also loaned money to the British state.56 Those with close connections to the Pelhams, financiers and merchants such as Samson Gideon and Joseph Martin, profited handsomely as the government sold debt to a select group of investors.57 This relationship not only raised tens of millions; it also assured that the ministry’s wealthiest supporters benefited from the government’s constant demand for credit. While the cozy relationship between high finance and government drew howls of opposition, establishment Whigs recognized how dependent on the “moneyed interest” their fiscal-military state was. As one progovernment newspaper observed during the 1745 Jacobite uprising, Britain’s safety depended on the “moneyed men” acting with “prudence and firmness by continuing to support the credit of the Bank of England.”58 In building an elitist fiscal-military state that maintained political stability at home and checked French power abroad, establishment Whigs advocated a commercial vision of empire.59 The importance of the colonies meant that Britain had to take an active role in managing their trade. The Navigation Acts, which were designed to provide British manufacturers with cheap raw materials, were a central component of this effort.60 George Coade Jr., an Exeter wool merchant and supporter of Henry Pelham, argued that trade required “utmost care and protection of the legislature” because it was of the “utmost importance to the wealth, power, and influence of his majesty, the security and preservation of his dominions, as well as the happiness and felicity of his subjects.”61 Indeed, the regime’s supporters showed considerable interest in developing colonies. Not only did establishment Whigs frequently discuss colonial matters in meetings and correspondence, but their newspapers reported important events throughout the empire. When William Shirley announced the capture of Louisbourg, the Whig Daily Gazetteer printed his speech on its front page.62 Establishment Whigs’ belief that Britain’s economic prosperity depended on trade meant that they actively encouraged colonial economic development. However, they shaped that development through parliamentary legislation that privileged existing metropolitan interests, sometimes at the expense of colonial ambitions. This was particularly clear in the debate over both the Iron Act of 1750 and the Currency Act of 1751. The Iron Act encouraged the production of bar iron in the colonies while prohibiting the

b r i ta i n ’ s c o n t r o v e r s i a l e m p i r e

35

building of steel furnaces and slitting mills. While historians have long seen this legislation as part of the mercantilist consensus against colonial manufacturing, Thomas Penn, proprietor of Pennsylvania and a close supporter of Henry Pelham, believed that the administration’s members were “friends” to the bill and had only reluctantly acquiesced to the ban on steel manufacturing in the colonies.63 That same commitment to colonial economic management was also evident in the Currency Act of 1751, which was strongly supported by more conservative members of the Whig establishment such as Horace Walpole and Alderman William Baker. By limiting inflation and runaway credit, it served long-standing goals of conservative merchants on both sides of the Atlantic.64 Establishment Whigs were happy to intervene in colonial affairs when Britain’s economic interests required it, but their commercial vision of empire meant that they showed little interest in levying taxes in North America. And while they supported modest duties on colonial imports, Hardwicke explicitly defended the right of American legislatures to raise money without outside interference.65 This is less surprising than it might seem. A robust fiscalmilitary state at home meant that it was far easier to collect revenue within Britain than outside of it. That is not to say that establishment Whigs rejected Parliament’s right to tax the colonies if Britain’s interests required it. William Baker, a trusted adviser to the government on the colonial policy and a future opponent of the Stamp Act, proposed that Parliament levy duties on the colonies’ foreign imports, using the tax to pay for a permanent military force in North America.66 It is telling that Baker’s tax also doubled as a trade regulation, discouraging colonial consumption of foreign molasses, rum, and wine. Even more telling was the government’s response. After considerable hand-wringing, Newcastle elected to send troops and money to defend the colonies from the French and their Native American allies, but he made no effort to support Baker’s tax. Such policies reflected the view that the colonies “grew to what they are, more from their own excellent situation, and the influence of English liberty and laws, which they carried into the deserts, than by any extraordinary encouragement from home.”67 Establishment Whig government—both in the colonies and in Britain—was at best moderate and elitist and at worse self-interested and menacing. Patronage politics, public order maintained by force, and a regressive fiscal-military state were all the result of establishment Whig principles. But so too was a comparatively liberal regime. Such a state was governed by a

36 b r i ta i n ’ s c o n t r o v e r s i a l e m p i r e

representative Parliament and committed to empire as a commercial project. It allowed Britain to expand trade, raise vast sums of money, and to challenge France, its larger adversary. These were real accomplishments, but they weighed heavily on certain segments of society. As taxes and debts increased, and the very real costs of imperial competition mounted, establishment Whigs faced a growing chorus of critics. Their regime’s detractors insisted that Britain was neither prosperous nor free, and they demanded reform both at home and throughout the British Empire.

Patriotic Conservatism: The Political Economy of Authoritarian Reform As successfully as the Whig establishment dominated British politics, the fiscal-military state that the group created drew howls of opposition from both conservative Tories and disillusioned Whigs. This coalition of authoritarian reformers was convinced that establishment Whig government was responsible for the moral, economic, and political decline of Britain and its empire. Despite their declining strength and their engagement with urban radicalism, Tories nonetheless furnished this group with both politicians and ideas.68 They were joined by frustrated Whigs, many of whom had supported Walpole but had become dissatisfied with the fiscal and imperial policies of the Pelhams. Together, they concluded that Britain’s free-spending state undermined both the balanced constitution and the prosperity on which its survival depended. Authoritarian reformers were not a political party per se. They were, rather, an ideological vanguard, a loosely organized group of politicians, publicists, and theorists who shared a patriotic commitment to Britain’s moral and economic regeneration. Some, such as William Murray, the future lord chief justice and Earl of Mansfield, were former Tories who had entered Whig government in pursuit of both power and political reform. Others, such the Duke of Bedford, Charles Townshend, and George Montagu Dunk, second Earl of Halifax, came from prominent Whig families. Yet others, such as Henry St. John, Viscount Bolingbroke, John Shebbeare, and Matthew Decker, were former Jacobites and committed Tories. Their views found their way not just into parliamentary speeches and pamphlets but also into periodicals like the Remembrancer and Critical Review.69 Although authoritarian reformers were divided by party identity, social connections, and

b r i ta i n ’ s c o n t r o v e r s i a l e m p i r e

37

religious differences, they nonetheless shared a damning critique of Whig governance. What brought these seemingly disparate politicians, commentators, and their supporters together was their shared conviction that Britain and its empire were, as Bolingbroke put it, “in a crisis that must turn either to life or death, and that cannot turn to the former unless remedies are applied much more effectual than those of mountebanks.”70 In advocating far-reaching domestic and foreign policy changes, authoritarian reformers deployed a sophisticated economic theory that has too often been mistaken by historians as either part of a mercantilist consensus or a pragmatic call for imperial reform.71 On the contrary, their economic arguments were rooted in a strong sense that the Whig establishment’s economic and fiscal policies had led the nation to a moral precipice. Corruption was manifest in the impotence of Britain’s ruling elites and in the disorderly behavior of its workers and colonists. Preserving the British constitution, these writers and politicians argued, required policies and institutions that would discipline Britain’s society and empire. In the fight against licentiousness and insubordination, taxation was a particularly potent weapon. Believing that economic competitiveness depended on underselling foreign rivals, authoritarian reformers argued that tax reform would lower wages, increase exports, and stimulate industriousness. They drew upon this political economic thinking to argue that the American colonies ought to be taxed and thereby subordinated economically and politically to Britain. Diligently applied, these reforms would give Albion the resources it needed to survive in a dangerous world. Authoritarian reformers argued that the Whig establishment’s misguided economic policies had unleashed an epidemic of truculence and idleness. These social ills threatened to undermine both the constitution and commerce. Josiah Tucker, a Welsh clergyman whose critique of Britain’s economy was every bit as harsh as his attacks on Methodism, argued that the “want of subordination in the lower class of people” was Britain’s greatest disadvantage compared to France.72 Charles Townshend, third Viscount Townshend, whose more famous son later helped inflame relations between Britain and its colonies, maintained a frequent correspondence with Tucker in which they commiserated on the nation’s economic and moral health. In National Thoughts, Recommended to the Serious Attention of the Public, as well as in his correspondence, the viscount lamented the “idleness and debauchery” that gripped the “whole mass of the people.”73 Such degeneration, the kind

38 b r i ta i n ’ s c o n t r o v e r s i a l e m p i r e

4. William Hogarth, Gin Lane, 1751. With its depiction of the licentiousness and debauchery of Britain’s working class, Hogarth’s engraving expressed the anxieties of many authoritarian reformers. (Courtesy of the Lewis Walpole Library, Yale University)

brought to life by William Hogarth’s Gin Lane, was a product of not only luxury but of bad fiscal policy. Matthew Decker, a Tory merchant and former East India Company director whose political economic ideas proved enormously influential among authoritarian reformers, argued that Britain’s tax system had “corrupt[ed] the manners of the people” and made them “less governable.”74 These writers and politicians insisted that profligacy and sin were the consequence of excessive wages, which were, in turn, the natural by-products of establishment Whig political economy. By raising workers’ pay far above the level of subsistence, the government’s economic policies provided laborers with surplus income that they could spend on unnecessary consumer goods and on alcohol. And that undermined industriousness, allowing people to work less while still supporting themselves and their families.75

b r i ta i n ’ s c o n t r o v e r s i a l e m p i r e

39

Debauchery and decadence were not the only consequences of high wages; authoritarian reformers also believed that paying workers too much would cripple the economy. Britain’s prosperity depended on exports and that meant selling manufactured goods for less than its foreign competitors. Thus, authoritarian reformers linked high taxes to what they believed was their country’s economic decline. They followed Tory political economists such as Charles Davenant, who concluded that “scarce any new tax could be imposed, that did not give trade some desperate wound.”76 The reason why taxation proved so damaging to trade was that it raised prices and allowed foreigners to undersell Britain. Shebbeare, for example, argued that “trade will always seek the cheapest market, as naturally and necessarily as heavy bodies tend to the center.” For this reason, authoritarian reformers complained loudly that taxes were raising prices and wages to the point that British goods were uncompetitive abroad. Francis Fauquier, the South Sea Company director who later served as governor of Virginia, explained that Britain was falling behind because “three-fifths of every man’s income is actually paid, in taxes, to the support of government.”77 While such calculations exaggerated the British tax burden, they were based on the sophisticated view that the cost of taxation lay not only in the money paid to the state but also in the loss of demand produced by higher prices. Only by removing taxes from land and the necessities of life could Britain hope to compete with France economically and militarily. Believing in the power of fiscal and economic policy, authoritarian reformers sought to shift the burden of taxation onto consumption and sin. Economic pundit Malachy Postlethwayt, who cut his teeth as a publicist for Robert Walpole’s hated excise, complained of the “burthensome and extensive” impositions on subsistence goods and argued for taxes that lowered the cost of labor.78 He, like Tucker, Viscount Townshend, and Fauquier, borrowed liberally from Tory political economy. Together, they took Decker’s Essay on the Causes of the Decline in Our Foreign Trade as their starting point. Decker proposed either a universal tax on houses or levying taxes on various forms of consumption. He suggested forcing consumers to purchase licenses on wine, tea, and brandy in order to “mend our servants’ manners, by curing their luxury, or making them pay for it.” Tucker, in the same spirit of curbing disorder and raising revenue, proposed taxes on servants, bachelorhood, coaches, horses, hounds, and traveling on Sunday. And Fauquier proposed replacing the hated salt duty with a capitation tax on houses. While

40 b r i ta i n ’ s c o n t r o v e r s i a l e m p i r e

these reforms would have removed unpopular excise taxes from the necessaries of life, they nonetheless taxed Britain’s burgeoning consumer economy.79 By increasing the price of popular goods, such taxes raised the bar for aspirational consumption and forced people to work harder. They promised to prevent presumptuous merchants from buying a coach and six, husbandmen from purchasing elegant china, and day laborers from drinking gin. Decker’s scheme, for example, taxed beverages that were widely consumed by Britain’s working class. Raising the cost of joining consumer society through taxation would, authoritarian reformers hoped, undo the damage caused by the Whig government’s fiscal and economic policies, guaranteeing that no one who was “either willing or able to work” would be “kept idle.”80 Embracing Tory arguments that debt reduction was the only way to avert financial catastrophe, authoritarian reformers vociferously objected to borrowing vast amounts to fight continental wars. Debt, they contended, not only encouraged Britain to live beyond its means, it also increased the price of private borrowing and exports. For this reason, authoritarian reformers like Bolingbroke urged prioritizing debt reduction over tax relief. Francis Fauquier likewise concluded that it was “utopian” to believe that the government could ever borrow money without being exploited by its creditors.81 Unless Britain stopped living beyond its means, it would be unable to compete for foreign trade, and unable to raise the money it needed to fend off France. The nation’s survival depended on finding a way of paying for wars without relying on credit.82 Authoritarian reformers were adamant that Britain’s continued existence depended on policies that would make exports more competitive. Tax reform and debt reduction promised to cure the poor of their truculence, to restore economic growth, and to assure political stability. To that end, authoritarian reformers set out to convince landowners and merchants that the value of their property and the viability of their businesses depended on economic policies that sustained their country’s prowess as a low-wage manufacturer. That meant not only lower taxes but also preventing workers from organizing for higher pay. Such a strategy promised to build a patriotic movement that united the landed and commercial interests in a powerful coalition, one that would restore Britain’s economic greatness.83 And it reflected a vision of politics committed to the idea that the public good depended on inequality.

b r i ta i n ’ s c o n t r o v e r s i a l e m p i r e

41

5. William Hogarth, Beer Street, 1751. Authoritarian reformers hoped to use taxes and imperial reform to make Britain more like this scene of productivity and order. (Courtesy of the Lewis Walpole Library, Yale University)

Such views had profound implications for Britain’s colonies. If the nation’s survival depended on reducing taxes, debt, and the price of British exports, the empire would have to change. To that end, imperial officials like the Earl of Halifax, Henry McCulloh, James Abercromby, and Charles Townshend argued that colonial insolence dangerously raised the price of American staples on which Britain’s economy depended. Not only did the colonies resist taxing themselves, haggling with their governors and one another, but they frequently traded with the enemy. Authoritarian reformers believed that parliamentary taxation and closer metropolitan supervision could work together to discipline the colonies. In practice, this meant imposing a sharp distinction between a politically dominant core that manufactured goods and a dependent periphery that produced staple products.84 Such an economic order demanded both a more centralized empire

42 b r i ta i n ’ s c o n t r o v e r s i a l e m p i r e

and colonial taxation. This proposed transformation was not, however, the inevitable consequence of a growing empire or war. It was the product of an ideology that expressed deep concern about Britain’s moral, economic, and political prospects. Indeed, authoritarian reformers struggled throughout the 1750s to convince Britain’s leaders that the empire was in urgent need of transformation. Authoritarian reformers insisted on the subordination of colonial economies and governments because they believed that Great Britain’s future depended on it. Abercromby called for the “firm and permanent” dependence of the colonies in order to “render the strength, and the wealth, of these American provinces, subservient, and conducive, to the general, and particular interest, of this nation.” The expansion of the colonies made maintaining their dependence on Britain all the more important. Halifax declared that the North American colonies had become so crucial for Britain’s power and prosperity that it was of “utmost consequence to regulate them, that they may be useful to, and not rival in power and trade their mother kingdom,” while the London merchant Henry McCulloh insisted on “the necessity of having the Parliament to aid the prerogative of the Crown” in American affairs.85 Halifax and McCulloh both feared that North America’s low taxes and rapid growth would allow colonists to abandon and then outcompete British manufactures. Unless Britain tightened its control, both “the trade and commerce of this kingdom, as well as the security and safety of His Majesty’s subjects,” would suffer grievously, McCulloh explained.86 Indeed, these concerns were reinforced by North American governors like William Shirley of Massachusetts, who advised their British masters that the colonies would “in time unite to throw off their dependency upon their mother country.”87 Men like McCulloh and Halifax believed that reforming colonial taxation would help preserve colonial dependence. Tax reform would make Britain’s trade regulations more effective while also paying for Native American diplomacy.88 With this in mind, authoritarian reformers proposed reducing the duty on French and Dutch rum, sugar, and molasses as a way of preventing smuggling. Parliamentary taxation would use colonists’ own money to pay for institutions that would bring discipline to an unruly empire. This principle also applied to internal duties such as stamp taxes. With stamp taxes, McCulloh argued, “the colonies would not be much longer burthensome to this kingdom in advancing money for their security and enlargement.”89 In

b r i ta i n ’ s c o n t r o v e r s i a l e m p i r e

43

proposing such taxes, both McCulloh and Abercromby followed in the footsteps the former Pennsylvania governor and Jacobite sympathizer Sir William Keith. In December 1742, Keith had urged the Walpole administration to impose a stamp duty in North America in order to discipline licentious North American colonies. This would, he hoped, more firmly establish American’s “dependency on a British Parliament,” pay for Crown officers to prevent the “multitude of injurious oppressive practices” that took place in the colonies, and curb the “immoderate quantity” of paper money issued by their governments.90 More than two decades later, those same goals would prompt George Grenville to introduce his infamous Stamp Act. Using taxation to check the untoward behavior of the colonies was all the more imperative, authoritarian reformers believed, because the French had built highly effective imperial institutions that threatened to undo Britain’s greatest source of economic prosperity—its North American empire. Unlike the British colonies, which suffered from obstreperous assemblies, France had established an active and powerful Council of Commerce that imposed clear rules. And they had strengthened their colonies through grants to the church and by offering incentives for intermarriage with Native Americans. Consequently, Britain faced the prospect of losing Indian allies to an increasingly powerful adversary. This was bad enough, but France’s thriving North American settlements also allowed it “to carry on a great trade to India, Turkey, and Africa, and even to supply Spain with a great part of the commodities suited to the Spanish American trade,” McCulloh told Halifax.91 To this end, both Halifax and McCulloh urged Britain to emulate French imperial institutions.92 Such reforms were urgently necessary, they stressed, because Britain faced the alarming prospect that France’s superior colonial management would lead it to eclipse Britain, not only in North America but all over the world. Authoritarian reformers’ enthusiasm for imperial reform was a natural outgrowth of their views on the social and moral consequences of Britain’s fiscal-military state. In the face of high taxes and mounting public debts that seemed to threaten the very survival of Britain’s economy and constitutional system, authoritarian reformers concluded that Whig governance was unsustainable. Colonies, they argued, offered the best hopes for cheap staple goods, and that demanded reforms that would reduce British taxes and bring the colonies under tighter metropolitan control. Authoritarian reformers, like their establishment Whig antagonists, wanted to minimize the costs of

44 b r i ta i n ’ s c o n t r o v e r s i a l e m p i r e

North American empire. But, unlike those Whigs who dominated government, they sought to do this by compelling the Americans to raise money on their own—money that would be controlled by governors and imperial officials rather than truculent colonists. But this was by no means the view of either British officialdom or the British public in the middle decades of the eighteenth century. It was an insurgent position led by activists and politicians who faced long odds in the face of an entrenched Whig establishment.

Egalitarian Empire: Radical Whig Political Economy Radical Whigs joined authoritarian reformers in attacking the moral, economic, and political failings of Britain’s ruling regime. Indeed, they also deployed patriotic language calling for the revival of Britain’s economy and society and even moved in similar circles such as the City of London and Leicester House, the residence of the future George III. However, they came to very different conclusions about what policies were necessary for national regeneration. They sought a freer and a more prosperous society through fiscal and imperial policies that they believed would serve Britain’s middle class. Far from being libertarians, radical Whigs on both sides of the Atlantic sought to use the state, particularly its taxing power, to foster economic development. In this spirit, they promoted an empire of settlement, one that involved a close and relatively equal connection between the colonies and the metropole. The radical Whig coalition included politicians like William Pitt and John Perceval, second Earl of Egmont; political economists such as Joseph Massie, as well as the merchant and lord mayor of London, Sir John Barnard. Over the course of the 1750s, Britain’s radical Whigs enjoyed the support of many patriotic Tories, who embraced Whig ideas about religious toleration, foreign policy, and political economy. Publications like the Monitor; or, The British Freeholder and the London Evening Post, which began as organs of radical Toryism, gradually transformed themselves into opposition Whig publications.93 William Beckford, the Monitor’s publisher and Jamaica’s richest slave owner, evolved from a committed Tory into a radical Whig champion of colonial liberties.94 The result was a period in which it was sometimes difficult to tell a radical Whig from a radical Tory. And while radical Whigs remained on the sidelines of British government before 1757, they were a potent political force on account of their ability to mobilize popular sentiment. Indeed, by the end

b r i ta i n ’ s c o n t r o v e r s i a l e m p i r e

45

of the 1750s, their greatest champion, William Pitt, was Britain’s leading minister, whose policies on both the militia and the colonies were the order of the day. Radical Whigs were every bit as concerned about moral decline as authoritarian reformers. Unlike authoritarian reformers, however, they were more worried about immorality trickling down. They blamed the excesses of Britain’s fiscal-military state, which multiplied the number of sinecures and pensions, for promoting conspicuous consumption among Britain’s elite.95 Moral decay undermined public accountability by encouraging vote selling and the pursuit of parasitic state offices. The radical Whig moralist John Brown, whose Estimate of the Manners and Principles of the Times proved a blockbuster from London to western Massachusetts, argued that parliamentary influence had “conspired with the luxury and ruling manners of the times to weaken the national powers, by raising men to places of the most important trust, who were in some respect or other unequal to the task.”96 William Pitt, who spent a lifetime wracked by both depression and gout, established his radical Whig bona fides through impassioned, if often abusive, speeches in the House of Commons. He denounced the corruption that had perverted Britain’s fiscal-military state, declaring that taxes were being “extorted” to support “ministerial tyranny.” Radical Whigs like Pitt and Beckford hoped to clean the “Augean stable of corruption” and to deliver the people from a “pack of place-men, who in idleness and luxury eat out the vitals of the nation by their large salaries.” Unlike authoritarian reformers, who sought to reverse the moral degeneration of the lower orders, radicals saw corruption and idleness among those in the highest ranks of society as Britain’s real problem. The common people of Britain, Brown explained, were “much more irreproachable than their superiors.”97 While radical Whigs attacked the establishment’s fiscal-military state for encouraging luxury, they were, nonetheless, staunch defenders of consumer society. They opposed excess and idleness as an impediment to industry and productivity and celebrated middle-class production and consumption. “In its middle and more advanced period,” Brown argued, commerce “provides conveniences, increaseth numbers, coins money, gives birth to arts and science, creates equal laws, diffuses general plenty and general happiness.” It was only when commerce gave rise to luxury that problems arose. But luxury, radical Whig writers made clear, was not the same thing as consumption. “Luxury is not the use of any convenient garment

46 b r i ta i n ’ s c o n t r o v e r s i a l e m p i r e

vessel, etc.,” the Monitor explained. It was, rather, “the excess in apparel, goods, and provisions.”98 And the real problem was imported luxuries, which employed foreigners and discouraged work among Britain’s laborers. Consumption, especially when it was done frugally, was, in fact, the handmaiden of industriousness and growth. This was the very opposite of the Whig establishment’s profligacy, which damaged Britain’s economy and heightened the danger of French universal monarchy. Radical Whigs accused the government’s leaders of wasting public money on useless sinecures and poorly conceived diplomatic initiatives. True frugality, they argued, meant confronting France, spending money on colonial defense, and investing in infrastructure.99 Still, parsimony was compatible with bellicosity. The author of Miscellaneous Reflections upon the Peace, and Its Consequences made it clear that “the only danger” that could result from frugality in government was “pushing it too far; since no body will deny, that improper savings are by no means the marks of true and genuine frugality.” The problem was that Whig leaders were wasting a shocking amount of money. William Pitt spoke for many radicals when he told the House of Commons in 1741 that had France spent as much as Britain had buying influence it “would have been able to purchase the submission of half the nations of the earth.”100 To that end, radical Whigs urged the government to pay for forts on the North American frontier, forts that were necessary to secure Britain’s vital commercial interests.101 Like their more conservative counterparts in opposition, they urged a naval-based strategy that would project British power. Unlike authoritarian reformers, however, they explicitly rejected the “odious, as well as unconstitutional” practice of impressment and resisted professionalizing the navy.102 But regardless of whether and how the navy was reformed, radical Whigs insisted that Britain needed to radically change its fiscal priorities. In advocating frugality, radical Whigs criticized the uses and excesses of public credit that had developed since the Glorious Revolution. However, their apparent hostility to borrowing was more nuanced than it sometimes appears. While radical Whigs objected to Britain’s ballooning national debt, they focused their attack on the way public credit had encouraged wastefulness while enriching a select few.103 “debt,” the Monitor opined, “is the ready way to poverty: a wise people, no more than a wise man, will never place his security in a load of debts.” But the paper’s objection was not to debt itself, but to excessive debt, to debts incurred for “large armies to defend foreign

b r i ta i n ’ s c o n t r o v e r s i a l e m p i r e

47

countries,” for “extraordinary subsidies for the friendship of states, that can do them neither good nor harm,” and for “pensions and needless salaries.”104 Indeed, radical Whigs defended public credit as means of avoiding a massive tax burden during wartime. They made a clear distinction between good debt and bad debt. Good debts allowed Britain to confront France militarily, especially at sea and in North America. Bad debts undermined the nation’s economic health and allowed the regime’s cronies to profit from public distress. To this end, radical Whigs attacked not only the speculative excesses of “money-jobbers,” but also the closed subscriptions to public bond issues that limited access to a select group of bankers in the City of London and Amsterdam. Such closed subscriptions, argued John Barnard, lord mayor of London, allowed a handful of financiers to profit at the expense of both the government’s creditors and the nation at large.105 A more public-spirited approach to public borrowing would allow anyone to invest in the nation’s credit. The lord mayor and other like-minded Whigs were sharply critical of the Whig establishment’s approach to borrowing money, but they did not repudiate public debt. On the contrary, they saw it as the basis of an aggressive, if frugal, foreign policy. The radical Whig critique of the government’s tax policy was similar to its critique of public debt. In both cases, a governing oligarchy had placed the partial interests of a select group above the rest of society. In practical terms, this meant that excise taxes on British manufactures were too high and land taxes on the rents of the gentry and aristocracy were too low. These views put them at odds not only with the Whig establishment but also authoritarian reformers. John Brown favorably compared “the poor farmer, laborer, and mechanic,” who paid his taxes on candles, salt, and shoes “without repining,” to “the higher ranks” who balked at moderate taxes on their coach or chariot.106 Although radical Whigs repeatedly complained about the luxury and dissipation of British society, they were less enthusiastic about luxury taxes, which often fell heavily on middling sorts. Instead, they preferred taxes that did not increase the price of British manufactures.107 To that end, Egmont pressed for sharply increasing the land tax, declaring “no man of a land estate, who duly considers the welfare and prosperity of these kingdoms arise from trade, and that the value of land rises or falls, as trade flourishes or decays, can imagine by lightening the burthen on land, and laying it on trade, he shall become richer.”108 Radical Whigs were convinced that only by shifting the burden of taxation away from manufacturing and

48 b r i ta i n ’ s c o n t r o v e r s i a l e m p i r e

consumption, effectively creating a more progressive tax code, could Britain regain its competitiveness. Not only did radical Whigs believe in more progressive taxation, they also believed that taxation could easily become oppressive. If the government took too much of its citizens’ property or ran roughshod over their liberties in collecting taxes, it violated the spirit of the British constitution. The Monitor argued that “taxes become burthensome to a nation, when they are multiplied beyond the abilities of the people; when imposed or continued upon unnecessary pretenses; or when they are levied arbitrarily: and they are intolerable, when they affect the liberty or trade of the nation.” Expressing a similar sense that taxation was only legitimate so long as it served the common interest, John Barnard declared that “no money should be raised on the subjects, but what is absolutely necessary for the public good.”109 Taxes that invaded the privacy of the subject were similarly illegitimate. For this reason, radical Whigs were particularly critical of the excise, which placed producers under the nearly constant surveillance of tax collectors. The Monitor called it a “hateful tax,” one that subjected the public to the “vexatious and arbitrary proceedings” of the exciseman.110 Radical Whigs objected to excise taxes because they invaded the privacy of merchants and manufacturers while at the same time extracting grievous amounts of revenue from the most productive members of society. Given radical Whigs’ opposition to regressive taxes on those of modest means, it is no surprise that they singled out Matthew Decker’s arguments for particular scorn. Decker’s scheme for a single tax on houses was everything radical Whigs hated. It was unequal; it weighed heavily on manufactures and trade; and it invaded personal privacy. In a pamphlet that attacked the Tory political economist and his admirers, Joseph Massie declared Decker and his scheme “wicked.” His suggestion “to raise all the public supplies by one single tax upon houses” was, Massie argued, “a proposal to raise all the public supplies by one general tax upon the commodities and manufactures of Great Britain.” Massie was convinced that “the farmer, the principal manufacturer, the tradesman and the merchant” would be forced to pay “most of the taxes now paid by the nobility and superior gentry, and about two parts in three of the land tax.” Despite Decker’s arguments to the contrary, such taxes would raise the cost of labor and annihilate trade. The licensing of consumption goods that Decker proposed was even more offensive. It would “destroy peace and good neighborhood, by making people turn informers, to lessen their own

b r i ta i n ’ s c o n t r o v e r s i a l e m p i r e

49

taxes or gratify private resentment.” By levying taxes on “the people principally concerned in growing, manufacturing, and exporting” commodities, Decker would radically increase the price of those goods on foreign markets. There was much that Massie shared with Decker and his acolytes: a belief in the importance of foreign trade for Britain’s prosperity, a desire to maintain competitive wages, and a strong conviction that Britain’s economic health depended on its tax policies. But the similarities ended there. Radical Whigs were firmly committed to taxes that weighed as lightly as possible on artisans and small manufacturers, and they looked with horror upon the reforms of men like Decker.111 As important as it was to find the right policies on taxes and debt, radical Whigs believed that Britain could not be prosperous or strong through domestic policy alone. What was needed was an empire of settlement in which colony and metropole were closely united. This republican imperium would be based on the equal rights of the mother country and its offspring, and it went hand in hand with policies that encouraged a more prosperous and fair Britain. Colonial improvement, radical Whigs believed, would produce a variety of goods with which to pay for British manufactures. Colonists would buy these goods because they were well treated as part of a unified British community. As the author of Miscellaneous Reflections put it, “Let us conceive the bounds of Britain to extend where-ever her laws are obeyed, where-ever men are made free and happy, by living under our excellent constitution.”112 That understanding of the colonies’ relationship to Britain meant that there was little need to bring America under closer metropolitan control. Understanding the colonies as an extension of Britain, albeit a particularly productive and dynamic one, radical Whigs advocated spending money on colonial defense, encouraging colonial manufactures, and avoiding taxes that might arrest colonial growth. Believing that their own affluence depended on the success of Britain’s North American colonies, radical Whigs advocated maintaining warm relations with their brethren across the Atlantic. The Westminster Journal rejected the argument that the colonies would eventually “throw off all dependency on the Crown of England, and erect themselves into a republic, according to the principles of the majority among them.” Such fears were unfounded because “when a colony thus deserts her mother, it is usually the effect of some ill treatment.” Like authoritarian reformers, radical Whigs supported closer ties between colony and metropole, but they did so believing

50 b r i ta i n ’ s c o n t r o v e r s i a l e m p i r e

that Britain’s well-being depended on prosperous and free colonies. The London Evening Post, for example, attacked Lieutenant Governor Robert Dinwiddie for depriving Virginia’s subjects “of their legal right” by unilaterally levying a fee on land patents.113 Indeed, the paper went so far as to suggest that such highhandedness threatened British liberties at home. Instead of shaking the colonies down, Britain’s leaders ought to build a close imperial union based on reciprocity. The Monitor, for example, argued in favor of both “a federal union amongst the northern colonies in America” and governing those colonies “in so gentle a manner, as not to provoke them to cast off their allegiance.”114 Colonies, these writers insisted, were extensions of the mother country, their subjects fully entitled to the same rights and privileges as those in England. Radical Whigs embraced a relatively egalitarian imperial relationship because they were convinced that colonial growth would lead to a larger market for British manufactured goods. One writer to the newspaper Common Sense urged lawmakers to promote iron manufacturing in the colonies because Britain “ought to take from our own colonies whatever they can supply us with, because they take our commodities in return.”115 Believing in a mutual relationship between colonial and metropolitan development, radical Whigs insisted that Britain ought to do everything in its power to promote the peopling and “improvement” of North America. The Monitor urged Britain’s governors to “encourage our manufactories, both at home, and in our colonies.” And the author of Miscellaneous Reflections likewise observed that there were “very large quantities” of unimproved land that, if developed, “would beget new demands for the produce of this island, raise new trades, increase our shipping, and consequently enlarge the capital of the nation.”116 As we will see, radical Whigs on both sides of the Atlantic were convinced that their country’s future depended on the settlement and improvement of North America. Britain and its manufacturers had nothing to fear and everything to gain from colonial development. Because radical Whigs understood North America as a market for British manufactures, they strongly opposed raising money directly from the colonies. They argued that American consumers more than compensated Britain for its colonial expenses. The colonies stimulated British economic growth, and economic growth meant more revenue. In doing so, they rejected the argument that the colonies ought to be taxed more in order to pay for imperial defense. “As their mother country, we have the tutelage of them, we

b r i ta i n ’ s c o n t r o v e r s i a l e m p i r e

51

provide them with necessaries, we supply them with conveniences, we assist them with what they want, we protect them when in danger, we send persons to govern them,” the author of Miscellaneous Reflections explained; “but then, on the other side, we take all they have, we apply it our own use, and we make a very large profit by that application.”117 Many radical Whigs went even further, arguing against taxes on imports of colonial sugar into Britain, and insisting that they raised prices for British consumers while discouraging colonial development.118 Some radical Whigs went so far as to suggest that colonists paid more than their British counterparts because they were taxed both in America and for the metropolitan manufactures they were forced to purchase.119 Believing that the empire existed to provide a market for British goods, and that Americans were their best customers, radical Whigs strongly opposed taxing colonies. Parliamentary taxation and authoritarian imperial reform failed during the 1750s because of strong opposition from both radical and establishment Whigs. This is perhaps most evident in the controversy over Charles Townshend’s instructions to Danvers Osborn, New York’s governor and the Earl of Halifax’s brother-in law.120 The instructions declared that the province’s legislature had subverted “order and government,” and endangered the colonists’ “rights and privileges” by refusing to levy taxes. Townshend instructed Osborn to press the assembly for a “permanent revenue,” one which would pay for the salaries of colonial officers, Native American diplomacy, and colonial defense.121 Townshend’s instructions were a classic example of authoritarian reformers’ efforts to curb colonists’ selfishness and licentiousness. But they met with little support from the dominant Whig establishment. Even Horace Walpole, a fairly conservative establishment Whig, condemned them as “better calculated for the latitude of Mexico and for a Spanish tribunal, than for a free rich British settlement.”122 New York’s agent to Parliament was convinced that the assembly’s protests against the instructions would receive a fair hearing in Whitehall—that ministers would allow colonial representatives to “assert their rights or express their grievances without any imputations of disaffection or disobedience.”123 Supported by an administration committed to Whig principles of colonial self-government, New York’s legislators could insist on their loyalty to the Crown and safely ignore Townshend and his fulminating instructions. Although the intellectual rationale for the Stamp Act, Townshend Duties, and Massachusetts Government Act was fully formed by the 1750s,

52 b r i ta i n ’ s c o n t r o v e r s i a l e m p i r e

authoritarian reformers remained on the sidelines of British politics until after the accession of George III. Their critique of Britain’s fiscal-military state and of imperial governance was overshadowed by both the continued dominance of the Whig establishment and its alliance with Whig radicals. Both groups utterly rejected authoritarian reformers’ arguments for fiscal austerity, foreign policy restraint, and an extractive imperial state. And although their debate lasted for decades, the terms of that debate changed surprisingly little. As we will see, what changed between the 1750s and 1770s, and what pushed America toward independence, was the balance of power in British politics. Authoritarian reformers would soon convince both their king and a significant portion of the British electorate that their vision of empire was a means of atoning for the sins of the Whig fiscal-military state.

2 Taxing America

Lieutenant Colonel Henry Bouquet understood that taxes were a matter of life and death. On June 15, 1757, he and five companies of the Royal American Regiment disembarked in Charleston, South Carolina. Many of the soldiers had contracted smallpox during their voyage south from Philadelphia, and their situation grew even worse as the summer progressed. Finding his army “ill supplied with straw, the camp full of water, and the number of the sick increasing every day,” Bouquet applied for quarters to the colony’s commissary. Receiving little help there, he took his case to the colony’s governor, William Henry Lyttleton. He demanded that his forces be lodged, and was granted “four bad empty houses . . . where the men were obliged to lie upon the floor” and “a half-finished church without windows.” The consequences were predictable. Sixty men died, and another five hundred became seriously ill. The numbers would have been far worse had the people of Charleston not taken nearly two hundred soldiers into their homes. With winter coming and the situation increasingly desperate, Bouquet and his men were shocked that a colonial assembly would allow “His Majesty’s troops to perish for cold, as they had been sent into the province at their request, and for their protection.” He expected too much. South Carolina’s legislators ordered a blanket for every two men, “in a country where the most covetous planter finds it his interest to allow one to the most despicable slave.”1 Bouquet’s ordeal raises the question of why colonists often refused to contribute to British military efforts during the Seven Years’ War. Indeed, it prompted John Campbell, fourth Earl of Loudoun and Britain’s commander in chief in North America, to assail South Carolina’s legislators for callously 53

54 ta x i n g a m e r i c a

causing the deaths of “so many of their fellow subjects.”2 Shocking though Bouquet’s story is, there is another way to tell it. Rather than an account of selfish South Carolina legislators refusing to provide urgently needed housing and supplies, it could also be told as a contentious debate over how best to reconcile the demands of colonial defense with the interests of the British Empire. Indeed, Bouquet’s experience of waiting on a disputatious colonial legislature was repeated dozens of times during the 1750s and early 1760s, as military commanders and governors requested money, men, and supplies. In so doing, they were forced to rely on American politicians and soldiers, who often had their own agendas and ambitions. And that meant British leaders fought the war by negotiating with colonists—with all of the entanglements, delays, and complications this implied. In an empire in which Parliament and colonial legislators held the purse strings, governors and commanders were at the mercy of politicians. Many historians trace the origins of American independence to conflicts like the one between Bouquet and the South Carolina assembly. They argue that during this period of “salutary neglect,” increasingly aggressive colonial legislatures clashed with governors who struggled to assert their authority. That conflict led to growing polarization, as assemblies heightened their demands for autonomy and imperial officials insisted on colonial subordination.3 One historian has rightly criticized this interpretation for ignoring revolutionaries’ motivations for independence, and for neglecting the fact that similar conflicts took place in colonies that did not join the American Revolution. Instead, he argues that opposition to government flourished in a political environment in which royal executives had extensive authority but limited power.4 Different though they are, both of these interpretations suggest that American colonists were implacable opponents of imperial authority. Yet such accounts stand in tension with a generation of scholarship demonstrating that many colonists embraced both their monarch and his empire.5 Indeed, Americans repeatedly demanded British military aid, raised large sums of money for the king’s troops, and praised the empire as a force for good. And although there is little doubt that colonial assemblies clashed with royal governors, they often worked closely together to expand colonial fiscal-military states. As in Britain, the growth of armies, taxes, and debts created new burdens and stirred intense controversy. But these conflicts were not, fundamentally, between localists and imperialists or libertarians and statists; rather, they were between radical Whigs and

ta x i n g a m e r i c a

55

authoritarian reformers. They turned on competing conceptions of political economy and government, and they exposed deep ideological rifts within colonial society.

America’s Ideological Politics Both authoritarian reform and radical Whiggery found fertile soil in colonial America. Colonial authoritarian reformers worried about the social and political consequences of a growing consumer society, condemned licentiousness, and argued for a more centralized imperial government. To that end, they supported excise taxes, restrictions on paper currency, and limiting popular political influence. Radical Whigs, on the other hand, deplored these measures as a repudiation of the Glorious Revolution and a violation of fundamental rights. They insisted that government ought to be accountable to the public and promote its prosperity. They attacked excise taxation, the prerogatives of colonial governors, and commercial restrictions. But they were not antiimperialists or libertarians. They embraced the empire and its expansion, and they worked to create institutions that encouraged the development of the colonial economy. Radical Whigs made these arguments in large part because they faced powerful opponents, authoritarian reformers who often controlled colonial governments or held positions of influence in the mother country. And while the struggle between authoritarian reformers and radical Whigs by no means captures the full range and diversity of colonial political debate, it does suggest that many of the same political divisions that mattered in Britain also mattered in its colonies.6 This is not surprising. The entire British Empire experienced the growth of the fiscal-military state and was forced to reckon with the fundamental questions of governance that it raised. Colonial authoritarian reformers shared their British counterparts’ concerns about disorder. New York’s future lieutenant governor Cadwallader Colden expressed concern that “factions and licentiousness” had undermined the government’s effectiveness.7 Echoing arguments made across the Atlantic, colonial authoritarian reformers linked their concerns about riotousness and insubordination to the damaging effects of debt and taxation. Massachusetts physician William Douglass, for example, blamed “fraudulent debtors” and their representatives for multiplying the amount of paper money in circulation and for causing rampant inflation.8 Such economic mismanagement had wiped out creditors, increased the price of labor, and

56 ta x i n g a m e r i c a

allowed other provinces to undersell Massachusetts. Predictably, that had led to depopulation and the emigration of the colony’s “most vigorous laboring young men.” In New York, Archibald Kennedy and Colden likewise condemned profligacy and indebtedness in the same breath that they denounced colonial mobs and “clamors among the people.”9 Authoritarian reformers complained that colonists wantonly cheated, coerced, and murdered Britain’s Native American allies.10 Indeed, they were particularly troubled by colonial encroachment on Native American lands, especially west of the Appalachians.11 This rampant disregard for morality and the law was the inevitable consequence of a society beset by consumer excess, debt, and weak government. Colonial authoritarian reformers argued that the best way to defeat the pathology that had infected their society was to significantly strengthen government, particularly imperial government. Douglass concluded that Massachusetts’s government was broken and that its legislature was dominated by debtors who were addicted to debt. The colony was unable to raise funds and pass “other wholesome laws” because conscientious governors were unwilling to print “large sums of paper money to defraud the industrious creditor and fair dealer.”12 In his Essay on the Government of the Colonies, Archibald Kennedy took this argument a step further, maintaining that colonial liberty was threatened by the assemblies themselves. Quoting Tory polemicist Jonathan Swift, Kennedy argued that the greatest threat to the state was that it would allow “popular encroachments” to usurp the powers of government. This was precisely what was happening in the colonies, where legislatures had used their power over spending to strip governors of their “dignity” and had forced them to abandon their instructions from home. Colden likewise complained of assemblies “who endeavor to assume to themselves the whole executive powers of government.” Such encroachments on the royal executive had real consequences for colonists’ well-being. Lacking “humanity and concern,” assemblies refused to raise money and men to defend the colonies or even to stop colonists from supplying French privateers.13 Rampant colonial selfishness and misgovernment left authoritarian reformers with little hope that assemblies would reform themselves. The only solution was for Parliament to intervene.14 Trusting neither colonists nor their legislatures, supporters of imperial reform sought to enhance Britain’s control over Native American diplomacy.15 They moved to place Native American relations under the direction

ta x i n g a m e r i c a

57

of regional commissioners who answered to metropolitan officials rather than to colonists. William Johnson, the first commissioner of Indian affairs for the northern colonies, was a strong advocate of this strategy.16 His deft diplomacy succeeded in stopping frontier assaults by bringing the Six Nations together with the Delaware and Susquehanna.17 Nevertheless, taking Native American diplomacy out of the hands of colonists was about more than simply stopping frontier violence. Authoritarian reformers wanted indigenous peoples as comparatively inexpensive allies against the French. Indeed, forging closer alliances with the Iroquois groups dovetailed nicely with authoritarian reformers’ goals. It gave British military commanders an alternative to supposedly untoward and undisciplined American troops, lowered the cost of imperial defense, and brought order to a region that was all too often the abattoir of empire.18 While authoritarian reformers advocated stronger imperial government, they also sought to change how colonies were governed at the local level. Taxation was at the heart of these efforts, and it led to fierce debates. In 1754, the Massachusetts assembly sought to crack down on tax evasion by requiring consumers of beer, wine, and spirits to pay excise taxes.19 The bill provoked one of the most intense controversies the colony had ever seen. Dozens of pamphlets poured off Boston’s presses as radicals accused their leaders of arbitrary taxation and the government jailed its opponents. As in Britain, expanding the excise provoked anger, especially among urbanites. Although some historians have treated the excise war as a conflict between the mercantile communities of Massachusetts and its agricultural hinterland, the debate was about much more than economic self-interest.20 Ultimately, the two sides articulated very different visions of the economy and government. Attacking the excise as “unconstitutional and arbitrary,” critics marshaled radical Whig ideas about the relationship between the state and economic growth. These arguments were not, however, directed against either government or taxation. Indeed, opponents of the excise wholly acknowledged that every person was “indebted to the public a proportionable part of his earnings for their protecting him.”21 They criticized the excise in part because they were convinced that the colony needed heavy taxes to pay for its upcoming war with France’s Native American allies. Boston minister Samuel Cooper, for example, worried that once the legislature reformed the excise it would begin to tax windows, cider, sugar, candles, soap, and molasses.22 And while such excises might seem to fall on well-off

58 ta x i n g a m e r i c a

consumers, they would ultimately injure trade and cripple the economy. Moreover, they would weigh heavily on poor settlers and hardworking fisherman. Instead of recommending taxes on alcohol, one polemicist even went so far as to suggest that Massachusetts provide such men—the backbone of its economy—with free rations of rum.23 Excise taxes were both damaging and dangerous. Indeed, they might even offer a precedent for Parliament to “extend and multiply exc[i]ses without measure, and without number.” Much better, then, to raise the money Massachusetts needed using the old system of taxation on polls and estates.24 The Massachusetts General Court, which was dominated by representatives from the inland towns, did not take kindly to such criticism. It ordered the common hangman to burn The Monster of Monsters, a satirical pamphlet that compared the excise’s supporters in the legislature to “an assembly of matrons.” And they had its suspected author arrested.25 But they also mounted a thorough defense of taxes on consumption, using many of the same arguments as authoritarian reformers in Britain. One pamphleteer, who dubbed himself “Rusticus,” argued that excises on vice could “retrench the extravagancies of the people.” Taxing life’s necessities was undoubtedly wrong, but “excising all articles of luxury” was “the best method” of raising funds for government. Excises helped to curtail vice and encouraged industriousness. And while they might prevent some people from consuming popular items like rum, tobacco, and candles, they promoted a positive balance of trade and enhanced national wealth. Such benefits meant excise taxes were preferable to property taxes, which were difficult to assess and had fewer social benefits.26 And although “Rusticus’s” argument was somewhat unfair given Massachusetts’s well-developed system of tax assessment, it was nonetheless sophisticated.27 Like authoritarian reformers in Britain, he recognized that the state’s power to levy taxes on consumption offered an efficient means of both raising money and shaping behavior. Colonial radical Whigs were far more critical of excises because they believed taxation should encourage civil society and equality. In this spirit, they attacked both colonial stamp taxes and arbitrary fees on land patents. The radical Whig printer James Parker deplored New York’s stamp duty on newspapers for preventing the people from declaring their “sentiments upon all topics with the utmost freedom.”28 And when Virginia’s lieutenant governor, Robert Dinwiddie, attempted to charge a one pistole fee (worth a little more than 16 shillings sterling) on land transactions, radicals in the

ta x i n g a m e r i c a

59

Virginia House of Burgesses resisted. Not only did they attack the levy as an unconstitutional tax, but they also condemned it for hampering settlement and weighing heavily on the poor.29 Indeed, colonial radical Whigs argued in favor of progressive taxation. In condemning New York’s unequal taxes on roads, the Independent Reflector contended that it was outrageous to ask “the penurious widow, surrounded with a plaintive circle of orphans unclothed, unfed, and almost unhoused,” to pay the same taxes “as the man of wealth and affluence.” But as in the case of the excise, arguments against regressive taxation were not directed against taxation itself. Indeed, the publication made it clear that “without government” there could be “no property” and “without taxes there could be no government.”30 It was precisely because taxes had a direct bearing on the success of both the state and the economy that it was essential to get them right. Radical Whigs believed that getting government right meant making it accountable to the public and using it to enhance society’s well-being. Excise taxes were particularly onerous in this regard because many of them were collected by tax farmers, who purchased the right to collect funds on the colony’s behalf. Such a system had the virtue of providing government with a guaranteed annual revenue, but it also transformed tax collection into a parasitical business dominated by the wealthy and well connected. The Independent Reflector condemned New York’s excise tax farm for costing the colony more than it supplied in revenue. Even more appallingly, tax farmers used their powers to plunder their fellow subjects and intimidate voters. Such complaints led one Boston polemicist to compare them to the publicans who had oppressed the ancient Israelites. “Rusticus,” on the other hand, defended tax farming as the method which had “been found the most beneficial to the government.”31 For authoritarian reformers and conservative Whigs, there was nothing wrong with individuals profiting from government if they were working to strengthen the state. But for radical Whigs this seemed nothing short of tyranny. Such debates over taxation reflected two very different viewpoints concerning political economy. While authoritarian reformers believed that the purpose of economic policy was to limit consumption and debt, radical Whigs were convinced that both governments and private individuals ought to develop institutions that increased human well-being, institutions that promoted knowledge, industriousness, and moderate consumption.32 Where authoritarian reformers like “Rusticus,” Kennedy, and Douglass condemned consumer society, Benjamin Franklin defended it as a source of industry and

60 ta x i n g a m e r i c a

employment. To be sure, radical Whigs expressed concern that people were living and borrowing beyond their means. And they blamed idleness and unemployment on the colonies’ growing trade deficit with Britain.33 But that did not mean they wanted to abandon domestic consumption. Indeed, they promoted manufacturing as a means of increasing the number of producers and consumers in the colonies. The Society for Encouraging Manufactures in New England was one such scheme. Thomas Barnard, minister of the first church of Salem, Massachusetts, commended the society’s efforts to add “many useful members to the common-wealth,” while the radical Whig minister Ezra Stiles of Newport, Rhode Island, praised the “very general effect” it would have in promoting “the national industry.”34 And although the society was a voluntary association, colonial radicals were fully committed to using government to encourage economic development. They supported spending money on colleges to educate the populace and on public highways to promote commerce. Pointing to the greatness of both the Roman and the British road networks, the Independent Reflector opined that “every wellpoliced state has been greatly attentive to the regulation of the public roads.”35 Such institutions, they believed, were the handmaidens of an industrious and relatively egalitarian consumer society, and there was no question that they deserved government’s support. Colonial radicals’ enthusiasm for encouraging economic development also led them to advocate extending Britain’s empire. With its vast territory and abundant natural resources, North America offered seemingly unlimited opportunities for settlement and improvement. Observing that demographic growth depended on cheap land and high wages, Franklin promised that the continent presented both a market for British manufactured goods and an opportunity for increasing British power. But he was not alone in coming to that conclusion. The radical Whig New American Magazine celebrated the many “improvements and additional benefits, that may be still made in, and accrue from our plantations.” And Boston physician William Clarke likewise argued that the mother country’s economic and military power depended on the colonies’ expansion and their growing consumption of British goods.36 Such opportunities prompted both Franklin and his future business partner, Massachusetts governor Thomas Pownall, to urge the creation of new colonies in the Ohio River valley. These inland settlements would not only purchase more British goods than ever before, they would also become the “center of the manufactures” in North America.37 Although Franklin and

ta x i n g a m e r i c a

61

Pownall’s plans were ambitious, especially given that most of the land in question belonged to Native Americans, they reflected radical Whigs’ belief that settlement and improvement were the twin pillars of the British Empire’s economy. Like their counterparts across the Atlantic, they were convinced that the Ohio River valley was “as great a prize, as has ever yet been contended for, between two nations,” and that whatever country settled it would soon become Europe’s dominant power.38 As much as American radical Whigs enthused about the expansion of the empire, they were convinced that it could succeed only if Britain governed its possessions well. That meant the mother country would have to resist the temptation to either neglect or exploit its colonies. Like their counterparts across the Atlantic, they saw the colonies as an extension of Britain itself, and they were adamant that they were entitled to the same rights. Perhaps the leading advocate for republican empire, Benjamin Franklin, argued that “Britain and her colonies should be considered as one whole, and not as different states with separate interests.” For Franklin, overcoming petty and partial interests meant an imperial Parliament in which the colonies had a “reasonable number of representatives allowed them.”39 And while radicals did not unanimously embrace parliamentary representation, they agreed that the success of the empire depended on just and effective colonial governance. That meant encouraging settlement by investing in infrastructure and institutions. Pownall’s proposed colony promised land offices and land surveys to encourage settlement as well as administrators to coordinate trade with Native Americans.40 Colonial expansion undoubtedly depended on infrastructure and institutions, but roads and land offices were useless without forts and soldiers to defend them. And with the French and their Native American allies increasingly checking the British Empire’s westward expansion, that meant unifying the colonies and readying them for war.41

The Politics of Colonial Union France began encroaching on Britain’s North American colonies almost immediately after signing of the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle in 1748. Just three years into the peace, one colonist complained that the “plague we have from the Indians set on by the rascally French is perpetual,” and that Britain was doing nothing to stop it.42 As French pressure intensified and the colonies struggled to respond, a growing number of colonists and imperial officials

62 ta x i n g a m e r i c a

concluded that some kind of colonial confederacy was necessary. But an American union was easier said than done, and it inspired a violent debate about what the colonies’ relationship to one another and to Britain ought to be. That dispute was not, however, between an authoritarian Britain and a libertarian America, but between radical Whigs and authoritarian reformers. Like their metropolitan counterparts, colonial radical Whigs aimed to use a North American confederacy to enhance the colonies’ influence within the empire, while authoritarian reformers sought to bring Britain’s North American possessions under tighter control. That clash only intensified during the summer of 1754 as colonial delegates met in Albany, New York, to fashion a plan of union. Ultimately, the confederation they proposed proved a dead letter. Nevertheless, the fight over the proposal of this Albany Congress exposed deep divisions over taxation and empire—divisions that would persist as the war continued. Radical Whigs and authoritarian reformers both concluded that French aggression and colonial dithering made union imperative. Over and over again, commentators of various political persuasions observed that France’s colonies were united under a single government, while Britain’s were divided.43 Even worse, colonial legislators fought fiercely among themselves at a time when “unanimity” was “more than ever necessary to frustrate the designs of the French.”44 Such concerns were echoed by both colonial assemblies and by governors. At cross purposes with everything from building forts to Native American relations, Colden observed that it was “agreed on all hands that something is necessary to be done for uniting the colonies in their mutual defense.”45 The question was whether the colonies could form such a union on their own or whether Americans were so divided that Parliament would need to intervene. Colden was unsure, but William Clarke was convinced that the colonies’ “jealousies” could only be overcome by an act of imperial legislation. That view prevailed among both radical Whigs like Franklin and authoritarian reformers who were convinced that colonies would never voluntarily fill their quotas of men and money.46 And it would, ultimately, prove the undoing of colonial union. Franklin used the Albany Congress in the summer of 1754 as an opportunity to propose an ambitious colonial confederacy. Originally conceived as a meeting between the colonies and the Six Iroquois Nations to improve relations and coordinate their response against the French, the meeting ended with a plan for colonial union. After a “great deal of disputation,”

ta x i n g a m e r i c a

63

the commissioners at Albany proposed a federation.47 The plan stipulated that a grand council appointed by the assemblies and a president general appointed by the Crown would meet annually in Philadelphia to pass laws and regulations for the common defense of the colonies. The grand councilors would have, with the president’s consent, the power to levy taxes and spend money on fortifications, soldiers, and Native American relations. Civil officers would be nominated by the grand council, and the president would select military officers, while both the legislators and the executive would retain the power to veto each other’s appointments. Peace and war, gifts and treaties, with Native American groups would also be the president’s responsibility, but again with a legislative check. What emerged from Albany was unprecedented—a supracolonial government with wide latitude to levy taxes and spend money.48 Franklin’s radical Whig principles led him to champion the Albany plan. Whereas authoritarian reformers concluded that the only way to make colonial union work was to assess the colonies’ contribution and have Parliament impose taxes, Franklin hoped to leave raising money to colonial legislatures.49 He was unequivocal that the only way for the union to work was if taxes were “agreed to by the representatives of the people.”50 In a series of letters to William Shirley that rehearsed arguments he would later make against the Stamp Act, Franklin condemned attempts to use colonial union to give either governors or Parliament control over American taxation. And he told the Massachusetts governor that he thought such a union would not only be unconstitutional but would give colonists “extreme dissatisfaction.” The provincial legislatures were willing to raise funds on their own and were far better judges of the colonies’ defense needs than Parliament. Moreover, Parliament would likely tax the colonies too much, thereby preventing “their growth and increase.” Not only would this be economically self-defeating, but it would reduce men who had risked “their lives and fortunes . . . extending the dominion and increasing the commerce of their mother nation” to a “state of slavery.”51 Franklin and the radical Whigs who supported the Albany plan did so because they believed it was a limited government that respected local autonomy. Under the plan, each colony retained the right to defend itself in an emergency and would even be reimbursed by the union if the president and the council decided it was justified.52 Franklin’s vision was for a confederacy of legislatures that would overcome the selfishness and free-riding that

64 ta x i n g a m e r i c a

6. Benjamin Franklin, “Join, or Die,” Pennsylvania Gazette, May 9, 1754. As Philadelphia’s most prominent printer, Franklin used his newspaper to urge fellow colonists to unite against French aggression. (Courtesy of the Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division)

were endemic in colonial politics. It was not, however, an attempt to give governors and Parliament control over the colonies or their finances. James Alexander, a Whig radical, recognized this. He thought the plan “extremely well digested” because it succeeded in walking the fine line between preserving “liberties on the one hand” and “being ineffectual on the other.”53 Other radical Whigs took their case to the newspapers. They reprinted the election sermon of one of Boston’s leading ministers, Jonathan Mayhew, in which he argued that the colonies’ only hope for salvation from the French was a union based on “common interest.”54 And they wrote editorials promising that unless colonists ceased “impoliticly and ungenerously to consider themselves as distinct states, with narrow, separate and independent views,” France would soon “ruin and enslave” them. French “universal monarchy” in America would mean the end of the “inestimable blessings of civil and religious liberty,” as well as “the uninterrupted possession and settlement of a great country.”55 For radical Whigs with a commitment to republican imperialism, union was the antidote to that truly horrifying prospect. Although many radical Whigs argued for the Albany plan as a means of strengthening the empire and preserving its liberties, most authoritarian reformers were convinced that it did far too little to bring North America under British control. Believing that the Crown’s goal was to keep “their

ta x i n g a m e r i c a

65

colonies, as far as they can, dependent,” Colden concluded that the grand council would never be accountable to the Crown.56 William Shirley likewise criticized the proposed union. He was adamant that it would reproduce, on a continental scale, the weak governing institutions of the democratic charter colonies. Lacking a firm royal government, those provinces paid “no regard to the King’s instructions, and very little or none to acts of Parliament, particularly to acts of trade.”57 Rather than double down on licentiousness and “mobism,” Shirley argued that metropolitan leaders should create a confederacy in which Parliament levied funds based on “quotas of men and money for each colony.”58 Nor was it only imperial officials who supported union as a means of curbing colonial insubordination. Andrew Rutledge, the former president of the South Carolina assembly, provided Britain’s attorney general, William Murray, with what he described as “the best account of the springs and consequences of the late misfortune upon the Ohio I had ever heard.” After consulting supportive friends in the Charleston merchant community, he proposed that Parliament create a North American army of British soldiers and tax colonists to pay for it.59 Although Rutledge and his friends were undoubtedly a minority, they nonetheless reflected the influence of authoritarian reform among many elite colonists. By the end of July 1754, British North Americans were reading about the Albany plan in their newspapers.60 Despite Franklin’s best efforts, the idea proved divisive. Colonial radicals and representatives concluded that the proposal had “too much prerogative in it.” Authoritarian reformers, on the other hand, insisted that the plan was based on “republican principles” and that it would “unite the colonies in such a manner as to give the Crown little or no influence.”61 And while a number of governors presented the plan to their assemblies and made the case for union, their advocacy served only to arouse suspicions that it would open the door to authoritarian reform. Indeed, the Albany plan posed a real risk to the autonomy of the assemblies because it required an act of Parliament to become law, one that might set a precedent for overhauling colonial governments. Under those circumstances, North American legislatures roundly rejected it as unconstitutional and a threat to their autonomy.62 But colonists’ unwillingness to endorse the specifics of the Albany proposal stemmed from neither selfishness nor antiimperialism. Indeed, both the radical Whig press and the legislatures that rejected the plan repeatedly praised the goal of colonial union. And the plan itself provoked “long debates” in Boston’s town meeting.63 Ultimately, the

66 ta x i n g a m e r i c a

contest over how to bring the colonies together proved there was much enthusiasm for union but little room for compromise between authoritarian reformers and radical Whigs. Franklin stood out among American radicals for his willingness to work with his opponents, but even his considerable political abilities were unable to reconcile defenders of colonial selfgovernment with advocates of British dominance.64

Debating the Fiscal-Military State The debate over how to fight and pay for the war was just as fierce as the debate over colonial union. As in Britain, issues of military strategy, taxation, and debt divided American colonists. This is not surprising. With their ideological discord, contentious print culture, and lengthy legislative debates, the colonies resembled the mother country far more than we often realize. But American colonists resembled their counterparts across the Atlantic in another way. After lengthy debates, colonial legislatures—like Parliament— usually voted for men and money for the war effort. Governors quickly discovered that they had to negotiate with assemblies in order to obtain funds. When the ministry named Loudoun commander in chief, James Abercromby told him that he would “find, as much, if not more difficulty, in your negotiations, with the many different governments, as in your operations against the enemy.”65 Many officials resented having to accommodate the Americans they had been sent to rule and quickly embraced authoritarian reform as a solution. Successful governors, however, ruled with their assemblies rather than over them. Challenging though this was, it was nonetheless possible because colonists were by no means hostile to either the king or the empire. They were, however, divided.66 The challenge for governors was to mobilize those inclined to support their efforts, a task that became considerably easier once Pitt began reimbursing the colonies’ expenses. Military commanders often became exasperated with the delays and restrictions that legislatures imposed on the war effort. In March 1755, Edward Braddock, Britain’s commander in chief in North America, reported that Virginia had not yet collected the £20,000 it had levied and that Maryland and Pennsylvania still refused to contribute anything. A year later, Dinwiddie reported a similar situation when he complained that, despite making every argument he could think of, he was unable to get the assembly to raise necessary funds. And the situation repeated itself in Pennsylvania,

ta x i n g a m e r i c a

67

where the legislature delayed passing bills in order to wring concessions from the governor. Even when the legislature did pass a militia law, a quartering act, and granted £4,000 for the King’s soldiers, more than half of it was earmarked for use within Pennsylvania.67 Conflict was endemic, but it also left room for negotiation. Legislative assemblies were filled with politicians with their own ambitions, and that meant battles among colonists were every bit as fierce as those between legislatures and governors.68 Pennsylvania’s assembly, for example, was deeply divided between a Quaker party intent on defending the colony and a proprietary party committed to limiting expenses and preserving the Penn family’s interests. And even though the Quaker party included a few Quakers whose pacifism and parsimony led them to oppose the war, many of its members had no problem fighting France. This was true of its leader, Benjamin Franklin, who did as much as anyone to organize the colony’s defense. The battle in Pennsylvania was not over whether the assembly would contribute to the empire’s defense but whether the Penn family’s lands would be exempt from colonial taxation.69 Such conflicts often led imperial officials to blame faction and petty disagreements in colonial politics for their struggles in raising and providing for troops, just as they decried the efforts of colonial legislatures to exert influence over how those troops would be used. At one point, New Hampshire’s lieutenant governor, Benning Wentworth, complained that his assembly had locked him out of its deliberations. All he could learn was “that there are two parties in the house, one for putting off the grant of fifty men until they hear what the Massachusetts do, the other party are not for making any grant at all.”70 Still, the ministry’s expectation that governors raise troops and supplies through their assemblies forced colonial executives to accommodate legislatures’ demands. As lieutenant governor of New York, Colden offered military commissions to legislators and their friends to secure the assembly’s support, while others lowered their expectations for troop quotas or accepted limits on where soldiers could be deployed. And Thomas Pownall successfully urged Abercromby not to send Massachusetts’s troops to Albany, where the assembly feared a smallpox outbreak. Colonial governors and military commanders recognized that they needed to preserve good working relationships with their assemblies in order to get what they wanted.71 And although this undoubtedly slowed responses to French aggression, it reflected a British political system in which legislative assemblies and the broader public shaped military and foreign policy.

68 ta x i n g a m e r i c a

Although commanders and governors learned to negotiate, they often became exasperated by having to constantly wrestle with colonial legislators. British officials were undoubtedly familiar with a political culture in which members of Parliament and London crowds attacked the government, but they had little love for such insubordination at home and even less for it in the supposedly dependent colonies. They decried colonial legislatures’ audacity in trying to dictate how troops would be used, and they suggested that parliamentary taxation might offer a solution.72 After complaining that his assembly had prevented the deployment of soldiers and put “officers under every possible hardship or difficulty,” Maryland’s governor Horatio Sharpe concluded that Parliament ought to levy a tax on the colonies. Major General Edward Braddock likewise concluded that the crisis faced by the colonies demanded that Britain’s legislature intervene to create a “general fund” paid for by the colonists themselves.73 Such conclusions are entirely understandable. The ministry’s policies placed commanders in an excruciatingly difficult position, one in which they had to choose between defending their own prerogatives and securing the money and soldiers they needed to fight the war. Under such circumstances, they begged Parliament to intervene and embraced authoritarian reform. Not only did governors and military commanders tussle with assemblies, they also had to contend with provincial populations. Both the recruitment and quartering of soldiers involved transferring property from individuals to the state without legislative consent. This aroused intense popular opposition and raised troubling questions about property rights and arbitrary taxation. The recruitment of servants often broke valuable indenture contracts, which promised their owners a person’s labor for several years. Quartering troops, on the other hand, required tavern owners, or in some instances ordinary colonists, to supply lodging, fuel, food, and alcohol to soldiers.74 Both of these obligations could be significant, and they inspired angry protest. Unsurprisingly, authoritarian reformers had little patience for such arguments and such blatant disobedience. But, as we shall see, these conflicts did not necessarily pit governors against legislators or Americans against the British. Rather, they reflected an ideological debate about rights and obligations in an empire at war. Recruiting indentured servants led to frequent clashes between British leaders and colonists. Governors were under intense pressure from London to draw as many men as possible into the army’s ranks, while many colonists

ta x i n g a m e r i c a

69

saw such recruitment as a form of taxation. This led to resistance from colonial officials as well as from violent mobs. William Shirley described disputes in “New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Maryland between the recruiting officers and masters of indentured servants, who have voluntarily enlisted into His Majesty’s service.”75 Recruiters were arrested by local officials for entertaining servants while soldiers were dragged from the army and imprisoned for violating their indentures. Such anger spoke to the importance of bonded labor in colonies that faced an ongoing and worsening labor shortage.76 After receiving a petition from the owners of indenture contracts, Pennsylvania’s assembly remonstrated that recruiting servants threatened the colony’s economic future. Enlisting servants without compensation was, they told the governor, “a most severe, unequal, and oppressive tax on particulars, often falling on people in low circumstances.” If the government made property in servants “precarious,” colonists would turn to African slaves to supply their labor force and Pennsylvania’s economy would stagnate. Shirley responded angrily to the assembly’s defense of property rights and insisted that “no contract” between servants and the masters could abrogate a person’s right “voluntarily to enlist in the army.”77 The clash between Pennsylvanians and Shirley shows the conflict between authoritarian reformers and colonial Whigs in high relief. For Shirley, local privileges, contracts, and economic needs ought to give way to the king’s commands. Anything less was selfish disobedience that put the colony in jeopardy. But for many Pennsylvanians, enlisting servants without compensating masters was a grievous and arbitrary tax that threatened their colony’s liberty and prosperity. Despite Shirley’s denunciation of the Pennsylvanian assembly’s arguments, establishment Whigs in Great Britain were more sympathetic to American concerns. The members of the cabinet, the Earl of Hardwicke observed, were “all of opinion that some rule ought to be laid down by the bill for apportioning the recompense to be paid to the masters of indentured servants, who may be enlisted.” They had little patience for the argument that the army could violate property rights and told Shirley to use the funds raised by the colonial legislature to compensate masters for their losses. Whatever Shirley’s desire to raise as many troops as quickly as possible, his masters in England concluded that enlisting indentured servants was an “arbitrary depriving people of their property,” one that encouraged African slavery and discouraged growth. By the following year, officers were paid extra to recruit free men rather than indentured workers.78 Shirley, like many colonial

70 ta x i n g a m e r i c a

governors, seized on authoritarian reform as a way to better defend and govern the colonies, but he received a cool reception from Newcastle’s establishment Whig ministry that had little interest in overhauling colonial government. The ministry’s expectation that governors and commanders would respect colonists’ property rights meant that some imperial officials did find common ground with those they governed. Massachusetts governor Thomas Pownall and his mentor Loudoun had very different approaches to supplying the army with food and lodging. While both men expressed frustration with the Massachusetts assembly, Pownall was far more deferential to both his colony’s laws and its well-being. He protected the colony from the greatest burdens of the war, curbing the navy’s impressment of seamen, reducing penalties for soldiers, and securing subsidies from home.79 And when colonial magistrates refused to house soldiers, the governor called the assembly in order to pass a quartering law. Pownall felt obliged to abide by the colony’s laws despite the pressure he faced from Loudoun and his own frustration with earlier legislation that gave up “the power of the King’s governors.” Still, he recognized that the issue of providing for soldiers was particularly explosive because colonists considered it a form of taxation. Moreover, quartering soldiers posed a real hardship for the small number of innkeepers on the frontier, who were “so poor” they could not afford to supply large numbers of troops with food, alcohol, and fuel. Rather than lay the burden entirely on the local population, Pownall proposed that the province levy a general tax on innkeepers, victualers, and retailers of spirits. He was sympathetic to Massachusetts laws and believed the burden of warfare in the colonies was considerably heavier than in England. And while the governor drove a hard bargain with the assembly, his approach reflected his radical Whig conviction that military commanders could not simply take what they wanted from the citizens they were charged to defend.80 Every bit the authoritarian reformer, Loudoun took the opposite position, directly repudiating Pownall as a governor and military commander. Writing to his patron William Augustus, Duke of Cumberland, he complained that his protégé’s views were based on both“a superficial reading of law at school” and his belief that “every act of a general is an infringement of the liberty of the people.”81 Such insubordination was not limited to Massachusetts. Loudoun complained of the “great imposition the troops meet with everywhere.” His response to Bouquet’s inability to secure quarters for his

ta x i n g a m e r i c a

71

men in South Carolina was to instruct the lieutenant colonel to “directly demand quarters in town, for as many of the troops as you find necessary.” Rather than accept the assembly’s plodding responses as the natural consequence of representatives protecting their constituents’ interests, he saw it as the work of colonial selfishness and inhumanity. He had little patience for negotiating with assemblies, and was insistent that the king had a right to quarter his soldiers anywhere “without paying anything for it.”82 Governors and assemblies clashed repeatedly, but Pownall’s experience reveals that governors could succeed in raising money and men by finding common ground with their assemblies. The Massachusetts governor accepted the legitimacy of his legislature to shape military and fiscal policy. Defending his conduct to Loudoun, he observed that while colonial governors were “invested with every power both legislative and executive of the crown,” there was not one instance of a North American governor “being able to carry His Majesty’s instructions into execution where the people have disputed them.”83 Knowing that high-handed assertions of prerogative would be ineffective, Pownall worked with Jeremiah Grindley and his friends in the assembly to build support for his agenda. While Pownall did not abandon his prerogatives as governor, his radical Whig politics smoothed his relationship with the assembly and helped him overcome their strong objections to providing the king’s troops with barracks.84 Despite being mentored by Loudoun, Pownall took a very different approach to colonial government. Where the commander in chief demanded and threatened, the governor of Massachusetts implored and negotiated. That willingness to negotiate helps explain why, despite frequent conflict, colonial legislatures repeatedly voted money and men to support the war. In the process, the colonies created fiscal-military states that resembled Britain’s own, if on a far smaller scale. They did so through a system of requisitions and reimbursements that raised large amounts of money and significant numbers of men. And although judgments differed on how effective this system was, it reflected an enormous expansion of colonial military capacity, one that accelerated after William Pitt became secretary of state and Parliament began sending more money to America. Colonists—like their brethren across the Atlantic—spent far more than they ever had. They saw mounting military expenses eclipse spending on infrastructure, education, and religion. And the colonies’ contribution was not limited to raising funds and soldiers. They provided food, stores, and transportation.85 The result was the

72 ta x i n g a m e r i c a

militarization of colonial society. To be sure, Parliament raised £16 million in 1761 alone, far more than the colonists ever did.86 Nevertheless, the colonies raised immense sums despite their more humble economies and persistent shortages of hard currency. Their efforts reveal a provincial population that was not only strongly attached to the British Empire but eager to defend it. Britain’s colonies contributed to the war effort through an ad hoc quota system. Colonial governors received requests for money, troops, supplies, fortifications, even vessels, from the secretary of state and then went to their assemblies for legislation to fulfill the request.87 Following the failure of colonial union, Halifax instructed colonial governors to determine troop quotas among themselves and to prevail upon their assemblies to raise the requisite forces. The British ministry depended on these colonial appropriations of money and men both for the defense of individual colonies and for the common war effort.88 However fiercely legislatures debated their ability and obligation to fulfill the demands made of them, it is clear that they took these requests seriously. And while colonies often exploited vague instructions from ministers and generals to shift the financial burden of the war to other colonies, the system raised a large amount of money and dramatically increased colonial taxes. Over the course of the war, the colonies collected more than £2.5 million, less than half of which was reimbursed by Parliament. Massachusetts citizens spent more than £10 sterling per adult white male, roughly two and half months’ wages for a ship captain.89 What stands out from these contributions is not only how much they varied from colony to colony but the particular enthusiasm of Massachusetts with its radical Whig governor. The Bay Colony raised far more than any other, contributing ten times as much as New Hampshire on a per capita basis. Such uneven commitments validated both authoritarian reformers’ arguments that colonists were guilty of shirking their responsibilities and radical Whig contentions that they were outstanding imperial citizens. In addition to taxing their citizens more than they ever had before, colonial legislatures followed Britain’s example and borrowed unprecedented amounts. Even after Wolfe’s victory on the Plains of Abraham in September 1759, Massachusetts borrowed more than £600,000 in order to defray the costs of its defense. And although Massachusetts was British North America’s largest debtor, other large colonies also borrowed heavily.90 Like Britain, the colonies turned to debt in order to keep their men in the field and taxes from growing too quickly. What differentiated the North American

ta x i n g a m e r i c a

73

7. Annual Colonial Taxation (in pounds sterling), 1755–1761. (Sources: Alvin Rabushka, Taxation in Colonial America [Princeton, N.J., 2008], 596–597, 636–640, 643–646, 709; and John J. McCusker, Money and Exchange in Europe and America, 1600–1775: A Handbook [Chapel Hill, N.C., 1978], 141–142, 164–165, 185–186, 224)

provinces from the mother county was their much less developed financial systems. Without a national bank like the Bank of England to float loans, the colonies relied on printing money. This approach worked because Parliament reimbursed the colonies in specie, which helped maintain the value of their paper money.91 Still, borrowing so much contributed to higher taxes and stretched the colonies’ finances almost beyond what they could bear.92 Yet the fact that they went so deeply into debt speaks to the enthusiasm of many British Americans for the empire’s war against France. North America’s fiscal-military states resembled the mother country’s, not only in their heavy taxing and borrowing, but also in how they spent their money. The war with France forced the colonies to pay for soldiers, supplies, fortifications, and ordinance, to say nothing of subsidizing the king’s troops. This transformed colonial governments into war-making machines. Despite its pacifist Quaker roots and middling contribution to the war effort, Pennsylvania exemplified this transformation of colonial government. In the years leading up to the war, military expenses made up about 10 percent of the colony’s spending. By 1760, it spent 80 percent of its budget on war.

74 ta x i n g a m e r i c a

8. Cumulative Colonial Borrowing (in pounds sterling), 1754–1761. (Sources: Rabushka, Taxation in Colonial America, 596, 633, 644, 675; and McCusker, Money and Exchange, 141–142, 164–165, 184, 211)

North American governments came increasingly to resemble the British state, where wartime expenditures also accounted for roughly four-fifths of the government’s outlays.93 Such spending reflected not only the colonies’ commitment to fighting absolutist France, but also radical Whigs’ enthusiasm for state building. What made the colonial fiscal-military states different from Britain were their significantly weaker economies and their dependence on aid from the mother country. The shortage of specie in America and the fact that soldiers expected to be paid in hard currency led many colonies to plead poverty. Virginia’s assembly, for example, blamed its inability to raise funds on “the extreme poverty of the people of this colony already laboring under grievous and heavy taxes.”94 Considering the colonies’ growing populations and expanding trade, such claims could well seem like shirking. And they may well have been. But the persistent lack of gold and silver in North America meant that even though their economies were extremely productive, colonists were legitimately short on cash. British ministers, especially William Pitt, recognized this and committed the British government to

ta x i n g a m e r i c a

75

spending hundreds of thousands of pounds to reimburse colonial governments for their expenses. Such compensation provided desperately needed funds and prompted Americans to raise far more than they otherwise would have.95 Indeed, legislators on both sides of the Atlantic recognized that specie was not only the sinews of war; it was the lifeblood of the economy. By the time the war was over, Britain had reimbursed the colonies for more than £1 million. That was more than a show of good will; it was an acknowledgment that many colonists were eager to fight the war but feared its financial and economic burden. As was the case in Europe, the creation of fiscal-military states in the colonies imposed significant hardship. It is no surprise, then, that while Parliament’s program of partial reimbursement succeeded in getting the colonies to spend money and recruit soldiers, military policy remained a hot political issue even after Pitt became secretary of state. In Pennsylvania, the Penn family continued to clash with the Quaker party in the assembly, which in April 1759 left General Jeffery Amherst with little hope of getting the assembly to raise much-needed funds. The situation was slightly better in Massachusetts in 1761, where Governor Francis Bernard reported that the assembly had raised three thousand troops, despite a party bent on “lowering the number as much as possible.”96 Reimbursement bought colonial support, but it was most effective when governors and commanders were savvy enough to rally radical Whigs to their cause. The modus vivendi of the eighteenth-century British Empire was neither salutary neglect nor authoritarianism, but rather engagement, conflict, and negotiation. Obstreperous as colonial legislatures might have been, most colonists were eager to accept a junior partnership in the fight against France. They insisted that the terms of that partnership would be that both taxation and military strategy be vetted by colonial political institutions. That made fighting the war contentious, though, as we will see, no more contentious than in Britain. Yet the system ultimately worked. Although Bouquet’s regiment suffered grievously, colonists raised millions of pounds, recruited thousands of troops, and supported Britain’s army with food and lodging. Working together, Britain and its colonies won the war. That experience taught politically engaged colonists that they had an important role to play in the success of the empire. They also learned that they had both friends and enemies in Britain. Who those friends and enemies were depended on one’s political disposition. Like their own society, ideology

76 ta x i n g a m e r i c a

and party divided the mother country. More conservative North Americans could find common cause with authoritarian reformers, who believed that colonists ought to defer to the best judgments of ministers, governors, and military commanders. And while these colonists might worry less about American “independency” than their British counterparts, they nonetheless shared their concerns about indiscipline and profligacy. Radical Whigs, on the other hand, flatly denied that subjecting military policy to the consent of elected representatives was incompatible with loyalty to the empire. They embraced both imperial expansion and the creation of colonial fiscal-military states. But they insisted that North America enjoy the same political protections as Britain. And even though authoritarian reform certainly appealed to many, the idea that colonists should divest themselves of British rights and submit to their metropolitan betters was always a hard sell in a place defined by its relative equality among white colonists and broadly representative institutions.97 Moreover, as the failure of the Albany union demonstrates, American colonists were most drawn to radical Whig arguments when they felt threatened by authoritarian imperial reform. As a result, radicals largely got their way when it came to relations with the mother country. With the help of British politicians who had little interest in either taxing or coercing America, colonists committed themselves to defending what they believed was an empire of liberty.

3 The Seven Years’ War and the Politics of Empire

For Britain, the Seven Years’ War was a war of superlatives. Not only was it the farthest-reaching conflict it had ever fought, it was also the most expensive, costing more than £100 million. The British state spent over £1 million reimbursing its colonies for their efforts and sent more than twelve thousand troops to fight the French from Canada to the Caribbean. And as the war expanded, its army swelled to 120 battalions, or more than ninety thousand men, on four continents. Just one seven-week campaign, the 1759 invasion of Germany, required 55,440 horses, 277,829 loaves of bread, and 3,333,960 pounds of wood. In Germany, British contractors built more than a dozen bakeries, each of which employed hundreds of people. And operations at sea were even more impressive. At the naval dockyards in London, thousands of men toiled in one of the largest enterprises in Europe, readying ships for destinations as far away as the Philippines. In a single year, 1760, Britain’s navy board bought almost half a million pounds of hops, more than four and a half million pounds of biscuit, and nearly eleven million pounds of beef— enough food to fill more than fifty 747 freighters. That was what it took to feed forty thousand men at sea, a population greater than Philadelphia, more in fact than any English city other than London. Such exertions allowed Britain to fight a world war against France, as well as against Spain, Austria, Russia, and the Mughal Empire. Herculean in its scale, that effort was all the more impressive considering the fight persisted for nearly a decade and ultimately ended in a victory against Europe’s richest and most powerful state.1 77

78 t h e s e v e n y e a r s ’ wa r

Why did Britain lavish such resources for fighting France and defending its empire? The answer to that question, as historians have long realized, offers important insight into the origins of the American Revolution. Many scholars argue that the Seven Years’ War was a turning point in the relationship between Britain and its colonies, because the conflict convinced metropolitan leaders that they had no choice but to centralize their empire and raise money directly from the colonies.2 Other historians have called this account of the necessity of imperial reform into question by pointing to William Pitt’s strategy of reimbursing the colonies for the money they spent defending the empire. They argue that there were competing approaches to imperial management, and they observe that many British policy makers accommodated themselves to the demands of colonial legislatures in order to win the war.3 The latter of these interpretations, which stresses Pitt’s “disposition to treat the colonists in effect as allies rather than subordinates, to ask for their help rather than to compel it,” informs the chapter that follows.4 Indeed, when Pitt came to power he not only rejected arguments for raising colonial revenue but decided to nearly double colonial reimbursements. Yet these earlier interpretations nonetheless leave many questions unanswered. They cannot explain why, even before Pitt became chief minister in 1757, the British government spent £170,000 reimbursing the colonies.5 And they are silent on why ideas of sensible military strategy differed so greatly among Britain’s leaders. As we will see, Pitt’s strategy of raising vast sums and fighting a global war reflected a set of political commitments that were markedly different from those of either the establishment Whig Newcastle administration or of the more authoritarian Bute administration that followed. The Seven Years’ War marked a genuine transformation in Britain’s foreign policy and empire, but that shift had far less to do with either the reluctance of colonial legislatures to contribute to a growing empire or the pragmatism of political leaders. Rather, it was the result of the growing power of authoritarian reformers and the gradual decline of both radical and establishment Whigs. Well before that change occurred, politicians and the politically engaged came to very different conclusions about how to pay for and fight the Seven Years’ War. Believing that Britain’s real interests lay in Europe, establishment Whigs like the Duke of Newcastle sought to minimize Britain’s North American expenses and pursued an ad hoc policy of colonial reimbursement. They were happy to let colonial legislatures raise funds on

t h e s e v e n y e a r s ’ wa r

79

their own, and they committed Britain to rebuffing French advances in North America only when it became clear that the colonies were genuinely at risk. Such caution and neglect infuriated radical Whigs. When Pitt joined forces with Newcastle in 1757 and became secretary of state, he forced the government to take a far more aggressive military strategy, one that greatly expanded the policy of reimbursement in order to secure American recruits and money. This approach reflected radical Whigs’ belief that Britain’s power and prosperity depended on North America and that absolutist France represented a profound threat to European peace. Unlike their establishment Whig allies, they had no objections to spending whatever it took to defend the colonies, because they believed the colonies were crucial to Britain’s economy and security. But Pitt’s far more aggressive approach to foreign and military policy required an uneasy set of alliances. Not only was he dependent on the Whig establishment for political power and access to financial markets, but he relied on the grudging support of Tories who had long criticized Whig rule. Many Tories initially supported Pitt as a counterweight to Newcastle and the Whig establishment. However, as the war dragged on, they became increasingly appalled by radicals’ bellicosity and extravagance. Indeed, they joined many disaffected Whigs in the cause of authoritarian reform. Averse to both taxation and debt, authoritarian reformers were convinced that a global war with France would lead to bankruptcy. Enthusiasm for fiscal austerity was nothing new for authoritarian reformers, but George III’s accession in 1760 was. The new king had been trained in their understanding of political economy and hoped to revive monarchical authority.6 As he increasingly sidelined Pitt and Newcastle in favor of both the Earl of Bute and the Duke of Bedford, authoritarian reformers seized the opportunity to scale back the war effort and radically reorient Britain’s relationship with its colonies.

A Different Kind of Colonial Union The debate over colonial union reflected this clash over how Britain ought to confront French power. Initially, metropolitan politicians and political commentators responded to French expansion in North America in much the same way as their counterparts across the Atlantic, with proposals to unite Britain’s colonies. Even before receiving word of the Albany Congress’s proceedings, the Newcastle administration asked the Board of Trade to

80 t h e s e v e n y e a r s ’ wa r

prepare a plan for colonial union. However, drawing the colonies together proved divisive. It split authoritarian reformers and establishment Whigs in Newcastle’s government, and it prompted a fierce debate about how to govern the empire. That dispute proved so contentious that Newcastle ultimately rejected any colonial reforms that required parliamentary approval. Historians usually explain this decision by pointing to both the ministry’s fears of colonial independence and Newcastle’s unwillingness to risk the government’s majority in Parliament.7 But this gives too much credit to the influence of authoritarian reformers in the administration and in Parliament. While Charles Townshend, William Murray, the future Lord Mansfield, and Halifax all sought to place the colonies under stricter dependence on the mother country, Newcastle and his closest advisers, Horatio Walpole and Philip Yorke, first Earl of Hardwicke, showed little enthusiasm for using Parliament’s authority to fight the imagined scourge of colonial “independency.” They believed in a commercial empire that enriched Britain’s merchants and manufacturers, and they were far more interested in quieting populist demands for protecting the empire than they were in reforming the colonies. Ultimately, Newcastle was caught in the middle of these competing recipes for imperial governance. While establishment Whigs ultimately gave up on colonial union, they were nonetheless committed to resisting French encroachments in North America. Their support for strengthening the bonds among the colonies was as much a fiscal strategy as a defensive one. Newcastle’s confidant Thomas Hay, Lord Dupplin, expressed hope that Britain would take measures that would stop the French and “produce a union of strength in our colonies, which alone can secure them.” To this end, Walpole hoped “to engage the colonies to exert their own powers in defense of their own settlements.” It soon became clear, however, that the “persisting exigency” of the French encroachments and the “inabilities” of the colonies to defend themselves left the government no choice but to send them money.8 Indeed, while the Whig establishment was eager to reduce Britain’s debts and feared provoking a war, they were fully committed to repelling France’s advances. They shuddered at what French domination of North America and its commerce would mean for Britain’s standing in the world. To that end, the government sent Virginia £10,000 in specie and another £10,000 in 1754 to match funds raised by the colony.9 Yet in spite of such generosity, Newcastle was nonetheless committed to empire on the cheap. He used import duties on colonial tobacco

t h e s e v e n y e a r s ’ wa r

81

to pay for the grant and continued trying to limit Britain’s financial exposure to the growing crisis in America.10 While searching for a way to repel France as cheaply as possible, the cabinet instructed the Board of Trade to prepare a plan for colonial union in June 1754.11 Unlike the Albany plan, the board’s proposal eschewed colonial representation and sought to make the colonies pay for their own defense. It observed that North America was “divided into separate and distinct provinces, having little or no connection with, or dependence upon each other,” and recommended that governors appoint commissioners who would meet to determine the relative contribution of each colony for the common defense.12 The board’s plan for American union created a “permanent method” for maintaining frontier forts and conducting Native American diplomacy, mandated that colonies raise enough troops to repel invasion, and created a Crown-appointed commander in chief for North America. The commander in chief would be responsible for coordinating American military efforts and would be authorized to draw upon colonial treasuries for his expenses. If the colonies refused to comply with the plan, or if they failed to raise money on their own, Parliament would have to intervene.13 Newcastle’s closest advisers responded enthusiastically to the Board of Trade’s proposal but stopped short of endorsing authoritarian reform. While John Carteret, Earl Granville, wholeheartedly endorsed the board’s recommendations, Hardwicke’s response was more skeptical. Hardwicke, who served as lord chancellor, praised the plan as “very well drawn up,” especially at a time when many in Britain had complained about the “great sums” the government had spent in America. Nevertheless, he expressed reservations that it was too cumbersome to allow the colonies to respond rapidly to invasion.14 And although he sought to reduce Britain’s expenses in defending America, he respected the right of colonial legislatures to raise money without being coerced by either the ministry or Parliament. Some people, he observed, might object that the colonial assemblies would simply ignore the union’s demands for money. Yet, as they were “legislative bodies,” Hardwicke could see “no help for it.”15 He believed in uniting the colonies and encouraging them to support their mutual defense. And like Newcastle, he had little taste for expending vast sums in North America. He accepted, however, that colonial revenue would have to be raised by the assemblies. His hope was that the government could create new institutions that would

82 t h e s e v e n y e a r s ’ wa r

convince the colonies to raise funds on their own, protecting Britain’s investment while minimizing its costs. Authoritarian reformers had a very different understanding of what colonial union was supposed to accomplish, and they criticized the Board of Trade’s proposal for very different reasons. For Townshend and Murray, like their fellow authoritarian reformers in the colonies, the whole point of union was to curb the power of the American assemblies and to reduce Britain’s expenses by securing a permanent and non-negotiable source of revenue. The Board of Trade was the best judge of what money the colonies ought to contribute and Parliament the most reliable means of raising those funds. Colonial legislatures, Townshend concluded, could never be counted on to collect the money that Britain needed to defend its empire.16 Moreover, the Board of Trade’s plan of union did nothing to stop colonial legislatures from using their control over taxation to badger colonial governors. Like the Albany plan, it would force Britain to choose between defending its empire and governing its colonies.17 With both his ministry and Britain’s legislators divided over colonial policy, Newcastle decided against bringing colonial union before Parliament. Not only did the Albany plan provoke concerns about American “independency” among many of the government’s supporters, but George Washington’s humiliating surrender at Fort Necessity now made the government’s neglect of colonial policy a cause célèbre of its opponents.18 “Everybody” was “full of North America,” observed Newcastle, and any discussion of colonial union would almost certainly prompt violent popular attacks against the ministry.19 Unless the government acted decisively, Secretary of State Thomas Robinson observed, it would face “the clamors of merchants at home, or their interested correspondents abroad.”20 A parliamentary debate on colonial reform would only inflame the situation while opening divisions within the ministry. It might even threaten Newcastle’s carefully constructed political coalition. Considering the political risks and eager to secure the colonies as quickly and cheaply as possible, Newcastle and Robinson decided to avoid a messy discussion about imperial governance. Instead of an ambitious colonial union, their government created a North American commander in chief and prosecuted the war through a combination of gubernatorial instructions, metropolitan reimbursement, and the goodwill of colonial assemblies.

t h e s e v e n y e a r s ’ wa r

83

Controversial War Despite Newcastle’s best efforts, the mid-1750s witnessed a fierce public debate over war and empire. Both Radical Whigs and Tories denounced Newcastle and the Whig establishment for allowing North America to languish while Britain supported greedy European allies. The political battle at home was particularly intense because the war abroad was so disastrous. In the summer of 1755, the French annihilated both General Edward Braddock and his army in the back country of Pennsylvania. A year later, both Fort Oswego, on the banks of Lake Ontario, and Minorca fell to France. Public outrage over the loss of Britain’s Mediterranean stronghold shook the government to its core. Indeed, it eventually forced the resignation of Secretary of State Henry Fox.21 William Pitt replaced Fox in a joint ministry with the Duke of Devonshire that lasted a mere four months. It was not until June 1757 that Pitt formed an alliance with Newcastle that would lead Britain through much of the war. With Pitt’s assumption of power, it “rained gold

9. Patriotism Rewarded: Inscrib’d to the Rt. Honble. the Lord Mayor, Aldermen & Common Council of the City of London by Their Most Obedient Humble Servants, John Ryall & Robt. Withy, 1757. London radicals celebrated William Pitt and hoped his leadership would curb corruption and restore Britain’s prosperity. (Courtesy of the Lewis Walpole Library, Yale University)

84 t h e s e v e n y e a r s ’ wa r

boxes” as communities throughout the kingdom sent him the freedom of the city to celebrate his commitment to British liberty and prosperity. A brilliant orator and popular champion, the new secretary of state began his tenure lamenting “Minorca, with it the Mediterranean, lost, and America itself precarious.”22 He would spend the next three and a half years waging a global war that promised not just to turn the tide but to crush French power around the world. Yet like the Whig establishment’s more cautious approach, Pitt’s strategy of unbounded warfare provoked intense debate. That debate began even before Pitt took office. As a condition of serving as secretary of state, Pitt insisted on subjecting Hanoverian soldiers to British military justice, investigating Britain’s territorial losses, and militia reform. All of those demands raised the ire of authoritarian reformers and provoked anxiety among establishment Whigs, but it was overhauling the militia that proved most controversial.23 Pitt’s insistence on a militia bill exposed radically different views about military discipline and professionalization. Historians largely treat militia reform as either the result of pragmatic military policy, popular political pressure, or efforts to strengthen a dynastic monarch against Parliament.24 But it was, in fact, part of an ideological debate that took place on both sides of the Atlantic about the role of a professional military in a free society. Radical Whigs were extremely critical of the government’s efforts to concentrate military authority. They feared that a professional army on British soil could be used to stifle dissent, and they thought little of the soldiers who composed that force. Instead, they sought to create a well-regulated militia, which they believed would be an inexpensive means of deterring French invasion while also encouraging patriotism and virtue. Yet ministry after ministry had neglected the county militias, leaving recruitment, training, and discipline in an appalling state. The militia bill of 1757 was supposed to fix that. Although it imposed a heavy burden on many middle- and working-class families and provoked some of the worst rioting of the 1750s, it was designed to free Britain from the domination of a professional army.25 Radical Whigs strongly supported a national militia because they believed that a populace trained in the arts of war was far preferable to a standing army of professional soldiers.26 They also concluded that Britain did not have enough troops to defend itself against a foreign invasion.27 Not only would an effective force of citizen soldiers help secure Britain from attack, but it would help curb “grievous” taxes and the “immense” national debt.28

t h e s e v e n y e a r s ’ wa r

85

Counterintuitive though it might seem, radical Whigs were convinced that patriotic amateurs made better soldiers than professionals. Richard Grenville, Earl Temple, told the House of Lords that he had no doubt “that a man who labors hard for six days of the week, and spends great part of the seventh in military exercises” was “more likely to make a good soldier, than a man who employs great part of two, or even three days of the week, in military exercises, and spends all the rest in idleness and drunkenness.”29 Committed to a notion of patriotic citizenship, they were adamant that both liberty and military discipline were best maintained by men who were part of society rather than outside it. And when rioting made it clear that the financial burden of service was too great, they convinced Parliament to support militiamen’s families through county rates. This is not to say that radical Whigs entirely opposed the use of professional military forces; indeed, they argued that a well-regulated militia would free Britain to use its navy and its regular forces to defend its colonies.30 Ultimately, they believed that a representative and accountable military force—like a representative and accountable government—was Britain’s best defense against the forces of absolutism. However, authoritarian reformers like the Antiguan sugar planter Samuel Martin and Loudoun’s patron William Augustus, Duke of Cumberland, were convinced that Britain needed a highly disciplined fighting force. Martin considered Pitt’s demand for a militia act “unreasonable, immoderate, haughty, and unworthy of the royal dignity to condescend to.”31 The Jacobite invasion of 1745, in which many counties had been reluctant to pay for their own defense and in which many militiamen had deserted their posts, proved that Britain could not rely on an army of amateurs to defend itself.32 Instead of a militia, which would be no match for the crack troops of a foreign power, Charles Townshend, third Viscount Townshend, argued that Britain needed a standing army of at least eighteen thousand professionals. Townshend’s skepticism derived both from his concerns about military discipline and his belief that pulling people out of the workforce would raise wages and diminish Britain’s competiveness.33 Opponents of a national militia, which also included many establishment Whigs, echoed the viscount’s view that Britain would be far better served by a professional army than by an armed rabble. Not only were career soldiers better trained, but they could be counted on to put down domestic unrest instead of encouraging it. As one group of Nottingham citizens told their representatives, the militia would promote “idleness and sloth among the mechanics, and unwillingness to

86 t h e s e v e n y e a r s ’ wa r

labor, joined to a licentious disposition.” Indeed, arming such men threatened the constitution itself.34 The few authoritarian reformers who supported the Militia Act, such as the Duke of Bedford, did so with the belief that it would subject militiamen “to a stricter degree of military discipline.”35 It was discipline and control—the kind of discipline that could only be instilled and maintained by professional soldiers—that authoritarian reformers sought to bring to Britain’s army and its empire. These rival assessments of the militia dovetailed with competing perceptions of American soldiers. Radical Whigs were convinced that the colonies were a well of martial virtue. They celebrated American troops, as they did British militia and privateers, because they believed that a participatory military force was both cheaper and more effective than a professional army. As one writer to the London Evening Post explained, the only thing that could save Britain’s colonies from the French was “a real and active militia, maintained, disciplined, and paid.”36 In that spirit, William Beckford questioned the need to subject American troops to British military discipline, explaining that while English soldiers were men of “no character, or perhaps a bad one,” American recruits likely included “many gentlemen of some fortune” and “men of some substance and character.” Indeed, Pitt arranged for provincial officers below the rank of colonel to have equal rank with their metropolitan brethren.37 Such views were understandable given the enthusiasm of radical Whigs across the Atlantic for American soldiers. While colonists like Boston minister Charles Chauncy certainly praised the bravery and skill of New Englanders, governors such Henry Ellis of Georgia and Thomas Pownall of Massachusetts also applauded the “zeal” and “discipline” of colonial troops.38 Authoritarian reformers, however, had a radically different understanding of colonists’ military professionalism and their commitment to the empire. They were largely convinced that colonists were cowardly, undisciplined, and selfish, no match for either the professional army France had assembled or their Native American allies. Major General Edward Braddock, who would lead his army to catastrophic defeat on the shores of the Monongahela River in July 1755, derided southern colonists, “whose slothful and languid disposition renders them very unfit for military service,” while Pennsylvania’s governor, William Denny, complained of Americans who panicked and ran because “neither the officers nor men raised in this wild manner, had any kind of discipline.” Far better, they argued, to send a professional army to North America and to put colonists under the

t h e s e v e n y e a r s ’ wa r

87

command of British officers.39 Such a view carried little weight with those who believed standing armies were ineffective and dangerous, and who saw America as a source of both virtue and prosperity. Indeed, it was precisely because radical Whigs valued the colonies’ economic and military contributions that they were prepared to spend enormous amounts of money defending them and reimbursing their assemblies. In this highly contentious political environment, the Newcastle-Pitt ministry depended on the support of an unstable coalition of Whigs and Tories. Pitt, in particular, had relied on the backing of patriotic Tories in his opposition to the Whig establishment. Indeed, Tories shared an apparent similarity with radical Whigs, arguing for political reform, a blue-water naval strategy, and colonial defense. They also attacked the excesses and corruption of the Whig establishment and grudgingly supported militia reform.40 While these common concerns united opponents of establishment Whig rule, Tories’ skepticism of religious dissent, opposition to European war, and aversion to public debt made their alliance with Pitt a marriage of convenience.41 Indeed, Charles Townshend, who supported Pitt’s aggressive military strategy in both North America and Europe, had little expectation that the “Great Commoner’s” ministry would be a success. He described Whigs, “who never loved Mr. P[itt],” keeping their distance from the great commoner, while “Tories, who gave him popularity for their own purposes,” rejoiced at the impotence of his administration.42 And he was convinced that fickle popular opinion would eventually turn against Pitt and restore more conservative Whigs to power. Indeed, the precariousness of Pitt’s administration put the secretary of state under intense pressure to satisfy the public’s desire for military victory.43 With the public demanding results, the new secretary of state turned against his North American commander in chief, the Earl of Loudoun. Loudoun’s undistinguished and contentious command in North America— and his close connections to Pitt’s arch political rival the Duke of Cumberland—made him a favorite target of radical Whigs. As Charles Lennox, Duke of Richmond, observed laconically, Pitt was “displeased” with Loudoun. Both the secretary of state and his fellow ministers complained that Loudoun had no real plan for military operations, while radical Whigs accused him of having made a fortune through contracts and peculation.44 Britain’s difficulties in North America, radical Whigs believed, stemmed not from recalcitrant assemblies but from overmighty governors who threatened

88 t h e s e v e n y e a r s ’ wa r

the “liberties of the people” and made colonists reluctant to raise funds. Frustrated with a commander who clashed with the colonists he was supposed to lead, and with a number of expeditions in the offing, Pitt took an increasingly active role in coordinating military operations.45 While Pitt and the City joined with Loudoun’s enemies in North America to attack his tenure, authoritarian reformers continued to support him. One complained of the whispering campaign that accused Loudoun of refusing to take Louisburg unless the Duke of Cumberland took power and urged the general to “strike a blow of consequence” to save this command.46 That proved to be wishful thinking. Facing popular pressure to show results and dissatisfied with his commander, Pitt recalled Loudoun in December 1757 and replaced him with General James Abercromby. With Loudoun out, Pitt could pursue the aggressive, global war that he wanted. His forceful defense of the colonies and his pursuit of naval warfare against France earned him grudging Tory support. However, he broke with the Tories by sending men and money to Europe. Despite his earlier, opportunistic attacks on the Newcastle ministry for lavishing money on the continent, Pitt insisted that nothing could divert the king’s attention from “the proper interest of Europe.”47 Fearing French hegemony, radical Whigs were emphatic in their desire to defend both Protestantism and the liberties of Europe. But they also believed that the best way of doing this was by securing the source of Britain’s prosperity, its American colonies. Their agenda was to crush French power, especially in North America. Pitt’s effort earned him the adulation of radical Whig mouthpieces such as the Monitor, the London Evening Post, and the City of London’s Common Council.48 Such enthusiasm stemmed from the shared conviction that the colonies were both loyal imperial subjects and in desperate need of Britain’s help. Defeating France meant expanding the system of requisition and reimbursement that Newcastle had created and using it to bring new vigor to the war effort. Pitt persuaded Parliament to spend more than £700,000 compensating its colonies and even more turning back French ambitions in Europe.49 He did so believing that this would ultimately expand commerce, manufacturing, and revenue. Like establishment Whigs, radicals were convinced that defending America was a means of securing Britain’s security. But unlike Newcastle and his allies, they drew little distinction between defending the colonies and defending the mother country. Boston was every bit as important for Britain’s security as Birmingham. The result of this philosophy was

t h e s e v e n y e a r s ’ wa r

89

10. Without: From the London Evening Post of Saturday, June 11, 1757. Critics of the establishment Whig regime attacked the government for impoverishing Britain and neglecting the defense of its colonies. In this illustration, the mother country’s industry stands idle while French troops and their Native American allies attack defenseless settlers. (Courtesy of the Lewis Walpole Library, Yale University)

the building of dozens of forts throughout North America, the construction of roads that snaked across the continent, and the expansion of industries such as shipbuilding and military contracting.50 Spending hundreds of thousands of pounds reimbursing the colonies was undoubtedly expensive, but so too was the war in Europe. And for Pitt and his radical Whig supporters, it was all money well spent. Radical Whigs were opposed to taxing the colonies for much the same reason they were willing to spend millions defending North America. Not only were they comfortable with borrowing money to fight France, but they believed that the point of the war was to secure and expand the colonial market. Even as the expense of the war mounted, they remained convinced that taxing the colonies was counterproductive. In early 1759, the Monitor considered a number of different approaches to raising new taxes to meet the demands of an increasingly expensive war. Not only did the radical Whig mouthpiece not suggest extracting more revenue from the colonies, it insisted

90 t h e s e v e n y e a r s ’ wa r

that the colonial trade was already too heavily taxed. Taxes on the colonies were like the domestic duty on soap and wool production: they increased production costs and fell heavily on the most productive sectors of the British economy. Instead, the paper suggested a tax on government sinecures and spirits.51 Pitt, whose grandfather had been governor of Madras and whose family fortune had been made in India, similarly opposed extracting revenue from Britain’s South Asian colonies. When Robert Clive urged him to assume control over the land revenue of Bengal, he showed little interest. Clive, as governor of Bengal, extolled the benefits of the diwani. He promised an “income of upwards of two millions sterling yearly” that could be used “as a fund toward diminishing the heavy load of debt under which we at present labor.” But an empire of revenue did not appeal to Pitt. Indeed, he worried that colonial wealth would “endanger” British liberties.52 Radical Whigs had little interest in extracting taxes from colonies; they were, however, willing to spend heavily to defend Britain’s overseas possessions. The logic of this was straightforward: colonies increased trade, spurred domestic manufacturing, and enhanced British power. Authoritarian reformers had little faith in Pitt’s strategy of spending enormous amounts of money on a global war. Charles Townshend asked how ministers and projectors could, “in times of so much danger and national weakness, propose to continue even a disadvantageous war for another year.” Loudoun’s ally William Baker had a similar perspective. He observed that England’s people were beset by “so licentious a liberty” that they maliciously denigrated their rulers’ characters while seeking to intervene in the most intimate details of policy. Such moral failings compounded political misjudgments. Having foolishly spent money on European alliances and wars, Townshend concluded that Britain was “sinking under its own debt and expenses” and would soon be forced to beg France for peace.53 Townshend’s condemnation of Pitt’s borrowing and spending demonstrates how political economic disagreements led to radically different conceptions of military strategy, diplomatic aims, and imperial policy. Rather than unite Britain, war with France divided it. The only thing most people agreed about was that Britain ought to defend North America against French aggression. But even that raised difficult questions about who should pay for what and how the colonies ought to defend themselves. Ultimately, Newcastle’s strategy of cautiously reimbursing the colonies for their military spending while minimizing Britain’s expenses proved too timid for British

t h e s e v e n y e a r s ’ wa r

91

popular opinion. Pitt’s leadership allowed radical Whigs to fight the war they wanted—a war that valued North America while leaving France no quarter.54 Almost Icarus-like in its ambition, Pitt’s strategy worked. In 1759, Britain won victories at Quebec, Guadeloupe, Lagos, and Madras, securing an empire that stretched nearly eight thousand miles, from the Mississippi to the Ganges. But those victories came at a price. By the time the “Great Commoner” left office, Britain’s military spending had more than doubled— reaching £16 million in 1761 alone. No minister had ever spent more. The success of that strategy depended on the vast amounts that Newcastle helped Britain secure through his connections to bankers in London and Amsterdam. In the four years Pitt was in power, Britain borrowed close to £33 million, more than it had during the previous eighteen years combined.55 Even as they made Newcastle and his confederates increasingly anxious, those great sums paid for fleets and armies that challenged French power all over the world.56 They were spent with the conviction, widely shared by radical Whigs, that the safety of European liberty and Protestantism depended on annihilating France’s geopolitical ambitions. And they reflected the mutual commitment of both establishment and radical Whigs to using public debt as a cudgel in the fight against absolutism. Not everyone, however, viewed Britain’s financial and military accomplishments as an unalloyed good. The accession of a new monarch committed to authoritarian reform would soon bring Pitt crashing down to earth.

Peace and Austerity George III was a different kind of king, and he brought a different kind of politics to Britain. The twenty-two-year-old monarch was not only an ardent musician but a committed maestro of authoritarian reform. With the help of his childhood tutor and confidant, the Earl of Bute, he worked to free the monarchy from the influence of Parliament, ministers, and the public.57 And he endeavored to bring the Seven Years’ War to a conclusion. Despite Britain’s overwhelming victories in 1759, diplomats spent years negotiating a settlement. All the while supporters of peace and austerity clashed with politicians and activists who pressed for a decisive military victory against France and its allies. Authoritarian reformers were appalled by the cost of Pitt’s German war and raised increasingly urgent concerns about the burden of debt and taxes. Radical Whigs responded by insisting that the real danger lay

92 t h e s e v e n y e a r s ’ wa r

in gratifying French ambitions.58 Their contest continued a long debate over the political economic consequences of Britain’s fiscal-military state, even as it took place in a new political environment in which authoritarian reformers enjoyed increasing power and influence. As secretary of state, Pitt pushed Britain’s fiscal military state to its limits and beyond. But winning the peace would be more difficult than simply defeating France.59 Like most radical Whigs, Pitt feared that Britain would repeat the mistakes of the War of Spanish Succession. In that earlier conflict, fecklessness and factiousness had led to the Treaty of Utrecht, which forced Britain to return Cape Breton Island to the French. This had allowed Britain’s rival to “cover the present age with blood.”60 Pitt’s sentiments were echoed in the radical Whig press, which insisted that the nation could ill afford to repeat the mistakes of the past. Newspapers like the Monitor, along with pamphlets such as The Conduct of the Ministry Impartially Examined and John Almon’s a Review of Mr. Pitt’s Administration, insisted that Britain should never trade its victories for a hollow peace.61 No price was too high, no debt too great to save the European world from French dominance. Such profligacy and bloodlust appalled authoritarian reformers. Although Newcastle grew increasingly nervous about the cost of the war and supported curtailing operations against France, he continued to support Britain’s European commitments. The German war was costing Britain £340,000 a month, and even some radical Whigs believed it was an expensive distraction.62 But it was authoritarian reformers who found it truly offensive. Israel Mauduit, a customs official close to Bute, wrote Considerations on the Present German War. A runaway best-seller, Considerations laid out the case against continental entanglements and for a naval war. Mauduit declared that France had the fiscal wherewithal to continue the war in Europe indefinitely, while Britain had to decide whether it would “lavish away five millions a year in Germany.” He was joined by Richard Rigby, an Irish privy councilor and staunch supporter of British rule, who denounced the cost of war and subsidies for falling “heaviest on the landed gentlemen.”63 Such efforts to rein in Britain’s expenses also enjoyed the support of George III, who had learned the political economy of authoritarian reform at a young age. The young king made no secret of his desire to put an end to the “bloody and expensive” war. To that end, he made Bute his second secretary of state and brought authoritarian reformers like Henry Fox and Bedford into the cabinet. Together, they pledged not only peace but “oeconomy and security.”64

t h e s e v e n y e a r s ’ wa r

93

Almost immediately, Pitt clashed with Britain’s newly empowered authoritarian reformers. Although he initially sought conciliation, supporting a duty of 3 shillings a barrel on strong beer that most radical Whigs detested as a regressive tax on poor laborers, he found himself at odds with Bute and his allies. He demanded retaliation for Spanish attacks on British shipping, while his political confidant Beckford insisted that Britain engage its enemies “out of the mouth of a cannon, sword in hand.”65 Such bellicosity and the arrogance that accompanied it increasingly alienated Pitt from the king and his cabinet colleagues. On October 5, 1761, he resigned, declaring famously that he would “not continue without having the direction” of the war.66 His departure was soon followed by that of the Duke of Newcastle, who was replaced by Bute as head of both the Treasury and the government. Even as they marginalized Pitt and purged the cabinet of their opponents, authoritarian reformers had to contend with popular backlash. Pitt took his case to the public. He published a letter in the Public Ledger that immediately sold three thousand copies, while his supporters produced angry pamphlets defending the “Great Commoner’s” administration.67 Bute and his allies responded in kind, publishing tracts, newspaper pieces, and political cartoons attacking Pitt’s reckless foreign policy and his war in Germany. Works like A Full Exposition of a Pamphlet Entitled, Observations on the Papers Relative to the Rupture with Spain and A Letter to the Right Honourable William Pitt, Esq. berated the former secretary of state for sacrificing peace and prosperity at the altar of his ambition. In the House of Lords, Bedford brought a motion that condemned the cost of the war by declaring that Britain could never afford an army as large France’s.68 Britain’s fiscal constraints left it no choice but to cut its subsidy to Prussia, withdraw its troops from Germany, and aggressively pursue peace. Authoritarian reformers’ desire for a speedy peace sprang from their long-standing view that Britain’s “distressful pecuniary circumstances” meant that it was “approaching ruin.” Henry Ellis, the former governor of Georgia, was typical when he lamented that his already overburdened country had been “forced into a war with Spain” that demanded a “speedy conclusion.”69 Even as the war continued, Bute advocated that Britain trim its wartime spending. This counterintuitive strategy made sense in the context of the political economy of authoritarian reform. Pitt’s brother-in-law George Grenville argued that the surest way to secure peace with France was to cut expenses and make concessions. Such arguments reflected the view, expressed by Anthony

94 t h e s e v e n y e a r s ’ wa r

Chamier, a financier with close connections to Bute, that Britain was unable to float any more loans “without apprehending the most dangerous consequences.”70 While this was certainly debatable—Britain’s interest rates were still among the lowest in Europe—there was no question that years of world war had added £42 million to the nation’s debts.71 Indeed, authoritarian reformers were convinced that neither military victories nor Bourbon territory could ever repay such staggering obligations. Those conclusions led the new king’s ministers to seek peace with France and to reduce Britain’s European commitments. In a speech to Parliament on the signing of the preliminary peace treaty, Thomas Villiers, the future postmaster and privy councilor, defended the ministry’s pursuit of peace and austerity. He promised that fixing Britain’s finances would “strike fresh terror” in the French and dissuade them from ever again challenging British power.72 With their strong sense that high taxes and excessive public debts were the cause of British decline, it is no surprise that Bute and his allies turned to domestic tax reform. In conjunction with eliminating public debt, John Shebbeare proposed replacing imposts with a graduated capitation tax that would lower the burden of high wages.73 With a similar ambition, the Treasury considered reviving Matthew Decker’s universal tax on houses and persons, which, it was hoped, would bring enough money to defray the government’s annual expenses “without the least oppression of the subjects industry or commerce.”74 Tax reform was urgently necessary, one Treasury official explained, so as not to “clog the industry of the lower class of people, load the articles of your manufactures, enable your aspiring neighbors to undersell and emulate your commodities at foreign markets, and thereby sap the very foundation of that commerce by which liberty and independency can alone be maintained.”75 The administration’s hugely controversial reform of the cider tax was promulgated with these ideas in mind. Authoritarian reformers estimated that nearly twenty million gallons of cider were evading the excise because it was often produced in small quantities in private residences. Francis Dashwood, the chancellor of the exchequer, insisted that the tax would raise at least £170,000 while also eliminating the unfair advantage that cider producers enjoyed relative to their beer brewing competitors.76 Authoritarian reformers did not, however, stop at the cider tax. Government officials recommended a variety of taxes on consumption, including levies on coaches, swords, lace, servants, saddle horses, and dogs as well as taxes on paper, wine, and beer. They proposed new stamp duties on operas, theater

t h e s e v e n y e a r s ’ wa r

95

performances, and bills of exchange.77 And they made sharp moral judgments about those who would bear the new taxes thus proposed. Such views led one of Bute’s subordinates to lament the “melancholy picture” that took place each weekend as a vast number of apprentices and young men rode out of London to spend their weekends “in wantoness and riot.” A tax of 10 shillings per horse promised both £150,000 for the treasury and an end to the Hogarthian spectacle.78 Bute and his allies recognized that they needed a strong and stable governing coalition if they were to transform British society. The “violent or peevish opposition” of radical and establishment Whigs was as frustrating as it was dangerous; however, authoritarian reformers were confident that pursuing “every true measure of oeconomy” would eventually win them popularity.79 Thus, Bute moved not only to end the war but to rehabilitate Tories who had long been excluded from Whig government. He sought to unite them with authoritarian Whigs in a powerful governing coalition that would strengthen the monarchy and clip the wings of Britain’s free-spending state. Condemning efforts to “fetter and enslave” the king, he strongly resisted parliamentary and popular attempts to encroach on the royal prerogative.80 And he worked assiduously to broaden the monarchy’s base of support. He actively courted country gentlemen, most of whom were Tories and resented the high taxes on land that came with European warfare. Such efforts also earned him the support of Whig authoritarian reformers like Thomas Villiers, who urged that the Tories be grafted “on a Whig-stock in such a manner as to make them bear the fruit of the old tree rather than their own.”81 This was indeed a tricky feat of political horticulture. Austerity and a muscular monarchy were a controversial departure from earlier Whig policies. And yet, it worked. As the costs of war mounted and George III welcomed the Tories back to court, they deserted Pitt and Newcastle in droves.82 The result was a broad alliance in favor of both austerity and authoritarian reform. Radical Whigs and their allies in the Whig establishment denounced these efforts to remake the British state. Although they were concerned about the burden of the war, they believed that it could only warrant its enormous expense if it provided Britain with the territorial and commercial resources to pay its vast debts.83 Despite their earlier misgivings about Pitt’s bellicosity, Newcastle and his allies joined radical Whigs in opposition to the government’s foreign policy. They looked in horror at the administration’s attempt

96 t h e s e v e n y e a r s ’ wa r

to turn its back on Britain’s Prussian ally. And they were joined by radical publications such as John Wilkes’s North Briton, which accused the government of neglecting the European war effort and allowing France’s trade to flourish at the expense of Britain’s. The political economist and Pitt supporter Joseph Massie likewise argued that “amazing wealth” had been “wasted” by the administration while nothing had been done to reach “a safe, honorable, and lasting peace.”84 These attacks in print were joined by the jeers of the crowd in the street. In November 1762, on the eve of the preliminary peace treaty, the future prime minister described an “extremely turbulent” lord mayor’s feast in the City, in which the crowd “hooted and pelted” the Earl of Bute’s coach and cried “Devonshire and Pitt.” By the time the preliminary treaty was signed, the prime minister had no choice but to travel through London under armed guard.85 Bute’s administration responded to these attacks both by attacking its opponents and by appealing to elites threatened by disorder. Observing that “faction” threatened the “happy conclusion of the peace,” the government hired an army of scribers to confront the harangues of the opposition press.86 And—in a move that resulted in howls of protest and accusations of Scottish tyranny—the ministry sought to silence the North Briton by prosecuting its publisher, John Wilkes, for seditious libel. The Earl of Halifax led the charge against Wilkes as he had for imperial reform. Declaring the North Briton “villainous,” he worked with Grenville to restore the “honor” and “authority” of government by bringing Wilkes to justice. Confronting Wilkes went hand in hand with authoritarian reformers’ efforts to build a broader coalition of those threatened by “misrule or disorder.” Members of the administration like George Grenville dined with London’s leading merchants and actively solicited their support for the government’s program of peace and austerity.87 Those efforts were critical given the sharp ideological divide over the Treaty of Paris. Unsurprisingly, authoritarian reformers responded to the treaty with both relief and enthusiasm. Bute declared that it was the best and most durable peace Britain had made in over a century.88 Radical Whigs, on the other hand, were convinced that 1763 was a repeat performance of 1715 and 1748, when British concessions had led to a temporary truce followed by even greater French aggression. Forfeiting hard-won territorial gains would only embolden France and lead to new conflict. For radical Whigs, the only thing that would make the war a success was unconditional French surrender.

t h e s e v e n y e a r s ’ wa r

97

And although they worried about Britain’s financial wherewithal, establishment Whigs like the Marquess of Rockingham and Edmund Burke joined Whig radicals in attacking the Bute administration’s foreign policy. Ending the war proved just as controversial as fighting it, because there was little agreement about the political and economic consequences of taxes, debt, and empire. As much as authoritarian reformers were united in their desire to rein in Britain’s finances and its dissolute society, they did not always agree how to do this. Ministers and politicians struggled to reconcile their aversion to public debt with a peace settlement that would be acceptable to the public. The Duke of Bedford, a Whig of a notably authoritarian stripe, clashed with Bute, a Tory, over whether Britain ought to seek possessions in the West Indies. Bedford opposed the seizure of Martinique, believing that it would cost “immense sums of money” and do little to improve the peace. He argued that attempting to deprive France of its naval power was “fighting against nature” and would “excite all the naval powers of Europe to enter into a confederacy against us.”89 Bute shared Bedford’s aversion to public debt and his desire to compromise with France, but he retained the long-standing Tory attachment to British naval supremacy. And he believed that public opinion demanded greater concessions from France. The treasury lord and his supporters pressed for seizing and retaining the immense revenues of the French West Indies, even if that meant giving up the “barren country” of Canada. And, despite his reservations about the attack of Havana, he believed that Britain ought to use its conquests to extract better terms from the French.90 Bedford and Bute disagreed about what Britain ought to relinquish, but they nonetheless rallied behind the Treaty of Paris. Bute declared the treaty the “salvation of an almost ruined country,” and accused Pitt of deceiving the “ignorant populace” with the view that the peace was “dishonorable, inadequate, unwise, hollow.”91 Like William Hogarth, whose satirical cartoon The Times mocked Pitt’s bellicosity, Bute and Bedford agreed that bringing the war to a rapid conclusion was urgently necessary if Britain was to avoid catastrophe. While establishment Whigs like Edmund Burke and his lifelong friend William Burke criticized authoritarian reformers’ foreign policy, they shared Bute’s aversion to trading Guadeloupe and Martinique for Canada. William, who soon found himself in a spirited debate with Benjamin Franklin, argued that the war had “laid so heavy a burthen upon our revenue, and our credit”

98 t h e s e v e n y e a r s ’ wa r

11. The Times, Plate I, 1762. William Hogarth depicted the Seven Years’ War as a worldwide conflagration fanned by the bellicosity of William Pitt and the greed of his American allies. Fortunately, he suggested, George III and his favorite Lord Bute were working to put out the flames and rescue Britain’s poor. (Courtesy of the Lewis Walpole Library, Yale University)

that Britons ought “to find in our conquests something which might enable us to lessen, or to bear the enormous weight of our debt.”92 For Burke, that meant Martinique and Guadeloupe, whose sugar offered a reliable source of both trade and revenue. Caribbean islands were far more valuable than either Pennsylvania or “speculative projects” of Canadian commerce. Quebec was not only worthless, Burke argued, acquiring it would eliminate the French threat in North America and allow the colonies to act independently. That might even lead to colonists competing with the mother country’s crucial manufacturing sector.93 Britain needed a peace treaty that would repay the war’s considerable expenses while also enhancing the commercial ties that had long been the sinews of the empire. Radical Whigs did not share these concerns, and they had no interest in choosing between Canada and the West Indies. One of their broadsides suggested that Bute’s concessions to France were motivated by the Duke of

t h e s e v e n y e a r s ’ wa r

99

Bedford’s desire to avoid paying the land tax. The Monitor told its readers that if Britain returned the territory it had taken from France and Spain, she “was only ruining herself, exhausting her riches, and lavishing away her strength and blood in fruitless expeditions.”94 Crippled by gout and unable to stand, William Pitt made a similar point in an angry speech to the House of Commons. The preliminary treaty “obscured all the glories of the war,” he told his colleagues, while sacrificing both public confidence and vital national interests. Even worse, it allowed France to fish off the coast of Newfoundland, which surrendered an “inexhaustible mine of industry, wealth, and courage” to an ambitious enemy. The treaty would enable France to rebuild its economic and military capabilities, thus planting “the seeds of a future war.”95

12. The Congress; or, A Device to Lower the Land-Tax, 1762. Radical Whigs attacked the Bute ministry’s peace with France as an attempt to cut the taxes of Britain’s landed elite. Here, Bute offers two Frenchmen Britain’s West Indian conquests while they hold the British lion in chains. (Courtesy of the Lewis Walpole Library, Yale University)

100 t h e s e v e n y e a r s ’ wa r

While debate raged both in and out of Parliament, British North Americans hoped, above all else, to see the French ejected from Canada. The memory of French encroachments and reluctant metropolitan support was still fresh in their minds, and they wanted assurances that they would never again be threatened by France and its Native allies. They believed that the conquest of North America promised an unprecedented opportunity for colonial development. On the fall of Quebec, Ezra Stiles, who was a committed radical Whig (as well as the future president of Yale College), imagined that “the whole country of Canada” would fall into British hands and described the victory as “a glorious conquest.” Stiles’s concern, like that of many colonists, was that Britain would return Canada to France as it had returned Louisburg in 1748. Canada was a “just answer to the national expense of 40 or 50 million,” the Newport minister observed. And he was convinced that giving it back to France would necessarily “plunge these provinces at once into the same dangers and disputes which have brought on and caused this war.” The Common Council of New York agreed. No less adamant that Canada was crucial to British power and American security, it declared that “exclusive possession of this vast continent,” would soon make Britain “the imperial mistress of nations.” Indeed, Benjamin Franklin, who had roundly condemned Burke’s efforts to trade Canada for Guadalupe and Martinique, declared that the preliminary peace treaty was “universally approved of in these parts.”96 While many colonists subscribed to radical Whig principles, they welcomed a peace that stopped short of annihilating France if it gave Britain control of North America. Despite its efforts to assemble a powerful coalition against disorder and licentiousness, Bute’s administration ended in failure. Exhausted from political attacks and threats of violence, he chose George Grenville to take his place. An “honest, conscientious, bold determined man,” who had “more and better ideas of oeconomy than any man in this kingdom,” Grenville was Bute’s ideal successor. The new prime minister would carry on the important work of moral and political improvement that the king’s favorite had begun. Grenville embraced his new role, telling colleagues that he had entered government to prevent politicians form “indecently and unconstitutionally” dictating policy to their monarch.97 With the peace signed, and the foundation laid for future authoritarian reforms, Grenville could continue the hard struggle for order and austerity.

4 The Rise and Fall of the Stamp Act

For conquest and commerce he cares not a straw, Nor if French Dutch or Spaniards in trade gives us law; Oeconomy only shall cure every evil, Pitt, merchants, and soldiers may go to the devil. ... America groans and petitions in vain, Her grief is his joy, and her loss is his gain; For ways and means curious his brain he ne’er racks, He stops all her wealth and then lays on his tax. —The Great Financier; or, British Oeconomy (1765)

March 18, 1766, was a day of jubilation, an unofficial public thanksgiving. That morning, more than fifty of London’s greatest merchants made their way in procession from Cornhill in the City to the House of Lords in Westminster. They went to give their thanks and their approbation to a king who had, in one stroke, lifted the pall that had descended upon British commerce and manufacturing. They were joined by sailors and artisans, the laboring phalanx of Europe’s greatest commercial and manufacturing center, who rang out “three cheers” as George III emerged from Parliament. Later that day, the newspapers reported “vast numbers” of Londoners swarming St. James’s Park, feting their monarch and expressing their “unfeigned joy.” And the bells of the metropolis echoed the cheers of the people in celebration, celebration for the restoration of “union, harmony, and prosperity, to every part of His Majesty’s extended and glorious dominions.” Celebration for an empire rescued from a law that one former secretary of treasury described as “illegal in its foundation, impracticable and 101

102 t h e r i s e a n d fa l l o f t h e s ta m p a c t

ruinous in its execution, and erroneous in its policy.” The American Stamp Act was over.1 Such revelry, which took place in the colonies as well as in London, suggests how the controversy over the Stamp Act drew the British Empire together, even as it threatened to tear it apart. Yet the outpouring of joy in Britain stands uneasily with a piece of legislation that had been passed only a year before—and by an overwhelming parliamentary majority. The act’s rationale of relieving an indebted and exhausted country has long seemed straightforward. Most historians conclude that the Stamp Act was a mild tax and that Parliament passed it with only token opposition.2 American colonists responded by resisting what they believed was an unrepresentative and unconstitutional measure. And they were joined by British merchants who protested its crippling economic consequences and eventually persuaded Parliament to reverse its mistake.3 Yet this story raises a real question of why so many people blamed a seemingly innocuous tax for a devastating recession. The Stamp Act’s meteoric rise and equally rapid fall make more sense, however, when we consider both the fierce economic debates that took place throughout the British Empire and the dramatic political changes of the first half of the 1760s. Following the Treaty of Paris in 1763, authoritarian reformers doubled down on fiscal austerity and argued that Britain ought to levy new taxes on its colonies. Policies like the Stamp Act would transform the empire from an albatross into an invaluable source of prosperity and revenue. For radical and establishment Whigs, such reforms threatened to undo the British Empire as they knew it. They accused authoritarian reformers of endangering the nation’s security, damaging its trade, and wrecking Britain’s finances by chasing the chimera of “oeconomy.” These attacks on fiscal austerity galvanized support for the Stamp Act’s repeal on both sides of the Atlantic. And they proved particularly effective amid a sharp economic downturn that crippled commerce from London to New London. When Grenville’s ministry fell for reasons unrelated to his program of fiscal austerity, an establishment Whig ministry led by the Marquess of Rockingham took its place. Committed to a fundamentally different understanding of both economics and empire, it responded to colonial protests by working with American agents and British merchants to swiftly roll back the Stamp Act.

t h e r i s e a n d fa l l o f t h e s ta m p a c t

103

Reforming the Empire: The Political Economy of the Stamp Act George Grenville came to power in April 1763 seeking to complete authoritarian reformers’ transformation of the British Empire. A financial wizard, the new prime minister was as ambitious as he was grating. Even those who shared his politics, including George III and his cabinet colleagues, could barely share a meal with him. Yet as grim and abrasive as Grenville was, there could be no denying either his gifts for public finance or his ambitions for remaking British government. As he took the political reins from Lord Bute, he described “a commercial nation . . . exhausted of its wealth and inhabitants, loaded with debts and taxes, the landed interest distressed, and more peculiarly groaning under the weight of every additional supply.” The war had been “ruinous” and had unleashed a spirit of “license and disorder” that had been “industriously augmented” by opposition politicians and their supporters.4 Grenville and his fellow ministers made it their mission to rescue Britain from this fiscal, moral, and constitutional perdition. He set to work cutting government spending by shrinking the army and shifting the cost of policing Greater London to the county governments. He improved revenue collection in Scotland and England. And, of course, he pressed ahead with transforming the colonies and their relationship with Britain. Such reforms aroused violent opposition—opposition that reinforced authoritarian reformers’ conviction that Britain and its empire were on the verge of collapse. The American Stamp Act was a key measure in that project, but it was only part of a much broader program of imperial reform.5 In 1763, the Hovering Act, which encouraged customs officials to seize vessels suspected of smuggling and to sell their contents to the highest bidder, became law. Then, in 1764, Parliament passed a sugar bill that not only revised the Molasses Act but imposed new duties on imports and exports from rival European powers. Meanwhile, Grenville’s administration gave orders to the navy and the customs service to aggressively patrol ports for smugglers and contraband, seizing the cargoes and burning the vessels of offenders. Along with these efforts to raise money came a Currency Act that barred the colonies from issuing new paper money.6 Together, these measures promised to bring both austerity and obedience to North America. They would cement the colonies’ role as a dependent periphery and

104 t h e r i s e a n d fa l l o f t h e s ta m p a c t

guarantee Britain the cheap raw materials that it needed to keep its workers employed and its society stable. Far from a pragmatic measure designed to offset Britain’s mounting expenses, the Stamp Act was a radical attempt to rescue an empire that authoritarian reformers believed was falling prey to the tyranny of licentiousness. Grenville’s government argued that reform was urgently necessary to lower the cost of labor and improve Britain’s fortunes. New sources of income—the Stamp Act, customs and excise duties, and Bengali revenue— were needed because taxes on land weighed heavily on all parts of the economy, including commerce and manufacturing. Thomas Whately, the junior secretary of treasury and a Grenville confidant, complained that Britain’s high taxes and excessive debts had raised the cost of labor and materials while also discouraging investment. Higher interest rates likewise raised prices and wages. The elevated cost of labor meant that commercial rivals could “undersell us at foreign markets, and even become competitors at our own.” Even worse, Britain’s loss of competitiveness meant that the colonies posed a growing threat to its manufacturers.7 Given Britain’s fragile condition, these economic and imperial shortcomings threatened not only the country’s power and prosperity but its political stability. This argument went far beyond the well-known argument that Parliament had a right to tax the colonies. Rather, authoritarian reformers returned to the argument that high taxes, elevated public debts, and widespread disorder were rapidly eroding the constitution’s economic foundations. Grenville offered a terrifying analysis of the social and political effects of Britain’s growing fiscal burdens. Facing high prices and rising unemployment, the people would naturally turn to “disorder and licentiousness,” which would most likely end in the “absolute power and despotism in the Crown.”8 Indeed, great debts and rising taxes undermined the political-economic power of Britain’s landed elite, who were a check on both royal authority and rampant licentiousness. Grenville saw himself as a Whig and believed that his imperial policies offered the best means of sustaining the post-1688 constitutional settlement, but that required both austerity and a strong governing elite. Seeking to ensure that the empire supported Britain’s public finances and its economy, Grenville’s administration moved decisively to increase enforcement of both customs regulations and the Navigation Acts. Smuggling deprived metropolitan industry of an essential market while also

t h e r i s e a n d fa l l o f t h e s ta m p a c t

105

denying the government much-needed funds. It had “greatly diminished” public revenue while at the same time harming those merchants who obeyed Britain’s trade regulations. Even worse, the colonies were increasingly inclined to abandon agriculture and compete with British manufacturing. Indeed, illicit trade was such a problem that Whately believed the American colonies were “no longer British colonies, but colonies of the countries they trade to.” In an effort to curb the wayward colonial economy, Grenville followed the advice of Henry McCulloh and helped pass strict laws regulating trade throughout the empire.9 Such reforms were inspired by a powerful sense that the colonies had grown prosperous at the mother country’s expense and that Britain could survive only by implementing policies that enforced American dependence. Bringing colonial trade under tighter metropolitan control went hand in hand with expanding Britain’s military presence in North America and with placing limits on settlement. Despite the fact that France had largely been eliminated from North America, secretary of war William Wildman Barrington, second Viscount Barrington, concluded that Britain needed ten thousand troops to defend the colonies. More important than the number of troops was how they would be paid for and used. Richard Grosvenor, Lord Grosvenor, a Tory supporter of Bute’s, observed that stationing soldiers in the colonies would allow Britain to spread the burden of colonial defense “among the several members of her empire.” Colonists, however, would have little say in determining what this burden would be. Indeed, the point of these troops was not only to protect Americans from rival empires but also to secure “the dependence of the colonies on Great Britain.”10 This new colonial military establishment would help enforce the 1763 proclamation that restricted settlement west of the Appalachian Mountains. Stopping western settlement was necessary, authoritarian reformers believed, because colonial expansion threatened metropolitan interests. As Barrington later explained, the interior of North America could have “little or no communication with the mother country or be of much utility to it.” British subjects who traveled west would be lost to the mother country, both morally and economically. Restricting settlement and deploying the army was therefore necessary to curb the “profligacy” and demographic growth of the colonies while also redressing “one great cause of the Indians’ discontent.” Moreover, as one pamphleteer supportive of authoritarian reform explained, the Stamp Act would pay for troops that could be used to put down “bloody riots

106 t h e r i s e a n d fa l l o f t h e s ta m p a c t

and insurrections” throughout the colonies.11 When combined with new restrictions on trade, royal soldiers and limited settlement offered the prospect of well-policed colonies that would serve Britain’s economic interests. Support for such an empire came not only from the mother country but also from the colonies. Massachusetts governor Francis Bernard and former Georgia councilor William Knox drew on their experience in America to argue for immediate reform. Bernard and Knox both complained that there was an excessive spirit of liberty in the colonies. The governor, for example, noted that it had led Americans to be “deficient in the support of their governments, both as to sufficiency and independency.”12 For both men, the problem was that executive authority, and thus metropolitan authority, was too weak. They defended the royal prerogative and urged Parliament to flex its muscles. Bernard pressed metropolitan leaders to reduce the number of colonial governments and to enhance governors’ ability to dispense patronage and manipulate colonial legislatures. He also advised that Parliament dictate to the assemblies how much they spent on defense. For his part, Knox proposed that the salaries of both colonial officials and revenue officers be put under the control of the Crown, and their salaries be paid out of a general fund of colonial quitrents.13 Bernard and Knox’s ambitions went far beyond strengthening a particular branch of colonial government or raising additional revenue, they sought to expand and centralize Britain’s imperial state. Their efforts lent support and legitimacy to the claims of metropolitan reformers that the colonies were not only out of control but that they could be remade as obedient British satellites. There was, of course, an inherent tension in authoritarian reformers’ vision of colonies subordinated to British control. On one hand, such colonies were a source of cheap raw materials and a captive market, whose gradual and controlled expansion would increase the mother country’s tax revenue.14 On the other hand, new taxes and diminished economic opportunities meant that colonies would contribute less to the British economy. Ultimately, however, authoritarian reformers concluded that colonies were a potential threat and that they could only pay for themselves if they were placed under firm metropolitan control. As secretary of treasury Charles Jenkinson explained, “The increase of our colonies is certainly what we wish but they must increase in such a manner as will keep them useful to the mother country.”15 Britain’s economic success, even survival, depended on soldiers, regulations, and taxes to keep its empire under control.

t h e r i s e a n d fa l l o f t h e s ta m p a c t

107

Authoritarian reformers diagnosed the same moral and fiscal disease in India that they did in Britain and America. And they offered similar medicine. Bengal’s governor general, Robert Clive, collaborated with Grenville to radically overhaul Britain’s South Asian empire. Together, they worked to bring order to the company’s affairs at home and its government in India.16 Clive reported from Calcutta that “the sudden, and among many, the unwarrantable acquisition of riches, had introduced luxury in every shape, and in its most pernicious excess.” With the torrent of lucre, “all distinction ceased, and every rank became in a manner upon an equality.” Nor was this all that was rotten in Bengal. Eastern riches multiplied the desires of Indian servants, and corruption spread throughout the company’s civil and military personnel. Clive sounded distinctly like Francis Bernard when he complained of a “froward spirit of independency” among company officials and of the Bengali governorship being “in a manner hunted down, stripped of its dignity, and then divided into 16 shares.”17 Taxation, as it did in both Britain and America, offered a powerful means of reform and moral regeneration. In 1765, the same year Grenville passed the Stamp Act, Clive acquired the diwani of Bengal, Bihar, and Orissa from the Mughal emperor, Shah Alam II. The diwani granted the East India Company the right to collect the Mughal’s vast land tax revenues. With that money, Clive promised to reform the company’s government in India and relieve the British Empire of its crippling debts. The Stamp Act was cut from the same cloth as the diwani, increased customs enforcement, and a permanent British military presence in North America. By forcing colonists to purchase stamped paper products, including property deeds, newspapers, and legal documents, authoritarian reformers sought both increased revenue and greater control over the colonial economy. The Stamp Act also promised to bring fiscal uniformity to an empire in which self-interested communities, like the American colonies and the cider counties in England, tended to “fling” the burdens from themselves. Although authoritarian reformers’ argument that colonists ought to contribute to the “general good” appears straightforwardly reciprocal, it nonetheless had a sharp authoritarian edge. As Jenkinson explained, only ministers and Parliament could judge what the colonial burden should be.18 The Stamp Act gave Britain’s leaders the means to promote whatever they believed the imperial common good was. Colonists, on the other hand, were expected to know their place and to pay for an army that guaranteed their subordination.

108 t h e r i s e a n d fa l l o f t h e s ta m p a c t

But it was not only the army that would ensure colonial dependency; the tax itself was explicitly designed to discipline the colonies. As Grenville observed when discussing the Stamp Act a few years after its passage, “all taxes ought to be, and many are checks upon vice and luxury or regulations of different kinds as well as sources of revenue.”19 The Stamp Act was no different. In addition to raising money, it acted “as a regulation, particularly to discourage by a high duty the grant of large quantities of land to one person, to make all law proceedings and instruments in the English language, to discourage a spirit of unnecessary litigation and several other things of the like nature.” Indeed, the levy targeted large land transactions, imposing a tax of two shillings sixpence on every 320 acres sold. Using taxation to limit land speculation was nominally progressive, but it also shifted the imperial tax burden from Britain’s wealthiest landowners to the colonies while also limiting the economic power of American elites. And it was not only land speculators like Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, and Benjamin Franklin who would be brought in line by the Stamp Act. It also promised to restrain North America’s rambunctious society. Ordinary colonists would soon find it more expensive to read newspapers and pamphlets, to petition the government, even to drink and gamble.20 With a single tax, Parliament could begin to curb the public and private license that was undermining the empire. As we have already seen, radical Whigs on both sides of the Atlantic had long rejected metropolitan efforts to levy taxes within the colonies as both politically and economically self-defeating. When Grenville introduced the Stamp Act in February 1765, radicals took the lead in opposing Parliament’s taxation of the American colonies. Pitt’s supporters in the House of Commons, including Isaac Barré, William Beckford, and Henry Seymour Conway, led the charge. Barré, a fierce public speaker who had lost an eye fighting the French in Quebec, defended America as a “new asylum of liberty.” He decried the Stamp Act for being “inflammatory and dangerous” and suggested that suffering colonists might well start competing with British manufacturing in response. Beckford, who had recently served as lord mayor of London, and Conway, whom George III had stripped of a military commission for defending the London radical John Wilkes, were no less unequivocal in their opposition. They were joined by a handful of establishment Whigs. William Meredith, a former Tory and a rival of George Grenville’s, for example, cautioned that the Stamp Act would likely

t h e r i s e a n d fa l l o f t h e s ta m p a c t

109

undermine both the colonies’ economy and the empire’s.21 Together, these opposition politicians enunciated a case against the Stamp Act that echoed the one developing across the Atlantic. Authoritarian reformers had little patience for these arguments. They insisted that regardless of how the people were represented, the state had absolute power over the property of its citizens. “Millions of British subjects resident within the island,” Jenkinson observed, “are taxed by the British Parliament without their consent as well as the Americans.” No one who had read John Locke or understood natural law could doubt “the right of supreme government over the property of the subject.” The power to tax and the power to govern were synonymous. Taxation—the lifeblood of the state—was the sine qua non of sovereignty. Both MPs and colonists who opposed the Stamp Act were guilty of fatally undermining the authority of government.22 Nor were objections to the heavy burden of the Stamp Act reasonable. The cost of Britain’s North American military force had quadrupled since the 1740s, and colonists were both able and obligated to pay for it. In a similar vein, Whately told North America’s surveyor general of customs that his concerns that the Stamp Act would reduce specie in the colonies were unjustified because the money collected would stay in North America. Another authoritarian reformer went a step further, arguing that the colonies’ lack of liquidity was irrelevant because their real wealth consisted of the goods that they produced.23 Grenville and his supporters dismissed objections to the Stamp Act as self-interested carping. And they were adamant that those responsible for the disorder and debt that threatened the nation’s survival were in no position to criticize a government that was finally putting Britain’s imperial house in order. The belief that the Stamp Act would begin reforming a licentious colonial society also meant that authoritarian reformers had little interest in alternative means of raising imperial funds. Edmund and Helen Morgan rightly observe that Grenville, despite his overtures to colonial agents, never really gave the colonies an opportunity to raise revenue on their own. Given the ideological motivations behind the Stamp Act, this is unsurprising. Whately called the Stamp Act a “great measure” because it established “the right of Parliament to lay an internal tax upon the colonies.”24 That right, by itself, would accomplish little, but new taxes and institutions would discipline the colonies and restore the political and economic health of the empire. Terrified of Britain’s mounting obligations, authoritarian reformers demanded

110 t h e r i s e a n d fa l l o f t h e s ta m p a c t

that colonists support debt reduction and fiscal austerity in Britain. However, authoritarian reformers had no faith that the colonies would contribute to the empire without Parliament’s intervention. They saw the Stamp Act as part of a broader program that would transform America into a disciplined and dependent periphery, one that would support both the economy and the treasury. Authoritarian reformers had been fighting for more than a decade to transform the empire along lines that they believed would promote the welfare of both the colonies and the mother country. The Stamp Act gave them a chance to do just that. Despite the fierce opposition of radical Whigs, Parliament overwhelmingly passed the Stamp Act in March 1765.25 Authoritarian reformers’ success reflected the divisions and disorganization of the Whig opposition. While eighteenth-century ministries enjoyed considerable advantages of patronage and loyalty to the king’s government, opponents of both Bute and Grenville had proved through their stiff opposition to both the cider duty and general warrants that they could effectively challenge the administration when they were united.26 This was not the case early in 1765. Establishment Whigs surrounding Newcastle and Rockingham, and the radicals who gravitated to Pitt, found themselves at odds over how to respond to Grenville’s initiatives. Indeed, George Onslow reported that Pitt was frustrated with Rockingham and Newcastle on account of “the American tax being not sufficiently objected to this year.” But this is not to say that establishment Whigs shared authoritarian reformers’ desire to tax the colonies. To be sure, they insisted that colonies were subordinate to Parliament and that they ought to provide a captive market for British goods. However, they rejected the assertion that high domestic taxes harmed trade and demanded imperial taxation. And while some establishment Whigs did support the Stamp Act, they abhorred Grenville’s broader program of austerity.27 David Hartley’s bruising attack on the Grenville administration’s fiscal and military policies, The Budget, dismantled the economic case for austerity. It went through eleven London editions and was favorite reading for establishment Whig grandees and radicals alike. The pamphlet’s reception led its printer, John Almon, to marvel that it had “opened the eyes of the public” and prompted Thomas Whately to rush his own response into print.28 Establishment Whigs’ relative silence on the Stamp Act was less a reflection of their enthusiasm for colonial taxation or even indifference about colonial affairs than a miscalculation about how disruptive Grenville’s reforms would ultimately prove.

t h e r i s e a n d fa l l o f t h e s ta m p a c t

111

The Whig establishment would, however, soon be roused to vigorous opposition through popular political pressure as well as the lobbying efforts of colonial agents and English merchants. In 1764 and 1765, these groups proved disorganized and ineffective. And they were further hampered by the legislature’s refusal to hear colonial petitions that “implied a doubt of the right of Parliament to lay taxes.” Marred by bickering and low morale, the opposition was little match for Grenville and his program. And they likely would have remained ineffective had it not been for George III’s growing frustration with Grenville. When the king finally fired his chief minister and replaced him with Lord Rockingham in July 1765, it opened the door to an establishment Whig ministry with little love for either fiscal austerity or authoritarian reform.29

“Oeconomy” in America The debate over authoritarian imperial reform took place throughout the British Empire, but it reached its highest pitch in the American colonies. From New Hampshire to Jamaica, radical Whigs clashed with authoritarian reformers over the legitimacy of Grenville’s taxes and trade restrictions. Colonial radicals were particularly critical of the Stamp Act because it represented a fundamental transformation of their society and of the imperial relationship more generally. They denounced the Stamp Act as a regressive tax that gave Britain free rein to extract their wealth.30 As republican imperialists who believed that colonial prosperity depended on an empire of relatively equal partners, they found Grenville’s reforms not just unwarranted but cruel. Indeed, the government’s reforms were seemingly so extreme that they provoked many moderates to embrace radical arguments against the Stamp Act.31 Yet some colonists feared the public’s disobedience far more than Parliament’s taxes, and they defended Grenville’s imperial agenda as both constitutional and necessary. Throughout North America, the debate over the Stamp Act echoed the one taking place in Britain, even as the immediate consequences of authoritarian reform meant that opposition was both more widespread and more visceral. The colonial response to the Stamp Act owed much to the economic consequences of the authoritarian imperial reform. Although the Stamp Act was never successfully implemented, much of Grenville’s program was— and with devastating consequences. In Jamaica, the trade with Spanish

112 t h e r i s e a n d fa l l o f t h e s ta m p a c t

America—long a source of valuable hard currency for all of Britain’s colonies—came to a screeching halt.32 In North America, new duties and restrictions threatened everything from the New England fishing industry to the supply of fine Madeira wine on the tables of Virginia’s planters. One Philadelphia merchant complained that the customs service blocked colonial ports “worse than a common enemy.” Colonists wrote newspaper essays deploring that “men of war, cutters, marines with their bayonets fixed, judges of admiralty, collectors, comptrollers, searchers, tide-waiters, land-waiters, with a whole catalog of pimps, are sent hither, not to protect our trade, but to distress it.”33 And they deplored the Sugar Act because it would cut off molasses and sugar from European colonies in the Caribbean, thereby crippling New England’s fish, lumber, and distilling industries. From Boston to Charleston, merchants, tradesmen, and Crown officials complained of a shortage of money and of inability to pay debts. Soon, the courts were filled with lawsuits for failure to make payment and the number of bankruptcies multiplied. Colonists responded by publishing scathing pamphlets and newspaper editorials, petitioning their legislatures, and forming associations like the Boston Society for Encouraging Trade and Commerce within the Province of Massachusetts Bay.34 At the same time that the Revenue, Hovering, and Currency Acts squeezed both trade and credit, the colonies suffered a severe postwar recession. The extent to which Grenville’s reforms made the downturn worse is debatable, but what is clear is that the years following the French and Indian War were lean ones. Government contracts dried up, colonies worked to pay back war debts, specie—already in short supply—flowed back to Britain, and per capita imports in both the northern and southern colonies fell substantially. This new economic reality left people all over North America struggling to find money to pay their creditors. In the port cities of Boston, New York, and Philadelphia, paupers filled the streets and the municipalities strained to provide relief, part of a longer trend of growing urban poverty. Moreover, prices throughout British North America declined, suggesting a broader downturn. The forced sale of property more than tripled in the Philadelphia area between 1763 and 1765, while the profits of the city’s dry goods merchants collapsed. In New York, military business disappeared, crops shriveled, inventories swelled, and one merchant observed: “everything is tumbling down, even the traders themselves.” The situation was no better in Massachusetts, where the great merchant Nathaniel Wheelwright went

t h e r i s e a n d fa l l o f t h e s ta m p a c t

113

bankrupt when he could no longer manage his staggering £170,000 of debt. The stinging recession and crippling economic restrictions left no doubt that imperial policy could have devastating consequences for colonists’ lives and well-being.35 Moreover, the downturn contributed to colonists’ perception that they were too poor to pay the Stamp Act. Crucially, stamp duties had to be paid in the “sterling money of Great Britain,” valued at “five shillings and six pence the ounce in silver.” British currency was scarce in North America, and that meant that the real burden of stamp taxes was considerable. Indeed, Virginia’s former stamp distributor told the House of Commons that he had been informed by “the most eminent merchants” that colonists did not have “a 10th part of the sum required” to pay the Stamp Act. The reason for this was simple. As John Temple, Boston’s surveyor general of customs, explained, North America was “much drained of silver” and paper money was often worthless.36 It would be extremely difficult for colonists—who were already struggling under the weight of rising colonial taxation—to pay back the debts they had contracted during the Seven Years’ War. Moreover, by forcing Americans to send their money to Britain, the Stamp Act threatened to push the colonies into a severe liquidity crisis. The lack of money would, one imperial official observed, leave colonists “destitute of every necessary of life.”37 Beyond the hardship of finding money to pay new taxes, the Stamp Act itself had broad implications for the colonial legal system and economy. More than a single tax, it was collection of fifty-four different duties on documents and legal instruments. It charged by page on petitions, claims, and pleas in court as well as for bonds, affidavits, bail documents, depositions, and court warrants. Licenses to practice law were taxed at a rate of £10 sterling, a significant sum at a time when the average Philadelphia ship captain earned around £4 sterling per month. In an influential pamphlet, the Boston lawyer and Son of Liberty James Otis predicted that bail bonds would rise from 15 shillings sterling a ream to £100; insurance policies would go from £2 to £190, and probate fees would triple. Taxing the legal system might seem a burden only for the rich, but, in fact, colonial Americans of modest means frequently sued one another to recover a multitude of debts. And because the Stamp Act’s burden depended on the amount of paper consumed, it discouraged colonists, especially poorer colonists, from engaging in potentially lengthy legal proceedings.

114 t h e r i s e a n d fa l l o f t h e s ta m p a c t

Not only was the Stamp Act a tax on the law, it was also a significant threat to an economy dependent on the acquisition and development of land. By levying a substantial tax on land grants, deeds, and the registration of real estate in colonial registries, it deterred speculation.38 It particularly targeted investors of large ventures like the Mississippi Land Company, in which investors like George Washington and Richard Henry Lee sought 2.5 million acres (an area slightly smaller than Los Angeles County) for free in exchange for surveying the land and retailing it to settlers. And although the Stamp Act taxed North American land transactions more cheaply than those in the Caribbean, the poorer but rapidly expanding Northern colonies felt the burden more acutely. Daniel Dulany, whose Considerations on the Propriety of Imposing Taxes in the British Colonies, for the Purpose of Raising a Revenue electrified opposition to the Stamp Act on both sides of the Atlantic, observed that the act would raise money in proportion to “the multiplicity of juridical forms, the quantity of vacant land, the frequency of transferring landed property, the extent of paper negotiations, the scarcity of money, and the number of debtors,” rather than colonists’ wealth.39 Ultimately, much of the Stamp Act’s unpopularity in North America and the Caribbean came from the fact that it was a heavy imposition on an expanding commercial economy at a time of economic difficulty. The burden of authoritarian imperial reform becomes even clearer when we consider the great many moderate and even conservative colonists who opposed Grenville’s program. Moderates attacked these tax and trade policies for damaging the colonial economy and fanning the flames of political radicalism. William Smith Jr., New York’s chief justice, concluded that the Stamp Act went “beyond all reasonable bounds” because colonists were too poor and cash-deprived to pay it. John Watts, a merchant and councilor in New York, derided the city’s radical printers as “all mad,” but he also condemned the Currency and Stamp Acts for wounding imperial trade.40 Indeed, many of the Stamp Act’s sharpest critics—individuals like Virginia minister Jonathan Boucher and the Maryland lawyer Daniel Delany—were future loyalists. Others, like Richard Waln and Henry Drinker, were Quaker merchants who watched in horror as imperial commerce went into precipitous decline. Yet others, like Robert Livingston and Benjamin Hallowell, were government officials. What drew them together was a shared attachment to the British Empire that had developed under the Whig establishment. That empire was united by the mutual benefits of commerce and by the

t h e r i s e a n d fa l l o f t h e s ta m p a c t

115

common interests of its elites. And while these moderates saw the Stamp Act as a shocking attack on the colonial economy, they were just as upset by Britain’s total disregard for the colonies’ social and political stability. Grenville’s taxes angered them not so much because they were unconstitutional (although some made this argument) but because they unleashed anarchy and brought business to a standstill. Moderate Whigs deplored the Stamp Act for unleashing the fury of the colonial mob and undermining the authority of government. Jonathan Boucher described how “The troubles and alarms in England in 1745 hardly exceeded what is now to be seen or heard of, every day, all over North America.” Moderates blamed this disorder and violence on both the Stamp Act and bumbling government officials. The Philadelphia merchants Abel James and Henry Drinker, who would later be blacklisted for selling East India Company tea, criticized the Stamp Act but also condemned the “riotous proceedings of many of the people.”41 While James and Drinker attacked colonial elites for encouraging rioting, Robert R. Livingston singled out New York’s lieutenant governor, Cadwallader Colden, for provoking colonists by ordering a man of war to guard the stamps. He described how the stamps’ arrival had brought out “a vast number” of “furiously enraged” people who threatened vengeance against anyone who dared pay the tax. Like his fellow moderate David Clarkson, Livingston feared the “terrors of a mob government,” worried they would lead to a social revolution that would “ruin all men of property.” Indeed, the enraged crowds unleashed by the Stamp Act made it impossible for moderate colonists to express their views—and made it impossible to do business.42 Merchants were caught between the impossible demands of the mob, which proscribed paying the tax, and the customs service, which threatened to seize cargoes that lacked clearances on stamped paper. Quaker Richard Waln described how nearly all of Philadelphia’s courts and public offices were closed, which made “trade languish and the recovery of debts impossible.” In New York, the situation was much the same. Moderate colonists complained that the city’s merchants and lawyers refused to conduct their affairs and that everyone “does as he pleases.” And farther south, merchant William Allason described how the Stamp Act had left Virginia “entirely without law,” and the colony’s creditors unable to recover their debts. Until Parliament repealed the Stamp Act, the colonies would have “nothing but anarchy and confusion.”43

116 t h e r i s e a n d fa l l o f t h e s ta m p a c t

Such anarchy and confusion shattered imperial unity, threatening the survival of the commercial relationships that held the empire together. Much like establishment Whigs in Britain, moderate colonists believed their prosperity depended on the export of British manufactured goods to a captive American market. Unlike many colonial radicals, however, they largely accepted the colonies’ subordinate position in the empire and acknowledged Parliament’s “supreme power.”44 The future loyalist Stephen Watts, who would later flee Philadelphia for a plantation in Louisiana, explained that “young countries stand in need of the assistance and protection of some powerful commercial state” and decried those colonists who depicted Britain as a “cruel stepmother.” Yet, colonial moderates also argued that Westminster’s power did not extend to taxation and, even if it did, it was selfdestructive to use it. Indeed, Grenville’s reforms would hurt Britain far more than they did the colonies. Clarkson complained that the recent “oppressive acts of trade, particularly the late unpopular, unconstitutional Stamp Act,” threatened colonial purchasing power. And William Smith Jr. lamented that they had “in a single stroke . . . lost Great Britain the affection of all her colonies.”45 Rather than strangling colonial trade and credit, which prevented Americans from paying British debts and buying British goods, the mother country ought to maximize its profits by liberalizing commerce and encouraging American consumption. That did not mean, as Dulany explained, that “the colonies ought to be indulged in a general liberty of exporting and importing every thing in what manner they please,” but it did militate “against all rigor and severity, not absolutely necessary.”46 Already, this system of mutual exchange and benefit was beginning to break down. Government incentives had spurred the development of nascent colonial industries, which had led “many gentlemen” to abandon British garments for clothing made in America. Such measures divided moderate colonists, who were torn between their commitment to British trade and their conviction that “a vigorous application to manufactures” was a “legal, orderly, and prudent” means of saving their economy from the damage done by the Stamp Act.47 Still, those divisions reflected a deeper agreement that the mutual benefits of commerce held the empire together. Moderates would soon find their vision of a rich and united political community thwarted by the relentless demands of authoritarian reformers and by the fierce resistance of colonial radicals. Indeed, many would be forced to choose between their terror of the colonial mob and their fear of Parliament’s taxes and trade restrictions.

t h e r i s e a n d fa l l o f t h e s ta m p a c t

117

While moderates condemned authoritarian imperial reformers for fracturing the empire, a large and growing number of colonists embraced radical Whig arguments. These arguments did not, however, arise out of libertarianism. On the contrary, they insisted that government’s legitimacy depended on its ability to secure the well-being of its citizens. The Stamp Act promised to make this impossible by undermining colonial governing institutions and by subordinating American interests to Britain. Unlike authoritarian reformers, radicals believed in a republican imperialism that treated Britain and its colonies as equal members of a single political entity. Promoting the public’s welfare within that community depended on both political equality and popular sovereignty. Many of these ideas had already appeared in Trenchard and Gordon’s Cato’s Letters, in the pages of Beckford’s Monitor, as well as in colonial pamphlets and sermons. What was new about the Stamp Act controversy was the sheer quantity of radical arguments and the fact that a great many of them influenced British politics. More clearly than ever before, radical colonists articulated a vision for the future of their empire based on political accountability, mutual prosperity, and greater equality. As they attacked the Stamp Act for violating their liberties, radical colonists articulated a republican vision of Britain’s imperial constitution. Their republicanism was not, however, an attempt to revive the civic virtue of the ancients any more than it was a celebration of monarchy; rather, it sought to make power accountable to the public. And while attachment to the king and the disorderly reputation of popular government kept many American radical Whigs from explicitly advocating republicanism, they seized upon republicanism’s core tenets of popular sovereignty, equality, and the common good. Indeed, radical polemicists often defended republics as both more orderly and more virtuous than absolute monarchies. For these colonists, government was only legitimate when it preserved the freedom and well-being of its citizens.48 Political liberty was not, however, freedom from government. It was, as Boston’s Samuel Adams explained in quoting Montesquieu, “tranquility of mind arising from the opinion which each man has of his own safety.” This meant that Parliament was not absolute and that it could not legitimately deny people their natural and civil rights by taking away their property without their consent.49 Moreover, the people retained the “supreme power to remove, or alter” the legislature when it acted “contrary to the trust reposed in them.” But preserving these rights was not merely about protecting the individual, it was also about preserving the

118 t h e r i s e a n d fa l l o f t h e s ta m p a c t

common good. James Otis, following Locke, observed that the purpose of government was “the good of the whole,” and that the legislature’s power was merely “fiduciary.” Preserving the people’s sovereignty and their common interests depended on equality. As one newspaper polemicist put it, God had placed mankind in a condition of “natural equality,” which was threatened by those who sought to place themselves above their fellows by “fleece[ing] and impoverish[ing]” them. Thus, for Otis, political liberty and the common good depended on political representation being “as equal as possible.” Although this vision of politics—a vision shared with British radical Whigs—certainly opened the possibility for a more democratic government, it was still compatible with monarchy. Indeed, when radicals endorsed “a perfect republic,” they made it clear that what they meant was “a mixed monarchy limited as that of Great-Britain is.”50 Ultimately, the goal was an imperial system that would promote the interests of all of its subjects by subjecting its leaders to the vox populi. The Stamp Act promised to erect a system of governance and taxation that was the exact opposite of this republican imperium. Indeed, radical colonists frequently said Grenville’s tax was a form of slavery because it stripped colonists of their fundamental right to liberty and property. “When taxes are laid upon us by the Parliament in any shape, without our having the privilege of a legal representation there,” Boston’s town meeting told its representatives in 1764, they were “reduced from the character of free subjects to the miserable state of tributary slaves.”51 The Stamp Act reduced colonists to the state of slaves, Rhode Island governor Stephen Hopkins explained, because a slave was a person who was “governed at the will of another, or others, and whose property may be taken from them by taxes, or otherwise, without their own consent.” Property and labor were at the heart of this conception of liberty, and colonial radicals repeatedly described the parliamentary taxation in terms of forced labor or theft. Taxes—as radicals throughout the British Empire repeatedly claimed—were a “free gift” from the people to their government.52 Colonial radicals’ obsession with British rights and liberties— their insistence that parliamentary taxes were a form of slavery—has often struck historians as odd, even paranoid, but it rested on the belief that liberty and property were intimately intertwined. Slavery, as white colonists knew only too well from their own experiences as slave owners, meant more than just being subjected to the arbitrary will of someone else; it meant having your labor—and the property it created—taken from you. Such theft was not

t h e r i s e a n d fa l l o f t h e s ta m p a c t

119

only oppressive; it came with devastating economic consequences. As one radical writer in the New-York Gazette observed, “commerce prevail[ed], and learning flourish[ed]” when the farmer enjoyed liberty and could reap “the fruit of his labor in peace.”53 Liberty had vast economic consequences because no one would toil or invest if they could not retain the benefits of their hard work. By denying colonists control of their property, the Stamp Act promised not only to deny colonists their constitutional rights but also their livelihoods. Because most colonial radicals believed liberty and well-being were natural rights, they insisted that they were the same on both sides of the Atlantic. As Hopkins declared in his pamphlet The Rights of the Colonies Examined, it was “beyond a doubt, that the British subjects in America, have equal rights with those in Britain.” Britain’s “imperial state” consisted of “many separate governments, each of which hath peculiar privileges” and “no single party, though greater than another part” was “entitled to make laws for, or to tax such lesser part; but all laws, and all taxations, which bind the whole, must be made by the whole.” Colonists had “as natural a right to the liberties and privileges of Englishmen as if they were actually resident within the kingdom,” Richard Bland argued in a similar vein. “If the British Empire in Europe and in America” were the same power, then all its subjects must “equally participate in the adversity and prosperity of the whole.” Following natural law theory, polemicists like Hopkins argued that government’s original purpose was “the safety resulting from society, and the advantage of just and equal laws.” “To talk of British Subjects free and of other British subjects not so free” was, Samuel Adams insisted, “absurd” because “they are all alike free.”54 Yet the Stamp Act threatened to elevate one part of the empire over another through crippling taxation. Even before the bill passed, Boston’s town meeting expressed concern that Grenville’s “unexpected” reforms were “prepatory to more extensive taxations upon us; for if our trade may be taxed why not our lands—why not everything we possess and even our polls.” That same concern led Hopkins to describe parliamentary taxation as a “malady . . . that must always grow greater by time.” Indeed, rumors circulated throughout the colonies that a land tax would soon follow the Stamp Act.55 Once the Stamp Act set a precedent of raising money in North America, Parliament would have a strong incentive to shift the burdens of the state from its constituents in England to unrepresented colonists. Moreover, if the

120 t h e r i s e a n d fa l l o f t h e s ta m p a c t

colonies gave up their rights, they would be taxed by both their own legislators and a Parliament ignorant of their economic and financial condition. Such fears led Ezra Stiles to worry of “hungry Europeans,” and to report that surveys were under way to levy a land tax of £150,000 sterling from the New England colonies. They also prompted New Haven minister Chauncey Whittlesey to conclude that the Stamp Act would lead to a multiplication of officials who would “be supported in idleness.” Such destructive levies were unnecessary, radicals argued, because colonial legislatures had always raised funds when they had been requisitioned by the Crown, and they would continue to grant whatever money was reasonably asked of them.56 Radicals understood the rights and obligations of imperial citizenship in terms of reciprocity, and they refused to transform an empire founded on exchange into one based on extraction. Nothing illustrates colonial radicals’ commitment to republican imperialism more than their objection to paying for soldiers under the command of an unaccountable government. Part of this was certainly their well-known opposition to standing armies.57 But the Stamp Act went far beyond simply paying for a permanent military force. It demanded that colonists sustain an army they did not need and were powerless to control. And it was burdensome in the extreme because Americans could never afford to pay for an army of ten thousand men. Moreover, such a military force threatened colonial liberties because the people and their representatives would have no control over the army’s budget.58 Instead of a large, professional military force paid for by parliamentary taxes, the colonies would be far better served by a provincial militia and occasional help from Britain at moments of danger. Indeed, James Otis mocked the idea that the colonies needed the Stamp Act to defend them from “a few ragged Indians.” It is difficult to exaggerate how offensive colonial radicals found authoritarian reformers’ military strategy. Parliament might have engaged colonists as fellow citizens and asked their legislatures to help pay for the defense of the empire. Instead, it treated them like defeated foes, demanding “tribute” to pay for an army of occupation.59 Not only did the Stamp Act threaten popular sovereignty by forcing colonists to pay for an unaccountable military force, it promised to destroy the colonial printing industry that was the lifeblood of a free society. Grenville’s stamp duties, John Adams argued, would cut off access to knowledge and information “by loading the press, the colleges, and even an almanac and a newspaper with restraints and duties.” Indeed, the act increased the cost of

t h e r i s e a n d fa l l o f t h e s ta m p a c t

121

a pamphlet like Dulany’s Considerations on the Propriety of Imposing Taxes in the British Colonies by about 50 percent and roughly doubled the cost of newspaper advertisements. Benjamin Franklin concluded that the Stamp Act would likely eliminate half of all advertisements and newspapers along with them.60 In New York, printer James Parker likewise described the tax as a “killing frost” on the American printing industry. Indeed, Franklin’s partner David Hall reported losing at least five hundred customers after the House of Commons resolved to enforce the Stamp Act. Such a blatant attack on publishing threatened not only businesses but a free press.61 This was, as we have already seen, by design. But for colonial radicals it was an audacious assault on an institution that was necessary for both popular sovereignty and accountable government. Radical colonists believed that authoritarian reformers’ attack on the colonial printing industry was part of a broader assault on an imperial system based on reciprocity, exchange, and expansion. Britain and its colonies were bound together in a relationship that had brought them both prosperity. Grenville’s authoritarian reforms threatened to annihilate that connection by impoverishing colonists and making it impossible for them to purchase British goods. “All the advantages” the mother country might gain from the colonies, Samuel Adams explained, “must arise from commerce, by which they have it in their power to purchase her manufactures.”62 If Americans could no longer afford to buy British products, it was not just American merchants who would sink into poverty, but thousands of British and Irish workers who made goods for American consumers.63 Rather than taxing the colonies and restricting their commerce, Britain ought to be doing everything in its power to encourage North American expansion and economic development. Otis criticized authoritarian reformers like the political economist Malachy Postlethwayt for favoring the sugar islands over North America. In fact, the expanding northern colonies, with their vast resources and growing market, were Britain’s real prize. Without its North American settlements, the mother country would cease to be a “great maritime, commercial, and powerful state.” Considering its dire economic consequences, some colonial radicals even thought the Stamp Act might be a Jacobite plot to “ruin England.”64 No minister in his right mind would pass a law that alienated and impoverished Britain’s best customers. For the colonies to remain Britain’s best customers, they would have to retain the kind of economy that made middle-class consumption possible.

122 t h e r i s e a n d fa l l o f t h e s ta m p a c t

And that meant avoiding extremes of wealth and poverty. The Stamp Act was particularly odious in this regard because it fell most heavily on the poor. By taxing the paper used in legal proceedings and land transactions, it placed an intolerable burden on those who owed small amounts of money. The Stamp Act Congress, which drew representatives from nine of the colonies to New York City in October 1765, argued that the Stamp Act would be “very burthensome and unequal.” James Otis likewise observed that “the burden of the Stamp Act will certainly fall chiefly on the middling, more necessitous, and laboring people.” Like Benjamin Franklin, who called the Stamp Act a “tax on the poor . . . for being poor,” Otis based his argument on the fact that the Stamp Act would make it more expensive for improvident debtors to defend themselves in court. Indeed, John Adams remarked that the Stamp Act would “strip multitudes” of their property and reduce them to “absolute beggary,” reviving the “inequality and dependencies of feudalism.”65 Whether the Stamp Act was a neofeudal measure is certainly debatable, but colonial radicals derided its tendency to entrench economic inequality. Indeed, colonial radicals’ efforts to boycott British goods and replace them with American ones reflected their vision of a middle-class empire that avoided extremes of inequality. By the fall of 1765, the “Sons of Liberty” were organizing associations to refuse British manufactures.66 Historians have rightly linked this movement—and its encouragement of colonial belttightening—to the related effort to encourage colonial manufacturing. However, they have often mistaken these initiatives as either a puritanical attack on consumer society or as the outcome of a clash between British and American interests.67 Instead, the boycott movement might be better understood as an attempt to rebuild colonial consumer society on a sustainable foundation. Radical colonists had already sought to do this by promoting the issuance of paper money. In boycotting British goods, they encouraged colonial production as a means of reducing unemployment and placing the colonies on a more equal footing with Britain. But colonists’ own insatiable demand for imported products militated against these efforts. Radical commentators complained incessantly of colonists’ appetite for French and Italian luxuries and of Connecticut hamlets mimicking the latest London fashions. Such “extravagance,” one Providence Gazette editorialist opined, increased unemployment and could only lead to “poverty and dependency.” But frugality did not imply, as a New York writer calling herself “Sophia

t h e r i s e a n d fa l l o f t h e s ta m p a c t

123

Thrifty” argued, “a design to make women of all ranks live and dress alike.”68 Rather, it insisted that colonists live within their means so that they could develop their own economy. The colonies boasted abundant resources, and all that was needed to make them prosperous and happy was to increase their self-sufficiency. Efforts to jump-start American manufacturing undoubtedly alarmed authoritarian reformers, but their ultimate goal was an empire of consumption in which economic gains were widely shared. The Stamp Act profoundly alienated colonial radicals because they believed it undermined the empire of equals that had long been a source of prosperity for both themselves and their fellow countrymen in Britain. As settlers, producers, and consumers, they agreed with John Trenchard’s argument in Cato’s Letters “that men add more to the public stock by being outside of their country than within it.” Colonists had given “an almost boundless extent to the British Empire, expanding its trade, increasing its wealth, and augmenting that power which renders it so formidable to all Europe,” New York’s assembly declared. They had purchased territory from Native Americas, settled a vast continent, and defended the empire, even as the Navigation Acts forced them to accept less favorable prices.69 Despite these burdens, colonists repeatedly argued that the empire had been successful because it granted them the same opportunities as subjects back home. This was in stark contrast to other European powers. Ezra Stiles observed that the despotic imperial policies of France and Spain had “been the cause which has prevented the growth of their colonies.” Such retarded development was the inevitable consequence of following a French and Roman imperial model, which aimed “ to confine the trade and manufactures of the mother state,” and “to interdict all commerce between them and other countries.”70 Britain’s empire was supposed to be different. Indeed, colonial radicals celebrated Britain’s monarch and his empire because they believed the Hanoverians had proved themselves to be constitutional rulers in a world plagued by absolutism. Convinced that the empire owed its strength to principles of “equity, moderation, and justice,” James Otis went so far as to suggest that Britain might soon establish “the next universal monarchy.”71 Radical colonists’ enthusiasm for an imperial union that would exceed the Roman Empire suggested the possibility that they might accept the Stamp Act if the colonies were represented in Parliament. As one writer in the NewYork Gazette editorialized, granting Americans representation in Parliament would “prevent divisions and misunderstandings, and above all . . . prevent

124 t h e r i s e a n d fa l l o f t h e s ta m p a c t

the danger of our enemies thereby in future . . . disunit[ing] and weaken[ing] this otherwise potent empire.” Such a union promised to create a supreme authority that could regulate issues such as imperial trade, monetary policy, and defense while still preserving equality and reciprocity.72 The problem with this approach to empire was how to adequately represent its different parts. If colonists sent only a few representatives to Parliament, or those representatives were corrupted by “some mighty minister,” they would subject themselves to a legislature with a strong interest in subordinating their interests to Britain’s. Moreover, as many observers across the ideological spectrum realized, colonial demographic growth meant that the balance of power in the empire would soon shift from Europe to America, making colonial representation an impossible sell in the seat of the empire. Such concerns led New England radicals like James Otis, Thomas Cushing, Samuel Adams, and Thomas Gray to conclude that it was impossible for America to be “equally and fully represented” in the British Parliament. Instead, legislatures throughout the empire ought to raise funds on their own.73 For these radicals, the solution to the Stamp Act crisis was not parliamentary representation but a multitude of local legislatures that respected the rights and aspirations of their citizens. While American radicals worried that the Stamp Act sounded the death knell of Britain’s empire of liberty, many conservative colonists embraced Grenville’s reforms. To be sure, only a minority of North American colonists outside Canada supported the Stamp Act. Stiles estimated that there were perhaps 200,000 supporters of the act (out of a white population of about 1.5 million), including northern Episcopalians, Quakers, and Crown officials. Whether Stiles’s observations were entirely accurate, his conclusions seem reasonable given the many Massachusetts legislators who identified as “friends of government.”74 These numbers reflected some colonists’ sense that their society was threatened by rampant self-interest and by weak governing institutions. Such weakness threatened the empire because it allowed ambitious elites to exploit colonists’ propensity for republicanism and independence. Like their ideological confederates in Britain, American authoritarian reformers supported the Stamp Act as part of a wider project of imperial reform, one that would assure the colonies’ political and economic subordination. Only by significantly strengthening imperial control could colonists safeguard their liberty and property from the popular forces that threatened to destroy it.

t h e r i s e a n d fa l l o f t h e s ta m p a c t

125

Like their British counterparts, authoritarian reformers throughout the colonies were convinced that moral decay was gnawing away at the foundations of colonial society. Martin Howard, a lawyer in Newport, Rhode Island, complained that corruption “had almost grown into a system” and that the colony was “nothing but a burlesque upon order and government.” Colonists thumbed their noses at imperial officials, smuggled goods with impunity, and refused to enforce the law. Their assemblies treated governors and other officials like lackeys, capriciously raising and lowering their salaries to ensure good behavior. And the “riotous proceedings” of their settlers had turned the frontier into slaughterhouse, threatening to annihilate Britain’s relationship with its Native allies.75 These were the fruits of a system of government in which the colonists’ republican tendencies went unchecked. The people, one Newport Mercury editorialist argued, were incapable of “moderation or wisdom” because it was impossible to reconcile the “various passions, humors and interests of a multitude, so as to produce harmony, order, and subordination.” This was precisely what happened in New York, where the colony’s lieutenant governor, Cadwallader Colden, accused the colony’s legal elite of seizing control of government by unleashing the “brutal rage of the mob.”76 The only solution to this political travesty, American authoritarian reformers argued, was for Britain to reassert its sovereignty over the colonies. Parliament’s jurisdiction was “transcendent and entire,” which meant it had an undoubted right to “levy internal taxes as well as regulate trade,” Howard argued. It ought to use that power to rescue colonists from the disorder and violence that threatened their liberties. Only by creating governing institutions that answered to authorities in Britain could the “spirit of liberty, and mildness of dominion, which distinguishes the constitution of our mother country” be restored. Such sentiments led Howard to celebrate Grenville’s program of relentless naval patrols, punitive seizures of smugglers’ property, and muscular admiralty courts. They prompted Colden and his supporters to advocate the Crown’s intervention in colonial justice. And they convinced General Thomas Gage, the commander in chief for North America, that the “insults and resentment” of colonial soldiers required tough enforcement of the Militia Act. In that vein, both Colden and Gage enthusiastically supported the Board of Trade’s plans for extending metropolitan control over Native Americans, prohibiting their consumption of alcohol, providing summary justice, and more tightly regulating frontier

126 t h e r i s e a n d fa l l o f t h e s ta m p a c t

trade.77 Making North America subservient to Britain was the best way to prevent ambitious colonists and the deluded multitude from undermining law, liberty, and property. The Stamp Act was a powerful weapon in the fight to strengthen imperial government. It promised not only to improve the empire’s beleaguered finances but to firmly establish American dependence on Britain. The Seven Years’ War, in which legislatures had bickered constantly while men died, proved that the colonies could not be trusted to raise funds on their own. Moreover, the mother country’s finances simply could not survive such disunity and selfishness. In one of the few newspaper editorials defending the Stamp Act, Franklin’s protégé Joseph Galloway observed that despite spending vast sums to secure the freedom of their American brethren, the people of England “struggle[d] with the utmost difficulty” to pay off a debt that threatened “the ruin of the nation.” Such sentiments induced Howard to write a pamphlet that lauded George Grenville as a minister of “great merit” and defended the Stamp Act as one of the “best methods” available for raising money. Although many defenders of the Stamp Act argued that it was an issue of simple obedience to Parliament, some colonial authoritarian reformers actively advocated it as a means of reforming their society. The Boston merchant James Murray, for example, argued that the Stamp Act was “a necessary spur” to colonial industry, one that would both discourage colonial manufacturing while also preserving “the benefit and dependence of America to Britain as long as may be.”78 Murray’s support of the Stamp Act rested on the same logic as Grenville’s and Whately’s: it promised not only to fix Britain’s beleaguered finances but also to bring order to an empire that was spiraling out of control. The riots and remonstrances against the Stamp Act convinced colonial authoritarian reformers that they were right about the state of American society. Many of their brethren, they concluded, were committed to both republicanism and the destruction of the British Empire. As stamp distributors and governors saw their homes attacked and their bodies hung in effigy, it was absolutely essential for colonial leaders to present a united front against “that beloved independency which so strongly prevails amongst all ranks of people,” William Johnson declared. Ambitious colonial elites were harnessing popular anger and using it to terrorize their opponents at the same time that colonial newspapers were “crammed with treason.”79 Indeed, radicals’ constant harassment of writers and printers friendly to government made a

t h e r i s e a n d fa l l o f t h e s ta m p a c t

127

mockery of their claims to support a free press. The Stamp Act’s opponents had been “educated in the seminary of democracy,” Thomas Gage argued, and they took “every opportunity to disturb the minds of the people, to alienate their affections from the government, and to spread and inculcate their pernicious principles.” Such anarchy and lawlessness demanded that Britain reestablish its authority. Gage had a point. Colonists had a long history of challenging their government and arguing about politics. But this was equally true of British subjects who had often made themselves heard in print, Parliament, and the streets. What was different was that the colonies were supposed to accept their inferior position within the empire. At stake in the Stamp Act crisis, Colden observed, was the question “whether the Parliament of Great Britain shall submit to the colonies or the colonies to the Parliament.” These fears prompted Pennsylvania’s stamp distributer John Hughes to worry that his children might one day “live to see a duty laid by Americans on things imported from Great Britain.”80 That, of course, would spell the end of the British Empire, or least the end of the empire as authoritarian reformers understood it. For them, the imperial political community depended on colonists accepting their dependence on Britain: for protection, for government, and for manufactured goods. Left to their own devices, the colonies would slouch toward republicanism and anarchy. The only way to prevent that catastrophe was for Britain to command and colonists to obey.

Repealing “A Great and Necessary Measure” On the morning of August 14, 1765, Boston’s residents awoke to find their colonial secretary and stamp distributor, Andrew Oliver, hanging in effigy from the “great tree at the south part of the town.” Pinned to the likeness of the city’s newly minted stamp distributor was an even more menacing message: “A godlier sight who e’re did see? A Stamp-Man hanging on a tree!” And dangling from the side of the figure was a green-soled boot, an obvious reference to George Grenville and Lord Bute. The grisly display, like the rioting that spread throughout North America, reflected colonists’ disdain for the Grenville administration’s attack on their “liberties and privileges as Englishmen.” Yet it was precisely because most colonists saw themselves as English that they attacked ministers by name.81 If there was one thing authoritarian reformers, Whig moderates, and radicals could agree on it was that British politics and colonial politics were inseparable. And that meant the

128 t h e r i s e a n d fa l l o f t h e s ta m p a c t

fight to repeal the Stamp Act mobilized ideological networks on both sides of the Atlantic. As word of violence against stamp distributors spread, it carried a message that colonists would never submit to the Stamp Act.82 In describing the destruction of the Stamp Office and the damage done to Andrew Oliver’s home to one of his correspondents in Britain, Samuel Adams made it clear that no one in the colonies dared to implement Grenville’s tax. Indeed, as effigies were paraded and hanged in Boston, New York, New Jersey, and Nova Scotia—and as newspapers defiantly published their editions on unstamped paper—it became increasingly clear that the act could only be imposed by force.83 Historians often explain colonial elites’ criticism of rioting by pointing to their fear of an increasingly assertive populace, but colonists also condemned colonial violence because it threatened their support in Britain. They were at pains to stress Americans’ affection for the mother country, and they frequently worried that their critics were painting them as “struggling for independence.”84 Radical leaders recognized that the colonies desperately needed British friends to help them repeal the Stamp Act, especially because they could not count on their own governors to make their case. Following mob attacks on the homes of imperial officials, Samuel Adams informed a British acquaintance that they had been universally condemned by Boston’s town meeting.85 Yet violent demonstrations could still be useful for making the case that the Stamp Act was both unenforceable and destructive. Radicals told their British correspondents that resistance was a natural consequence of the “hard, cruel, and oppressive treatment” they had received at the hands of the Grenville administration. Boston minister Jonathan Mayhew, who publicly and privately condemned colonial violence, nonetheless made it very clear to the English radical Thomas Hollis that it would take “a large army” to enforce the Stamp Act.86 Colonial opponents of the act recognized that rioting might damage their reputation and strengthen their opponents, but they also understood that it reinforced just how deplorable most colonists found the Stamp Act. That message was reinforced by boycotts and resolves throughout the colonies, and it culminated in the “humble, dutiful, and loyal petition” of the Stamp Act Congress that met in New York City in December 1765.87 Throughout it all, the challenge for opponents of authoritarian reform was to bring opposition to a low boil, one that forced the colonies to a standstill while avoiding the destruction of lives and property.

t h e r i s e a n d fa l l o f t h e s ta m p a c t

129

Limiting colonial violence was particularly necessary because authoritarian reformers throughout the colonies were only too happy to use boycotts and rioting to buttress their case for overhauling colonial governance. Oliver denounced the efforts of Massachusetts’s lawyers to reopen the colony’s courts as an attempt to “spread further destruction.” And Cadwallader Colden informed the head of the Board of Trade, William Legge, second Earl of Dartmouth, that colonists’ nonimportation agreement was “calculated solely to influence the people in England.” The boycott led Colden to condemn the “seditious spirit” in America, which sought to raise “a spirit of discontent among the manufacturers” of the mother country. And he joined Jamaica’s governor, William Henry Lyttelton, in advocating the use of force to restore order.88 These rival efforts to influence British policy reflected the fact that colonists paid close attention to political developments throughout the empire. North American newspapers frequently republished British editorials attacking Grenville’s imperial reforms while also offering reports of rioting in the Caribbean and supportive toasts in Ireland. Indeed, colonists knew who their ideological allies and antagonists in the mother country were. Ezra Stiles read Whately’s Regulations Lately Made carefully and compiled a list of the colonists’ supporters and opponents in Parliament.89 In Boston, protestors paraded through the city waving a flag inscribed with “king george and pitt forever! liberty and property and no stamps.” Colonial newspapers likewise celebrated Pitt, describing him as “the glory and the ornament of the country in the same manner as Cato’s name was in Rome.” And when Pitt’s one-eyed ally Isaac Barré wrote James Otis of his “natural attachment” to America and his commitment “to its most solid interests, to its improvement in time of peace,” his views were reprinted in Boston’s newspapers.90 Radical colonists celebrated their British allies because they believed that both government and empire could be a force for good. Indeed, they were convinced that their prosperity depended on the outcome of metropolitan debates; and they responded with “transports of joy” when they heard that the king had dismissed Grenville’s ministry and replaced it with Lord Rockingham’s. The change in government fueled rumors that Pitt would soon join the administration and repeal Grenville’s hated tax. Conservatives like William Johnson were more skeptical, believing that colonial rioting would make it impossible for Rockingham’s ministry to repeal the Stamp Act. But they followed the ebb and flow of politics in Britain no less closely than their

130 t h e r i s e a n d fa l l o f t h e s ta m p a c t

radical counterparts. And they recognized that the new ministry was led by politicians deeply critical of the economic and political logic of authoritarian imperial reform.91 Colonists made a concerted effort to convince their counterparts across the Atlantic that Britain’s fortunes were threatened by the Stamp Act. They wrote to ministers and merchants, advising them of the colonies’ dire economic straits. One Jamaican described how the “distresses” of the colony were “every day increasing.” Another blamed the downturn on the island’s “greatest source of wealth” being “stopped up, and the addition of intolerable taxes imposed by the mother country.”92 Facing similar pressures, North American merchants cut their orders and informed their business partners in London, Bristol, Liverpool, and Leeds of the devastating consequences of Grenville’s measures. Their message reflected a profound conviction that the mother country’s economy was dependent on colonial consumers and that unemployment and suffering would be the inevitable consequence of authoritarian reform. The Philadelphia clergyman and educator Dr. William Smith even encouraged the English political economist Josiah Tucker to write a pamphlet modeled on Dulany’s Considerations on the Propriety of Imposing Taxes in the British Colonies.93 While Smith’s suggestion went unheeded, his efforts reflected colonists’ fervent belief that the Stamp Act would end when Britain realized that it could not survive without a prosperous North American empire. As much as colonial radicals sought to make opposition to the Stamp Act the cause of the entire British Empire, West Indians were far less enthusiastic.94 Still, it would be a mistake to conclude that North American colonists were implacable opponents of imperial government and the Stamp Act while colonists in the Caribbean embraced it. As in North America, assemblies clashed with governors who supported authoritarian imperial policies, and governors responded by dissolving legislatures and making common cause with sympathetic colonial elites.95 Many in the West Indies detested the Stamp Act and even rioted against it. Samuel Martin, who split his time between his estates in Antigua and his political affairs in Britain, worried that islanders “have not silver enough to supply our family wants” and would be unable to pay the tax. Yet frustration with the North American colonies over trade policy made establishing a united front difficult.96 Mainland colonists blamed West Indian interests for the Sugar Act, and West Indians complained that North Americans were guilty of trading to the French sugar islands. In

t h e r i s e a n d fa l l o f t h e s ta m p a c t

131

the same breath that Martin lamented the Stamp Act’s effects on the West Indian economy, he grumbled that the act fell more heavily on the Caribbean. Ezra Stiles likewise concluded that the political scene in the sugar islands was different. In his journal, he noted that “civil and military governments are combined” and that the “Crown officers in the West Indies had too much power from regular regiments and the navy to be resisted.”97 As much as the white West Indians might abhor the Stamp Act, their political economic reality—shaped as it was by vast sugar plantations and a heavy military presence—tempered their resistance. While resistance to the Stamp Act was limited in the Caribbean, colonial petitions and protests profoundly shaped the British debate over taxing the colonies. They helped mobilize a growing number of politicians, polemicists, and activists. Fortunately for American opponents of authoritarian reform, establishment and radical Whigs in Britain had very different ideas about imperial governance and economics. In July 1765, the king replaced Grenville with one of their own. One of the greatest landowners in Britain, Charles Watson-Wentworth, second Marquess of Rockingham, was a Whig grandee of impeccable breeding. A protégé of the Duke of Newcastle, he was charming, principled, and enjoyed both art collecting and improving his estates. He and his supporters blamed Grenville’s reforms for sinking the empire’s maritime economy. His new administration moved decisively, if deliberately, to reverse Bute and Grenville’s program of fiscal austerity and imperial reform. This was by no means easy. Rockingham faced both authoritarian reformers who blamed the colonies’ economic woes on disorder and radical Whigs who loudly demanded the immediate repeal of an unconstitutional tax. Moreover, many in Parliament and in the ministry had supported the Stamp Act and were reluctant to accept its repeal, especially in light of Americans’ violent opposition. Given these difficulties, Rockingham’s efforts to turn back authoritarian imperial reform undoubtedly benefited from the lobbying campaign orchestrated by colonists and their merchant allies in Britain. Together, they worked to convince Parliament and a skeptical king that Britain was far better off with the prosperous commercial empire of the 1750s than with the new empire proposed by Grenville and his supporters. While the Rockingham administration was generally sympathetic to arguments against authoritarian imperial reform, British opponents of the Stamp Act pressured the ministry through both activism and advocacy.

132 t h e r i s e a n d fa l l o f t h e s ta m p a c t

Colonial agents like Dennys De Berdt, Richard Jackson, and William Bollan were powerful critics of the tax, thanks to their connections to the Rockingham administration and Britain’s business community. Bollan provided Rockingham with an alarming account of the situation in New England and forwarded letters describing how colonial trade had “vastly declined” and was getting worse. His counterpart De Berdt stressed how the loss of the American market had provoked the “discontent” of “merchants and manufacturers.” These efforts galvanized business people who believed that authoritarian imperial reform threatened to annihilate the commercial empire on which their livelihoods depended. Barlow Trecothick, a London merchant who had spent his childhood in Boston, formed a committee to organize commercial interests and to advocate for the Stamp Act’s repeal. With his extensive mercantile contacts and close connection to the Duke of Newcastle, Trecothick was a particularly effective advocate for the colonies. By the middle of January 1766, Parliament was receiving petitions from all over England describing how American trade, “so beneficial to the state, and so necessary for the support of multitudes,” had so deteriorated “that nothing less than its utter ruin is apprehended without the immediate interposition of Parliament.”98 These arguments had a powerful effect on politicians who passionately believed that expanding trade was both the point of the empire and the source of Britain’s power and prosperity. Attacks on the Stamp Act did not, however, go unanswered. Supporters of authoritarian reform like Soame Jennyns and Josiah Tucker, along with dozens of anonymous newspaper writers, unleashed an avalanche of print that defended the Stamp Act. Together, they insisted that Britain’s right to tax its colonies was irrefutable. Parliament was Britain’s sovereign power, and it had a right to levy taxes anywhere in the empire. Indeed, the precedent for Parliament’s right to levy internal taxes had already been set by the post office establishment.99 Colonial violence was an audacious and unprovoked attack on the legislature. As the clergyman and polemicist James Scott argued in one of his many “Anti-Sejanus” essays printed in the Public Advertiser, supporters of the Stamp Act were contending “for the credit and welfare of the nation, together with the very essence of our excellent constitution.” In a similar vein, the author of The Rights of Parliament Vindicated argued that Parliament’s enforcement of the Stamp Act was a test of whether the “just and high supremacy of the British legislature” would endure. Giving in to colonists’ demands would fatally undermine Britain’s authority over its

t h e r i s e a n d fa l l o f t h e s ta m p a c t

133

colonies at a time when Americans were already “throw[ing] off their dependence on and allegiance to their mother country.”100 That dependence was the essence of the imperial relationship, and only Parliament could govern the colonies for the benefit of Britain and its empire. Colonies could either be subordinate or they could be independent states; there was no middle ground. The alternative was for the colonial tail to wag the metropolitan dog, for Britain to become “a pitiful dependent herself.”101 American rebelliousness left Britain no choice but to impose its authority by force. As one newspaper writer put it, colonists could “submit to the laws of the mother country,” or they ought to “feel the effects of that vengeance which their own temerity has brought upon them.”102 As much as authoritarian reformers denounced colonists’ behavior, they reserved some of their harshest attacks for the Rockingham ministry and its radical Whig allies. Britain faced a moral and political crisis that was exacerbated by both the government’s weakness and its desire for popular support. Like Grenville, Reverend Scott was convinced that his country was crippled by moral decline. This impending disaster was the inevitable consequence of elites seeking popularity when they ought to be governing the “lower sort of people.” The “spirit of licentiousness and sedition” had led both colonial and British mobs “to rise upon every trifling occasion,” Scott declared. One pamphleteer went so far as to argue that the “undutiful, disobedient behavior of Britain’s children abroad” was due “to the murmurs and discontent of those at home.” Under such circumstances, enforcing the Stamp Act in America was more than simply an assertion of Parliament’s rights over its colonies; it was a defense of government itself.103 Rockingham’s administration was surely guilty of bartering away Parliament’s honor to quiet dissent, but his sins paled in comparison with the demagoguery of William Pitt. The “Great Commoner” was infecting the “canaille” with “republican principles” and threatening the very “peace and safety of the nation.”104 Britain had to enforce the Stamp Act, authoritarian reformers argued; it had to show the rabble that government could not be cowed by either the howls of the mob or the oratory of populist politicians. As much, however, as authoritarian reformers insisted on Parliament’s sovereignty and the dangers of popular government, they remained committed to the political economic logic of the Stamp Act. Britain’s taxes and debts were relentless, and it was completely unreasonable for colonists, who owed their existence to Britain’s “encouragement and protection,” to

134 t h e r i s e a n d fa l l o f t h e s ta m p a c t

refuse help to the mother country in its hour of need. Indeed, the mother country treated its colonies better than itself. Reverend Scott argued that Britain had spent £50 million defending Americans from French tyranny, and Tucker pointed out that his country’s debts amounted to £18 per person while the colonies’ were only 8 shillings.105 The alternative to the Stamp Act, Scott declared, was to increase the land tax by a third, which would certainly “so raise the price of provisions, that the poorer people must either rise up in arms, or submit to perish with hunger.” The protests of colonists who enjoyed concerts and assemblies, carriages and fine wine, were “presumptuous and ungrateful.” It was lamentable, then, that Americans had convinced so many British investors, merchants, and manufacturers that the Stamp Act was to blame for their woes when the real perpetrators were, in fact, the colonists themselves. Indeed, British trade and manufacturing would suffer far more by repealing the Stamp Act than by enforcing it, because colonists would soon throw off all trade restrictions.106 The Stamp Act had to be enforced or Britain would soon be bankrupted by its empire. One pamphleteer even went so far as to argue that if Parliament capitulated, Britain would soon face a tax burden so great that its population would “flock to America,” and it would be left “a desert.”107 Radical and establishment Whigs responded to such arguments by taking their case to the public in newspapers, pamphlets, and prints. Their efforts played a crucial role in convincing reluctant members of Parliament. As the English radical Thomas Hollis observed, “No measure certainly was wiser, than that of securing an influence over the public prints.” Scores of newspaper essays and pamphlets attacking the Stamp Act poured off the London presses. Satirical prints like The Great Financier; or, British Oeconomy for the Years 1763, 1764, 1765 mocked the Grenville administration’s economic and colonial policy, while the press ridiculed him as the “Gentle Shepherd,” a moniker he had acquired after Pitt made fun of his pontifications in the House of Commons.108 News writers attacked the Stamp Act’s defenders, reserving particular opprobrium for “Anti-Sejanus,” whose letters threatened to “light up the flames of civil war, in his native country, as well as in her colonies.” These were joined by colonial pamphlets deploring the Stamp Act, which were excerpted in the London papers and republished by the metropolis’s leading radical printer, John Almon. But it was not just colonial polemic that British readers consumed. They also absorbed reports documenting colonists’ inability to pay the Stamp Act and its devastating

t h e r i s e a n d fa l l o f t h e s ta m p a c t

135

13. The Great Financier; or, British Oeconomy for the Years 1763, 1764, 1765, 1765. Radical Whigs mocked authoritarian reformers for seeking peace with France and represented the Treaty of Paris as a penny-wise but pound-foolish effort to salvage Britain’s finances. In this illustration, a crutch-carrying Lord Chatham and a Native American representing the colonies advise George Grenville that the way to balance the scales of Britain’s finances is through conquest and commerce. (Courtesy of the John Carter Brown Library at Brown University)

consequences for Britain’s economy.109 Ultimately, the campaign against the Stamp Act exposed British readers to arguments that were not just American, but Anglo-American. In challenging the Stamp Act, radical and establishment Whigs offered a very different understanding of the colonies’ political relationship than the one offered by George Grenville and his allies. They attacked authoritarian reformers for passing an unprecedented and unequal tax, for failing to acknowledge colonists’ contribution to the empire, and for passing a tax that incensed and alienated “dutiful and loyal subjects.”110 The colonies were not

136 t h e r i s e a n d fa l l o f t h e s ta m p a c t

in a state of rebellion, as authoritarian reformers argued, but were defending their freedom against an oppressive tax, which violated the principles of Britain’s august constitution. In pamphlets such as The Crisis; or, A Full Defence of the Colonies and The Importance of the Colonies of North America, and the Interest of Great Britain with Regard to Them, Considered, and in numerous of newspaper articles, radical Whig writers insisted that colonists were not represented in Parliament. Far from being a precedent for the Stamp Act, the inequities of Britain’s political system were an argument for legislative reform at home. Liberty within the British Empire, they insisted, could not “differ with climate.”111 Even Ireland, a conquered and Catholic country, was allowed to raise its own revenue without interference from Britain’s Parliament.112 Moreover, if Parliament could behave in an arbitrary and cruel manner in America, it might soon violate British liberties, which were already threatened by the Cider Act and general warrants. To be sure, most establishment Whigs criticized Grenville and the Stamp Act while asserting Parliament’s right to tax the colonies, a position that led some to propose suspending or amending the Stamp Act instead of repealing it. Yet a commitment to the absolute sovereignty of Parliament did not keep more moderate Whigs from concluding that the Stamp Act undermined the political economic logic of the British Empire.113 Radical and establishment Whigs declared that Britain would be far better off treating its American subjects as partners in the project of empire, encouraging colonial economic development rather than hindering it. As one anonymous writer pointed out, the mother country ought to give its colonies “every possible encouragement” so that “by their increase in trade and wealth, their demands for our manufactures might have been greater, our poor more fully employed, our customs proportionably increased.” Colonists, one radical newspaper writer argued, already paid taxes in England in the form of higher prices for imported goods.114 Moreover, as the Quaker minister John Fothergill observed, the Stamp Act cruelly raised the cost of circulating information and made it more difficult for colonists to earn their livelihoods. The ill consequences of American resistance were already evident in the “fatal decline of trade” and the “numbers of British artificers, laborers, etc.” who had “lost their employments.”115 In so doing, these writers not only condemned Grenville and Bute’s program of authoritarian reform, they insisted that Britain and its colonies were better off in an empire that respected the rights of all its constituent parts. Instead of taxing the colonies

t h e r i s e a n d fa l l o f t h e s ta m p a c t

137

and labor, Britain’s leaders ought to reform the land tax and more equitably levy funds from Britain’s wealthiest subjects. Britain’s economy and exchequer would gain far more by encouraging the growth of the colonies than by taxing them. To that end, radical Whigs such as Massachusetts’s former governor Thomas Pownall as well as London merchant Nicholas Ray argued that Britain’s empire was a “grand marine dominion” that ought to be governed for the “mutual harmony” and prosperity of the entire realm.116 Benjamin Franklin epitomized this commitment to an empire of exchange and expansion, and he made himself its champion. Both in print and in the backrooms of British politics, Pennsylvania’s envoy worked tirelessly to mobilize opposition to the Stamp Act. His friend William Strahan observed that Franklin’s “assiduity” was “really astonishing,” and he was “forever with one member of Parliament or another” pressing the colonies’ case against the Stamp Act. Writing as “A Virginian,” “F.B.,” and “Pacificus,” he attacked parliamentary taxation in London’s newspapers on almost twenty occasions. Franklin’s defenses of the colonies echoed those made by radical Whigs throughout the empire, but often with a satirical tone. He mocked advocates of using force to execute the Stamp Act by proposing that Britain burn the colonies’ cities and “cut the throats of all the inhabitants, men, women, and children, and scalp them, to serve as an example.” Still, Franklin’s opposition to the Stamp Act and his vision for the British Empire were entirely serious. He believed deeply in the “rights, liberties, and privileges, that make the subjects of Britain the envy and admiration of the universe.” His desire for a united British Empire led him to produce a cartoon, Magna Britannia: Her Colonies Reduc’d, that indicted authoritarian imperial reform. Franklin depicted Britannia dejected and dismembered on account of the Stamp Act, and he had the image distributed to members of the House of Commons on the eve of a Stamp Act debate. His message was clear: history was littered with states that had ruined themselves by “ordaining of laws in favor of one part of the nation, to the prejudice and oppression of another.” Britain’s power and prosperity depended on “an equal dispensation of protection, rights, privileges, and advantages,” because it did not matter “whether a subject grows rich and flourishing on the Thames or the Ohio, in Edinburgh or Dublin.”117 While Franklin’s lobbying efforts likely swayed some Members of Parliament, most radical and establishment Whig representatives needed little convincing that authoritarian reform threatened the British Empire.

138 t h e r i s e a n d fa l l o f t h e s ta m p a c t

14. Benjamin Franklin, “The Colonies Reduc’d,” The Political Register and London Museum, 1768. Franklin depicted Britannia dismembered by the loss of her colonies. Both the Latin inscription “Date Obolum Belli Sario” (Give a Penny for Bellisarius) and the idled British ships suggested the poverty to which Britain would be reduced by the loss of empire. (Courtesy of the Lewis Walpole Library, Yale University)

Newcastle, long a critic of the Stamp Act, was insistent that its repeal was necessary to “restore quiet and peace in America” and to revive “those valuable branches of trade, which are, at present, totally lost.” Indeed, establishment and radical Whigs came together to attack the Stamp Act in speech after speech. Edmund Burke told the House of Commons that “the very foundations of this kingdom are sinking under us.” Taxing the colonies was not just bad for the economy; it undermined the state’s revenue as well. In a dramatic speech on January 14, 1766, William Pitt defiantly told Parliament that the profits from America were “the fund that carried you triumphantly through the last war,” and that taxation of the colonies was unnecessary because Britain received “all that we can have from the plantations.”118 Taxing the colonies directly was not just unnecessary but foolhardy because Britain could raise all the money it needed through requisitions and quotas. Expanding the population and trade of the empire was the real means of fixing Britain’s fiscal problems. This argument was not unreasonable: Britain

t h e r i s e a n d fa l l o f t h e s ta m p a c t

139

had a world-class bureaucracy in place to collect revenue at the point of production.119 If a textile worker in Norwich had more money to buy soap because of the growing colonial market, Britain’s tax receipts would rise, regardless of whether Americans paid stamp taxes or not. Additional imperial trade meant more money for both British manufacturers and for the British state. The Stamp Act meant less for both. In addition to their strong economic and fiscal arguments, radical Whigs in Parliament took a constitutional position that echoed the one being made across the Atlantic. They declared that parliamentary taxation was a violation of colonial rights that had long held the empire together.120 Pitt insisted that the House of Commons “had no right to lay an internal tax upon America, that country not being represented.” And he drew a distinction between legislation and taxation, arguing that taxes are “a voluntary gift and grant of the Commons alone.” This was exactly the opposite position of authoritarian reformers, and his brother-in-law Grenville would have none of it. Rising in response, the former prime minister countered that the colonies had “grown to disturbances, to tumults, and riots.” If Pitt and his radical friends had their way, government would effectively be “dissolved,” and America would tip from near “rebellion” into “revolution.” Pitt responded to these assertions by saying that he “rejoice[d] that America . . . resisted.” The polarized politics of taxation and empire were on full display, as was the increasingly marginal position of establishment Whigs and their principles. One observer remarked that the clash between “those two great masters” went on for hours and that “the ministry stood by, like the rabble at a boxing match.”121 Even as radical and establishment Whigs came together in opposition to authoritarian reform, the constitutionality of the Stamp Act opened an awkward rift. It threw into sharp relief two very different potential futures for the British Empire: one that sought a return to the old colonial system and another that believed in significant economic and political independence for Britain’s growing colonies. As Pitt and Grenville exchanged verbal volleys in Parliament, Rockingham’s administration carefully orchestrated a committee of the whole House to consider the American crisis. This was no typical parliamentary committee, but rather a concerted effort on the part of the government and its supporters to attack authoritarian imperial reform. The committee accepted petitions criticizing the Stamp Act from all over the empire—from Jamaica, Virginia, and New England as well as from London, Liverpool, and

140 t h e r i s e a n d fa l l o f t h e s ta m p a c t

15. Locations of British petitions against the Stamp Act, 1765–1766. Petitions to Parliament against the Stamp Act came from more than two dozen cities, particularly port communities and newly industrializing towns. (Map by the author)

Leeds. And they conducted dozens of interviews with colonists and merchants, including Franklin and Virginia’s stamp distributor, George Mercer, who told Parliament that only a complete repeal of the Stamp Act would quiet the discontent in the colonies. They were joined by Britain’s merchants and manufacturers, who described the economic wreckage left by authoritarian reform. Barlow Trecothick, who prepared his testimony in consultation with the administration, spent hours describing how colonists would never accept the Stamp Act, how colonial disorder had brought trade to a screeching halt, and how Britain’s manufacturers were planning to move to the colonies due to high unemployment. John Hose, a shoemaker from Cheapside in London, echoed that description when he told the House that

t h e r i s e a n d fa l l o f t h e s ta m p a c t

141

he had been making shoes for decades but had been forced to reduce his staff from three hundred to forty-five. Even as the government demonstrated that authoritarian reform was wrecking the economy, they also reiterated that colonists were loyal subjects and that repealing the Stamp Act would restore their obedience.122 But while Rockingham and his supporters criticized authoritarian reform, the ministry had to manage a government and a Parliament that included many supporters of the Stamp Act. Colonial resistance seemed to validate authoritarian reformers’ argument that the colonies were out of control, forcing the administration to walk a fine line between inflaming the situation and legitimizing colonial resistance. At the beginning of January 1766, Rockingham observed that everyone in his inner circle “would agree to various amendments and curtailing of the Act” but that “not very many [would agree] to a suspension and very few to a repeal.” In particular, he faced the opposition of Charles Yorke, who had publicly supported the Stamp Act. He also had to contend with large numbers of wavering supporters in the House of Lords who were reluctant to break with the king, who publicly supported modification and not repeal. Yet by late January, Rockingham was convinced that public opinion had turned so sharply against the Stamp Act that he had little choice. Unless something was done, “the confusion at home” would “be much too great” for the ministry to survive. The challenge was how to unite his coalition.123 The ministry’s solution was an act declaring the supremacy of Parliament over the colonies that was modeled on the Dependency of Ireland on Great Britain Act of 1719. By stating in clear terms Parliament’s right to tax the colonies while pressing for the Stamp Act’s repeal, Rockingham shifted the issue from Britain’s authority to govern the colonies to the economic consequences of the Stamp Act. The Declaratory Act was a brilliant political move, because the right to tax the colonies was meaningless if colonial revenue extraction was both politically and economically self-destructive. Whether the Stamp Act was constitutional or not, the reports of idled trade and rampant discontent left most opponents of the Stamp Act convinced that no minister in his right mind would ever try to tax Britain’s colonies again. And yet the prospect of a Declaratory Act was not enough to convince those authoritarian reformers composed of “Bute’s friends, the Duke of Bedford’s, Mr. Grenville’s, and the Tories.” Bedford, for example, concluded that it was “unworthy [of] the dignity of Parliament” because “the disgrace of departing from the enforcing

142 t h e r i s e a n d fa l l o f t h e s ta m p a c t

the laws by constraint, and by open rebellion of the colonists, can’t be wished off by the power of any words whatsoever.”124 Yet despite these complaints, the Declaratory Act was a powerful political weapon. By asserting the supremacy of Parliament over the colonies, a supremacy few in either America or Britain denied, the act gave wavering members of Parliament a way of rejecting both American rioting and the failures of authoritarian reform. Despite the “many ill natured things flung out against America,” by February 1766 the Rockingham ministry’s efforts were rapidly turning Parliament against the Stamp Act. Grenville’s motion to enforce his tax went down by a two to one margin. Grateful merchants and the colonial agents crammed the lobby of the House of Commons, and the ministry delayed the mail packet ships bound for the colonies to relay the exciting news of the Stamp Act’s repeal.125 For a majority in Parliament, the combination of government support, popular activism, and the threat of losing a great part of the empire was enough to convince them that the status quo antebellum was far preferable to the Grenville administration’s ambitious efforts to remake the empire. Finally, on March 4, 1766, the Stamp Act’s repeal passed the House of Commons, 250 to 122. Passage in the House of Lords was more difficult, requiring Rockingham to convince the king of “how strong the torrent of opinion in favor of the repeal was.”126 Yet, with George III’s blessing, thirteen days later the House of Lords ended the Stamp Act without a division. The Rockingham ministry celebrated its success. Newcastle noted that the Whig government had “gained great credit in the nation, and particularly in the City by their conduct and measures in Parliament.” To celebrate their triumph, Rockingham’s supporters commissioned The Repeal; or, The Funeral Procession of Miss Americ-Stamp, a luxuriously illustrated engraving of the infant act’s burial. It sold two thousand copies in just four days and went on to even greater sales with both a sixpence and a Philadelphia edition.127 But the newly empowered Whig establishment did not stop there; it also worked to end Grenville’s trade regulations and to implement their own model of imperial political economy. As De Berdt observed, there was still “much to be done” to remove impediments to colonial trade. In that spirit, the administration overhauled the Cider Act, lowered the duty on foreign molasses, opened free ports in the Caribbean, and restored the bullion trade with Spanish America. Turning back authoritarian reform was

t h e r i s e a n d fa l l o f t h e s ta m p a c t

143

16. Benjamin Wilson, The Repeal; or, The Funeral Procession of Miss Americ-Stamp, 1766. British opponents of the Stamp Act celebrated its repeal for restoring trade while linking it to earlier battles over British liberty such as ship money and the hearth tax. (Courtesy of the Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division)

a significant accomplishment, and Rockingham was justly proud. He had defied not only the skeptics in his own ministry but also the king and his favorite, Lord Bute, to carry “all the regulations, that were proper, relating to the American trade.”128 The Stamp Act’s repeal had been a transatlantic effort, and London’s merchants chartered a ship to carry the news of the Stamp Act’s repeal to North America. When it arrived, the colonies exploded in celebration. Colonists expressed their admiration for their British supporters in government and declared their loyalty to both the king and the empire.129 Rhode Island’s governor, Samuel Ward, who had resigned his post over the Stamp Act, noted that the law’s repeal had “suppressed every appearance of murmuring, and dissatisfaction,” while his assembly echoed his sentiments by declaring their “affection, loyalty, and gratitude” to the mother country.130 Colonists took comfort in the fact that Parliament was turning back Grenville’s baneful trade restrictions as well as repealing his despised Stamp Act. But even as

144 t h e r i s e a n d fa l l o f t h e s ta m p a c t

they gave thanks, colonists recognized that they owed their deliverance to like-minded politicians and activists in Britain. New York’s Sons of Liberty praised “the noble patriots, our staunch friends on the other side of the water,” whose “unwearied endeavors” had succeeded in rolling back the Stamp Act. In Virginia, colonists “continually mentioned” Lord Dartmouth’s name “with honor and respect.” The colony’s religious and political elite drank toasts to the first lord of trade’s honor and the lawyer John Randolph sent his wife “a pair of summer ducks” to thank him for his efforts on the colony’s behalf. The citizens of Boston went further, erecting an obelisk that celebrated both the ministry and their radical Whig allies in Parliament. But even more than Dartmouth and Rockingham, or even the king, it was William Pitt, with his unequivocal declaration that Britain had no right to tax the colonies, who colonists credited for saving the colonies.131 “Pitt and liberty” became the slogan of colonial radicals as it was for their British counterparts. The Philadelphia printer William Dunlap prepared an edition of the parliamentary debates over the Stamp Act that gave pride of place to the great patriot’s efforts, while enterprising artisans hawked “medals of copper, silver, and gold” with his likeness. In a similar spirit, Reverend Mayhew dedicated his sermon celebrating the Stamp Act’s demise to Pitt— and sent him a copy. And even though Maryland’s and South Carolina’s assemblies would not abide parliamentary taxes, they were happy to raise funds for statues in the “Great Commoner’s” honor.132 Although the Stamp Act’s repeal seemed a moment of triumph for a political coalition that only a year earlier had been incapable of securing a parliamentary majority, the controversy over parliamentary taxation left behind plenty of bitterness and uncertainty. Colonists, undoubtedly, declared their disdain for the “riotous proceedings” that had gripped the colonies and vowed to seriously consider making amends for the property destroyed in the Stamp Act riots. But this was not enough to satisfy authoritarian reformers on either side of the Atlantic, who were convinced that the colonists had been indulged by Parliament and ought to show their gratitude through obedience. Colonial radicals, on the other hand, were more convinced than ever that Parliament had no right to levy taxes in America and that they faced powerful enemies committed to their destruction. They also recognized that their future depended on the shifting currents of British politics.133 Yet the coalition that secured the repeal of the Stamp Act was anything but stable. For reasons both personal and ideological, radical and establishment Whigs

t h e r i s e a n d fa l l o f t h e s ta m p a c t

145

17. Paul Revere, A View of the Obelisk Erected under Liberty-Tree in Boston on the Rejoicings for the Repeal of the Stamp Act, 1766. Revere designed an obelisk for Boston Common that celebrated the work of radical and establishment Whigs in repealing the Stamp Act. (Courtesy of the Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division)

continued neither to like nor to trust each other. An aging Newcastle could not resist complaining that Rockingham would have robbed Pitt of his popularity had his protégé supported “the total repeal of the Stamp Act” from the beginning. Indeed, the letters of thanks Rockingham received from merchants and manufacturers throughout England were not enough to earn him either the public’s adulation or the support of his king.134 Only a few months after the Stamp Act’s repeal, George III’s frustration with Rockingham and his brusque ministry reached a breaking point, and the king sent for Pitt to form a new government. Even as the Rockingham ministry came to a close, the debacle of the Stamp Act seemed to spell the end of authoritarian reform. Parliament had repealed Grenville’s program, not just because the British economy was on its knees, but because it flew in the face of both theory and experience. The economic downturn that strangled businesses from Boston to Birmingham offered a resounding argument against the Stamp Act. But it took the shared

146 t h e r i s e a n d fa l l o f t h e s ta m p a c t

critique of radical and establishment Whigs for Parliament to conclude that Grenville’s tax was responsible for Britain’s woes. Like the Cider Act, increased customs enforcement, and fiscal austerity, the Stamp Act was supposed to stimulate the British economy and strengthen the British Empire. Instead, as critics of authoritarian reform had long warned, colonial trade shriveled, manufacturers suffered, and unemployment swelled. Events validated the argument that Britain’s prosperity depended on the empire’s wellbeing. Economically ruinous and hugely unpopular, authoritarian reform appeared dead. It was not.

5 Britain’s Authoritarian Ascendancy

George Grenville spent most of the last years of his life in a state of misery and bitterness. Few events frustrated him more than the defeat of the Tory MP Armine Woodhouse in 1768. Grenville expressed shock that the public would punish a representative for voting to lower taxes on British land and raise taxes in the colonies. His friend’s defeat signaled that Britain was “hastening to its destruction.” The same popular delusion that felled Woodhouse also contributed to disastrous borrowing and spending that multiplied the ranks of the unemployed and promised to bring either anarchy or despotism. Things were no better in Ireland and America, where there was “a spirit of absolute independence and a plan formed to withdraw themselves from their subordination and obedience to this country.”1 The Stamp Act’s failure, like that of Grenville’s political comrade, was no mere political setback. It threatened the destruction of British liberty. Knowing the events of the next seven years— the Townshend Duties and Parliament’s forceful defenses of its sovereignty— Grenville’s despondent reaction to Woodhouse’s defeat seems overwrought. And yet it made sense. The former treasury lord still believed that Britain faced an existential crisis, and he saw little evidence that efforts to reform Britain’s economy and empire would succeed. Grenville’s fulminations highlight both authoritarian reformers’ unrelenting commitment to overhauling Britain’s imperial state and the sharp controversy this inspired. Historians generally downplay such disagreements, choosing instead to stress the irreconcilable political cultures of America and Britain. They see the Townshend Duties and the imperial policies that followed as the natural outcome of British leaders’ commitment to 147

148 b r i ta i n ’ s a u t h o r i ta r i a n a s c e n da n c y

parliamentary sovereignty and their desire to raise revenue from the colonies.2 But while this view of British political values is seemingly convincing, it cannot explain why imperial reformers were so adamant on making taxation the test of Britain’s sovereignty or why these efforts proved so controversial. If authoritarian reform had been truly popular in the late 1760s, Grenville would have spent his sunset years celebrating the overhaul of the British Empire rather than lamenting the defeat of the Stamp Act. Instead, he and his fellow authoritarian reformers watched with increasing alarm as British radicals celebrated colonists’ denial of Parliament’s authority. Why then were authoritarian reformers successful in steering Britain toward policies that culminated in the overhaul of the Massachusetts government and the occupation of Boston? The answer to this question lies in their success in rallying Britain’s relatively small electorate against social and economic disorder. Even as Grenville angrily exited the political stage, authoritarian reformers continued to argue for debt reduction, low wages, and a refurbished empire. Unsurprisingly, establishment and radical Whigs remained sharply critical of this new vision of politics. Drawing support from Britain’s industrializing towns, ports, and the City of London, radicals rejected Parliament’s efforts to tax the colonies as unconstitutional, fiscally irresponsible, and economically ruinous. Establishment Whigs likewise continued to argue that taxing the colonies was a political mistake and that it would destroy the “golden goose” of colonial trade. As we will see in Chapter 6, their arguments echoed those being made more successfully across the Atlantic. But in Britain, violent mobs shattered political calm from Bloomsbury to Birmingham, while establishment and radical Whig leaders struggled to mount an effective opposition. The result was that much of the country’s propertied class embraced measures to restrain the mad, bad, and dangerous. When Boston’s radicals dumped £10,000 worth of East India Company tea into Boston Harbor in 1773, authoritarian reformers secured the support of both Britain’s king and its electorate to transform the British Empire.

A Radical Whig Ministry? Grenville’s conclusion that the end was near for British society and politics reflected a country that was racked with division and instability. Although authoritarian reformers were growing increasingly influential, four different ministries came to power in just five years. Control of government continued

b r i ta i n ’ s a u t h o r i ta r i a n a s c e n da n c y

149

to pass back and forth between establishment Whigs, radicals, and authoritarian reformers. In July 1766, George III replaced Lord Rockingham’s establishment Whig ministry with one led by William Pitt. Pitt was a radical Whig hero, but the “Great Commoner’s” decision to reenter government as Earl of Chatham provoked consternation among many in opposition. Despite his apostasy in accepting peerage, Chatham retained his liberal views on colonial policy, and his ministry should have made American taxation a thing of the past. But he was also a politician, and political power under George III required compromises. The price of Chatham’s premiership was an accommodation with the king’s friends. Men who had served Grenville and Bute, such as Wills Hills, Earl of Hillsborough, and Charles Jenkinson, returned to court.3 The result was a political system in which authoritarian reformers had considerable influence in both the cabinet and Parliament and in which Chatham and his allies sometimes presided over policies they detested. In opposing such measures, radical Whigs received relatively little help from Rockingham and his allies, who not only opposed Chatham’s ministry but remained resolutely attached to a conservative and aristocratic vision of politics. In the wake of the Stamp Act’s repeal, the chancellor of the exchequer, Charles Townshend, a man Chatham considered unfit for office, seized the opportunity to overhaul imperial government.4 As Chatham reentered government, both authoritarian reformers and establishment Whigs sought the support of Britain’s landowners by reducing the land tax. Rockingham and his supporters worked to restore the conservative coalition of country gentlemen and aristocratic grandees that had sustained Whig power during the mid–eighteenth century. As the Cambridgeshire MP Philip Yorke, second Earl of Hardwicke, observed, the Whig establishment could demonstrate their “pathos” for “the small and middling landed gentry and country clergy” by lowering the land tax.5 Authoritarian reformers courted those same landowners by condemning Chatham’s high taxes and his belief that they were a bunch of “idle fox hunters” and “drunken squires.” They decried the prime minister’s “ignorance of the very meaning of the word oeconomy” and his failure to make the colonies pay their own way. And they reiterated their view that government profligacy was raising prices and taxes while impoverishing landlords.6 Grenville and his allies shared that anger, and they offered their fiscal and imperial program as a solution. While some authoritarian reformers dissented, arguing that the nation ought to prioritize debt reduction, they based their opposition on the

150 b r i ta i n ’ s a u t h o r i ta r i a n a s c e n da n c y

conviction that government spending was out of control. And in February 1767, those forces came together to reduce the land tax by a quarter. But while it was the Whig establishment that spearheaded the tax cut, it was authoritarian reformers who received the thanks of a grateful countryside. No longer, Essex and Buckinghamshire told their representatives, would they be forced to pay crushing land taxes while greedy Americans refused to pay their share of imperial defense.7 Indeed, Benjamin Franklin recognized that efforts to “render the taxing of America a popular measure” fell on deaf ears among Britain’s traders and manufacturers but that it was “very pleasing to the landed men, who therefore readily receive and propagate these sentiments wherever they have influence.”8 The problem for Franklin—and indeed for radicals throughout the British Empire—was that it was landed men who dominated Parliament. Despite facing a powerful coalition of landed gentlemen and authoritarian reformers, radical Whigs were convinced that reducing the land tax was an outrageous giveaway to the privileged and unproductive. Rather than reduce the land tax, Parliament ought to reduce excise taxes, which burdened Britain’s manufacturers and consumers. The former lord mayor of London William Beckford and the stalwart Stamp Act critic Henry Seymour Conway both argued against the reduction of the land tax in Parliament.9 In the press, radical Whigs derided reducing the land tax as a giveaway to the “great peers, rich commoners, or men of large landed property” at the expense of the “useful parts of the community: the farmer, the husbandman, the merchant, the manufacturer, the shopkeeper, the laborer.” Rather than gratify country gentlemen who were of “no other earthly service . . . than to advise laws about game and fish and to be vigilant in carrying them into execution,” radical Whig writers proposed reducing the tax on beer consumed by Britain’s laborers. Writing in John Almon’s Political Register, “Regulus” asked his readers to “look on the meagre faces of our poor manufacturers,” who suffered while landowners in Parliament “eased themselves of a fourth part of the land-tax, and left the burden on soap, candles, and beer, without which the poor cannot subsist.”10 Although radical Whigs failed in their effort, that did not stop them from loudly advocating what they believed would be a fairer and more economically salubrious system of taxation. At the same time that authoritarian reformers were working to cut taxes for British landowners, they demanded that the Stamp Act be replaced by new colonial levies. Under pressure from George Grenville, Britain’s

b r i ta i n ’ s a u t h o r i ta r i a n a s c e n da n c y

151

chancellor of the exchequer, Charles Townshend, announced his intention on January 26, 1767, to “give relief to Great Britain from bearing the whole of the expense of securing, defending, and protecting America and the West India Islands.”11 Townshend’s announcement reflected his long-standing enthusiasm for taxing the colonies and subordinating their legislatures to Parliament’s authority, although he was less zealous than many authoritarian reformers. Not only had he supported aggressively defending the colonies against France, he had joined Pitt and Newcastle in opposition, attacking the Bute administration’s persecution of radical champion John Wilkes.12 Still, he belonged to a ministry whose leaders had staked their reputations on opposing the Stamp Act, and his announcement provoked consternation within the government. In a cabinet meeting the following evening, ministers attacked the chancellor for stoking demands for parliamentary taxation and for departing “on so essential a point, from the profession of the whole ministry.” The secretary of state, William Petty, second Earl of Shelburne, complained that the chancellor’s proposal was starkly opposed to his own goal of encouraging western settlement and “incidentally” raising revenue by taxing land. Four months later, Townshend introduced import duties on china, lead, glass, and East India Company tea to Parliament. This would be a new beginning for the project of forcing the colonies to carry their weight within the empire. It would accomplish Townshend’s long-standing goal of reducing the power of colonial assemblies by using colonial customs revenue to defray the salaries of judges and governors. But he made it clear that this was only the beginning of a much broader tax regime for the colonies, what he called a “real American revenue.” Those taxes would eventually produce as much as £1 million a year, enough to restore the nation’s finances.13 For Grenville, it was not nearly enough. Colonial revenue was urgently necessary, and he tore into the chancellor for the inadequacy of his proposal. Yet as bruising as their clash was, Grenville and Townshend actually agreed that Parliament ought to raise significant amounts of money from the colonies. Like their fellow authoritarian reformers, both men were convinced that Britain needed to reduce its taxes and debts in order to survive economically. They eyed colonial revenue as a solution to the profligacy and lax tax collection of the Chatham and Rockingham administrations. Britain had no choice but to immediately fix its public finances or it would find itself impoverished, beset by anarchy, and completely eclipsed by France.14

152 b r i ta i n ’ s a u t h o r i ta r i a n a s c e n da n c y

18. The Triumph of America, 1766. Authoritarian reformers accused Chatham of driving Britain over a cliff with the help of American colonists. Here, the members of his administration are depicted as horses and mocked: the Earl of Shelburne as “Crafty” for being “full of tricks,” the Earl of Camden as “Prerogative” for having abandoned the cause of liberty, and Charles Townshend as “Weathercock” for adapting his views to the political winds. (Courtesy of the John Carter Brown Library at Brown University)

With Townsend and authoritarian reformers pressing for colonial tax revenue, developments in America placed Chatham’s government in a particularly difficult position. In late 1766, the New York Assembly brazenly defied the Quartering Act, refusing to shelter British troops. American insubordination seemed to validate authoritarian reformers’ arguments that colonists were bent on independence and that Parliament ought to exert its sovereignty through both force and taxation.15 In a private letter to Shelburne, Chatham worried that “disobedience” to the Quartering Act would “justly create a great ferment here, open a fair field to the arraigners of America, and leave no room to any to say a word in their defense.” The ministry responded by contemplating a more muscular Declaratory Act, one that would make it “high treason to refuse to obey or execute any laws or statutes made by the King, with the advice of Parliament, under pretense that the King and

b r i ta i n ’ s a u t h o r i ta r i a n a s c e n da n c y

153

Parliament hath not sufficient authority, to make laws and statues to bind his American colonies.” Yet Chatham and his radical Whig allies continued to oppose both authoritarian imperial reform and parliamentary taxation of the colonies. Shelburne urged the ministry to “resist such as would advise more violent measures” and sought to bring the Americans to “their senses by gentle means.” In a similar vein, former governor of Massachusetts Thomas Pownall attacked the Quartering Act for reopening the wound of the Stamp Act. Demanding that colonists provide quarters, equipment, and money for British troops, he told the House of Commons, was an internal revenue measure that was both “absurd and impracticable.” If the empire was to survive, Parliament ought to abjure colonial taxation and return to “that commercial a spirit and prudence” that it had “always exercised towards the colonies.”16 The clash over the British Empire was about far more than the American colonies; the future of the East India Company also provoked ideological division, bruising debate, and protracted negotiation.17 Politicians cared deeply about the company’s future both because Britain’s economy and their own finances depended on it.18 Its acquisition of the diwani of Bengal, Bihar, and Orissa had transformed it into one of the world’s great tax collectors. And while the diwani promised millions in revenue, managing this new domain proved expensive and declining sales weighed on the company’s finances. Townshend’s solution for reviving its business—an approach likely influenced by Rockingham’s friend and ally William Dowdeswell—was to pass the Indemnity Act, which eliminated duties on the reexport of the company’s tea from England.19 Chatham and his radical Whig supporters, on the other hand, had no interest in propping up the company. They wanted to break it and use its territory and revenue to strengthen Britain’s imperial state. In 1767, the same year that Townshend’s duties became law, the Chatham ministry launched an inquiry into the British East India Company’s South Asian conquests. Led by an irrepressible defender of the American colonies, William Beckford, the investigation was as ambitious as it was controversial. It sought to show how a private corporation’s scramble for riches had embroiled Britain in costly wars that threatened its trade and manufacturing. The only reasonable response, radical Whigs argued, was to strip the company of its territory and taxes.20 But this was anathema to both authoritarian reformers and establishment Whigs, who declared that it was an invaluable part of Britain’s empire and that the government had no right

154 b r i ta i n ’ s a u t h o r i ta r i a n a s c e n da n c y

to steal its Bengali revenues. Sir George Colebrooke, a banker and MP with close ties to Newcastle, attacked Beckford for wanting to “unwind” the East India Company, telling the House of Commons that it was “a useful and beneficial monopoly.”21 Townshend meanwhile undermined the inquiry by insisting that the government negotiate with the company. Instead of shaking down the company or stripping it of its charter, authoritarian reformers and establishment Whigs argued, it ought to be reformed and preserved as a monopoly dominated by Britain’s political and mercantile elite.22 Radical Whigs had never liked the East India Company, but they were genuinely terrified of what its acquisition of the diwani meant for Britain’s economic and constitutional future. Millions in Indian tax revenue, they argued, threatened to transform what was already a venal and unjust monopoly into an out-of-control state within a state.23 The company had, Shelburne’s secretary Maurice Morgann explained, “exchanged industry for violence, and trade for plunder and rapine.” Indeed, conquest and greed threatened to annihilate the market for British goods in India. If Indians did not “expel or extirpate their insatiable oppressors,” their wealth would annihilate the British constitution. Greedy and “arbitrary” company directors might soon “purchase the liberties” of Britain by either bribing Parliament or raising their own military forces. At stake, the radical Whig “East India Inquisitor” explained, was “whether the people of England shall be the free subjects of a limited monarchy or the slaves of a few tyrannous and usurping aristocratics.” The British state ought to seize the company’s revenues and free Bengalis from the “dominion of tyranny” under which they had long suffered, Beckford told the House of Commons. Indian manufacturing would then flourish through the “wisdom” and “sagacity” of British law and government.24 Unsurprisingly, authoritarian reformers like Clive and his confidant Grenville had a very different idea of what was wrong with the East India Company. In both public and private, they insisted that the company had a right to its trade monopoly and the territory it had acquired.25 The problem was neither the company’s monopoly on trade, nor its wars, nor its acquisition of Bengali tax revenue, but rather the insubordination of its employees. Company servants were guilty of trading on their own and of putting their own interests ahead of their employer. The same “corruption and licentiousness” that gripped Britain—and indeed the American colonies—was sapping the profits of the Indian empire.26 Clive was convinced that unless the company’s servants were brought under control, “the immense revenues and

b r i ta i n ’ s a u t h o r i ta r i a n a s c e n da n c y

155

commerce of Bengal” would be either be “totally lost” or appropriated by the state. As a solution, both he and Grenville worked together to transform the company’s governance. They advocated lengthening the terms of its directors, replacing its militia with royal troops, and appointing a governor and council in Bengal with supreme authority over all of the company’s possessions on the subcontinent.27 The same strategy that worked in the West would work in the East. Virtuous leaders would command an obedient and profitable empire, and British taxpayers would be relieved of the wages of profligacy. Although authoritarian reformers and radical Whigs had very different views as to how to fix the East India Company, they agreed that Britain’s acquisition of the diwani offered an opportunity to improve the nation’s finances. Still, they clashed over what this newfound Indian wealth meant and how it should be collected. Committed to the East India Company as a centrally controlled corporation that enriched both its politically connected owners and the British state, authoritarian reformers insisted that the company be left to collect as much money as possible in India.28 Parliament had a “duty,” Townshend told the House of Commons, to “make as good a bargain as possible for the public.” But the best way to do that was to leave revenue collection to a reformed East India Company.29 Chatham and his radical Whig allies were, by comparison, much less interested in extracting wealth from India than they were in stripping a monopolist of its ill-gotten gains. It would be far better, they argued, to use the riches of Bengal to relieve “honest and industrious” British taxpayers of the excise than to lower the land tax and enrich the warmongering grandees of the East India Company.30 Despite radical Whigs’ best efforts, weakness and division within Chatham’s ministry ultimately sunk the inquiry. Instead of remaking the company, Shelburne used his connections to its former chairman Lawrence Sullivan to hash out a compromise, in which it agreed to contribute £400,000 a year to the British government.31 As divided as the Chatham ministry was, the opposition was even more factious. When establishment Whigs led by Rockingham and authoritarian reformers surrounding the Duke of Bedford met in July 1767 to form a government that could replace Chatham’s, they were beset by intractable divisions over imperial policy. Establishment Whigs never renounced Britain’s right to tax the colonies, but they remained resolutely attached to the fiscal and imperial policies that had predominated under the Pelhams. Indeed,

156 b r i ta i n ’ s a u t h o r i ta r i a n a s c e n da n c y

George Grenville’s pledge to support the new administration only if the “dependence of the colonies was asserted and maintained” incensed Rockingham, who accused Grenville of insulting him by trying to revive the Stamp Act. Although the Earl of Sandwich and Rockingham’s friend William Dowdeswell calmed the former prime minister down, nearly four hours of torrid debate could not overcome the would-be government’s deep ideological divisions. Their failed meeting prompted Basil Feilding, the Tory Earl of Denbigh, to conclude that an alliance between Rockingham and Bedford was unlikely to be “either sincere or lasting” because the “parties in opposition” could not agree about either “offices or measures.”32 Those divisions would persist, even as authoritarian reformers used their growing power to transform the British Empire.

Radical Whigs on the Defensive Chatham’s ministry effectively ended in July 1767, less than a year after it began. Increasingly ill, the prime minister secluded himself, leaving his wife, Lady Hester, to refuse entreaties from fellow ministers and even the king.33 As Chatham’s malady persisted, the Duke of Bedford, who had spent decades trying to overhaul colonial government, stepped into the political vacuum.34 He and his fellow authoritarian reformers, like Frederick North, Lord North, and the Earl of Hillsborough, took over key positions in the cabinet. Even after Augustus Henry Fitzroy, third Duke of Grafton, replaced Chatham at the head of the ministry in October 1768, Bedford and his allies continued to exercise enormous influence over domestic and imperial policy. Despite an authoritarian streak, Grafton had radical Whig sympathies and supported a complete repeal of the Townshend Duties. And yet, in a telling sign, he and his fellow radical Whigs were overruled in a 4 to 5 cabinet vote that assured that the spasms of protest in the colonies would continue. The close divisions within the government reflected both the sharply contested nature of imperial policy and the ascendance of authoritarian reformers, who used their newfound power to transform government, both in Britain and throughout the empire.35 Although it seemed to settle the question of Parliament’s sovereignty over the colonies, the Declaratory Act had done little to change people’s minds about imperial policy. Authoritarian reformers, establishment Whigs, and radicals all came to vastly different conclusions about what followed

b r i ta i n ’ s a u t h o r i ta r i a n a s c e n da n c y

157

from Parliament’s “full power and authority to make laws and statutes” for the colonies.36 For authoritarian reformers, the act meant that Parliament’s sovereignty over the colonies was absolute and that Britain’s legislature had no choice but to enforce its sovereignty through taxation. Either Parliament could give law to its colonies or it could not. There could be no middle ground between taxation and free-riding, dependence and independence.37 Establishment Whigs like Burke, on the other hand, defended Parliament’s right to tax the colonies while insisting that exercising that right would leave “no trace of freedom” in America. Moreover, as Rockingham rightly concluded, if Parliament used the Declaratory Act to justify its taxation of the colonies, colonists would respond by denying the legitimacy of the Navigation Acts as a “virtual” tax.38 Radical Whigs, on the other hand, flatly denied that Parliament had any right to tax the colonies. If Britain wanted to raise money in North America, it should either requisition the funds or meaningfully represent colonists in Parliament.39 Those clashing interpretations of Parliament’s sovereignty set the stage for a fierce debate over the future of the British Empire. Authoritarian reformers ultimately won the contest over the meaning of Parliament’s authority because British politics was becoming more conservative. Despite the presence of radical Whigs in government, authoritarian reformers enjoyed growing support from the king and the landed elite during the late 1760s. They exploited both their majority in Parliament and divisions among their opponents to secure a hierarchal vision of governance that favored land at the expense of middle- and working-class consumption. Both establishment and radical Whigs struggled in a political environment in which Parliament was becoming less representative, a consequence of Britain’s industrializing northern counties and rapidly expanding cities not gaining new representation. At the same time, pocket boroughs like Old Sarum, which famously had a mere eleven electors, continued to send two MPs to Westminster.40 The result was an electoral system that muffled the voices of the new towns and cities and left both radical Whigs and American colonists at a significant political disadvantage. Still, a reformed electoral system would not have been enough to win over Britain’s electorate on behalf of radicalism and colonial rights. Even if urban England had been fully represented, it housed only about 20 percent of the population. And even metropolitan boroughs sometimes voted authoritarian reformers into office. Such conservatism reflected divergent responses

158 b r i ta i n ’ s a u t h o r i ta r i a n a s c e n da n c y

to a society transformed by urbanization and racked by contentious politics. As commercial and manufacturing centers like London, Birmingham, and Manchester grew at a breakneck pace, cities became increasingly threatening places for many propertied men and women.41 The postwar economic slump and rising price of grain struck the poor particularly hard. There were serious food riots in 1766, and industrial protests punctuated the life of the capital. Franklin described how coal heavers and porters pulled down the houses of merchants who refused to raise their wages. Elections, always something between a bacchanal and a brawl, became even more violent. In April 1768, Thomas Whately concluded that “four and five thousand regulars” were “not sufficient to quell” the riotousness of John Wilkes’s supporters during the Middlesex election. Authoritarian reformers were right that British politics was becoming ever more tumultuous. Economic dislocation and political struggle during the 1760s led to an almost tenfold increase in the number popular demonstrations and an even greater increase in the number of people killed and wounded in violent protests. After soldiers fired on Wilkes’s supporters at St. George’s Fields in May 1768, London descended into anarchy. Franklin told one correspondent how mobs “patrolling the streets” were “knocking all down who would not roar for Wilkes and liberty,” while Grenville described Westminster “in a state as if it was taken by an enemy.”42 These scenes of pandemonium inspired both indignation and anger among authoritarian reformers. This was not, as we have already seen, a new frustration. But amid divided government, economic crisis, and increasingly belligerent crowds, it reached fever pitch. Authoritarian reformers condemned the riotousness of Wilkes and his supporters, workers demanding higher wages, and American insubordination. The Duke of Bedford’s grand Bloomsbury townhouse was attacked by an antigovernment crowd in July 1769, prompting one of his supporters to remark that the government had permitted “the mob to lord over us.” The Scottish MP and future attorney general Alexander Wedderburn told George Grenville that Britain was becoming “great Bedlam under the dominion of a beggarly, idle, and intoxicated mob without keepers, actuated solely by the word Wilkes.” And when the Spitalfields silk weavers rioted in 1769, the merchant Michael Herries condemned them as “villains,” while Thomas Villiers, the future Earl of Clarendon, deplored their “spirit of leveling by insurrection.”43 They were convinced that mob’s lawlessness and disregard for property would upend the social order while its demand for higher wages and better working conditions

b r i ta i n ’ s a u t h o r i ta r i a n a s c e n da n c y

159

would destroy the economy. And yet, the “epidemic” of “licentiousness” was not limited to North America, but was, in fact, burning its way through the entire British world.44 Authoritarian reformers made themselves the champions of those who wanted government to stand up to the mob. They threw the radical activist and writer John Wilkes out of the House of Commons and prosecuted him for seditious libel. And they called out the army to suppress riots all over the British Empire.45 If the government failed to confront the mob, it would, Wedderburn argued, “rise up like Hydra’s heads to a greater degree of magnitude.”46 The alternative was to allow populist politicians and the weakness of Britain’s elite to foment disorder.47 As Wedderburn observed, the “listlessness and indifference” of the “upper and middle ranks,” had emboldened the “licentiousness of the lower.”48 Even Eton, responsible for educating the scions of Britain’s greatest families, had succumbed. Grenville complained that it was failing to instill the “firmness” and discipline necessary to face down “the disorders of the state.”49 The solution—both in Britain and America—was a show of military force.50 In October 1768, the ministry sent a fleet and an army to confront the violent faction that had hijacked American politics.51 The occupation of Boston reflected the imperial scope of authoritarian reform. Grenville and his supporters continued to argue that Britain’s salvation depended on transforming the colonies. They demanded new sources of colonial revenue, and they sought to restrain colonial growth. William Knox, who had served as Georgia’s agent before being fired for defending the Stamp Act, sought George Grenville’s counsel in writing The Present State of the Nation and The Controversy Between Great Britain and Her Colonies Reviewed. He argued that Britain had no choice but to raise money in America in order to offset the punishing effects of taxation and debt.52 Townshend’s successor as chancellor of the exchequer, Lord North, along with authoritarian reformers, echoed those arguments in the House of Commons.53 Taxing the colonies went hand in hand with limiting their westward expansion. As Secretary at War Lord Barrington argued, the American interior ought to be left a “desert” and Native American relations placed under the “absolute power” of the army.54 Curtailing American expansion would have the double benefit of preventing costly frontier wars while also preventing growing colonies from challenging Britain’s supremacy within the empire. As Grenville observed, the combination of taxation and restraints on colonial

160 b r i ta i n ’ s a u t h o r i ta r i a n a s c e n da n c y

expansion promised to turn American “thoughts to agriculture and by that means to prevent their interfering with Great Britain in her manufactures.”55 Establishment and radical Whigs could not abide such policies, and they blamed those in power for the riotousness of politics at home and abroad. Indeed, they believed the ministry was racing toward the complete domination of the royal executive and military government. Blaming rioting in London on “persecutions, and oppression,” London’s former and future lord mayor William Beckford told the House of Commons that he was “more and more confirmed in the opinion that this country will be destroyed by a standing army.” Newcastle likewise complained that “the doctrine of doing everything by force prevails now everywhere.”56 In February 1769, the citizens of the City of London insisted that their leaders take a stand against “the pretense of calling in a military force” and demanded “a strict enquiry into the use which is lately been made of military power.” No less than their radical counterparts, establishment Whigs promoted popular opposition to authoritarian reform.57 Even as Chatham abandoned John Wilkes, Rockingham and Burke strongly supported him and the 1769 Middlesex election petition. The new political environment even prompted the Duke of Newcastle, a man who had served twice as prime minister and was the epitome of a Whig grandee, to quip: “I love a mob. . . . I headed a mob once myself. We owe the Hanover succession to a mob.”58 As authoritarian reformers clashed with the opposition, and the state increasingly used both the law and the military to crush dissent, radical and establishment Whigs embraced the politics of popular—even violent—opposition. Although radical and establishment Whigs blamed the turn to military government on ministerial corruption, they disagreed about the source of that corruption. Burke’s Thoughts on the Cause of the Present Discontents, the political manifesto of the establishment Whig Rockingham party, argued that court “influence” over the legislature and public offices was responsible for the empire’s violent discord. He called on the public to unite in support of a strong government led by the old Whig elite while deriding authoritarian reformers’ suggestion that Britain was suffering under the weight of debt and taxes. Prices and wages were stable, he argued (incorrectly), and the economy was growing.59 Radical Whigs likewise argued that the executive was growing too powerful, but they were ultimately far more skeptical of patronage, regressive taxation, and government expenditure. Radical newspaper writers like “Junius,” “Frugalitis,” and “Regulus” attacked the ministry for frittering

b r i ta i n ’ s a u t h o r i ta r i a n a s c e n da n c y

161

away the public’s money and failing to restore the nation’s credit. In Parliament, Beckford urged “caution and oeconomy.”60 But while this sudden enthusiasm for cutting spending and debt may seem like an embrace of authoritarian reformers’ arguments for fiscal austerity, radical Whigs’ motivations were very different. As Benjamin Franklin’s friend Richard Price observed, excessive debt and spending had led to “influence,” “military establishment by law,” and “the disuse of parliaments.” Public debt was financing spending that was gnawing away at the nation’s constitutional foundations while at the same time loading the state with vast obligations that ultimately threatened its very existence. Indeed, the government’s treatment of the colonies and the multiplication of patronage positions in America was proof that the Grafton administration was undermining Britain’s constitutional foundations. Indeed, there was a real danger that the cycle of war and debt would bring Britain’s obligations to such heights that it would be unable to contract new debts or service old ones. And when that happened, both the economy and government would collapse.61 Facing a potential financial crisis brought on by political corruption, radical Whigs urged political reforms that would enfranchise Britain’s growing towns and cities. Regulus complained that the “commercial” interests of England’s great cities were underrepresented and argued that the House of Lords ought to have been stripped of its authority to pass legislation. Given the circumstances, Britain needed to radically overhaul its political system. London’s radical Whig electors called for publishing civil accounts, limiting the number of useless government offices and pensions, and requiring candidates to take oaths that they had not accepted any bribes. And their political confederates called for elections by ballot and shorter Parliaments so that the legislature would reflect the “genuine and uncorrupt sense of the people.”62 The solution to corruption was a more representative political system, one that would align the interests of government with those of the public. Rockingham and the Whig establishment developed a far more conservative political program to address what they believed was the corruption of the Grafton administration. That program sought to bring Britain back to the constitutional balance that had prevailed under George II, when the dominance of Whig aristocrats carried “the glory, the power, the commerce of England, to an height unknown.” The new system of court influence that had emerged under George III, by contrast, Burke observed,

162 b r i ta i n ’ s a u t h o r i ta r i a n a s c e n da n c y

allowed the king to “appoint one of his footmen” as minister. But Rockinghamites explicitly rejected radical Whigs’ suggestion that the solution to an overmighty executive was shorter Parliaments and a place bill that would prevent holders of government offices from sitting in Parliament. Instead of democratizing reforms, Burke urged strengthening the “the great Whig connections” whose “long possession of government,” “vast property,” and “obligations of favors given and received” was the only effective way of checking monarchical power.63 Support for Wilkes and popular agitation was wholly compatible with this conservative vision. Rockingham and his allies fully expected that popular discontent would sweep Britain’s natural leaders back into office and return government to the policies and aristocratic dominance of Pelham and Newcastle. And yet, this vision of politics put establishment Whigs at odds with Chatham and his allies, fundamentally weakening efforts to stop authoritarian reform.64 Despite their profound political differences, radical and establishment Whigs continued to deplore authoritarian imperial reform as both cruel and economically self-defeating. They had nothing but contempt for an imperial policy that taxed the colonies and limited their growth. Convinced that Britain owed its prosperity to its liberal constitution and its empire, they reiterated that Parliament had no right to tax the colonies. Radicals attacked the government in both Parliament and the press for trampling on colonial liberties and for reducing America to “the condition of a conquered country.”65 Establishment Whigs joined radicals in insisting that Britain’s prosperity depended on American trade. The Grafton ministry and its colonial governors’ zealous enforcement of the Townshend Duties were pushing the colonies “into rebellion to get a little money,” Rockingham’s political confidant William Meredith argued. And although Rockingham was frustrated by the “dangerous madness” in America, he and his allies were “just as angry” at “the passion and obstinacy of some at home” and sought to resolve the conflict through “soothing, conciliating arts.”66 Instead of “raising paltry taxes in America with a military force,” Beckford argued that Parliament ought to recognize colonists’ contribution to the empire as consumers of British manufactures and repeal the Townshend Duties.67 Allowing an unrepresentative Parliament to tax the colonies would cripple them and undermine their ability to purchase British goods. Barlow Trecothick, Beckford’s Rockinghamite rival in the City of London, agreed. He told the House of Commons that Britain might “get a little tax now,” but “tax gatherers and

19. The Wise Men of Gotham and Their Goose, 1776. Opponents of authoritarian reform accused the North administration’s colonial policy of killing off Britain’s “golden goose.” (Courtesy of the John Carter Brown Library at Brown University)

164 b r i ta i n ’ s a u t h o r i ta r i a n a s c e n da n c y

custom-house officers innumerable” would soon smother the colonial market that had made British commerce the envy of the world. Establishment and radical Whigs were adamant that loathsome taxes would only encourage Americans to retaliate by developing their own industries to compete with Britain. The ministry’s ludicrous efforts to obtain taxes by force threatened to starve “the hen that lays the golden egg” and endangered Britain’s “very being as a country.”68 Sharing a worldview and believing that British and American interests were one and the same, radical Whigs on both sides of the Atlantic worked together to challenge authoritarian reform. American radicals defended both colonial and British liberties in the London press while British radicals assured their American counterparts that they had many friends in the mother country. As an agent for several of the colonies, Benjamin Franklin lobbied ministers and published numerous articles attacking the administration’s American measures. Yet Franklin’s output paled in comparison to the Virginia physician and lawyer Arthur Lee, who wrote some 170 newspaper essays. Greatly admiring the writings of the Grafton ministry’s sharpest critic, “Junius,” Lee wrote as “Junius Americanus,” a sobriquet that aligned the American and British radical causes. As Lee recognized, colonists’ best hope was to join their struggle to the one taking place in Britain. To that end, both Franklin and Lee maintained close contact with radical Whig leaders, dining with them and staying at their homes. And they used their close contacts to relay assurances of a vigorous opposition back to the colonies.69 Those pledges of support were echoed by British radicals themselves. Writing from King’s Bench Prison, John Wilkes promised Boston’s Sons of Liberty that he would always use his position as a member of Parliament to “give a particular attention to whatever respects the interests of America, which I believe to be immediately connected with, and of essential moment to, our parent country, and the common welfare of this great political system.” Thomas Pownall informed his correspondents in Boston that their boycott was working and that many laborers in the “great manufacturing towns Wolverhampton and Birmingham” were unemployed and preparing to move to America in droves. He even suggested that colonists create a fund to encourage their migration.70 Radical Whigs might abhor the direction of British politics, but they could at least take comfort in being part of a movement that stretched across the empire and that united some of the most illustrious names in British and American politics.

b r i ta i n ’ s a u t h o r i ta r i a n a s c e n da n c y

165

Radical Whigs’ shared worldview was not, however, limited to the elite. The diary of a young, anonymous Bostonian who visited London in the winter of 1768 captures how political radicalism brought together people throughout the British Empire. The young man condemned Sir William Beauchamp Proctor, the government’s candidate for Parliament, for using “bribery and corruption” to raise mobs against the radical Sergeant John Glyn. He blamed both the ministry and corruption for denying Wilkes election and for the “heavy burthens the inhabitants are loaded with.” And he witnessed vigorous opposition to the government’s imperial policies. He described how the members of the Temple Bar Debating Society voted that Britain had neither an interest nor a right to tax its colonies. The Americans, the society concluded, spent a “vast sum” on British manufactures, which employed “a great many poor indigent people which otherwise would be exposed to beggary.”71 Although very far from home, that anonymous Bostonian discovered a radical political world that was altogether familiar. Yet despite London’s vibrant radical community, British politics was moving in a different direction. Most of the country’s political class did not share that forgotten Bostonian’s enthusiasm for radicalism. As one Chatham supporter lamented, “It has been fashionable of late to join in loud outcries against the working people of this kingdom on account of pretended extortionate demands of wages, and likewise for idleness and vice.”72 Voters and members of Parliament increasingly embraced authoritarian reform, and their desire to use the manifold powers of the state to curb factiousness and violence would secure the stability of Lord North’s government for over a decade. It was a political shift that would transform the entire British world.

Toward an Imperial Civil War In January 1770, the Duke of Grafton resigned as prime minister and Lord North formed an administration that would endure for the next twelve years. North’s ministry cemented the position of authoritarian reformers at the apex of British politics. It continued the persecution of John Wilkes, sent opposition printers to the Tower, and pressed ahead with imperial reform.73 Its success reflected the fact that North enjoyed the support not only of George III but also of much of Britain’s electorate. As committed as he was to preserving order throughout Britain’s dominions, North nonetheless sought to avoid conflict, a quality that often frustrated more zealous

166 b r i ta i n ’ s a u t h o r i ta r i a n a s c e n da n c y

authoritarian reformers. He responded to the so-called Boston Massacre that killed several people in March 1770 by withdrawing Britain’s troops and working to repeal most of the Townshend Duties.74 And, over the vehement objections of Lord Hillsborough, he and most of his cabinet supported the creation of a new colony west of the Allegheny Mountains. North’s unwillingness to sacrifice stability for authoritarian reform ushered in a period of relative calm in Anglo-American relations. But it did little to settle the ideological conflict over the colonies. In the early years of the North administration, radical Whigs made considerable progress in their long-standing goal of creating a new western colony. The project was the brainchild of a number of radicals, including Thomas Walpole, Samuel Wharton, Benjamin Franklin, and Thomas Pownall. They argued that the eastern colonies were running out of cheap land for settlement and that the North American interior offered a valuable market for British manufactures. The colony would be settled on the finest farmland in North America and promised to supply Britain with an abundance of iron, lead, hemp, pot ash, wine, and silk. As enthusiastic as the colony’s proprietors were for the new settlement, they were republican imperialists who recognized that their venture could never attract settlers or realize its economic potential without effective governing institutions. They drew on the expertise of the radical Whig hero and former lord chancellor Charles Pratt, Earl of Camden, to draft the new colony’s plan of government. Unlike the colonies Britain had acquired after the Seven Years’ War, its settlers would enjoy the same rights as those in older provinces like Virginia and Massachusetts, including an elected legislature and free land tenure. The colony’s government would manage land sales, lay out cities, construct public works, and facilitate trade and diplomacy with Native Americans. And although the final plan for the colony’s government accommodated itself to the temper of the times, establishing the Church of England and creating a slightly less democratic assembly than the one in Massachusetts, it was designed to encourage both growth and public accountability.75 Wharton and his associates succeeded in overcoming the fierce objections of authoritarian reformers through a combination of savvy argument and clever political maneuvering. The secretary of state, the Earl of Hillsborough, and his deputy, John Pownall, were vociferous critics of the project, and they did everything in their considerable power to stop it. They stalled, objected in cabinet meetings, and had the Board of Trade prepare a damning

b r i ta i n ’ s a u t h o r i ta r i a n a s c e n da n c y

167

report. They were adamant that the colony’s settlers would disturb Native American relations, start manufacturing on their own, and effectively be lost to Britain.76 Despite Hillsborough’s angry objections, Wharton and his allies made a strong case that western settlement was inevitable and that colonists had little interest in settling Nova Scotia or Florida. They rebutted arguments that new colonists would be “lost” to the mother country by pointing out that British manufactures were already finding their way as far west as Niagara and Detroit. And they addressed authoritarian reformers’ longstanding concerns directly. The Ohio Company’s proprietors promised to pay £10,460 for the grant, to defray the colony’s governing expenses themselves, and to use their political influence to guarantee its allegiance. And when Hillsborough’s Board of Trade published a report condemning the venture, they took their case to the public, rebutting their critics point by point. But their most effective strategy for rallying support was aligning their venture with the self-interest of Britain’s political elite. Not only did they name their new colony Vandalia, in honor of the queen, but they promised to enrich both cabinet ministers and members of Parliament. The colony, Hillsborough observed, was a “very advantageous bargain” for his political friends—so much so that even he might be tempted to support it.77 He was not, however, to be convinced. When the Privy Council approved the grant in August 1772, he resigned in disgust. North replaced him with William Legge, second Earl of Dartmouth. A devout philanthropist and well-known “friend to America,” the new secretary of state worked to bring Vandalia to fruition.78 The colony’s success was a victory for a radical Whig vision of empire, even if the venture eventually succumbed to the burgeoning civil war between Britain its colonies. And it proved that radical Whigs could still influence imperial policy when they accommodated authoritarian reformers’ anxieties and greed. As controversial as the Ohio Company was, it paled in comparison with the dispute over Britain’s teetering Indian empire. By 1772, the East India Company had accumulated nearly £1 million of debt and was rapidly becoming insolvent. Even worse, a catastrophic famine had wiped out as much as a third of Bengal’s population and left some districts deserted.79 Facing a severe imperial crisis, the North administration turned, as Grenville had, to Robert Clive.80 Clive did not mince words. The company was now sovereign over an empire “more extensive than any kingdom in Europe, France and Russia, excepted.” But instead of wisely overseeing this new

168 b r i ta i n ’ s a u t h o r i ta r i a n a s c e n da n c y

dominion, the Chatham and Grafton administrations had shaken down the company for the government’s “immediate advantage.” Four million pounds in revenue—revenue that might offset Britain’s crippling debts—and a vast trade were now threatened by rogue company servants, divided Indian government, and tumultuous leadership in London. The situation was particularly bad in Bengal, where the company’s employees had abandoned their former role as merchants and become rapacious sovereigns. They monopolized trade and drove Indian merchants out of business and into “beggary.” And while the company had succeeded in extracting revenue from Bengal despite the crippling famine, its civil and military expenses were out of control thanks to the self-enrichment and profligacy of its servants and managers. Immediate reforms were necessary to save the company from itself. In Britain, Clive recommended restricting voting for directors to larger shareholders and lengthening their terms. For India, he again advised subordinating the company’s multiple governments to the presidency of Bengal, dispatching supervisors to oversee its operations, and reforming the Indian legal system.81 Most of Clive’s suggestions found their way into Lord North’s East India Company Regulating Act. This bill was a model of authoritarian imperial reform. It made the company’s directorship less democratic, centralized British India’s government, created a royal supreme court whose decisions could be appealed to the Privy Council, and prohibited company officials from receiving presents or participating in private trade. In addition to reforming the company’s government, the North administration also helped fix its finances. It loaned the company £1.4 million, worked to remove the duty on tea exports, and gave up the state’s share of diwani revenue.82 All of this reflected authoritarian reformers’ sense that the East India Company’s territory and taxes were invaluable state assets that needed to be placed under adult supervision. While radical and establishment Whigs shared authoritarian reformers’ abhorrence of developments in India, they sought to protect the company’s independence. Establishment Whigs like Edmund Burke and Lord Rockingham, who made a strong effort to co-opt Clive, believed that the North ministry was trying to seize control of the company and its innumerable patronage opportunities. Parliament had an obligation to respect the company’s charter and had no right to meddle in its governance, they argued.83 Unfortunately for the unity of the opposition, Whig radicals entirely rejected this argument. The company, Thomas Pownall argued, had gone far beyond

b r i ta i n ’ s a u t h o r i ta r i a n a s c e n da n c y

169

the rights granted in its charter and was exercising sovereign power over Bengal. And in exercising that sovereignty, it was guilty, as Chatham put it, of “iniquities so rank, as to smell to earth and heaven.” It had, one radical Whig pamphleteer argued, established “commercial despotism” and “cruel monopolies” that devoured Bengal’s once flourishing commerce, manufactures, and population. And its rapacious servants had collected crushing taxes that ruined farmers, left land uncultivated, and drove the “most fertile of all countries” into a devastating famine. Britain, Chatham declared, was conducting its commerce with Bengal at gunpoint, and its trade would soon collapse if its Indian empire was not immediately “strengthened by a system of justice and humanity.”84 Instead of leaving the company alone or buttressing its government, radical Whigs sought to make it more accountable to the public. Chatham rejected Clive and North’s efforts to eliminate the annual election of directors, to tighten voting qualifications, and to lengthen the terms of governors. He also criticized the Regulating Act’s legal reforms, which he believed made judges tools of the Crown. Instead, he called for the elimination of the company’s “ruinous and odious” monopolies. Repeating a point he had made when prime minister, Chatham argued that the company’s revenues were public trust, one that should be used to pay Britain’s debts and the company’s governing expenses in India. Keeping Bengal’s territorial revenue within narrow bounds was imperative because Indian wealth posed a real danger to the economic and political system. If the Crown seized the company’s revenue for its own use, Chatham argued, “English Kings would become Moguls” and Indian wealth would asphyxiate “trade, industry, liberty, and virtue.” Indeed, the company’s perverse political economy already threatened Britain. Enriched with the “presents” they had extorted from Bengal, Barré suggested that returning company servants would soon purchase the House of Commons. Britain’s new Indian rulers might then replace the land tax with a “mottut”—the same rapacious revenue system that had devoured India—and hire sepoys to give the law to England.85 All of this was a bit dramatic, but it reflected radical Whigs’ keen awareness that their antagonists saw imperial tax revenue as both a justification and a mechanism for creating a more autocratic empire. As the debate over the crisis in India demonstrated, the opposition was divided and weakened by their very different approaches to government and empire.86 This was especially true when it came to reforming Britain’s corrupt

170 b r i ta i n ’ s a u t h o r i ta r i a n a s c e n da n c y

political system. A growing number of radical Whigs embraced more frequent parliamentary elections as a solution. Drawing on the American experience, they insisted, as both the antislavery campaigner Granville Sharpe and the dissenting minister Joseph Priestley did, that there was an intimate connection between representation and taxation. In the second edition of his Essay on the First Principles of Government, Priestley observed, “Men of equal rank and fortune with those who usually compose the English House of Commons have nothing to fear from the imposition of taxes, but persons of lower rank, and especially those who have no votes in the election of members, may have reason to fear, because an unequal part of the burden may be laid upon them.” With the relationship between political power and economic well-being in mind, radicals like the London alderman John Sawbridge introduced motions for shortening Parliaments, and a growing number of writers called for triennial or even annual Parliaments. Others, like the Earl of Chatham, believed that triennial Parliaments would be a hard sell in the House of Lords and instead recommended increasing the number of competitive constituencies.87 All of this was too much for establishment Whigs, who preferred to fight corruption by limiting the influence and violence of the Crown. Those differences only grew with time, as radical Whigs embraced political reforms that were almost republican in character. By the time John Cartright published radical call for parliamentary reform, Take Your Choice! Representation and Respect: Imposition and Contempt, in 1776, even a future prime minister had endorsed the call for annual elections.88 Despite its divisions and growing weakness, the opposition nonetheless remained united in its defense of the American colonies. But the tide of British politics huge shifting irrevocably against them. When Bostonians destroyed a huge quantity of the East India Company’s tea in December 1773, hostility toward the colonies proved insurmountable. Parliament closed Boston’s harbor, overhauled Massachusetts’s charter, and passed a law that facilitated the army’s suppression of rioting. Such coercive legislation reflected a political worldview that was gaining ground and that insisted that the state resolutely suppress “disorders at home, and abroad.” Indeed, Lord North spoke of those disorders from personal experience after an angry crowd attacked his house.89 With Boston under the “tyrannical anarchy” of the mob, Lord Barrington urged ministers to give General Thomas Gage free rein to restore order in the colony.90 Radical and establishment Whigs reacted with horror at this approach and instead blamed the latest round of

b r i ta i n ’ s a u t h o r i ta r i a n a s c e n da n c y

171

colonial resistance on parliamentary taxation and ministerial violence.91 But most British voters agreed with authoritarian reformers that it was madness to coddle colonists who wantonly denied Britain’s authority. The general election of 1774 was a humbling experience for radicals and establishment Whigs, who had hoped that the British public would join them in their opposition to North’s administration. Reacting to disorder from Boston to Bengal, voters returned a House of Commons strongly supportive of government and hostile to those who would challenge its authority. It marked a point of no return for the British Empire. The government was now uncontestably in the hands of men like Lord Barrington, who believed the conflict had gone far beyond a whether Parliament would raise money in North America. It had become a “point of honor only,” one that demanded that Britain stand up for itself against its rebellious colonists.92 As much as authoritarian reformers insisted that suppressing colonial disorder was necessary to preserve the dignity and sovereignty of Parliament, they continued to demand that colonists pay whatever taxes Parliament asked of them. In his spirited defense of the government’s American policy, Taxation No Tyranny, Samuel Johnson insisted that “all the subordinate communities” of the empire were “liable to taxation” and ought “to furnish their proportion” of the empire’s charges. The University of Edinburgh’s politically connected professor of moral philosophy Adam Ferguson likewise insisted that no British minister would ever “surrender the undoubted right of this country to require from America some share in the supplies which are necessary to support the imperial crown and the empire of Great Britain.”93 At the same time, members of Parliament and the North ministry celebrated George Grenville’s legacy and made it clear that they still expected colonists to pay imperial taxes. With debate raging over repealing the Townshend Duty on tea, the Shropshire MP Frederick Cornwall told the House of Commons that Britain was “loaded with a debt of a very considerable amount on account of the last American war” and that it was “just and right that they should bear their proportion of expense,” while Alexander Wedderburn demanded to know how Parliament expected to raise colonial revenue if not through taxation.94 Parliament’s supremacy had a purpose: to compel colonists to pay what they owed. Authoritarian reformers’ demand for revenue and reform raised the prospect of an imperial civil war, which greatly alarmed radical Whigs. Fearing the consequences of a fractured empire, Benjamin Franklin and

172 b r i ta i n ’ s a u t h o r i ta r i a n a s c e n da n c y

20. “The Parricide: A Sketch of Modern Patriotism,” Westminster Magazine, May 1776. Authoritarian reformers attacked colonists not only for their ingratitude but also for threatening the integrity of Britain and its empire. (Courtesy of the Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division)

Lord Chatham worked tirelessly to produce a compromise that would satisfy colonial grievances and place the empire on a sustainable footing. Franklin, who had been living in London for almost a decade, found an eager partner in the former prime minister. He reported that Chatham spoke “feelingly of the severity of the late laws against the Massachusetts,” and that he had expressed support for the American’s suggestion that the prosperity and happiness of the empire depended on adding province after self-governing province as far west as the Pacific.95 With a powerful ally, Franklin expressed hope that the next session of Parliament would unite the “great folks who agree in disapproving the present measures” and that they would succeed in repealing “all the mischievous acts that have of late almost dissolved our union.” And he took heart that Chatham’s collaborator in the House of Lords, the Bishop St. Asaph, had just published an undelivered speech opposing the repeal of the Massachusetts charter that seemed to be quieting “the abuse of America in the papers.”96 Believing that reconciliation might now be possible, Franklin followed the advice of London merchant David Barclay and Quaker minister John

b r i ta i n ’ s a u t h o r i ta r i a n a s c e n da n c y

173

Fothergill and drafted his own plan for reuniting Britain and its colonies. His “Hints, or Terms for a Durable Union” insisted on the repeal of the tea duty as well as the recent Coercive Acts. And it recommended that any money granted to Parliament be raised by requisition and with the sole consent of colonial legislatures. Franklin also sought to roll back authoritarian reforms such as restrictions on colonial manufacturing, vice-admiralty courts, military deployments, and onerous trade restrictions. His wish list was indeed extensive, and Barclay tried to soften some of Franklin’s demands, but it nonetheless reflected long-standing radical Whig ideas about empire and colonial policy.97 Franklin’s proposal was very much of a piece with radical Whig efforts to bring about a conciliation. On January 19, 1775, just a few months before the outbreak of war, Chatham invited Franklin as his guest in the House of Lords. The following day, enfeebled by age and gout—barely able to walk— but still a towering figure, Chatham entered the Lords’ chamber. With Franklin at his side, he demanded the withdrawal of troops from Boston and defended the American cause as that of all true English Whigs. The “Great Commoner” declared that he had “studied and admired the master-states of the world,” and concluded that “no nation or body of men” could rival the “solidity of reasoning, force of sagacity, and wisdom of conclusion” of the American Congress. Withdrawing troops and renouncing Parliament’s right to tax the colonies was “prepatory to the restoration of your peace, and the establishment of your prosperity,” he told his colleagues. Chatham’s motion was soundly defeated, and at least one earl described Franklin’s presence in the house as “a gross indignity to all the peers.”98 Appearing beside the most famous American in the British Empire was indeed a stunning act of political theater, but it was also a dramatic demonstration of the daunting prospects facing American and British radical Whigs. Nine days after their failed effort, Chatham arrived at Franklin’s handsome four-story townhouse on Cravenstreet in London with his “Provisional Act for Settling the Troubles in America.” For nearly two hours, as his coach and horses drew the attention of the neighborhood churchgoers, the former minister expatiated on his plan with so much eloquence that whatever suggestions Franklin had, he “found little inclination to interrupt” his guest. There were indeed many details of Chatham’s plan that Franklin thought might be improved, but he nonetheless endorsed it as the basis for future negotiation. Chatham’s proposal shared his own ambition of making America’s “industrious subjects . . . more and more happy by the sacredness of

174 b r i ta i n ’ s a u t h o r i ta r i a n a s c e n da n c y

property, and of personal liberty.”99 And it answered radical Americans’ demand that Parliament requisition funds and leave the raising of taxes to the colonial assemblies. When Chatham presented his proposal to the House of Lords, with Franklin again in attendance, many assumed that the Philadelphian must be the author. Glaring at Franklin, the Earl of Sandwich called for the proposal’s immediate rejection and insisted that it could never be the work of an English peer. Despite Shelburne’s and Camden’s best efforts to defend Chatham’s plan, the opposition lacked the votes to overcome the ministry’s objections, and the House of Lords “hastily and harshly rejected” it, 61 to 32.100 For all the angry words uttered in the House of Lords, Lord North and his colonial secretary of state Lord Dartmouth genuinely wanted to avoid war. The problem was that North was unprepared to give up his demand for colonial revenue. This became abundantly clear in February 1775 when the prime minister offered his own conciliatory resolution to Parliament. The measure, as North’s family friend and tutor Thomas Dampier observed, preserved “the dignity of Parliament, and the sovereignty of the mother country” while turning the “artillery of opposition upon itself.” Although some historians treat North’s proposal as a sign of his moderation and willingness to negotiate with the colonies, it effectively reiterated the prime minister’s commitment to authoritarian reform.101 His proposal delegated raising revenue for the “common defense” and for “support of the civil government and administration of justice” to the colonial legislatures, but also subjected every colony’s fiscal policy to parliamentary review. North made it clear that colonists would no longer be taxed by Britain, except in the regulation of their trade, but that if they failed to satisfy Parliament’s demands, they would face the wrath of the British army. This was barely any concession at all. As Grenville’s protégé Charles Jenkinson observed, North’s conciliatory proposal was based on the foundational principle “that every part of the empire must bear its share to the common defense.”102 And although he abhorred Jenkinson’s political views, Isaac Barré agreed that North’s resolution was nothing new because it placed colonial property under the control of Parliament. Chatham likewise dismissed the prime minister’s plan as a “puerile mockery” that would be spurned by all “true friends” of America, while Franklin compared it to a highway man taking what he wanted at gunpoint.103 It was a false compromise, one that appeared to offer concessions to the empire’s radicals without actually doing so. And

b r i ta i n ’ s a u t h o r i ta r i a n a s c e n da n c y

175

while the prospect of conciliation angered some who believed that Britain should simply impose its will by force, North’s resolution reflected authoritarian reformers’ conviction that Parliament urgently needed to be in control of colonial revenue. With even North under attack for failing to uphold Britain’s sovereignty, Franklin gave up on reconciliation. He was embittered by the spectacle of “hereditary legislators” with “scarce discretion enough to govern a herd of swine” treating colonists as “the lowest of mankind, and almost of a different species from the English.”104 Franklin had spent sixteen of the past twenty years in Britain advocating for a political community that he believed was a source of power, justice, and prosperity. Now, he was through with the British Empire. At the end of March 1775, he boarded the Pennsylvania Packet for Philadelphia. He would never live in England again. The failure of conciliation and the opening salvos of the American War left radical and establishment Whigs in an excruciatingly difficult position. With Chatham’s proposal rejected and colonists increasingly denying Parliament’s authority, the opposition lacked a coherent alternative. As champions of republican imperialism, radical Whigs were increasingly forced to choose between supporting the new republics that were emerging in North America and defending a British Empire that they had long revered. That led to a real split between ardent imperialists like Chatham, who insisted on both parliamentary sovereignty and colonial fiscal independence, and those like Joseph Massie who believed that Parliament ought to give up its claims to “supreme legislative authority” over the colonies. Massie was joined by those radical politicians and intellectuals who congregated at Shelburne’s sumptuous Bowood estate in Wiltshire. Richard Price’s blockbuster pamphlet Observations on the Nature of Civil Liberty, which he authored with Barré and the Shelburne’s input, denied both Parliament’s right to tax the colonies and the justness of prosecuting a war to enforce the “superiority” of the British state over America. On the other hand, establishment Whigs continued to downplay the question of rights and instead criticized North’s government for waging an unwinnable war when the entire point of Britain’s empire was commercial growth.105 As cacophonous as the opposition debate over the American crisis was, radical and establishment Whigs were nonetheless united in their abhorrence of authoritarian reform. Even as colonial radicals began erecting committees, associations, and congresses that were independent of the old colonial

176 b r i ta i n ’ s a u t h o r i ta r i a n a s c e n da n c y

governments, radical Whigs like Shelburne expressed confidence that Americans were “faithful colonists to the parent state.” And they reiterated their arguments that Britain’s imperial policies had to respect the mutually beneficial relationship between colonial and metropolitan growth. All over the country merchants and manufacturers assembled and prepared petitions for Parliament and the king praying for peace and decrying the ministry’s efforts to raise revenue from the colonies.106 The alternative was a disastrous civil war that would spell the end of Britain’s power and prosperity. Richard Price shuddered to think what would happen when “many millions” were added to

21. The Political Black-Smiths, 1776. Following the Prohibitory Act, which blockaded colonial trade, radical and establishment Whigs accused the North administration of “enslaving” their colonial brethren. William Murray, Lord Mansfield, forges chains for the colonies while Lord North holds a copy of the act prohibiting American commerce. (Courtesy of the Lewis Walpole Library, Yale University)

b r i ta i n ’ s a u t h o r i ta r i a n a s c e n da n c y

177

the national debt “at the same time, perhaps, [that] some millions are taken away from the revenue?” One possibility, considered by the Bristol merchant and Rockinghamite Richard Campion was starvation. In any event, Camden concluded, Britain would almost certainly face “an unnatural and an unsuccessful war,” one which would “end as ingloriously as it was rashly commenced.”107 In November 1775, Edmund Burke made a last-ditch motion for conciliation, one that reiterated Britain’s economic interest in respecting colonial rights. Supported by radical Whigs and England’s manufacturers, the motion garnered a third of the votes cast in the House of Commons. It was not enough.108 Authoritarian reformers succeeded in pressing their political agenda, but they were nonetheless trapped in a double bind. Having concluded that Britain’s commercial empire no longer worked, they argued that colonists must be disciplined through both taxation and the institutions taxation made possible. But that brought only chaos. For authoritarian reformers, the solution was force, which only encouraged more resistance, resistance that sank the colonial economy and undermined tax collection. Seeking both discipline and money in North America, authoritarian reformers found neither. Their failure stemmed from an understandable but flawed assumption that the better sort of colonist would rally to their cause. Whatever concessions North was willing to make, he and his supporters were unwilling to compromise Parliament’s right to American revenue. Anything less would spell the end of the British Empire and, quite possibly, of Britain itself. And thanks to an electorate that was losing patience with popular protest, authoritarian reformers convinced a substantial portion of Parliament and the public that they were right. Yet their victory was precarious, inspiring fierce dissent in Britain and independence in North America.

6 Sons of Liberty, Sons of Licentiousness

What has a slave? nor fire, nor clothes, nor meat; Not for themselves they’re warm’d, or claoth’d or eat; But defend their master in his pride; Their sov’reign; who may tax their very hide. Flay off their skin in wantonness and sport, Or send an order for their heads from court. —Casca’s Epistle to Lord North (1775)

Alexander Hamilton was likely less than twenty when, in 1774, he mounted his swashbuckling defense of the Continental Congress. Recently arrived in New York from the West Indies and swept up in the growing resistance movement, Hamilton had no doubt that if Parliament taxed the colonies their future would be very bleak indeed. “This you may depend upon,” the young radical declared, “before long, your tables, and chairs, and planters, and dishes, and knives and forks, and everything else would be taxed.” Britain would find a way to tax colonists “for every child you got, and for every kiss your daughter received from their sweet-hearts, and God knows, that would soon ruin you.”1 Hamilton’s forwardness with women equaled his enthusiasm for politics and the battlefield, and it is easy to imagine the dread a tax on kisses might have caused the young radical. Yet the future secretary of the treasury was no enemy of the state, or of taxation, and his remarks came at a time when Parliament had significantly reduced the colonial tax burden by repealing the Stamp Act and most of the Townshend Duties.2 Given this reality, why did Hamilton, along with a growing number of colonists, respond to Parliament’s taxes with vehemence and violence? 178

s o n s o f l i b e rt y, s o n s o f l i c e n t i o u s n e s s

179

Hamilton’s fulmination against a tax on kisses offers a clue that can help answer this difficult question. His angry attack on British taxation shows that political economic ideas were at the heart of colonial resistance. Like other radical Whigs, he was terrified that parliamentary taxation would reduce the colonies to a dependent and impoverished periphery of Britain’s empire. Colonial radicals came to this conclusion because authoritarian imperial reformers—both in North America and in Britain—made no secret of their desire to circumscribe colonial self-government and to raise significant amounts of money in North America. In response, radical Whigs articulated a vision of empire based on equality and reciprocity while organizing the boycott of a wide range of British goods. Their resistance strategy drew on a radical Whig understanding of imperial political economy that stressed the mother country’s dependence on colonial consumers and the increasingly urgent need to promote North America’s economic independence. This was the same understanding that led British radicals like the Earl of Chatham to literally stand beside Benjamin Franklin against Parliament’s efforts to overhaul the empire. When American defiance led to the Boston Port Act, the suspension of Massachusetts’s charter, and the occupation of British North America’s second largest city, radicals responded with increasing defiance.3 Britain’s vicious response convinced radicals that authoritarian reformers were firmly in control of the British state and that they would stop at nothing to bleed the colonies dry. Colonists from vastly different social and geographic backgrounds embraced radical Whig arguments out of a strong sense of economic vulnerability. Anger and opposition flashed through the circuits of a vibrant civil society and drew strength from representative institutions that were longestablished facts of colonial life. And yet, neither this anger nor the relative equality among North America’s yeomen farmers fully explains the success of radical mobilization following the repeal of the Stamp Act. A vibrant civil society was not enough to secure Britain’s radical future, and it was the increasingly unequal cities that proved to be the best incubators of radicalism throughout the British Empire.4 Landless young men, struggling artisans, tobacco planters, and prosperous merchants throughout the colonies, on the other hand, were united by their profound economic anxiety. Indeed, that sense of vulnerability and fear prompted many moderate merchants and politicians to endorse, however uneasily, resistance to British authority.5 And while Caribbean and Canadian colonists also harbored such concerns,

180 s o n s o f l i b e rt y, s o n s o f l i c e n t i o u s n e s s

Britain’s dominant military force restrained their resistance.6 Economic apprehension meant that a growing number of colonists embraced the radical Whig conviction that unrepresentative taxation was not just illegitimate but economically devastating. As radical Whig resistance increased during the 1760s and 1770s, North American political culture became more and more polarized. Each side increasingly accused the other of violence and barbarism, claims that while frequently exaggerated often turned out to be true. Such differences of outlook were even expressed socially. In Boston, for example, authoritarian reformers and radical Whigs set up rival concerts and assemblies.7 Colonial authoritarian reformers, who regularly referred to themselves as “friends of government,” continued to believe that parliamentary taxation was a price worth paying if it could bring order to the British Empire. As the controversy intensified, more moderate colonists were forced to choose which they feared more: the ferocity of radical mobs, or authoritarian reformers’ efforts to circumscribe popular government through taxation and military force. At a time of economic uncertainty, radical Whigs’ vision of republican empire and colonial self-government proved far more appealing than political and economic subordination. And a wide franchise allowed the growing number of radical voters to strip authoritarian reformers of their power.8 As the violent implications of imperial reform became clearer and ever more terrifying, many colonists concluded that the only way to preserve their prosperity was to erect new institutions and governments free from Britain’s authority. In so doing, they declared their independence from an empire that they had long cherished.

Liberty Versus Licentiousness The Stamp Act left a deep scar on colonial politics. American radicals were less confident and more suspicious of British colonial policy than ever before. Indeed, Massachusetts agent Dennys De Berdt chastised the Sons of Liberty for speaking “diminutively” of the Stamp Act’s repeal and reminded James Otis of both “the difficulties and reproach” the Rockingham ministry had faced and of its desire “to do everything that appears to be for the mutual advantage of Great Britain and her colonies.” But while radical colonists were grateful to their British allies, they knew that authoritarian reformers remained in powerful positions. Colonists meanwhile were reluctant to vote

s o n s o f l i b e rt y, s o n s o f l i c e n t i o u s n e s s

181

funds for an empire that appointed corrupt and meddling governors like Francis Bernard.9 When Charles Townshend’s duties on colonial imports of paper, paint, lead, glass, and tea became law in early 1767, it became clear that the Stamp Act’s repeal had settled nothing. Authoritarian reformers remained committed to using parliamentary taxation to secure the colonies’ order and obedience, while radical Whigs, once again, asserted that this would impoverish the empire and strip it of its liberty. In the face of the Townshend Duties and the Mutiny Act, colonists revived radical Whig arguments they had made during the Stamp Act debates. Although both of these duties were far less onerous than Grenville’s program, radicals insisted that they were cut from the same cloth because they allowed Parliament to separate the colonists from their property without their consent or that of their chosen representatives.10 They rejected parliamentary taxation as a matter of both political and economic principle. John Dickinson, a Philadelphia lawyer, merchant, and politician, popularized this argument in his widely reprinted Letters from a Farmer in Pennsylvania to the Inhabitants of the British Colonies. His essays electrified colonists during the winter of 1767 and 1768 by offering a grim vision of the future if Americans submitted. Like many radicals, Dickinson distinguished between taxation and trade regulation, arguing that taxes were special because they granted “His Majesty the property of the colonies.” Taxes could only be legitimate if they were given voluntarily; anything less was theft and slavery. As the president of the Massachusetts Provincial Congress, Joseph Warren, explained, “every man” had a natural right “to enjoy what is acquired by his own labor.”11 In this respect, the Townshend Duties and the Mutiny Act were just like the Stamp Act. If colonists were reduced to toiling for “rapacious” ministers, industriousness and innovation would be for naught. Indeed, both elite and working-class radicals argued that British liberties were responsible for the colonies’ phenomenal economic and demographic growth. Philadelphia’s manufacturers and mechanics declared that liberal colonial government had “reared spacious cities in the wilderness,” while Dickinson warned that Parliament’s taxes and trade restrictions would soon reduce the colonies to the impoverished condition of Ireland, France, and Poland, with their “wooden shoes, and uncombed hair.” As the Philadelphia merchant Thomas Mifflin observed, Ireland “was once a rich and flourishing isle, but being charged beyond her abilities with the payment of excessive sums to worn out panderers and whores, she is now sinking beneath the infamous load.”12

182 s o n s o f l i b e rt y, s o n s o f l i c e n t i o u s n e s s

Radicals believed parliamentary taxation threatened colonial prosperity, not only because it undermined the security of property, but also because it destroyed the accountability and effectiveness of government. The Townshend Duties and the Mutiny Act were explicitly designed to eliminate the most important power of the colonial legislatures—their ability to raise money. Only by keeping fiscal control in the hands of the colonial representatives, who were themselves accountable to the people, could colonists be sure that government would serve the public rather than itself. Such a view reflected the long-standing radical Whig commitment to popular sovereignty and constitutional government. The people (however they were conceived) had a duty to challenge officials who violated the rights and interests of the community.13 Parliament, on the other hand, was not accountable to the colonial populace, and it had a strong interest in maximizing colonial taxation while ignoring the miseries it imposed. In “free states,” Dickinson argued, taxation was “as exactly proportioned as is possible to the abilities of those who are to pay them.” However, if Parliament taxed the colonies, taxes would be insidiously levied on consumer goods and sharply regressive. The problem was not taxation itself but unaccountable taxation. Unconstrained by colonial voters and hungry for patronage opportunities, Britain’s leaders would create an army of tax collectors as invasive as they were rapacious. Only colonial legislatures, whose election depended on the people’s well-being and their knowledge of local circumstances, could be trusted to levy taxes.14 Radical Whigs conflated the Townshend duties and onerous British trade restrictions because they believed that both of them undermined the commercial relationship that sustained the British Empire. Not only did these damage the colonial economy, but they called into question imperial ties built on reciprocity and common interest. As the clash over the Townshend Duties intensified, Samuel Adams expressed hope that “Great Britain and the colonies may thoroughly understand their mutual interest and dependence” A toga-clad Joseph Warren went even further in a 1775 oration, declaring that both Britain and her colonies owed their prosperity and power to their mutual “commerce and affection.” The glories of the British Empire were threatened, however, by trade restrictions that forced colonists to buy overpriced and overtaxed British goods, thereby violating the “rules of equity.” Such policies threatened the mutually beneficial relationship in which the colonists produced agricultural goods while importing British manufactures.15 George Grenville had made no secret, John Dickinson observed, of his intention to

s o n s o f l i b e rt y, s o n s o f l i c e n t i o u s n e s s

183

replace commercial reciprocity with taxes aimed at enforcing the “dependence and obedience” of the colonies. These policies had led to a shortage of money and a decline in trade. If colonists failed to find a way of supplying their economy with sufficient cash, one writer to the Philadelphia Chronicle warned, “the declension and ruin of Pennsylvania will be as rapid and surprising as its population and growth.”16 Most radicals believed that Parliament had a right to regulate commerce, but they also insisted that when these restrictions benefited the mother country at the expense of the colonies they ceased to be legitimate. Indeed, Britain’s crippling commercial policy, especially when combined with parliamentary taxation, offered overwhelming evidence that authoritarian reformers were working to transform an empire of reciprocity into an empire of domination. Intimately familiar with the debates that were tearing the mother country apart, radical colonists had no trouble convincing themselves that they were engaged in a shared struggle for the future of the British world. Indeed, they understood both the intent and potential consequences of the Townshend Duties because they paid close attention to metropolitan politics. Their repeated attacks on the Grafton and North ministries demonstrate that they opposed, not Britain per se, but an ideologically motivated program. They were keenly aware of the growing appetite for authoritarian reform in the mother country and worried about efforts to spread “prejudices” against the colonies, particularly their ability “to pay considerable duties and taxes.” And they rightly blamed George Grenville and his allies for spearheading the publicity campaign against them. Arthur Lee reported that authoritarian reformers had assiduously spread “such rumors among the people of Great Britain” that “every tumult here was rebellion.” South Carolina’s nonimportation committee decried “the wretched situation of our mother country,” but expressed hope that “the patriots, who are defending the state, would favor that passion which glows in their own bosoms.”17 Indeed, American radicals expressed an enthusiasm for European patriotism that went far beyond John Wilkes and Corsican freedom fighter Pasquale Paoli. They recognized a wide variety of British activists, MPs, and even government ministers for their support of the American cause. And they devoured radical essays from the British press, including “Junius’s” virulent attacks on the ministry. Indeed, they took comfort that the “two most popular men in the Kingdom,” the Earls of Chatham and Camden, had loudly declared that Parliament’s taxation of the colonies was unconstitutional.18

184 s o n s o f l i b e rt y, s o n s o f l i c e n t i o u s n e s s

This was not, however, the view of colonial authoritarian reformers, who, like their British counterparts, took denials of the mother country’s authority, coerced nonimportation, and the roughing up of critics as conclusive evidence that the tyranny of the mob was a far greater threat to liberty and property than either parliamentary taxation or colonial dependence. These colonists solicited the support of political moderates, frightened elites, and metropolitan officials while seeking to shield government from popular opposition. Rescuing government and its supporters from the rabble meant insisting on the sovereignty of Parliament and giving colonial executives a source of revenue that was independent of the people. For authoritarian reformers, this was the only way to cure the cancer of republicanism that had metastasized throughout the colonies. Authoritarian reformers had long accused colonists of being an ungovernable lot, and every time American radicals denied Parliament’s authority, they grew more and more alarmed. This was an understandable reaction. Radicals repeatedly insulted, threatened, and attacked the king’s servants and their supporters. As Robert Auchmuty, the judge of Boston’s vice-admiralty court, complained, “No treatment is too bad for the known friends of government, except taking away their lives.” In response, authoritarian reformers derided radicals as “sons of tyranny,” “sons of anarchy,” and “sons of licentiousness.” Samuel Curwen, a merchant and judge in Salem, Massachusetts, concluded that colonists were a “people licentious and enthusiastically mad,” who had broken “loose from all restraints of law and religion.” Men like Curwen were convinced that their fellow colonists were exploiting the Stamp Act’s repeal to assert their independence from Britain.19 One customs official concluded that Americans would not stop until “the colonies are free, independent states, under the same king, with Great Britain, and no more subject to it in matters government and legislation, than Hanover is now, or Scotland was to England, before the union.” The evidence was everywhere. Radicals had browbeaten Britain into repealing the Stamp Act by boycotting the empire’s goods and by promoting colonial manufacturing. Now, the Sons of Liberty, radical newspapers, and even legislatures were spreading the flames of insubordination throughout North America and as far away as Antigua and London.20 Such truculence reflected the fact that colonial society was infected with republican principles and crippled by democratic institutions. Historians have long debated the inclusiveness of colonial politics, but authoritarian reformers

s o n s o f l i b e rt y, s o n s o f l i c e n t i o u s n e s s

185

had no doubt that it was dominated by the ignorant and vulgar. Boston customs official Henry Hulton offered a sociological explanation for this excess of democracy, explaining that the easy access to landed property tended to “keep up those independent leveling principles which the first settlers brought with them.”21 But whether Hulton was correct or not, what is clear is that American political culture appalled authoritarian reformers. While radicals like Thomas Young celebrated Boston’s meetinghouse as a “noble school” for the resistance movement, where “the meanest citizen . . . may deliver his sentiments and give his suffrage in very important matters as freely as the greatest lord in the land,” Boston’s customs commissioners complained that the “popular governments” of New England had allowed the “lowest mechanics” to “discuss upon the most important points of government with the utmost freedom.” Demagogues and democratic despotism ruled New England’s towns and dominated American assemblies, making it impossible for the friends of government to speak out against sedition.22 Infected by democracy, colonial governments had repeatedly failed to protect both people and property. For authoritarian reformers, this was anarchy, a far more monstrous tyranny than parliamentary taxation. Following riots in Norfolk, Virginia, a writer calling himself “A Lover of Order” wrote to the Virginia Gazette, telling his readers that “the violence of the multitude is always more precipitate and excessive than that of an individual tyrant.” Violent mobs that defied law and government were the antitheses of civil liberty. As soon as government loosened its reins, the “security of person and property” became “very precarious, nay in great and imminent danger.” Authoritarian reformers expressed these sentiments repeatedly. Responding to a September 1768 letter from the selectmen of Boston, representatives of the Town of Hatfield, Massachusetts, made it very clear that they were less concerned about a standing army than they were about the “unconstitutional, illegal, and wholly unjustifiable” nonimportation association that undermined government. The wife of one prominent Massachusetts merchant likewise complained that radicals were subverting the authority of the colony’s leaders, pointing to the Sons of Liberty’s efforts to promulgate coercive nonimportation resolves by packing the town meeting with defiant adolescents.23 A society in which mobs ruled and political elites denied the authority of Parliament was the natural outcome of shamefully weak government, and authoritarian reformers throughout the colonies begged metropolitan

186 s o n s o f l i b e rt y, s o n s o f l i c e n t i o u s n e s s

officials to reassert government’s authority. Although the Townshend Duties were supposed to put control of the colonies’ revenue back into the hands of the executive, they actually exacerbated the problem. General Thomas Gage observed that the laws were “trampled upon” and flouted “in the most open and shameful manner without any show of opposition from government or magistrates.” Customs officers likewise complained that the American authorities were “weak and enervated,” allowing colonists to flout revenue and customs regulations with impunity.24 Such weakness led officials in both North America and the Caribbean to join other authoritarian reformers in lamenting the poor state of revenue collection. Unless they had “further powers,” the commissioners of customs informed the lords of the Treasury, colonial opposition would make it impossible for the Townshend duties to “be carried into effect.” Indeed, colonial authoritarian reformers expressed astonishment that British policymakers were so foolish as to attempt to levy new taxes without first reforming popular constitutions and strengthening the hands of government.25 Indeed, the behavior of radical and establishment Whig ministers alarmed and exasperated authoritarian reformers, and they responded by mounting their own press campaign to turn colonists against radicalism. As Boston’s customs commissioners observed, “everything that is said or published in England in favor of the colonies, is peculiarly prejudicial, as the people of this country are led to believe that their cause is powerfully espoused at home.” Both Massachusetts’s governor Francis Bernard and Henry Hulton’s sister Ann agreed. Bernard observed that colonial opposition had “gained strength from the political dissensions at Westminster,” while Hulton blamed radical Whig leaders like Chatham and Camden for spreading the “poison of disaffection.” Gage went even further. He was convinced that British radicals were not only misleading their colonial brethren about the British constitution but also actively encouraging them to resist the mother country’s authority.26 Recognizing that British politics mattered in America, authoritarian reformers responded by attacking metropolitan radicalism and by reprinting arguments from across the Atlantic. Printers like Richard Draper and John Mein published letters from London describing how the colonists’ resistance harmed their friends in the metropolis. They attacked metropolitan radicals for their “narrow prejudices and sordid views,” which served only to “distress, and confound government; to disturb the peace, and ruin the credit of the nation.” Indeed, Mein took the

s o n s o f l i b e rt y, s o n s o f l i c e n t i o u s n e s s

187

risky step of reprinting British articles that supported parliamentary taxation in order to make it clear that colonial radicalism was not only out of step with British opinion but damaging the interests of the mother country.27 Like authoritarian reformers, radical colonists were keenly aware of just how much their political and economic fortunes depended on the mother country. Their correspondence and newspapers gave them frequent but contradictory reports that reflected the instability of British politics. In April 1767, colonists learned from the Pennsylvania Gazette that Parliament had pushed through a “very unpopular reduction of that [land] tax,” which would necessarily “be made up by some other tax, perhaps not so agreeable, and in a way more prejudicial to trade.” Only a few months later, John Dickinson expressed confidence that the Townshend Duties were every bit as unpopular as the Stamp Act had been, while the newspapers reported that British manufacturers were emigrating en masse to escape the government’s authoritarian policies. Those hopes for a change in imperial policy were then dashed when colonists received word that Camden had abandoned them and that John Wilkes was again the subject of governmental persecution. Such instability led colonial radicals to conclude that the vagaries of British politics were no foundation on which to lay American liberty and prosperity. As John Dickinson observed, Americans had “reason to believe that several of His Majesty’s present ministers are good men, and friends to our country.” But “the mortality of ministers” was “a very frail mortality.”28 And that meant that radical colonists had no choice but to do everything they could to empower their allies and defeat their enemies on the far side of the Atlantic.

The Politics of Economic Independence Facing a concerted campaign for authoritarian reform that spanned the empire, colonial radicals responded forcefully and decisively. The Sons of Liberty organized the harassment of customs commissioners; towns and cities remonstrated; and colonial legislatures lobbied Parliament through their agents. Indeed, the opposition became so intense that in October 1769 a crowd of over a thousand chased John Mein through the streets of Boston, forcing him to flee to England. And while radicals ostensibly sought to limit disordered violence, John Adams dismissed attacks on mobs as a “trite topic of declamation and invective, among all the ministerial people, far and near.” Aggressive resistance was necessary, Richard Henry Lee explained, because silence

188 s o n s o f l i b e rt y, s o n s o f l i c e n t i o u s n e s s

would allow the “poison” of parliamentary taxation to destroy the “body politic.”29 The boycott movement was the most sustained effort in that cause. Following a strategy that appeared to work in the Stamp Act crisis, groups of citizens, starting with Boston’s merchants, organized local nonimportation agreements and appealed to their fellow colonists to stop consuming British manufactures. Newspaper writers such as “Philo-Patriae,” “Atticus,” and “Monitor” urged colonists to form nonimportation associations. That protest, as Tim Breen observes, “invited people to think about political life in more inclusive terms,” bringing people from a variety of different backgrounds together in political action.30 Only by working together, following the example of other colonies that had joined the boycott, could radicals succeed in overturning the Townshend Duties. Yet, this proved an uphill struggle: merchants were reluctant to support a movement that would harm their businesses. Philadelphia’s mercantile community initially withheld support for Boston’s boycott, expressing concern that nonimportation would “injure us in the opinion of our friends, and add strength to our opponents.” Such foot dragging meant that it took Pennsylvania until the end of 1768 to join the movement while Virginia waited until March of the following year. Indeed, moderation led radical colonists to condemn the “timid and selfish policy” of merchants while insisting that resistance could only succeed through unity and action.31 Radical Whigs’ conviction that nonimportation was the only way to force Britain to repeal the Townshend Duties and repudiate parliamentary taxation depended on their long-standing understanding of imperial political economy. Even after years of tumultuous protest, colonists still believed that they could demonstrate Britain’s economic dependence on American trade and avoid accusations of riot and rebellion by refusing to buy British goods. A boycott would also make the colonial cause popular in Britain, giving the lie to the argument that the mother country’s burdens would “be lessened in proportion as ours are increased,” as the Virginia radical George Mason put it in 1769. Believing that they could bring Britain’s leaders to their senses by proving their value to the empire as consumers, radicals urged temporary pain in order to secure their prosperity. Americans could easily adapt to the hardship of nonimportation, Mason explained, because “a man may be as warm in a coat that costs but ten shillings as in one that cost ten pounds.” While the colonies enjoyed an agricultural surplus that made them selfsufficient, Britain was entirely dependent on the Americans who bought its

s o n s o f l i b e rt y, s o n s o f l i c e n t i o u s n e s s

189

goods. Without colonial buyers for its exports, Arthur Lee explained, Britain “must speedily sink, with all her blushing honors, into ruin.”32 Radical Whigs on both sides of the Atlantic had long argued that Britain’s economic and political survival depended on colonial consumers; nonimportation gave them a chance to prove it. While the colonial boycott forced American colonists to go without British tea and sugar, coaches and china, American radicals did not seek liberty from consumer society. Rather, they sought an economy in which thoughtful consumption would lead to prosperity. Dickinson had no patience for those who believed that “mankind grew wicked and luxurious, as soon as they found out another way of communicating their sentiments than by speech, and another way of dwelling than in caves.” The “luxury” that American radicals decried was, as George Mason explained, the “excessive or superfluous indulgence in anything which our circumstances will not reasonably afford.” Its embodiment was the farmer draped in China damask on his way to debtors’ prison, whose profligacy left the colonies beholden to Britain. The enemy was not consumption per se, but rather the indiscriminate use of consumer credit to purchase foreign-made goods. Living beyond one’s means undermined local investment, impoverished the colonies, and left them at Parliament’s mercy. Nonimportation offered a remedy by forcing colonists to accept “some temporary loss and inconvenience,” in exchange for the “manifold, great, and lasting” benefits of secure rights and a more robust economy.33 Believing that authoritarian reform left them no choice but to fight for their position within the empire, radicals urged their governments to develop British America’s manufacturing capacity. Boston’s freeholders, for example, pledged to “promote industry, oeconomy, and manufactures among ourselves,” by “prevent[ing] the unnecessary importation of European commodities, the excessive use of which threatens the country with poverty and ruin.”34 Convinced by radicals that their fortunes were in jeopardy, a growing number of colonists caught manufacturing fever. By early 1768 some three hundred impoverished New Yorkers were working in the city’s manufactory. Boston’s citizens similarly embraced proto-industrialization, showing off locally made starch, barber powder, glue, and “snuff like kippens” at their town meeting. Indeed, such enthusiasm led John Adams to express satisfaction that in Connecticut “every family” had “become a little manufactory house, and raise and make within themselves, many things, for

190 s o n s o f l i b e rt y, s o n s o f l i c e n t i o u s n e s s

which they used to run in debt to the merchants and traders.” Nor was this eagerness confined to the northern colonies. In Virginia, George Mason used the nonimportation movement to argue that the colony ought to diversify its economy. He told his readers that if the colony “were to desist purchasing slaves, and making tobacco,” it would “have a number of spare hands to employ in manufactures, and other improvements.”35 Radical colonists like Mason prescribed neither the anti-statism of laissez-faire nor the aestheticism of civic humanism as a solution to economic decline and unconstitutional taxation. Rather, they turned to their understanding of imperial political economy and put their faith in government to develop institutions that promoted development. As Margaret Ellen Newell rightly observes, “the political economy of revolution assumed a strong government regulatory role,” one in which “the center of promotion and regulation would be the colonial legislatures and towns, not Parliament.”36 In that spirit, Arthur Lee urged “a judicious distribution of public and private bounties,” which would give “encouragement to every useful project, by wisdom in planning, by industry, unanimity, and spirit in execution.” He hailed the example of “the linen-hall at Dublin” and the “the board for the improvement of fisheries and manufactures in Scotland,” which had brought manufactures in both those places to “great perfection.” Following the example of other government-sponsored manufacturing throughout the British Empire, Rhode Island’s assembly voted £1,000 to encourage coal mining in the colony, while Boston’s town meeting urged their representatives to vote bounties to promote the production of iron, glass, paper, and linen. Such popular initiatives prompted the Massachusetts Assembly to pass a resolution in February 1768 declaring that the House would “use their utmost endeavors . . . in suppressing extravagance, idleness, and vice, and promoting industry, oeconomy and good morals, in their respective towns.”37 Building up the colonies’ limited—and now crucial—manufacturing capacity depended on government action, regulation, and coercion. Colonies capable of manufacturing for themselves would be economically independent, capable of making British policy makers feel the full consequences of their misdeeds. Like many Whig radicals on both sides of the Atlantic, George Mason believed that the colonial boycott would prompt Britain manufacturers to “remove hither for employment” and inspire a “general spirit of frugality and industry.” Sharing this understanding of imperial political economy, Samuel Cooper reported that British troops were

s o n s o f l i b e rt y, s o n s o f l i c e n t i o u s n e s s

191

deserting in droves, bringing with them “useful arts and trades.” Even Philadelphia’s merchants, who initially opposed nonimportation, told their British counterparts that parliamentary taxes and economic restrictions would lead colonists “from necessity, if not from motives of interest,” to “set up manufactories of their own.”38 Such remarks reveal the tension between the colonists’ professions of loyalty and the nonimportation movement’s explicit goal of destabilizing Britain’s economy and society. But they also demonstrate radical colonists’ belief that consumption and government-supported economic development were the sinews of empire. And yet such actions came perilously close to an economic declaration of independence. Authoritarian reformers certainly believed that the boycott movement was a repudiation of the British Empire. They attacked radicals for making a mockery of property rights and for destroying the commercial relationship that had long made the colonies prosperous. As Timothy Ruggels, former speaker of the Massachusetts House of Representatives, explained, nonimportation undermined colonists’ “good harmony with their mother country” while stimulating manufacturing that came “at the expense of husbandry, or other general employment of the people.” The colonial economy could never prosper so long as radicals “plunder[ed] the properties of all the friends of government and the public must pay for them,” Massachusetts’s chief justice Peter Oliver declared angrily. Colonial manufacturing schemes were no better, a manifestation of the republican madness that had seized British North America. Only deference to government could ensure that colonists received a just reward for their labor and rescued their “neglected and abandoned” cities, Oliver’s New Jersey’s counterpart, Frederick Smyth, told a Middlesex grand jury.39 Believing that many better educated and more thoughtful colonists shared their assessment of the appalling consequences of resistance, authoritarian reformers hoped to exploit social divisions within the colonies. They sought to recruit those Americans who wanted to curb the power of the colonial “rabble” every bit as much as George Grenville or Lord North. There were “people of property,” Boston’s customs commissioners reported, “who might be induced to show their countenance in support of government if the executive power had strength to protect them.” Gage’s deputy, Lieutenant Colonel John Maunsell, was likewise convinced imperial officials ought to rally “the most wealthy and most numerous” of New Yorkers, who had “admitted that the colonies are subordinate to, and dependent upon the

192 s o n s o f l i b e rt y, s o n s o f l i c e n t i o u s n e s s

Kingdom of Great Britain.”40 Building a coalition of the moderate and propertied was difficult but not impossible. As Boston lawyer and legislator Daniel Leonard observed in his Massachusettensis essays, “a very considerable part of the men of property” in the Bay Colony were “firmly attached to the cause of government.” Farther south, in Norfolk, Virginia, trader James Parker, dining with a well-heeled grand jury, found “no external marks of patriotism” among them and concluded that the governor retained considerable influence. Indeed, Francis Bernard was so convinced that loyal elites could be separated from the popular rabble that he urged granting the colonies representation in Parliament.41 This was, undoubtedly, fanciful. Unlike in Britain, authoritarian reformers’ taxes and trade restrictions had antagonized many of the moderate and affluent, and it seems unlikely that colonial representatives to Parliament would support the reforms Massachusetts’s governor so ardently desired. Although Britain’s imperial policy was unpopular throughout the colonies, the boycott movement proved unsuccessful. Parliament repealed most of the Townshend Duties in April 1770 but preserved the tax on tea, to assert its right to levy taxes on the colonies. Predictably, partial repeal did nothing to end the controversy, and many radicals derided it as a scheme to break colonial resistance and establish a permanent American tax regime. Not only did the boycott fail to damage British trade, but it proved to be a significant burden for many colonists. Its opponents, particularly merchants and moderates, grew increasingly critical of its economic consequences and some even embraced authoritarian reform. Such ambivalence led radicals to respond with growing anger. South Carolina’s radicals, scorning “servile submission to superior birth or riches,” appealed to Philadelphians to stand firm in support of nonimportation. They assailed the city’s merchants for haughtily denying workers’ political rights and for putting their economic interests ahead of the community. Philadelphia’s activists likewise attacked their community’s business interests for engrossing “the whole wealth of the province in their hands” while reducing their fellow colonists to the same poverty as the “East-India Company reduced the poor natives of Bengal.”42 These critiques reflected the fragile state of the economy and the fact that nonimportation not only brought colonists together but also threw the social tensions of their society into high relief. Those hardships prompted radical Americans to attack both the duty on tea and the Tea Act that gave the East India Company a colonial

s o n s o f l i b e rt y, s o n s o f l i c e n t i o u s n e s s

193

monopoly. Drawing on radical Whig ideas of political economy that circulated throughout the British Empire, they took a dim view of the company, criticizing both its exclusive trading rights and its acquisition of the diwani. Radicals ranging from a young Boston tradesman traveling in London to the polymath minister Ezra Stiles criticized its rapaciousness. For his part, Stiles could not fathom how a private company could legitimately govern a country “equal in number and opulence if not sup[erior] to England,” or how it could expropriate “at least a million sterling of the Indian labor,” without Bengalis responding with their own version of the Stamp Act riots.43 This radical Whig assessment of the company led many colonists to complain that they were being forced to subsidize a self-interested monopoly that would soon leave them no better off than starving Bengalis.44 Jonathan Shipley, bishop of St. Asaph, warned the readers of his undelivered speech to the House of Lords—a speech that was published in more than half a dozen American cities—that the company’s trade and revenue monopoly had “destroyed, starved, and driven away more inhabitants from Bengal, than are to be found at present, in all our American colonies.” Bengal’s poverty suggested the material consequences of the alliance between avaricious economic interests and the British. Not only did it undermine commerce, but it also corrupted government. Their collusion was, as the Massachusetts committee of correspondence put it, “pregnant with new grievances, paving the way to further impositions.”45 Indeed, it was the precise opposite of the republican imperialism radical Whigs had long advocated. Fearing these consequences and incensed by Parliament’s taxes, a posse of Boston radicals dumped almost £10,000 worth of the East India Company’s tea into the city’s harbor in December 1773. In so doing they struck a blow against a corporation that had come to symbolize much of what was wrong with the British Empire. Parliament responded with a slate of coercive legislation that made radical colonists’ nightmares of authoritarian reform a reality.46 The Boston Port Act, Administration of Justice Act, and Massachusetts Government Act confirmed that those who controlled the British state had no respect for colonists’ lives or property. British troops again occupied New England’s largest city, blockading its port and depriving it of provisions, while Parliament radically curtailed colonial selfgovernment. For the economically vulnerable, who had already endured the hardship of resisting parliamentary taxation, the violence of authoritarian imperial reform was now menacing. Boston minister and theologian Charles

194 s o n s o f l i b e rt y, s o n s o f l i c e n t i o u s n e s s

Chauncy told Richard Price that Boston’s occupation, which had thrown many in the city out of work, was “so palpably cruel, barbarous, and inhumane, that even those who we called the friends of government complain bitterly of it.” Radicals throughout North America responded by pledging solidarity with Boston, and communities throughout the empire contributed funds for the city’s relief.47

The Crisis While the occupation of Boston convinced a growing number of colonists that radicalism and resistance were urgently necessary, authoritarian reformers begged Whitehall and the British army to protect them from the tyranny of mob violence. They were convinced that only an aggressive show of military force would allow the “friends of government” to challenge the “sons of licentiousness.” Without “a ship of war in the province, nor a Company of Soldiers nearer than New York,” Boston’s customs commissioners reported, it was “totally impracticable to enforce the execution of the revenue laws.” Jamaica customs official Daniel MacLean similarly told his superiors, “without an occasional military force, these turbulent people will always make officers lives uncomfortable.” Like many British authoritarian reformers, Gage was convinced that a show of strength would allow those loyal to British government to “avow their principles” and break the resistance movement “to pieces.” Indeed, the threat of force seemed to work in Boston where “tumult and riot . . . subsided” following the occupation of the city in October 1768.48 Lieutenant Colonel Maunsell praised Gage’s “firm” management of Boston, which “discompose[d] the republican party.” Despite such progress, there still was much trouble in New England. Peter Oliver, who had often faced the taunts and jeers of radicals, continued to complain that British leaders had “shamefully neglected” the friends of government and failed to send the ten thousand troops that were the only hope of stopping the insurgency.49 While the reality of military violence meant that the imperial crisis had entered a new phase by the beginning of 1774, control over taxation— with its power to define the relationship between colony and metropole— remained the crux of the controversy.50 Authoritarian reformers were convinced that military measures were not enough to stop the violent protests and popular violations of property rights that had overtaken the colonies.

s o n s o f l i b e rt y, s o n s o f l i c e n t i o u s n e s s

195

If Parliament wanted to regain control of North America, Britain had to “vigorously assert her sovereignty, or resign it to a weak, timid, and licentious mob, misled by a few affected patriots,” North Carolina governor Josiah Martin explained. The mother country needed a guaranteed source of revenue so that neither colonial radicals nor civil society more generally could challenge its American governments. Moreover, new impositions were necessary because Britain was already weighed down by grievous debts and had recently reduced taxes on land. While American authoritarian reformers were less enthusiastic about direct parliamentary taxation of the colonies than their British counterparts, they nonetheless hoped to maintain colonists “in proper subordination” by freeing the salaries of governors, judges, and imperial officials from the tyranny of public opinion and colonial assemblies. The Massachusetts Government Act made many of these reforms a reality and was duly trumpeted by authoritarian reformers. Daniel Leonard, for example, asserted that the act had rescued the province from “a despotism cruelly carried into execution by mobs and riots, and more incompatible with the rights of mankind, than the enormous monarchies of the East.”51 Radicals had a very different idea of what oriental despotism was, and it looked something like occupying and blockading Boston for asserting its constitutional rights. In response, they recommitted themselves to the transimperial movement against authoritarian reform and made a strong case for an empire based on principles of equality and public accountability. In his Summary View of the Rights of British America, Thomas Jefferson declared that an “imperious” Parliament was guilty of reducing the colonies to a “state of nature” and of reducing Boston to “beggary.” In Marblehead, Massachusetts, the town meeting likewise concluded that this vision of empire would deny colonists the fruits of their labor and that all “the time spent in improving their interests and estates” would be for nothing. Drawing on their own trying experience as well as reports from Britain, radical colonists were increasingly convinced that they faced a violent political movement that sought to transform both the colonies and the mother country. The same politicians who were responsible for the occupation of Boston had launched the “barbarous and unprovoked massacre in St. George’s Fields,” which had killed several people in London.52 Despite such outrages, radicals had many British friends. As Benjamin Franklin reported from across the Atlantic, colonists could count on all of the dissenters in the mother country, “many of the merchants and manufacturers,” and “a few members of

196 s o n s o f l i b e rt y, s o n s o f l i c e n t i o u s n e s s

22. Henry Dawkins, Liberty Triumphant; or, The Downfall of Oppression, 1774. Keenly aware of the contentiousness of metropolitan politics, colonial opponents of parliamentary taxation attacked the Tea Act and the East India Company. (Courtesy of the John Carter Brown Library at Brown University)

Parliament in both houses.” Such reports, along with petitions from England’s manufacturing towns, correspondence from well-wishers, and radical writings, informed colonists that many in Britain shared their hatred for North’s ministry. The Crisis, which was written in London and republished in New York and nine other American cities, went even further, reporting in sanguinary detail on the cabal that had robbed “the people of their property, by shameful and iniquitous taxes in time of peace,” subverted “the Protestant religion,” and destroyed “the trade of the town of Boston in America, and the commerce of England.” Such publications knit the radical movement together across the empire and helped convince many colonists that they faced not just a corrupt ministry but also a tyrannical king.53 Confronted with a government that blockaded their trade, occupied their cities, and ignored their arguments, colonists protested their treatment as second-class citizens and increasingly denied Parliament’s right to

s o n s o f l i b e rt y, s o n s o f l i c e n t i o u s n e s s

197

regulate their economy. Jefferson spoke for many in America when he demanded to know “why 160,000 electors in the island of Great Britain should give law to four millions in the states of America, every individual of whom is equal to every individual of them in virtue, in understanding, and in bodily strength?” Onerous restrictions on trade and manufacturing, imposed at the behest of a “British aristocracy,” had reduced many families “almost, if not quite, to penury and want,” George Washington complained.54 If Parliament could legitimately restrict colonial trade, it could, George Mason argued, “restrain you from manufacturing the smallest article for your own use as it hath already prevented you from erecting slitting mills.” Indeed, the ministry’s repeated refusal to allow the colonies to bring about “the abolition of domestic slavery” through either taxes or the “prohibition” of the slave trade reflected British authoritarian reformers’ disregard for colonists’ prosperity.55 These destructive economic policies mocked the reciprocal relationship that had once sustained the British Empire, and they led colonists to demand ever more autonomy from Britain. As 1774 and 1775 progressed and the crisis intensified, radical colonists increasingly disregarded colonial governments and began to assert state authority themselves. They followed radicals like Thomas Greenough, a Boston instrument maker who observed, “when the magistrates depart from ruling the people according to the laws of the realm, province, etc. and play the tyrant, and when all our efforts by way of petition and remonstrances fail of relieving us from those grievances we labor under, I think we have just reason to rouse up and try to break the yoke of tyranny.”56 Colonists flouted parliamentary statutes and refused to trade with Britain. Their resistance enjoyed considerable support because, as Samuel Adams reported, the public was “thoroughly sensible of the necessity of breaking of all commercial connection” with a country whose leaders endeavored to “enslave them.”57 Recognizing, however, that voluntary cessation of trade would inevitably fail, the First Continental Congress passed a sweeping nonimportation, nonexportation, and nonconsumption proclamation on October 20, 1774, the “Association.” This system of commercial restrictions sharply curtailed colonists’ consumption by ordering every city, town, and county to enforce its policies. In Wethersfield, Connecticut, for example, only individuals whom local officials deemed sick and infirm enough to warrant a tea permit could consume proscribed Bohea tea. Not all efforts at nonconsumption were coercive, however. Philadelphia’s butchers embraced the Association’s goal

198 s o n s o f l i b e rt y, s o n s o f l i c e n t i o u s n e s s

of promoting textile manufacturing and declared their patriotism by refusing to butcher any “ewe, mutton, or lamb.”58 Radicals’ aggressive efforts to resist parliamentary taxation and to promote economic independence from Britain led authoritarian reformers to press for reconciliation while still insisting on the colonies’ subordinate role within the empire. They averred that British ministers had no desire to enslave America and that colonists ought to prove their desire for reconciliation by repaying the East India Company for the destruction of its tea. And as the crisis intensified and the colonies sent delegates to Congress, they declared that war with Britain was utter lunacy and that it would have catastrophic consequences. The Quaker merchant James Pemberton, for example, complained that Congress should have “avoided their numerous resolves and confined themselves to the address to the King and the People of Great Britain.” Indeed, many moderates, terrified of a breach with Britain and resentful of radicals’ wanton disregard for authority, property, and business, turned to authoritarian reform. Colonists had been misled by “notion[s] of liberty and service to their country” to take actions that would “in all human probability terminate in our distress and ruin,” the Philadelphia merchant Henry Drinker complained to his business associates in England.59 New Jersey minister Thomas Chandler observed that Congress’s Association had already left the colonists “as poor as dogs.” Further clashes with the mother country promised to “introduce civil war among ourselves, and leave us open and exposed to the avarice and ambition of every maritime power in Europe or America.” Like their radical Whig antagonists, authoritarian reformers appealed to the power and prosperity that empire had brought the colonies, but they also insisted that deference to Parliament’s supreme authority was the starting point of reconciliation. To that end, authoritarian reformers like New York’s William Smith and Samuel Auchmuty, the rector of the city’s Trinity Church, enthusiastically embraced Lord North’s conciliatory resolution.60 Reconciliation through subordination was the essence of loyalist Joseph Galloway’s controversial proposal for colonial union. Although Galloway, like many authoritarian reformers, deftly acknowledged colonial grievances and proposed expanding the colonies’ participation in imperial governance, he lamented the “tide of licentiousness and sedition” and insisted on the absolute supremacy of Parliament. He also reiterated the position he had taken in defending the Stamp Act, telling Congress “it was

s o n s o f l i b e rt y, s o n s o f l i c e n t i o u s n e s s

199

not unreasonable to expect that Parliament would have levied a tax on them proportionate to their wealth and the sums raised in Great Britain.” He even asserted that parliamentary taxation was “neither unjust nor oppressive.” And he pointed out, as many authoritarian reformers had, that Britain’s North American war effort had suffered from the fact that “there were colonies which at some times granted liberal aids, and at others nothing.” Colonists had a choice: they could remain under the aegis of the British Empire and its Parliament or they would suffer under “the distressful state of a conquered people, after being reduced by the calamities of a civil war!”61 Radicals disagreed, and Congress tabled Galloway’s proposal. Nevertheless, the conciliatory efforts of authoritarian reformers like North and Galloway forced moderate colonists to make tough choices. While some sided with North’s ministry and demanded an end to colonial intransigence, many others concluded that resistance was their only option. Such aggressive opposition prompted more moderate radicals like New York’s James Duane to urge “lasting accommodation with Great Britain.” His view reflected not only radical Whigs’ long-standing affection for the British Empire, but also a fear that a clash between Britain and its colonies would bring “nothing but desolation and ruin.” Dreading those consequences, Congress offered Parliament substantial American revenue. As the former radical Whig turned authoritarian reformer William Smith recognized, “all America” viewed Britain’s “taxing claim with horror,” and the only way to resolve the crisis was to “inspire them with confidence in the enjoyment of the fruit of their own labors.” Indeed, most colonists could not abide Lord North’s proposal to tax the colonies through compulsory requisitions. They were convinced that the first lord of treasury’s offer of conciliation was a sham, one designed, as New York congressional delegate John Jay put it, “to sow the seeds of dissension among us and thereby weaken that union on which our salvation from tyranny depends.”62 Radicals insisted on keeping control of taxation because of their ideological commitment to property rights and because they believed that it was the only thing standing between them and ruinous authoritarian imperial reforms. Joseph Reed, who went on to serve as an adjutant general in the Continental Army, spoke for many moderate colonists when he told the Earl of Dartmouth that he might have more vocally opposed nonexportation if he “could be convinced that submission to the claims of Parliament did not virtually and necessarily imply a surrender both for myself and my children of the blessings of liberty.”63

23. Paul Revere, “America in Distress,” Royal American Magazine, March 1775. Revere echoed radical and establishment Whigs in Britain when he attacked Lord North and Lord Bute as “evil physicians.” He accused Britain’s leaders of bleeding America dry even as he celebrated opposition politicians such as Chatham and Rockingham. (Courtesy of the American Antiquarian Society)

s o n s o f l i b e rt y, s o n s o f l i c e n t i o u s n e s s

201

Radicals also agonized over the consequences of resistance and conciliation, but they nonetheless pushed their fellow colonists to embrace a more expansive role for government as part of their effort to oppose the British Empire. They moved swiftly to rebuild state institutions that encouraged economic development and the common defense, while insisting that political leaders, as Joseph Warren put it, rule “through the affection of the people.”64 They organized committees of safety to govern the colonies and mobilized militias as well. Both the Continental Congress and provincial congresses throughout the northern colonies offered premiums for manufacturing saltpeter, gunpowder, and firearms. And while the Massachusetts delegation to Congress was unsuccessful in its proposal for a continental manufacturing program, Congress nonetheless overcame the apprehensions of some of its members to pass a resolution encouraging the development of new industries. The colonies proved no less enthusiastic in calling up militias and raising funds to pay for soldiers. Such efforts, Fairfax County’s committee believed, would both relieve Britain of the colonies’ “protection and defense” and eliminate the need for a dangerous and expensive standing army.65 But while colonial militias were cheaper and more public spirited than regular armies, Congress and the colonies still had to find funds for their armed forces. Struggling to raise the enormous sums necessary to fight the war, they turned to credit. Congress borrowed nearly $3 million to pay for just six months of fighting, while Virginia, whose duty on slave imports was vetoed by its governor, began printing money. These initiatives reflected the radical Whig commitment to a state that promoted the public welfare. And yet such values could express themselves through coercion at a time of mounting expenses and incipient civil war. Indeed, the Virginia radical Charles Lee proposed that Congress raze New York, arrest Tories and imperial officials, and seize their property.66 Ultimately, American radicals imagined a republican imperium, one that would realize their aborted aspirations for the British Empire. Repudiating authoritarian reformers, John Adams proclaimed that he had no “horror of republican spirit,” which was not only compatible with the British constitution, but the source of the mother country’s prosperity. Such a republican empire, Adams observed, would allow colonies to manage their own finances or it would grant them a quarter of seats in the House of Commons and force “haughty” members of Parliament to make the trek across the Atlantic every four years. Neither of those options was realistic, but the idea of an empire

202 s o n s o f l i b e rt y, s o n s o f l i c e n t i o u s n e s s

founded on equality and non-domination was a powerful and enduring one. Indeed, the playwright and patriot Mercy Otis Warren hoped “to see America boast in her turn of science and of empire”; not an empire based on the “thralldom” of one nation to another, but one built on a “more equitable base” and committed to the “mutual security” of all of its denizens. She denied that such an idea was a “utopian dream” or that it meant anarchy, arguing that it was easy to conceive of “nations and states rising to the highest consequence under more liberal plans” than those suggested by “marblehearted despots.” Indeed, she was insistent that public well-being depended on government. She hoped colonists would establish new regimes with “such strength of sinews and vigor of nerves” that they would be immune to “ambition and tyranny” and would guarantee “liberty,” happiness,” and the “public welfare.”67 Despite their best efforts, authoritarian reformers failed to stop radicals like Warren and Adams. Selling an ideology of economic and political subordination was inherently challenging, but it proved impossible when the British state imposed its reforms by fiat and force. Authoritarian reformers fled to the safety of fortresses, armies, and the mother country. In so doing, they lost their property and gained only bitterness. Peter Oliver fretted about how he would be compensated for his lost property. He lamented that “this once happy country must for the future be miserable.” For the Massachusetts merchant James Murray, colonial manufacturing amid growing belligerence was nothing to celebrate. Walking past a local distillery, he observed that it was “now turned into a saltpeter works, and from being the pool of Bethesda is made use of to manufacture a commodity for destruction of the human species.”68 Radical rebellion forced both men to retreat to Britain, where their views, despite inspiring riots and violent protest, were nonetheless politically ascendant. Radicals, on the other hand, developed a far more optimistic vision of what they could build if they were free of the British Empire. No one did more to develop this outlook than Thomas Paine, whose Common Sense moved colonists decisively toward independence in the first half of 1776. Like The Crisis, Paine denounced the British monarchy, but unlike The Crisis, he also rejected the British Empire. A former excise collector turned Philadelphia firebrand, Paine pushed the boundaries of radical Whig thinking in a genuinely new direction.69 Departing from earlier radical Whig arguments, he made the audacious claim “that America would have flourished as much,

s o n s o f l i b e rt y, s o n s o f l i c e n t i o u s n e s s

203

and probably much more, had no European power had anything to do with her.” It was the free and reciprocal exchange of goods that had made the colonies rich, Paine insisted, and that could continue without an imperial connection. Antagonism toward France and the mutual benefits of empire were replaced with the reciprocal profits of free trade and American independence. Paine agreed with the old radical Whig claim that parliamentary taxation and a hierarchical relationship between colony and metropole robbed colonists of their liberty, property, and prosperity. But he added that America’s “progress” under the aegis of the British Empire was “but childhood compared with what she would be capable of arriving at, had she, as she ought to have, the legislative powers in her own hands.” By the middle of 1776, the British Empire’s great American champion, Benjamin Franklin, agreed. The mutual benefits of commerce and trade had been usurped by “a government that has with the most wanton barbarity and cruelty, burnt our defenseless towns in the midst of winter, excited the savages to massacre our farmers, and our slaves to murder their masters, and is even now bringing foreign mercenaries to deluge our settlements with blood.”70 In such a world, imperial protection no longer guaranteed colonists’ well-being or their safety, and there was no good reason to remain under British rule. The only rational choice was independence. The colonies’ break with Britain required, if not consensus, then a widely shared source of indignation and fear. The social and political divisions that wrought American society—the pregnant political battles of coming decades—were real, but they were also overcome by the unpopularity of parliamentary taxation and authoritarian empire. Colonial radicals overcame the fissures within their own society because they shared a common antagonism to the rigid inequality embodied in authoritarian reform and because an economically vulnerable population embraced their ideology. This was much more than an adherence to the ancient English constitution or a paranoid reaction to the demands of sensible, if misguided, imperial officials. The notion that colonists could not legitimately be treated as inferiors by their British counterparts—either in terms of their political liberties or their economic aspirations—was the bedrock of American radicalism. To deplore inequality within the empire was not, of course, to embrace anything resembling a belief in real equality. Colonial radicals drew lines between poor and rich, between women and men, between blacks and whites. And yet the demand for equal political participation and economic opportunity

204 s o n s o f l i b e rt y, s o n s o f l i c e n t i o u s n e s s

corroded those boundaries. The belief that prosperity depended upon a government that encouraged its people’s well-being, and that this well-being was threatened by an empire in which the self-interested and the powerful could dictate to the periphery, undergirded the resistance movement. Such a view was republican, embracing broad political participation, equality, and the notion that the state was a public rather than a private thing, a res publica. But it was also liberalism, a bourgeois belief that individual initiative and private property ought to be encouraged rather than threatened by the state.71 When a growing number of radical Americans reluctantly accepted that the British Empire was moving in an inexorably different direction, they declared their independence. In so doing, they rejected not the state but the empire that Britain was becoming. They also rejected authoritarian reformers throughout the colonies, persecuting those who argued for a sovereign imperial government that could maintain political and economic hierarchies. For both sides, the state offered the means for creating the society that they desired. The question was what that state would be. It was a momentous debate that could not be resolved merely by argument; it would have to be settled by civil war.

7 English Blood by English Hands

America has declared itself independent, and the idea of establishing a new and magnificent empire, upon the pillars of freedom, is a flattering object, and must captivate every youthful and generous mind; but are there no rocks or quicksands to be dread? Even if the object were already obtained, it would be a new phenomenon in the universe, a republic possessing an extensive continent, and yet preserving its liberty; the wisest and most plausible theory, cannot provide against all the dangers of so new and untrodden a path. —William Pulteney (1778)

Adam Smith understood that the American Declaration of Independence left Britain with few good options. He told ministers that they might use the army to crush rebellious colonists, but the costs of violence would almost certainly exceed the gains. Nor did he believe that giving up America would be any more advantageous. While Britain would no longer have to defend its expensive and overgrown empire, it would lose “power and dignity” in Europe and respect and obedience at home. Even restoring the status quo antebellum was unpalatable, as it would mean the colonists would contribute “little or nothing toward defraying the expense” of the empire. Most likely, the war would leave Britain with a small fraction of its dominions, which it would be forced to defend at great cost. But while Smith lamented his country’s prospects, he had even less faith in Americans’ republican experiment, which he fully expected to end in “violence” and “regret.” What ought to happen, but was impossible given the sad realities of British and American politics, was a constitutional union based on colonial representation in Parliament. A confederacy founded on “the most perfect equality” would guarantee both “complete freedom of trade” and a fair 205

206 e n g l i s h b l o o d b y e n g l i s h h a n d s

division of imperial burdens. By uniting the interests of leading citizens on both sides of the Atlantic, Britain could “secure the continuance of the prosperity of the colonies” and assure the “splendor” of its empire.1 Smith understood that authoritarian reform in North America was selfdefeating, but his analysis raises the question of why Parliament insisted on fighting a civil war with America when it would have been far easier to either give up the “golden dream” of empire or to create a union of equals. Indeed, Josiah Tucker, a fierce authoritarian reformer and longtime critic of excessive debts, concluded that it would be better to allow the ungrateful colonists to suffer the folly of independence.2 Although his advice largely fell on deaf ears, it laid bare the irony of a government committed to austerity fighting one of the most expensive wars in Britain’s history. However, this was largely consistent with the logic of authoritarian reform. The North ministry fought with the conviction not only that the empire was invaluable but that victory would be cheap. Ministers concluded that most Americans were disgusted with their new regime and wished to rejoin the British Empire. Assuming that colonists’ shared their commitment to property and government, North’s administration grossly underestimated Americans’ hatred of authoritarian reform. And so, as the costs of fighting the colonies mounted, it repeatedly made concessions that flabbergasted more zealous authoritarian reformers. As we will see, those efforts to preserve the trade and revenue of the empire failed in large part because authoritarian reformers simply could not bring themselves to accept colonists as equals. They demonstrate that while some British conservatives were willing to compromise their demands, authoritarian reformers were nonetheless ideologically committed to a distinct political agenda. Indeed, radical and establishment Whigs in opposition continued to denounce the ministry for its regressive taxation, violence against fellow citizens, and refusal to acknowledge American rights. And while these efforts remained largely unsuccessful before Britain’s defeat at Yorktown in October 1781, they help explain why the fight against America was one of the least popular wars in English history.3 Most historians offer a very different explanation for Britain’s willingness to spend vast amounts of blood and treasure on a seemingly Sisyphean effort. These scholars argue that both Parliament and the British public fought to preserve their country’s sovereignty over the colonies.4 Such straightforward accounts of British motivations ignore the radically different visions of empire at stake in the American Revolution. Not only do they

englis h blood by englis h hands

207

neglect the fluidity of imperial politics, but they also treat the ideology of Britain’s ruling party and that of Britain as one and the same. And most American historians focus almost exclusively on events in North America, arguing that colonists believed they were fighting for their lives and liberties against a parliamentary conspiracy, or that they were primarily concerned with the question of “who would rule at home.” Although one scholar has recently attempted to correct this imbalance, historians continue to downplay the ideological differences that divided people throughout the British world.5 Few in the eighteenth century made that mistake. Whig radicalism animated the American struggle for independence, and it promised a fundamentally different society and government from the one that existed under the British Empire. American revolutionaries’ commitment to an independent republican empire sustained their war effort and informed their confederation. Their political project implied both an expanding imperium and a powerful state whose leaders were charged with promoting the people’s welfare. For all of the difficulties and injustices of the war and its aftermath, most white Americans remained committed to republicanism’s greater promise of equality and prosperity. To be sure, the new republic did not always live up to its promises—indeed it was riddled with hypocrisy—but it nonetheless challenged long-standing assumptions about society, government, and empire. As Washington observed, the colonial war effort often struggled because its soldiers were volunteers, fighting on behalf of a government of questionable legitimacy and even more questionable power.6 The way to secure their loyalty and that of their fellow citizens was to create governing institutions that promised a better future, new state constitutions, and the Articles of Confederation. To be sure, the new American confederation fell short of creating the republican empire that revolutionaries desired, but it nonetheless reflected their aspiration for a government that was simultaneously powerful and benevolent. Their new regime explicitly rejected the violent logic of core and periphery that defined European empires, and it promised to join the economic opportunities of empire with the public spirit of a republic.

The Howe Brothers and the Dream of Reconciliation Even as British ships blockaded American ports and redcoats exchanged volleys with American militia, the ideological battle over the colonies’ future persisted. In the cabinet, Lord North and Lord Dartmouth clashed with their

208 e n g l i s h b l o o d b y e n g l i s h h a n d s

fellow ministers over whether to offer an olive branch to the Americans. Their efforts led to the creation of a parliamentary commission charged with extinguishing the “fire” that was “raging with fury, through the greatest part of His Majesty’s American dominions.” Dartmouth and Thomas Villiers, soon to be made Earl of Clarendon, convinced North to appoint Admiral Richard Howe, first Earl Howe, and his brother William to serve as commissioners to negotiate with the rebellious colonies. The admiral was a surprising choice. He had a reputation as an American sympathizer and had friendly ties to radical Whigs like Benjamin Franklin and the Earl of Chatham. Unsurprisingly, Britain’s secretary of state for the colonies, George Germain, the man charged with coordinating the war effort, was just as strongly opposed to making Howe a peace commissioner as he was to the idea of the commission itself. As his aide William Knox observed, Germain had “collected a vast force” that had a “fair prospect of subduing the colonies.” And like many authoritarian reformers, he wanted to make colonists “feel the distresses of that war, which their detestable principles have occasioned, encouraged, and supported.”7 The fight between Germain and North over whether to negotiate a peace agreement with Britain’s rebellious colonies suggests that the prime minister had embraced more moderate views, but the administration nonetheless clung tightly to the demand that colonists submit to Britain’s authority and contribute to its treasury. Indeed, many authoritarian reformers believed that the survival of both Britain and its constitution depended on reconquering America and overhauling its government.8 And although North had little appetite for war, he insisted that Britain would continue to blockade American ports until the rebellion subsided. In that spirit, Knox devised a strategy to divide the colonies by promising them both peace and the restoration of trade if they laid down their arms. Howe’s instructions were to offer a settlement in which colonists would contribute at least 10 percent of Britain’s military budget, more money than they had ever paid before. Moreover, the administration instructed the commissioners to press for changes in North American governance that authoritarian reformers had long demanded. Life tenure for judges, upper houses filled with great landholders, and royal governments established in place of democratic ones were all on the agenda.9 Even as they offered the pretense of compromise, Knox and the North ministry demanded authoritarian reform.

englis h blood by englis h hands

209

This was a radically different approach to imperial governance than the one suggested by the administration’s opponents. To be sure, radical Whigs had long called for a peaceful solution to the imperial crisis. Chatham went so far as to declare that “unless effectual measures were speedily taken for reconciliation with the colonies, he was fully persuaded, that, in a very few years, France will set her foot on English ground.”10 But while some radical Whigs, like the Quaker minister John Fothergill, pinned their hopes on the Howes’ commission, most remained skeptical. The majority of radical and establishment Whigs derided the peace mission as a plot to divide and conquer the colonies. Continuing his attacks on the North administration’s colonial policy, Isaac Barré told the House of Commons that there was no way to reconcile Howe’s desire for moderation with the commission’s insistence on “unconditional submission.” Establishment Whig David Hartley likewise condemned North’s “pretended commission” for “tying up the hands of the commissioners from making any offer but of unconditional submission, with an army of foreign mercenaries sent close upon their heels, to lay waste the whole country with fire and sword.” Indeed, the opposition both inside and outside of Parliament repeatedly observed that the commissioners were incapable of either making amends for British violence or freeing colonists from British taxation.11 North’s efforts to secure a settlement were bound to fail, not because colonists were unreasonably belligerent, but because Parliament and his administration had made impossible demands. American radicals shared their British counterparts’ skepticism and antagonism toward the peace commission. Although former colonists still sought out British pamphlets like Richard Price’s Observations on the Nature of Civil Liberty, they had lost all faith in North’s administration. Ralph Izard, a South Carolina planter who had spent several years living in London, told John Almon that “an accommodation” between Britain and its colonies was “quite out of the question.” Comparatively moderate radical leaders like Robert Morris were willing to hear the commissioners out, but most colonial radicals were far more skeptical. And the commission quickly angered supporters of independence by issuing their own Declaration that promised “free and general pardons” to Americans who renounced the rebellion. Charles Carroll of Carrollton, a Maryland delegate to Congress known for his role in burning British tea in Annapolis harbor, derided the Howe brothers’ terms as “harsh” and “silly.”12 Indeed, there was no reason to capitulate. Heavily indebted, Britain would likely soon find itself at war with

210 e n g l i s h b l o o d b y e n g l i s h h a n d s

France, while the United States would grow stronger thanks to its rapidly expanding population, commerce, and manufactures. Far more likely than American defeat, Massachusetts shipbuilder Edmund Quincy concluded, was a political crisis in the mother country and the “actual ruin of the British Empire.”13 Quincy was, of course, wrong. But his political economic assumptions and his expectations for America’s future help explain why so many colonial radicals saw the Howe commission as a desperate attempt to divide the colonies rather than a good faith effort to reunite the empire. While radicals attacked the commission, Lord Howe was confident that once colonists learned of his willingness to discuss their grievances that they would accept peace. That conclusion was not unreasonable. Many moderate colonists, like the budding Pennsylvania lawyer William Tilghman, feared the “convulsions” of revolution and thought that there could be little glory in independence. Indeed, colonial supporters of authoritarian reform were convinced that their country had been hijacked by radicals and were happy to encourage the view that Howe and his army would be greeted as liberators by a country disgusted by war and independence. William Johnson’s son John assured British leaders that many New Yorkers remained “steadily attached to His Majesty’s government” and “would take up arms in its defense had they sufficient protection.”14 Sharing this view, the commissioners were convinced that their reasonableness would isolate rebel leaders, both from their fellow Americans and their supporters in Parliament. Howe eagerly sent Washington a warm letter inviting him to discuss the commission and its aims but received no reply. Such insolence baffled his secretary, Henry Strachey, who could not fathom why colonists, who were offered “peace and happiness,” insisted “upon having their brains knocked out first.”15 Although colonial radicals showed little desire to engage his commission, Howe himself was personally invested in negotiating with Congress, believing that “reconciliation, union, and redress” were still possible. He got his chance when, following the Battle of Long Island, Congress appointed delegates to meet with him. On September 11, 1776, Howe met with Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, and Edward Rutledge and thanked them for the “very high compliment” they had paid him. Despite conducting the negotiations in an army barracks that Adams described as “not only wholesome but romantically elegant,” Howe’s efforts quickly unraveled. He told his guests that he hoped to “prevent the further effusion of blood” and promised them that the king was willing to adjust the commission’s instructions if it might bring

englis h blood by englis h hands

211

peace. The problem was that the delegates insisted that the United States would agree to peace only as “free and independent states.” When Howe asked the three Americans in what capacity he ought to receive them, Adams answered, “in any capacity your Lordship pleases excepting that of British subjects.” Such impertinence was more than Howe and his subordinates could bear, and the Americans were, as one British army officer observed, “dismissed with indignation.”16 Facing a Congress that refused to engage, the commissioners sought instead to negotiate with moderates and loyalists. Eight days after the failed Staten Island talks, Howe’s commission issued another proclamation that promised, once again, to grant clemency to colonists who pledged loyalty to the Crown. They asked Americans “to judge for themselves whether it be more consistent with their honor and happiness to offer up their lives as a sacrifice to the unjust and precarious cause in which they are engaged, or to return to their allegiance, accept the blessings of peace, and be secured in a free enjoyment of their liberties and properties, upon the true principles of the constitution.” A day later, on September 20, colonial radicals set New York City ablaze. “Exasperated” British soldiers and sailors threw what perpetrators they could seize into the flames. Surveying the damage, Quaker John Thompson concluded that America’s false patriots were a “mad and wicked people” who were willing to destroy their own city just to deprive British troops of provisions and winter lodgings. Burning New York confirmed authoritarian reformers’ belief that American resistance was the product of popular delusion. On both sides of the Atlantic, they deplored radical colonists’ “diabolical cast,” their “immoderate notions of liberty,” and their wanton destruction of private property. Given the bedlam that had overtaken the colonies and the warm welcome the commissioners received from loyalists, authoritarian reformers convinced themselves that many if not most Americans outside New England supported the restoration of British rule.17 American radicals had very little interest in the commission’s promises of peace and clemency, but they understood all too well that Britain’s military strategy depended on persuading colonists that they were better off as subjects of the Crown. That posed a particular challenge, because the war was not going well. Revolutionary elites derided troops as cowardly and struggled to supply the army. Indeed, military commanders were often forced to rely on the controversial practice of impressing what goods they needed. Edmund Quincy described how the people of Connecticut were “much

212 e n g l i s h b l o o d b y e n g l i s h h a n d s

offended” by the “exorbitant” cost of necessary goods and worried about the “strife” among rebellious colonists at a time when their “common enemy seem united, either by force or fraud to effect their ruin.” With the burden of war increasing and the Howe commission promising relief in exchange for obedience, Thomas Paine sought to rally the popular movement for independence. His American Crisis essays reiterated many of the arguments he had made in Common Sense, while specifically attacking the Howe commission’s promise of peace. Whatever promises the commission made, Britain had proved time and again that it was incapable of governing the empire for the common benefit of its citizens. Giving up independence, Paine declared, would bring “a worse ruin than any we have yet thought of.”18 By the end of 1776, Britain’s military leaders and authoritarian reformers had good reason to be confident that war would soon be over. They had routed Washington’s army in New York, and they were in control of much of New Jersey. Rebel soldiers were deserting so quickly that the Continental Army would soon be an army in name only. Despite the great hopes of radicals from Boston to Bristol, France had not entered the conflict and seemed unlikely to do so.19 Germain was convinced that the “discontent of the people with the new mode of government” would only increase as the hardship of war increased. At the end of November, the Howe brothers issued yet another proclamation, this time giving colonists sixty days to declare their loyalty to the Crown or face the wrath of the British military. The commissioners expected that it would prompt an enthusiastic response among “the desponding multitude” who feared for their property and who had been “compelled or deluded into the present rebellion.” By the end of December, both Howe brothers were sure that their proclamation was restoring order throughout the middle colonies. Henry Strachey, their secretary, was even more effusive, telling his wife that he could not “deliver out the King’s pardons so fast as they are claimed.”20 Given their long record of opposing authoritarian reform, it is no surprise that radical and establishment Whigs denounced their government’s efforts to remake the British Empire through violence. The opposition blamed the government’s coercive policies for the American rebellion and demanded that Britain withdraw both its grievous laws and its murderous troops. Punishing the Americans by prohibiting their trade had led to an “effusion of English blood, by English hands,” that damaged commerce and wasted the public’s money. Despite the fact that American independence

24. “News from America, or the Patriots in the Dumps,” London Magazine, November 1776. By the end of 1776, authoritarian reformers on both sides of the Atlantic were celebrating Britain’s victories over continental forces and predicting a quick end to the war. (Courtesy of the John Carter Brown Library at Brown University)

214 e n g l i s h b l o o d b y e n g l i s h h a n d s

forced radical Whigs to choose between their commitment to colonial liberties and their attachment to empire, most did, in fact, side with their colonial brethren. Writing in the wake of Congress’s declaration, the Earl of Shelburne wrote warmly to Silas Deane expressing his desire for “union, peace, and freedom” in America, and the Bristol theater owner and merchant Richard Champion hoped that Britain’s “tyrannical” leaders would “meet with their just deserts!”21 That seemed increasingly unlikely. Although Benjamin Franklin and Robert Morris boasted in August 1776 that Congress now had an army of eighty thousand under its command and that the Declaration of Independence met with “universal approbation,” the truth was that the American war effort was struggling. The army faced constant shortages of food, equipment, and medicine.22 Anticipating victory, Britain’s leaders insisted that the American rebels capitulate and beg Britain for “forgiveness.” Authoritarian reformers had no interest in yielding to what they believed was an unpopular and licentious opposition—either in Britain or America. Indeed, the Earl of Denbigh, George III’s hard-drinking privy councilor, hoped that Isaac Barré’s severed head would soon decorate Temple Bar for inciting rebellion.23 Although that did not happen, American radicals could no longer count on their British compatriots to help them. Britain’s opposition was far too weak, and the political class’s enthusiasm for war much too strong. Colonists were now charged with fighting a conflict in which the administrative and logistical hurdles were seemingly infinite. Indeed, their ramshackle military effort saw infantrymen without clothes, armies without discipline, and men swindled of their wages. Under such circumstances, Congress struggled to recruit soldiers and keep them from deserting.24 To win their independence, Americans would have to build a far stronger—and far more effective—state.

Building a Republican Empire American radicals responded to the excruciating difficulties of war and financial crisis by working to strengthen the hand of government. They fought Britain not just through military campaigns and diplomacy but through the creation of a republican confederacy. This “rising empire” reflected the view, expressed by John Adams in his Thoughts on Government, that “the happiness of society is the end of government.” Adams was insistent that “the form of

englis h blood by englis h hands

215

government, which communicates ease, comfort, security, or, in one word, happiness to the greatest number of persons, and in the greatest degree, is the best.” Despite Adams’s confidence that the new United States was “possessed of great resources, and capable of great exertions,” establishing a political system that could exploit those resources and summon those exertions proved controversial.25 And yet, revolutionary leaders were remarkably consistent in their efforts to increase both taxation and the powers of government. This was true of populist radicals like Thomas Paine as well as more conservative revolutionaries like John Jay. Radicals reiterated the promise of both popular rule and republican empire, recognizing that it was their best defense against British efforts to court American allegiance.26 They believed in a robust state, one capable of not only raising taxes but standing up to one of Europe’s most powerful empires. Building up the capacity of Congress and the Continental Army required coordinating the war efforts of more than a dozen quasi-independent governments. This proved excruciatingly challenging. The American states began their war against Britain without a constitution, and their military endeavors raised difficult questions about whether Congress or the states should pay for troops, what enlistment bonuses ought to be, and how to promote officers. Even worse, as John Adams observed, many of the new state governments were “weak as water and as brittle as glass.”27 Congress responded to these difficulties by persuading the states to provision the army and to pass laws to prevent monopolies in military contracting, and it spent enormous amounts of money on commissary provisions, frigates, hospitals, recruiting, and militias. It created a bureaucracy composed of boards of war, commerce, admiralty, treasury, ordnance, and Indian affairs under the control of professional administrations. And, observing that it was “impossible” for “distant, numerous, and deliberative bodies” to effectively fight Britain, Congress granted George Washington vast powers modeled on the Roman dictatorship. As the army’s commander in chief, Washington had the authority to seize needed supplies and to “arrest and confine” the enemies of the American cause.28 These were significant accomplishments, but creating an American state also required raising huge sums, and this proved an even greater challenge. Congress met its expenses by borrowing and printing money. Although both proved controversial, it was the continental notes that had the most immediate economic effect. Congress issued $25 million in bills of credit in 1776, far more than America’s blockaded economy could absorb, and the

216 e n g l i s h b l o o d b y e n g l i s h h a n d s

25. Benjamin Franklin, One Third of a Dollar, 1776. Franklin designed the notes of the new continental currency using motifs that promoted unity. Although it rapidly lost its value, Franklin defended paper money as a powerful means of mobilizing American resistance. (Courtesy of the Yale University Art Gallery)

value of the currency quickly plummeted. America, John Adams told Thomas Jefferson, faced a triple cocktail of distress: an excess of currency, a sharp decline in production, and a dramatic wartime increase in demand. With a worthless currency, ordinary people were struggling to purchase basic necessities, and mills were refusing to grind flour for the army.29 But the value of the continental money was not a matter of pure economics: accepting Congress’s bills meant accepting its legitimacy at a time when many Americans believed that it was an assembly of rebels. Although he was more concerned about the economic effects of the British blockade than he was about the falling value of Congress’s money, South Carolina merchant Henry Laurens recognized that the real threat of depreciation was that it allowed the new regime’s critics to fill “the minds of weak people with the most direful apprehensions.” Indeed, many American radicals blamed high prices on the “malicious cunning” of Tories and on avaricious merchants.

englis h blood by englis h hands

217

Whether Tories were to blame or not, the country’s economic crisis had dire consequences for its ability to fight the war. As Robert Morris observed, militiamen were fed up with “the scarcity and high price of salt and many other articles” and were abandoning the fight against Britain.30 Congress responded to the collapsing value of the continental dollar by dramatically expanding government’s control of the economy. Congressional delegates urged the states to pass laws against counterfeiting and depreciation. And although Congress could not intervene in the states’ internal affairs, it could use its moral authority to persuade them to pass laws making counterfeiting a capital crime. Even more alarming than the problem of counterfeiting was the growing number of people who denied Congress’s authority by refusing its money. Revolutionary Americans contemplated increasingly draconian sanctions for those who refused continental bills, including the forced discharge of loans, imprisonment, and death.31 But punishing people who refused worthless currency threatened to validate authoritarian reformers’ argument that Congress and its radical supporters were enemies to both liberty and property. What was really necessary was legislation that protected people from crushingly high prices. That led many revolutionaries to propose price controls as a solution. Following the resolution of a convention of New England states, Congress advised the rest of the continent to regulate the “fluctuating and exorbitant” price of labor, manufactures, produce, and foreign goods. This promised to address both the scarcity of wartime necessities and the “spirit of speculative monopoly.” Boston’s town meeting, for example, expressed its conviction that strengthening the “the hands of government” through price fixing would preserve the “peace of the town” and relieve the “distresses of the poor” at a moment of crisis. In that spirit, nine states passed laws fixing prices, and all but two passed laws preventing monopolies and engrossing. Although a majority of radicals supported these measures, some, like John Adams, John Witherspoon, and Benjamin Rush, were vociferous in their opposition. However, their hostility stemmed neither from libertarianism nor from a lack of radicalism. Rather, they believed that setting prices would lead to scarcity, inflation, and damaged trade. Their position was based on a view that unenforceable and divisive laws significantly weakened government at a time when it urgently needed strengthening.32 For many in Congress, including supporters of price fixing, the best solution to Congress’s financial problems was to raise taxes. Taxation promised to accomplish three things at once: it would provide governments with

218 e n g l i s h b l o o d b y e n g l i s h h a n d s

much-needed revenue, increase the credibility of the continental governments, and remove depreciated paper bills from circulation. Delegate William Williams observed that many people in Connecticut “despise[d] Continental money,” took it only out of “fear,” and demanded the “most extravagant quantities for trifles.” The solution, he and many other members of Congress believed, was “a heavy tax,” one “as high as the people can possibly bear.” John Adams went so far as to implore Abigail to “pay every tax that is brought you, if you sell my books, or clothes, or oxen or your cows to pay it.”33 Indeed, the extent to which former colonists embraced taxation was remarkable. And although imposing a heavy tax burden cut against the radical Whig commitment to levies that encouraged industry and respected the ability of people to pay them, there was a strong sense among many American revolutionaries that new taxes would be offset by the rising value of continental currency. Moreover, the heaviest taxes might be levied on the country’s enemies. Thomas Paine proposed requiring those who refused to take an oath of allegiance to pay a tax of “ten, fifteen, or twenty percent” on their property. And many states passed laws allowing for the confiscation of Tory property. In that spirit, Francis Lightfoot Lee, who worried that Virginia had raised taxes beyond what the people could bear, praised his state for strengthening the powers of government and seizing military supplies from the “most infamous, vile, execrable, extortionate villains.”34 As much as radical Americans agreed on high taxes and stronger government, the creation of new governments and institutions was not without controversy. The new state constitutions reflected long-standing radical Whig aspirations of protecting both popular sovereignty and religious liberty against the scourge of corruption.35 And yet this provoked a fierce debate about what kind of governing institutions would best accomplish these goals, particularly at a moment of crisis. Pennsylvania’s constitution, which created a single legislative assembly and expanded the franchise to all of the state’s taxpayers, was a case in point. As Benjamin Rush observed, “many people” found the new Pennsylvania constitution “too much upon the democratical order,” believing that it would promote both “licentiousness” and “arbitrary” power. The debate over the constitution pitted popular radicals like Timothy Matlack, James Cannon, and Thomas Paine against more moderate radicals like John Dickinson, Benjamin Rush, and Thomas McKean. And their quarrel became so intense that it prompted one newspaper writer to observe that Pennsylvanians were “almost at daggers-drawing” over their

englis h blood by englis h hands

219

new frame of government. Bradford County recalled its representative, and many assembly members and prospective office holders refused to swear allegiance to the new constitution.36 Ultimately, Pennsylvania’s constitution revealed a sharp disagreement among revolutionaries about how to create a popular government that was strong and effective enough to promote the common good. Critics of the constitution and assembly accused them of being simultaneously weak and tyrannical. In a critical memorial, Philadelphia’s residents lamented the “languor which prevails in every department of the government of this state, at a time when her own safety, and the safety of the United States require the most vigorous exertions against the common enemy.” While loyalists went unpunished and patriots feared for their lives and property, the enemies of the revolution spread “the seeds and principles of disaffection.” Moreover, as Rush observed, Pennsylvania was unable “to draw forth the wisdom nor strength of the state” at a moment of crisis. And unlike other states, the assembly had failed to check “the exorbitant prices of every necessary of life” and support “the credit of public money.” The government was so weak that people were refusing to pay their taxes and Congress had been forced to manage the state’s defenses in order to “save it from anarchy and ruin.”37 As feeble as Pennsylvania’s government was, its critics nonetheless believed that it was slouching toward tyranny. Without a governor and council, nothing could keep the assembly from infringing on trial by jury, habeas corpus, or even annual elections. Indeed, they had already “forbidden tumultuary meetings,” trampled on the freedom of the press, and meddled with elections. Only an elite council, Rush concluded in his Observations upon the Present Government of Pennsylvania, with the power to revise the decisions of the lower house, could rescue Pennsylvania from “folly, passion, and prejudice.”38 The effort to overhaul Pennsylvania’s constitution drew a fierce response from supporters of its new system of government. They accused their opponents of seeking to revive colonial government, with its unelected governor and council, and prevailed in the assembly to have Rush recalled from Congress. In the newspapers, they proclaimed the unmitigated sovereignty of the people and decried the effect of inequality in politics. Only rulers who derived their authority “from the people by repeated delegations,” delegations which maintained “a constant sense of his dependence,” could be “servant[s] of the public,” a newspaper writer calling himself

220 e n g l i s h b l o o d b y e n g l i s h h a n d s

“Whitlock” argued. Men were easily corrupted, Thomas Paine observed, and unless magistrates were directly elected by the people, they would end up acting on behalf of the political elites who appointed them. For government to remain free, the people had to be able to choose their magistrates, judges, and military officers. Moreover, all men—and not just the well off—ought to have the same opportunities to choose their leaders and participate in government. A legislative council would, Whitlock insisted, give the wealthy “absolute control over the persons and property of the people” and allow them “suppress every murmur of the poor against it.”39 The constitution’s supporters were committed democrats, but they also asserted the importance of unity and strong government at a moment when “disaffected persons” threatened independence. Speaking on behalf of many defenders of Pennsylvania’s radical constitution, Philadelphia’s Whig Society, including its president, the painter and naturalist Charles Willson Peale, declared that “noisy and ill-natured wrangling” over the constitution threatened to “injure and disgrace” Pennsylvania.40 Paine and Rush had very different views about Pennsylvania’s constitution, but both men believed that the state’s government had to address inequality and the role of money in politics. Despite his elitism, Rush was a sharp critic of wealth’s power to undermine republican government. Indeed, he turned on its head the adage that Pennsylvania’s constitution was “a government for poor men.” He argued that in an unequal commercial society a single legislative assembly would likely be held captive by its more affluent members. In a bicameral legislature based on property, however, the lower house would be filled with men of modest means and would “check that lust for dominion which is always connected with opulence.” While Rush attacked Pennsylvania’s constitution as bad for the poor, Paine defended it as good for the rich. A wide franchise and popular accountability was the best guarantee that everyone would enjoy the benefits of freedom and economic prosperity. Paine agreed with Rush that economic inequality could easily lead to tyranny, but he insisted that the real danger came from limiting political participation on the basis of wealth. The best guarantee against “corruption and party influence” was a large and diverse electorate that was dominated by neither the rich nor the poor.41 Rush and Paine saw eye to eye on this point, but they disagreed about whether the best way to accomplish this aim was to give the people direct control over the offices of government or to divide power and wealth.

englis h blood by englis h hands

221

The debate over Pennsylvania’s constitution reveals American revolutionaries’ common commitment to both popular sovereignty and strong government. As one newspaper writer observed at the time, there was “a difference of sentiment as to the means among people agreeing in the same end.” Rush and Paine were both advocates of popular sovereignty, and they both believed that government ought to use its powers to aggressively prosecute the war, promote the general welfare, and make Tories’ lives a living hell. To be sure, the elitism of many of the Pennsylvania constitution’s critics makes it easy to conclude that they had abandoned Whig radicalism and its attachment to equality and popular accountability.42 But this was not the case. Indeed, the New York Constitution of 1777, which consciously repudiated Pennsylvania’s experiment, reiterated revolutionaries’ commitment to “equal freedom.” Despite its property restrictions and strong executive, New Yorkers’ new government enshrined popular sovereignty, established a census to apportion representation, and proposed voting by secret ballot.43 Such a government demonstrated that American republicanism remained a radical venture, one that not only built upon the colonial legacy but that utterly repudiated authoritarian reform. The Articles of Confederation promised to balance the popular accountability of small republics with the diversity and strength of empire. Although we often think of the Articles as a disastrous prologue to the American system of government, it was, in fact, a significant—if flawed—political accomplishment.44 Not only did it replace the ad hoc arrangements Congress had functioned under since 1775, it also created a republican union that stretched from New Hampshire to Georgia. Although Congress had succeeded in raising an army, printing money, and even creating a “very regular” postal service, it was abundantly clear that American independence depended on creating a confederacy that enjoyed legitimacy in the eyes of both Americans and the world. John Hancock described how the confederation was laying “firm and permanent foundations” for the “future glory and happiness of our country.” Yet forging a continental union required bringing thirteen very different states together at a moment of pandemonium and crisis. The challenge was, as North Carolina delegate Thomas Burke observed, “to secure to each state its separate independence, and give each its proper weight in the public councils.” And while it might have been easier to have created a defensive alliance, Americans did not do this.45 Instead, they forged a powerful confederation that recast the British Empire along republican lines.

222 e n g l i s h b l o o d b y e n g l i s h h a n d s

American radicals argued that the Articles of Confederation would create a union that respected the rights and interests of all of its constituent parts. The new American union was based on what Arthur Lee called “a system of equal liberty,” which was maintained “by the checks of so many republics.” Such a confederacy, Thomas Burke observed, was “one sovereign (power) with respect to foreign powers, in all things that relate to war or where the States have one common interest,” but would otherwise respect the states as “separate sovereigns.” In that spirit, the American union excluded “all coercive interpositions within the states respectively, except with respect to the Army and Navy.” Congress would therefore have to depend on the states to comply with its requests to supply the army, regulate the prices, and prosecute loyalists.46 Designed to prevent the domination of a remote legislature, the new union made it difficult for Congress to exercise many of its powers, requiring the consent of nine states to declare war, raise military forces, or borrow, print, and appropriate money. But the new American confederation sought to do more than protect the states from an overbearing legislature; it promised to dramatically strengthen American government. Such a political system was compatible with state sovereignty because it promised to coordinate the states’ efforts rather than to dominate them. This “liberal plan,” James Duane observed, was “calculated to establish general security, and social intercourse, among the states; and to extinguish all territorial disputes.” The Articles gave Congress the moral authority that it needed to impel states to follow its directives, particularly levying heavy taxes to sink the continental debt. And by creating a mechanism for coordinating the efforts of the union, it promised not only to enhance America’s war effort but to strengthen the governments of the individual states. Moreover, the Articles institutionalized Congress’s power to wage war, make alliances, coin money, and manage interstate communication through the post office—much like European states did. And, perhaps most important, it gave Congress the authority “to borrow money, or emit bills on the credit of the United States,” which, John Adams later observed, forced the states to “consider themselves as one body, animated by one soul.”47 Such powers gave the new confederation considerable influence over the economy, not only because it shaped both credit and the money supply but also because it had the power to make treaties with America’s most important trading partners. And although it fell far short of creating a nation-state, and was in many ways a wartime expediency, the

englis h blood by englis h hands

223

Articles forged a confederacy that challenged the British Empire both militarily and ideologically. The intense debate over the confederation’s tax quotas demonstrates both the strength and weaknesses of the new union that Americans were creating. Colonists created a confederation that could borrow and spend with abandon but left Congress at the mercy of the states to pay its bills. Under the Articles, the states agreed to supply Congress with funds, which they would then raise however they saw fit. Given their very different economic interests as well as the long history of parliamentary requisition, this was an entirely natural solution. The question—as it always had been—was how much each state would pay. Even though these contributions were both voluntary and self-assessed, New Englanders and Southerners fought a fierce battle over whether tax quotas should be based on property, people, or some combination of the two. That debate turned in large part on the question of slavery. Opponents of slavery, like Pennsylvania delegates Benjamin Franklin and James Wilson, proposed that the states’ tax quotas should be based on their entire population, to discourage the growth of unfree labor. This was too much for South Carolina’s Thomas Lynch, who not only insisted that “slaves being our property why should they be taxed more than the land, sheep, cattle, horses etc.,” but threatened to end the confederation if there was further debate on whether slaves were property.48 Ultimately, Congress compromised by following New Jersey delegate John Witherspoon’s suggestion that states contribute in proportion to the value of their land and buildings. But this left the United States with an unworkable tax system, because, as New Hampshire delegate Samuel Livermore later observed, no assessment had ever been made. Instead, Congress relied on crude and shifting estimates of state populations to fix its tax quotas, a decision that sidestepped the issue of slavery while confirming the power of the institution.49 Thus, the Articles of Confederation created a government that not only was weaker than many revolutionaries would have liked but also was plagued by instability. However, this was not because Congress was stocked with libertarians. Rather, it was the result of a difficult compromise made at a time when delegates’ urgent desire for a confederation—any confederation—demanded that they set their disagreements aside. Still, disputes over what the states owed the confederation remained intense throughout the 1780s because delegates understood that their states would levy taxes at Congress’s behest and that this would have significant economic

224 e n g l i s h b l o o d b y e n g l i s h h a n d s

consequences. Indeed, the states eventually paid Congress several million dollars, not nearly enough to keep the government solvent but a substantial sum nonetheless.50 Shaped by the intense pressures of war, the Articles of Confederation struck a difficult balance between strengthening the American union and respecting the interests of a diverse collection of states.51 Nevertheless, the new government had no shortage of critics who were convinced that it had reproduced the tyrannical powers of Parliament. Thomas Burke had no objection to Congress’s control over the army and navy or its ability to make treaties with foreign powers. But that was as far as Burke was willing to go. States had a right to control the garrisoning of soldiers within their territory, and they ought to be able to limit the power of courts-martial over their citizens. His biggest concern, however, was Congress’s power over property and the economy; he complained of its ability to regulate the states’ weights and measures, their Native American trade, and their naval forces. As Burke observed, setting the value of coin, borrowing money, emitting bills gave Congress “an unlimited power over all property” and “a power to tax at pleasure.” It enjoyed these powers despite the fact that congressional delegates represented the states and not the people.52 The Articles created a government with a large army and debt as well as broad influence over property and the economy— powers that genuinely frightened more locally minded revolutionaries. Yet it seems clear that Burke’s fierce opposition to a stronger American union was a minority view. Not only did the states ratify the confederation unanimously, but twelve out of thirteen of them were willing to amend the Articles to grant Congress the power to levy import duties.53 Americans needed a strong and effective union because their independence from Britain depended on both foreign money and foreign military support. No government would lend money to the United States unless it was convinced that the new confederacy was capable of functioning like a normal European state, the kind of state that could raise money and pay back its debts.54 Believing American independence would be won in Europe as well as in America, and eager to prove that the United States was genuinely independent, Congress sent commissioners to Paris, Madrid, Berlin, Vienna, and Florence. The new government’s diplomatic corps signed contracts with European merchants, purchased clothing and weapons for tens of thousands of soldiers, and secured invaluable military aid with the help of France’s foreign minister Charles Gravier, Comte de Vergennes. With the promise of

englis h blood by englis h hands

225

a North American confederacy, Britain’s former colonists were confident that their continent’s millions of consumers and bountiful resources would prove an irresistible prize for Europe’s great powers. Arthur Lee told Frederick the Great that no less a figure than the Earl of Chatham had declared that American commerce “sustained the power of England” and that the colonies’ independence spelled the end of that power. North America’s rapidly expanding population promised to provide Prussia with the same vast market that had sustained Britain’s wealth and influence. But more than anything, Americans desperately needed a military alliance with France that would break Britain’s crushing blockade, which was responsible for the decline of trade and depreciation of the currency.55 The passage of the Articles of Confederation in November 1777 reassured the French that Americans had a government that could fight and win a war against a great European power.

The Carlisle Commission and the Limits of Authoritarian Reform The Continental Army’s victory at Saratoga in October 1777 bolstered the diplomatic prospects of the United States and shook the foundations of British politics. Not only did it help secure the American alliance with France in February 1778, but it dealt a heavy blow to Britain’s war effort and threatened to topple North’s administration. Boston minister Samuel Cooper exulted that the American triumph promised to “confound the British Ministry,” divide the British nation, and “raise a clamor against the promoters of the war.”56 Indeed, it prompted the prime minister to renew his efforts to secure peace with Britain’s rebellious colonists. Those endeavors ultimately proved an abysmal and embarrassing failure, but they demonstrate in brilliant color authoritarian reformers’ desperate desire to reconcile both fiscal austerity and imperial reform. They also show that the British debate over empire was far from over. And yet, most Americans had moved on, and they had little interest in accepting the compromises of a ministry that had long sought their political and economic subordination. Even before John Burgoyne’s defeat at Saratoga, radical Whigs concluded that Britain’s empire of liberty had ceased to exist and embraced the American cause as their own. Although Chatham could not bring himself to accept the fracturing of an empire he had worked so hard to preserve, a growing number of radical Whigs accepted that Britain had lost its North

226 e n g l i s h b l o o d b y e n g l i s h h a n d s

American colonies. Franklin’s old business partner Thomas Walpole concluded that it was foolish to think “that the colonies will ever again acknowledge the supremacy of Great Britain over them.” The American states had already built an army larger than Britain’s and would develop their “vacant lands and a perfect freedom of commerce with all the world.” Lord Camden agreed, expressing that “as an Englishman,” he “most sincerely pray[ed]” that Britain would “never conquer America.” Even Chatham, who declared that he would sooner “subscribe to transubstantiation” than acknowledge the independent sovereignty of the colonies, expressed admiration for the American army and blamed colonial alienation on an “ill-understood plan of illiberal, Tory principles.” Both violent and mad, those principles had annihilated “the great . . . and flourishing prospects” of the British Empire.57 Indeed, the opposition frequently sided with the rebellious colonists and worried, as the Earl of Abingdon did in his blockbuster pamphlet, that “the dagger uplifted against the breast of America” was “meant for the heart of old England.” United by this conviction, many American and British radicals continued to maintain warm relations and offer one another advice despite the North ministry’s efforts to suppress communication across the Atlantic.58 Although they remained convinced that their country’s prosperity depended on the development of the American colonial market, the opposition disagreed vehemently about what American independence meant for Britain. In the summer of 1777, Abingdon launched a blistering attack on Edmund Burke for his weak support of the American cause. Thoughts on the Letter of Edmund Burke, which both Shelburne and Camden strongly endorsed, took the Bristol MP to task for asserting the supremacy of Parliament and assumed the almost republican position that Britain’s legislature was limited by a constitution that derived its authority from the people.59 Despite such differences, radical and establishment Whigs nonetheless came together in the interest of saving their country, as Lord Rockingham put it, from “utter ruin.” Their success depended on convincing the public that the government had “dismembered half the empire, ruined our commerce . . . and reduced this once glorious nation to a miserable existence upon the mercy of our natural and most perfidious enemy.” And so they demanded not only that Parliament make peace with America on whatever terms possible but also that it implement far-reaching electoral reforms at home. Notwithstanding these efforts—including a brilliant speech in which Chatham “brandished his crutches” and urged the House of Lords to allow “conciliation [to] succeed

englis h blood by englis h hands

227

chastisement”—the opposition’s May 1777 motion to unconditionally repeal all American taxes and embargos received little support in Parliament.60 Authoritarian reformers were no less committed to the politics of principle, believing that they were rescuing loyal Americans from the tyranny of republican government. And they concluded that Britain could ill afford to give up its dominance over the colonies. Reflecting on ancient history, Grenville’s protégé, the privy councilor Charles Jenkinson, observed that when ancient Rome’s Italian allies revolted, the Romans responded by granting them imperial citizenship. But even though this saved the empire, it led to “violence and bloodshed” that ultimately cost Rome its liberty. The lesson of history was clear: the Crown ought to take control of North America and govern it in the “best and cheapest manner” possible. In that spirit, Jenkinson offered Lord North a sweeping proposal to secure “the interests and protection of a vast empire.” He suggested reforms that would sharply curb colonial civil society and give colonists a choice between authoritarian imperial reform and a military government supported by crushing taxes. For those colonies that submitted, Jenkinson advised a capitation tax that would produce more than £600,000 a year and that might, with colonial growth, eventually defray all of the British government’s expenses. While obedient Americans would be left to pay more than ever before, colonies that resisted Britain’s authority would not be so lucky. Parliament would dissolve their legislatures and impose its own taxes. Jenkinson proposed resurrecting the Stamp Act, aggressively collecting quit rents, and levying duties on a wide array of consumer goods. New American taxes would protect British economic interests and the rigorous collection of quit rents and stamp duties would help to curb the land speculation that had wreaked havoc on the frontier. All of these revenues would be collected through an American tax farm, which would create a new colonial elite with close ties to Britain.61 Jenkinson’s proposal reflected authoritarian reformers’ long-standing desire to remake colonial society and government, but defeat at Saratoga shattered those plans. Having spent three fruitless years and more than £20 million fighting a war to secure obedience and revenue, authoritarian reformers found themselves with more debt and less order in America than ever. The difficulties of war and opposition led North to sink into despondency and the Scottish historian and philosopher Adam Ferguson to become “much dispirited about every public prospect.”62 Under such circumstances, the prime minister and his allies—along with the British public—were

228 e n g l i s h b l o o d b y e n g l i s h h a n d s

increasingly willing to make concessions. As Hugh Elliot, Britain’s young ambassador to Prussia, observed, his country would either “establish an empire of greater extent of greater importance than was ever united under the same dominion, or else be reduced within the narrow precincts of our weak and exhausted island.” To that end, North sent former New Hampshire agent Paul Wentworth and Scottish landowner William Pulteney to Paris to negotiate with the American commissioners. And he allowed members of the opposition like David Hartley, whose Budget had eviscerated Grenville’s austerity program more than a decade earlier, to open lines of communication with Franklin.63 The prime minister worked to create a parliamentary commission that could offer Congress reasonable terms for peace. William Eden, who in addition to serving on the Board of Trade was North’s European spymaster, developed the plan in consultation with solicitor general Alexander Wedderburn. Together, they proposed appointing commissioners with wide room to negotiate, repealing all of the taxes and legislation that Parliament had passed since 1763, and giving the colonies assurances that Britain would respect their charters. In exchange for these concessions, the colonies would agree—or be compelled—to contribute “to the common defense of the empire.” But while North’s allies proposed a negotiated peace, they also urged a more vigorous prosecution of the war. They were convinced that Britain’s military supremacy and the oppression, barbarism, and poverty of independence would finally convince Americans to rejoin the empire.64 North introduced his conciliatory resolution on February 17, 1778. Following Eden’s and Wedderburn’s recommendations, he proposed appointing yet another peace commissioner as well as a bill promising that Parliament would “not impose any duty, tax, or assessment whatever” in the colonies, “except only such duties as it may be expedient to impose for the regulation of commerce.” Britain needed peace because the war had cost “more than any revenue which could have been raised from America.” North insisted that Parliament had to show the Americans it was “not fighting for taxation.” And, stretching credulity, he claimed that he had “never thought” that colonial taxation “would be very beneficial to us.”65 North’s speech was a stunning capitulation, leaving the House of Commons in a “dull and melancholy silence.” And although it earned him the applause of establishment Whigs like Charles James Fox and radicals like George Johnstone, “astonishment, dejection, and fear overclouded the whole assembly.” Authoritarian reformers simply could not believe that their prime minister would give up

englis h blood by englis h hands

229

Britain’s right to American tax revenue, a right which North himself had long defended. Jenkinson responded by concluding that he “never saw a popular assembly . . . so humiliated” while attorney general Alexander Thurlow condemned the administration’s proposal as a “wretched and disgraceful” measure that would “lose America and ruin England.” American authoritarian reformers responded in much the same way. Now living in exile in London, former Massachusetts governor Thomas Hutchinson reported that upon reading the North’s conciliatory resolution, one New York merchant “went up to the highest story of his house, threw himself out, at the window, and broke his neck.”66 North’s speech was shocking, and it undoubtedly made many arguments that seemed typical of the opposition, but it did little to win him support from radical and establishment Whigs. In a stinging dissent that was reprinted in Britain’s newspapers and that circulated among American delegates to Congress, Abingdon attacked North’s resolution as nonsensical and useless because Parliament could not well pass a bill renouncing a power it did not have. “Taxation and representation” were, Abingdon argued, “inseparable” in the British constitution, and no act of Parliament could revoke fundamental constitutional rights. The only solution was to dismiss “those evil ministers” who had “spilled the blood of America,” and to replace them with men who might be able to restore Britain “to that health and strength, and again to that peace and empire, which was once the boast of this country, and the terror of the world beside.” Franklin had much the same reaction, believing Americans would be foolish to negotiate with ministers who were unable to “divest themselves of the idea, that the power of Parliament over us is constitutionally absolute and unlimited.” Indeed, those radical Whigs who supported a peace commission suggested far more generous terms than North’s supporters. Sir John Dalrymple, who had once defended the Massachusetts charter in Parliament, proposed liberalizing imperial trade and helping Americans wind down their debts.67 If Britain wanted to restore its empire, radical Whigs argued, it would have to prove beyond a doubt that it had renounced the violence and extortion of authoritarian reform. Those divergent responses to North’s conciliatory plan reflected the ideological chasm that separated authoritarian reformers and radical Whigs. Although North sought to bridge that divide by exploiting Chatham’s disagreement with the Rockinghamites over whether to recognize American independence, his efforts went nowhere. Not only did the radical Whig

230 e n g l i s h b l o o d b y e n g l i s h h a n d s

leader have little desire to join a ministry he could not control, but George III declared he “would rather lose the Crown . . . than bear the ignominy of possessing it under” the opposition’s “shackles.”68 Both France’s entry into the war in March 1778 and Chatham’s death in May that same year underscore the vastly different mental worlds of British radicals and authoritarian reformers. Camden responded to Britain’s declining military fortunes by expressing that he was “truly ashamed to be an Englishman,” and that he was sure that “such maladministration must end in a civil war after we have lost the remainder of [our] foreign dominions.” His despondency turned to despair a few months later when his friend and patron finally succumbed to spasms and nervous convulsions. He faced the appalling prospect that Britain would be stuck with “the same ministers, the same folly, and the same ignorance” that had brought his country to its knees. That view was reflected in the funeral itself, which featured the luminaries of opposition politics bearing the pall and mourning the hero of British radicalism.69 And although the House of Commons voted to inter Chatham’s body at the public’s expense, authoritarian reformers took a far more critical view of the “great commoner’s” legacy. Indeed, Joseph Yorke, Britain’s ambassador to the United Provinces, could not help observing that Chatham had made Britain “too great at too great an expense” and was guilty of fomenting both “American obstinacy” and “faction at home.”70 As competing reactions to Chatham’s death demonstrated, authoritarian reformers remained committed both to British supremacy and to the belief that rebellion had left the colonies weak, divided, and poor.71 That view shaped the peace commission’s instructions. Led by Frederick Howard, Earl of Carlisle, a man whose political experience largely consisted of drinking and gambling with Charles James Fox, the commissioners were under strict instructions not to negotiate with the colonies as independent states. This meant that the Carlisle Commission was almost certainly consigned to failure. Indeed, the British mission began inauspiciously. General William Howe abandoned the American capital at Philadelphia to reinforce St. Lucia from French attack, significantly weakening the commissioners’ negotiating position. With British officers reporting thousands of American soldiers abandoning their posts and rumors of a growing peace party in Congress, Eden was particularly disgusted that Britain had “deserted” its friends.72 Still, the commissioners persevered. They sent Congress a letter at the beginning of July offering to cease hostilities and “restore free

26. Hancock’s Warehouse for Taring & Feathering, 1778. Authoritarian reformers repeatedly condemned both the popular violence and the repression of America’s revolutionaries. In this image, women caught purchasing British tea are tarred and feathered by a Boston mob. (Courtesy of the John Carter Brown Library at Brown University)

232 e n g l i s h b l o o d b y e n g l i s h h a n d s

intercourse, revive mutual affection, and renew the common benefits of naturalization through the several parts of this empire.” Most importantly, they promised “to establish the power of the respective legislatures in each particular State, to settle its revenues, its civil and military establishments, and to exercise a perfect freedom of legislation and internal government.” Although the commission conceded many American grievances, it received a cold response from Congress, which would only negotiate if it received “an explicit acknowledgment of the independence” of the United States or if Britain withdrew its “fleets and armies.”73 American radicals had little interest in negotiating with representatives of a government that had blockaded their trade, strangled their economy, and killed their fellow citizens, even if some of those representatives had impeccable radical Whig credentials. Although British observers were undoubtedly right that the war imposed heavy burdens, most Americans remained resolutely attached to the cause of independence. British officials were wrong to assume that Congress spoke for themselves rather than for the people. As New York delegate Gouverneur Morris pointed out, two-thirds of Americans supported Congress, including “the most respectable members of the community.” But even the poor had displayed patriotism and virtue in the American cause. Responding to the commissioners in the Pennsylvania Packet, Morris described the lowly soldiers at Valley Forge who, despite their “sufferings,” which entailed laying “literally on the earth naked without fire and without food,” had neither mutinied nor deserted nor “even complain[ed].”74 Morris’s view was undoubtedly Panglossian—even propagandistic—but it reflected the fact that most Americans preferred independence to the new British Empire that authoritarian reformers were trying to create. They did so, Pennsylvania delegate Joseph Reed told commissioner George Johnstone, because Britain had responded to the colonists’ “humble petitions” with “savage barbarities, insults, and outrages.” American radicals simply did not trust North’s ministry, and they were convinced that if they broke their treaty with France they would be “absolutely” at Britain’s mercy.75 Not only had Britain proved itself violent and authoritarian, but the empire was governed by principles that actively sought to subordinate American interests to the mother country’s. Writing in the Pennsylvania Packet, South Carolina delegate William Henry Drayton observed that while Johnstone had “long and ably pleaded the cause of America,” Britain’s interest

englis h blood by englis h hands

233

was that colonists’ trade “should be limited,” while Americans believed “it should be unlimited.” But the mother country and its colonists’ differences went beyond mere matters of interest. Morris observed that most American patriots held “democratic principles,” and that even those with republican or aristocratic convictions opposed the rule of kings. Americans’ opposition to Parliament, the Presbyterian minister and president of the College of New Jersey, John Witherspoon, observed, had arisen not from the ambitions of politicians but from “a deep and universal conviction in the people.” They were convinced that the mother country’s policies were “inconsistent with their own security and peace.” Indeed, Morris went so far as to mock the commissioners’ proposal in the Philadelphia press: You ask me to become a subject of the King of Great Britain; and what shall I get by that? Security of your person and property. My person and property are secure already. He will make laws for you and govern you. I had much rather make laws for myself and govern myself. But he will regulate your trade. Pray what is that? Why he will tell you where your ships shall go, and where they shall not go, and what they shall carry, and what they shall not carry. But I had rather our merchants should send their ships where and with what cargoes they please; I fancy they know as much of trade as your King, and how to get the best prices and the cheapest goods. Aye, aye, but this is for the sake of a union of force, and for the interests of the whole British Empire. My good friend, the force of America is already united, and I have nothing to do with the British Empire.76

American radicals wanted nothing to do with the British Empire because they believed that the new United States offered them a far better system of government—and far greater opportunities for the future. Although he worried about the “ignorance, indolence, and avarice” of many American Whigs, Benjamin Rush argued that “the strength and resources of America, the determined spirt of a majority of the people, and the success of our arms in the northern department,” placed American independence on “as broad a basis as any of the powerful monarchies of Europe.” American radicals were confident that they had created a state capable of standing up to Britain, one whose growing population, extensive commerce, and free governments would allow it not only to pay its debts but to prosper. And that meant, as Reed observed, that the conflict had “irrecoverably changed from taxation to

234 e n g l i s h b l o o d b y e n g l i s h h a n d s

empire” and that nothing remained but either “the hopeless prospect of conquest and unconditional submission or a federal union upon rational, fair, and independent ground.” That union was led by republican governments whose “sole object,” Richard Henry Lee declared, was “the security of public happiness.”77 With American radicals committed to independence, the Carlisle Commission quickly found itself mired in scandal and controversy on both sides of the Atlantic. Reed accused the commissioners of trying to bribe him for his support. And although Johnstone denied the accusation, it led to a fierce condemnation from Congress. As Franklin observed from Paris, the commissioners had acted “very indiscreetly in America,” speaking disrespectfully of the United States’ French ally, calling into question Congress’s authority to negotiate, and “vainly trying by publications to excite the people against the Congress.”78 Indeed, the commissioners’ failure to negotiate with Congress led them to take their case directly to the American people. They published proclamations and manifestos attacking Congress and promising that submission to British authority would mean not only clemency but also “a constitution more mild, more free, and better calculated for their prosperity, than that which they heretofore enjoyed.”79 But the commissioners miscalculated when they also promised to severely punish the colonies for their alliance with France. Not only did they fail in their goal of terrifying the rebellious Americans, they also earned the denunciation of opposition Whigs in Parliament. Edmund Burke condemned the commissioners for promising “the killing of man, woman and child, burning their houses, and ravaging their lands, annihilating humanity from the face of the earth, or rendering it so wretched that death would be preferable.” And in the House of Lords, Abingdon declared that the commissioners’ manifesto was completely in keeping with the deplorable belief that “the tomahawk and the scalping knife were the engines put into the hands of Englishmen by God and nature, first to torture, and then to murder our fellow subjects.”80 Although Burke and Abingdon overstated the commissioners’ bloodlust, authoritarian reformers remained committed to the strategy of using military force and the promise of better government to convince the colonists that they would be happier as British subjects. They received reports that mobs and “committees of inspection, correspondence, safety etc.,” ruled “with so high an hand as to excite the contempt and aversion of every moderate member of society among them.” Nor was this view confined

englis h blood by englis h hands

235

27. The Curious Zebra: Alive from America! Walk in Gem’men and Ladies, Walk In, 1778. British radicals mocked the Carlisle Commission’s efforts, arguing that Britain’s offer of peace for obedience was nothing more than a ruse to tax the colonies. Here, the rejected commissioners look on as Lord North struggles to pull the reins of a zebra representing the thirteen American colonies while George Washington and a French companion hold the tail. Meanwhile, George Grenville (who was deceased at the time) places a saddle labeled “Stamp Act” on the animal. (Courtesy of the Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division)

to officialdom. One London newspaper writer described the desperate situation in America, where “plough-shares and hoes are turned into spears, the earth deprived of its usual cultivation, manufactories stand still, and the labor of the people lost.” And in a pamphlet that made the case for an empire dominated by a Parliament that was unaccountable to popular opinion, Reverend James Ramsay argued that Americans had disastrously ignored both the commercial advantages of the British Empire and the heavy burden of taxation, debt, and paper money that they now faced. As loyalist and Franklin protégé Joseph Galloway told New Yorkers, they had a choice between “the mild and equal rule of English customs and manners” or a life governed by the “miserable sophistry and jargon of designing men.” Indeed, such

236 e n g l i s h b l o o d b y e n g l i s h h a n d s

observations convinced the ministry “that nothing but the tyranny” of the rebellion’s leaders prevented the Americans from declaring their loyalty to the king. What the administration needed to do was combine military force with the promise of effective government. By empowering American elites to redress popular grievances, curb unfair trading, and restore the rule of law, Britain would draw Americans back to their allegiance.81 The journal of John Berkenhout, a physician and naturalist who traveled to Philadelphia as the Carlisle Commission’s covert agent, shows in vivid detail how one authoritarian reformer understood the politics of peace. Berkenhout described the “incredible distresses” of Washington’s army and how its officers had gone “literally without shoes.” Such hardship was not surprising considering the state of the American Congress, which was “unpolished, illiterate, poor, and of no character.” Indeed, the “demagogues who rule[d] America” were “extremely fearful of the people.” Under this reign of terror, “every publication calculated to undeceive” the public was suppressed and the continental dollar had lost four-fifths of its value. Considering the state of American government and the economy, all Britain had to do was restore government and Americans would rally back to the imperial standard. “Most of the Americans” Berkenhout spoke to “lamented their separation from the mother country, disapproved the Declaration of Independence, and detested their French alliance.” Instead of granting concessions that threatened Britain’s “existence,” Parliament ought to unanimously resolve to “conquer America.”82 Berkenhout was wrong that most Americans longed for a return to British rule, but he was undoubtedly right that the financial and economic difficulties of the war posed a grave threat to the revolution’s legitimacy. American radicals responded to that threat by arguing that both Congress and the state governments ought to do everything in their power to stabilize the continental currency and place the economy on a path toward growth. That meant persuading the states to create tax regimes so they could raise funds for the war and take continental notes out of circulation.83 Fortunately, the states were raising a litany of taxes, and members of Congress were optimistic that such taxation would bring inflation under control. Those taxes, John Adams observed, were “rising very high,” but they would never be more “than the people can bear, because the representatives who lay them tax themselves and their neighbors in exact proportion.” Indeed, they fell “heaviest upon the rich and the higher classes of people.”84 To be sure, taxes were

englis h blood by englis h hands

237

far heavier during the revolution than they had been under British rule and were less progressive than Adams suggested, but their burden paled in comparison to the British blockade. And although Franklin recognized that depreciation weighed heavily on those with fixed incomes, he described the continental currency as a “wonderful machine.” Inflation, he observed, was “a kind of imperceptible tax,” one that imposed a far greater burden on capitalists and creditors than on workers and debtors. America’s ramshackle system of currency finance undoubtedly caused much heartburn and significant suffering, but the situation was perhaps less dire than many in Europe assumed.85 While Americans succeeded in raising money for their war effort, it was clear that if the United States wanted to do more than survive it would have to find an able steward of the confederation’s ways and means. The fact that Congress’s first choice was a British citizen illustrates how even after three years of fighting, the American War of Independence was as much a civil war between two rival ideologies as it was a battle between Britain and its colonies. In October 1778, Congress offered the celebrated political economist Richard Price U.S. citizenship and requested his “assistance in regulating their finances.” Although Price agreed with radicals like Lee and Franklin that America would soon become “the refuge of mankind,” he was too old and too attached to his homeland to take the job.86 Still, Congress’s invitation demonstrated the enduring the connection between British and American radicals. And it speaks to the undeniable importance of both money and credit in securing independence. America’s revolutionaries had no interest in negotiating with the Carlisle Commission, but they were all too eager to embrace those in Britain who shared their radical convictions about taxation, public debt, and government. The failure of the Carlisle Commission revealed Americans’ commitment to building their own republican empire, but it also laid bare the insurmountable tension at the heart of authoritarian reform. As a vision of politics, it was committed to the idea that public order, hierarchal empire, and cheap government went together. But as the costs of fighting the American rebellion mounted and France entered the war, it became clear that Britain would have to choose between fixing its finances and reconquering its colonies. Had it succeeded, the Carlisle Commission would not only have ended the conflict, it would have saved the treasury millions and secured American revenue to help Britain pay its debts. Indeed, when the commission failed, North and his

238 e n g l i s h b l o o d b y e n g l i s h h a n d s

allies took the unprecedented step of searching for a way to fund the war without further borrowing. In so doing, they advocated an austere regime of sumptuary laws and hefty taxes on middle-class consumption. Although he was uncertain how to implement his plan, North was convinced that funding the war without debt would give Britain “superiority over all its enemies.” The prime minister and his allies were adamant that their strategy would reduce long-term spending and free the country from the “millstone” of public borrowing that threatened its “existence.”87 Although Eden and Berkenhout advised eliminating taxes on exports and reducing taxes on land, they both recommended raising revenue from a vast range of commodities, services, and transactions. Berkenhout suggested dozens of taxes on articles and practices he disliked, ranging from dissenters and debating societies to male haberdashers and corset makers, who were engaged in professions he deemed more appropriate for women. North avoided Berkenhout’s more eccentric suggestions, and he increased Britain’s debts by almost £90 million, but his administration nonetheless leaned heavily on consumption taxes to finance the war.88 And while there was a certain irony in proposing a panoply of new taxes as a means of reducing the burden of the state on Britain’s economy, it made sense in the context of authoritarian reformers’ enthusiasm for limiting consumption and their almost religious aversion to public debt. Radical and establishment Whigs also bemoaned Britain’s debts, but they argued that the real problem was that their country was spending tens of millions of pounds fighting its own citizens. The opposition was convinced that the war was responsible for both the decline of trade and widespread poverty. Those places hit hardest, like the Norfolk wool country and Britain’s port towns, were also hotbeds of American support. The manufacturer John Sykes described the business failures and the “tottering situation” of many of Liverpool’s great merchant houses while Camden described how poverty was creeping “gradually throughout the country.” New buildings in London went unfinished, “thousands of workmen” were “without employment,” and money was unavailable for investment. Indeed, between 1775 and 1779, British exports fell by more than a quarter.89 Blaming the downturn on the war and the loss of the colonies, the opposition pummeled North’s administration for its stewardship of both the economy and the empire. In yet another one of his pamphlet blockbusters, David Hartley observed that Britain had in just four years lost “the greatest and most increasing parts of

englis h blood by englis h hands

239

the British dominions,” while sacrificing thousands of lives and tens of millions of pounds. Those losses, he argued, threatened the very existence of the British state. In a broadside that echoed many of Hartley’s themes, radical political economist Joseph Massie declared that the war’s “ruinous rate of expense” and rising levels of taxation had “only helped to increase our disgrace, and to hasten our approach toward general bankruptcy.” And in the newspapers, radical Whigs attacked the ministry for impoverishing Britain. As the London Evening Post editorialized, North’s ministry had loaded the people “with oppressive taxations,” and reduced them to the “greatest slaves in the known world” in order to “carry on the most bloody, expensive, and impracticable war, that this nation ever was involved in.”90 Radical Whigs hated the war because authoritarian reformers continued to use it to secure their vision of a new British Empire. In a memorandum he prepared for the secretary of state, William Knox told Germain that the challenge Britain faced was how to keep America “a member of the empire without making it the head.” To that end, he proposed crippling

28. Mr. Trade and Family or the State of ye Nation, 1779. British radicals condemned the American war for destroying their country’s lucrative export industries and for impoverishing its workers. (Courtesy of the Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division)

240 e n g l i s h b l o o d b y e n g l i s h h a n d s

restrictions on colonial emigration and shipping, creating an “aristocratic order” in North America, and leaving Native Americans entirely in control of Ohio. And he remained committed to the Grenvillian idea that Americans “ought to contribute an equal share to the public charge,” suggesting that taxes might be used to limit American growth and to defray Britain’s expenses. Franklin’s protégé Joseph Galloway and budding abolitionist Reverend James Ramsay laid out similar proposals for securing American obedience. Both men promised that the unlimited sovereignty of Crown and Parliament would restore order to colonies that had long suffered under selfishness, ambition, and mob rule. As a solution Galloway recommended shielding royal governors from “every principle of democracy and aristocracy,” while Ramsay advocated letting “the mother-country take upon herself the whole civil and ecclesiastical establishments of the several colonies and the payments of all salaries.” They both agreed with Knox that Americans ought to reimburse Britain for its expenses in settling and defending the colonies. And they were committed to the idea that government could only subsist through clear political and economic hierarchies. For Ramsay the consequences of an empire ruled by a benevolent Parliament were clear: American colonists would be confined to furnishing “staple commodities” and “raw materials” while Britain rose to new heights of “luxury and refinement.”91 Ultimately, Ramsay and his fellow authoritarian reformers concluded that the colonies were to be treated as potential rivals, and that Britain ought to do everything in its power to guarantee that they remained subordinate. In the end, authoritarian reformers’ demand for imperial transformation won out over their desire for austerity. Their anger at colonists’ “haughtiness” and “usurpation” of Parliament’s authority provoked their demand for war. George III himself preferred that Britain “be totally destroyed than crouch” in the face of colonial resistance. Authoritarian reformers blamed Americans’ unceasing resistance on the opposition, moderation, and the “relaxation of government” that so afflicted British politics.92 But while they resented Whig radicalism on both sides of the Atlantic, they also believed the empire was the engine of their country’s power and prosperity. Ferguson insisted that North America was “an object of so much consequence” that the government ought to spare no expense preserving it, while Berkenhout accused the “dictators in America” of seeking the destruction not just of the British Empire but of Britain itself. Indeed, the alliance between France and America opened the terrifying prospect that the colonies that had once

englis h blood by englis h hands

241

underwritten Britain’s dominance would now seal its fate as a second-rate power. As William Eden made clear, the stakes of the war were nothing less than whether his country would “subsist as a nation, possessing its own liberties, pursuing its own commerce, and observing the rules of justice to all the world,” or whether it would “hold a crippled trade and commerce . . . at the good will and compassion of the House of Bourbon.”93 For all of the attempts to stitch the empire back together, the war had served only to push authoritarian reformers and their opponents apart. Indeed, it proved that Smith’s dream of an Anglo-American union was entirely quixotic. Hartley attacked North’s administration for “studiously” evading every American proposal for peace, and he reiterated the radical and establishment Whig conviction that “every British subject” had an interest in an empire that fostered the “commerce” and “affections” of America.94 Authoritarian reformers could not abide such politics, and they continued to insist that the real source of Britain’s troubles was both profligacy and the willingness of ambitious politicians to abet popular opposition. Berkenhout spoke for many when he accused American colonists of a “premeditated scheme of separation, and of a settled plan for the erection of a vast republic on the ruins of mixed monarchy.” That was certainly George III’s assessment when he told his cabinet that the worst decision of his life was “changing his ministers in 1765, and consenting to the repeal of the Stamp Act.”95 His hatred for the opposition, a hatred shared by many authoritarian reformers, reflected the fact that Britain’s war effort was about much more than simply preserving the British Empire. It was also about remodeling that empire, and making it, at long last, both governable and profitable. That gambit failed, not because colonists hated Britain, but because revolutionaries succeeded in laying the groundwork for a new American empire. And although the foundation of that republican imperium was cracked and incomplete, it was a revolutionary project shaped by the radical Whig conviction that an empire of equal citizens was stronger and more prosperous than an empire of domination and subordination. As the future Federalist John Jay explained, American government was based on the “generous principles of equal liberty, where the rulers of the state are the servants of the people, and masters of those from whom they derive authority.” That generosity was undoubtedly circumscribed by race and by the commitment of many American radicals to slavery. It was a fatal weakness that would undermine their union for nearly a century. Yet such views reflected Americans’ belief

242 e n g l i s h b l o o d b y e n g l i s h h a n d s

that in uniting the “permanent interest” and “mutual affection” of the states they had given “importance, weight, and splendor” to the new American confederation. With their just and “vigorous” governments, Americans would soon take their place among the powers of Europe.96 Although it ultimately proved exaggerated, confidence in the new American confederation sprang from the belief that an expanding territory and a growing economy would allow Americans to build a prosperous union. In October 1779, Congress called on the states to raise $15 million. Its president, Henry Laurens, hoped the “almost intolerable burthen” of taxation would “rouse and animate” American patriotism while also bringing accountability and power to government.97 Those taxes and the many hardships of war proved extreme, and they brought with them alarming tumults as the states mobilized for war. Indeed, the fierce battles surrounding Congress’s efforts to levy taxes and pay debts weakened the confederation and encouraged the creation of a new constitution. Yet those conflicts did not imply an abandonment of the principles that inspired independence. Even a moderate like Robert Morris accepted that “revolutions such as ours cannot be effected without violence,” and he argued that best way for government to address popular anger was through sound financial management.98 Like his fellow revolutionaries, Morris believed that the future of the United States depended on a government that could both tax its people and guarantee their happiness.

Conclusion Republican Empire

Two years after the United States declared its independence, in an oration that Benjamin Rush described as breathing “a spirit of freedom which cannot be counterfeited,” a South Carolina doctor named David Ramsay laid out his vision for America and its revolution. The United States’ new government was in “every way preferable to the royal one we have lately renounced,” Ramsay told his fellow Charlestonians. It was a republic whose measures were “determined by a majority of votes, [and] arguments enforced by the art of persuasion.” Like all good commonwealths, it enshrined both equality and meritocracy. And because Americans enjoyed assemblies based on equal representation, they would avoid the anarchy and disorder that had so plagued the republics of the ancient world. Indeed, America’s new constitutions promised to protect “life, liberty, and property, equally.” They would enable “the poorest school-boy [to] prosecute his studies” with the hope that he might, “by his improved abilities, direct the determinations of public bodies, on subjects of the most stupendous consequence.” Republican government, he declared, promised not only uncommon freedom but also greater prosperity, happiness, and knowledge than the world had ever known.1 And yet, as Ramsay reminded his audience, Americans had created not simply a republic but an imperial republic. America’s union endowed the new nation with the strength of a large state and the liberalism of a small one. He imagined a government that encouraged the public’s welfare by selling land, promoting manufactures, and funding a continental university. Within this 243

244 c o n c l u s i o n

29. America Triumphant and Britannia in Distress, 1782. Even as they struggled to create a working economy and system of government, American revolutionaries continued to believe that their independence from Britain promised prosperity for themselves and poverty for their former colonial masters. (Courtesy of the Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division)

new confederacy, the weight of each member would be represented in Congress and each state would compete to “produce the most accomplished statesmen.” That spirit of emulation extended to the states themselves, each striving to create the freest government in the hope of attracting as many inhabitants as possible. Indeed, Ramsay promised that as soon as the suffering peasants of Europe learned of the quality of America’s government and the cheapness of its soil, they would emigrate in droves. Like Corinthian steel, the strongest of the ancient alloys, the new American empire would be forged “of the different nations of the old world.” That republic would not only fill the continent with people, fields, and cities, it would “rise superior to all that have gone before it, and extend human happiness to its utmost possible limits.”2

c onclusion

245

Ramsay—like so many other American revolutionaries—took radical Whig ideas about empire to their logical conclusion. He imagined a powerful and growing confederacy that enshrined equality as a cardinal value, a republican empire. This radical Whig imperium was undoubtedly expansionist— even bigoted—but it was also based on a far more democratic conception of what the common good might mean than the empire proposed by authoritarian reformers.3 It insisted on a confederacy of equal citizens, whose prosperity was sustained rather than smothered by government. Freedom meant more than whether the government could compel colonists to pay taxes; it meant paying taxes for a government that promoted the well-being of its citizens, whether they lived in colonies or not. Radical Whigs’ opposition to the duties and revenues demanded by authoritarian reformers had always been based on the belief that such taxes would spell the end of an empire of reciprocity, improvement, and expansion. They were adamant that the legitimacy of government depended, not only on constitutional arrangements that protected the people from the powerful and corrupt, but also upon laws and institutions that fostered society’s improvement. Indeed, when America’s revolutionary generation sought to improve upon the Articles of Confederation, they made it clear that their new government’s taxes would provide for “the general welfare of the United States.” A small but substantial minority in Britain agreed that Americans had squared the circle of politics. In his Memorial, Most Humbly Addressed to the Sovereigns of Europe, Thomas Pownall, who had served as Massachusetts’s royal governor twenty years earlier, announced that the new United States was growing “into an independent, organized being, a great and powerful empire.” And he insisted that this had implications, not just for Britain and its former colonies, but for the entire world: a “poor man’s country” in which “the wisdom and not the man is attended to” offered a stunning rebuke of the violence and exploitation of the old world. American independence left Europe’s leaders with no choice but to accept that empires based on colonies and trade monopolies were unsustainable. They ought to reform their societies along American lines, and “like the police of China, give force and exertion to their own internal powers of production, . . . cultivate their waste lands, and improve their agriculture, and in due turn, given every encouragement to manufacture.” Convinced that Pownall’s vision of government accorded with his own, John Adams sent a copy of the Memorial to Congress. Indeed, Pownall was so committed to the view that Europe’s future lay in

246 c o n c l u s i o n

America that he sought to move to the United States.4 Richard Price agreed with the former Massachusetts governor, declaring that the American Revolution would likely “prove the most important step in the progressive course of human improvement” since the invention of Christianity. It promised to unshackle civilization from “superstition and tyranny” by demonstrating that “the members of a civil community are confederates not subjects, and their rulers, servants not masters.”5 Ironically, the future of prosperity and progress that radical Whigs foresaw for the United States was that once offered by the British Empire. But for Price and Pownall, Franklin and Adams, Britain’s empire of liberty no longer deserved its name. Price was right that colonists confronted a government led by men who insisted that well-being could only be achieved through austerity, hierarchy, and a paternalistic state. Those men, like so many conservatives throughout British history, cloaked their illiberalism in robes of moderation. And yet, authoritarian reformers were hardly villains. Ultimately, they were committed to “peace, order, and good government,” a view that led many of them to condemn slavery as antithetical to British liberty.6 Indeed, both George III and George Grenville saw themselves as patriots. Having faced the violence of crowds and the insubordination of colonists, they had an understandable fear that the economic and social changes transforming their empire would make government impossible. And they were right that colonists’ experiment with republicanism would prove excruciatingly difficult. Committing themselves to strong state institutions, authoritarian reformers led their country into an age of unprecedented industrial and imperial expansion. By 1830, a reinvigorated British Empire circled the globe and dominated world trade, including trade with the United States.7 That achievement proved radicals like Pownall and Price wrong. Colonial domination would continue to bring prosperity and power to those lucky enough to rule. As much as authoritarian reformers indicted their opponents for unweaving society’s fabric, they shared their conviction that America’s war for independence was a struggle between rival ambitions for the future. Indeed, those American and British radical Whigs who negotiated the treaty that secured American independence believed that it might be possible to resurrect the British Empire as a federation of equals. Benjamin Vaughn told Lord Shelburne, who became prime minister in July 1782, that if he could “beseech” his country “it should be to attempt a union with America, while there is yet cord enough to make a knot.” Even Benjamin Franklin, peace

c onclusion

247

30. Thomas Colley, The Reconciliation Between Britania and Her Daughter America, 1782. Many critics of authoritarian reform believed that the fall of the North administration would allow for the reunion of Britain and the colonies, preventing them from falling under the influence of European rivals. (Courtesy of the Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division)

commissioner Richard Oswald observed, thought that in time “England would not only have a beneficial intercourse with the colonies, but at last it might end in a federal union between them.”8 Those dreams proved fleeting, a casualty of authoritarian reform in Britain and republicanism in America. But they serve as a reminder that the revolution was less a triumph of American political values than a victory for radical Whig ideas in America. That vision of politics defined the new republic. As Price recognized, America’s revolution against empire was a revolution against domination. But domination was about far more than power; it was about denying people the fruits of their labor. And for that reason, radicals on both sides of the Atlantic contended for a more equal society and a more perfect union. Drawing on those political values, millions of European immigrants became citizens with the power to choose their leaders and shape their politics while many state legislatures gradually curtailed slavery and encouraged economic development.9 But the reality of American empire proved far more equivocal. Despite Ramsay’s encomium, the future of the United States was

248 c o n c l u s i o n

marked by growing inequality and by laws that denied many their dignity and their freedom. Independence created a state strong enough to conquer a continent and robust enough to keep millions in bondage. To be sure, many American radicals abhorred slavery and fought to curtail or eliminate it. Others, though, were willing to tolerate a “peculiar institution” as the price of nationhood; still others embraced slavery and promoted its expansion. The revolution’s ambiguous legacy reflected both its high ideals of egalitarian resistance as well as the cruel logic of contempt and bigotry. It was shaped less by a single aspiration for America than by a fierce debate over the relationship between freedom and equality, inclusion and exclusion.10 Those struggles continue to inscribe both great beauty and great ugliness upon the landscape of American history. Yet for all of its caveats and contradictions, the revolutionary faith that inequality weakens society and that authoritarianism corrodes political legitimacy offers a road map for the future. It demands that we recommit ourselves to a government that promotes the well-being of all its people.

Abbreviations AHR APS BL Bod. BRBML CKS CO Cobbett

CUL Eg. EHR GGL HEH HJ HL HoC HSP JCC

LDC LPCC

American Historical Review American Philosophical Society Library, Philadelphia British Library Bodleian Library, University of Oxford Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University Centre for Kentish Studies, Maidstone, United Kingdom Colonial Office The Parliamentary History of England from the Earliest Period to the Year 1803, ed. William Cobbett, 36 vols. (London, 1806–1820) Manuscripts and Special Collections, Cambridge University Library Egerton English Historical Review Stowe General Volumes, George Grenville Letterbook Henry E. Huntington Library, San Marino, Calif. Historical Journal Houghton Library, Harvard University House of Commons Historical Society of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia Journals of the Continental Congress, 1774–1789, ed. Division of Manuscripts, Library of Congress, 34 vols. (Washington, D.C., 1904–1937) Letters of Delegates to Congress, 1774–1789, ed. Paul H. Smith et al., 26 vols. (Washington, D.C., 1976–2000) Letters and Papers of Cadwallader Colden, 9 vols. (New York, 1918–1937)

249

250 a b b r e v i at i o n s LWL NAUK NLS N.Y. Docs.

PBF PDBPRNA

PSWJ Rubenstein SA SRO Townshend Papers UNMSC VG VHS WA WCRO WLCL WMQ WWM YMA

Lewis Walpole Library, Yale University National Archives of the United Kingdom, Kew National Library of Scotland, Edinburgh Documents Relative to the Colonial History of the State of New York, ed. Edmund Bailey O’Callaghan, 15 vols. (Albany, N.Y., 1853–1887) The Papers of Benjamin Franklin, ed. Leonard Woods Labaree et al., 41 vols. (New Haven, Conn., 1959–) Proceedings and Debates of the British Parliaments Respecting North America, ed. Richard C. Simmons and P. D. G. Thomas, 6 vols. (Millwood, N.Y., 1982–1987) The Papers of Sir William Johnson, ed. James Sullivan et al., 14 vols. (Albany, N.Y., 1921–1965) David M. Rubenstein Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Duke University Sheffield Archive, Sheffield, United Kingdom Staffordshire Record Office, Stafford, United Kingdom Townshend Papers at Dalkeith House Relating to America (Microfilm) Manuscripts and Special Collections, University of Nottingham Virginia Gazette Virginia Historical Society, Richmond, Va. Woburn Abbey, Bedfordshire, United Kingdom Warwickshire County Record Office, Warwick, United Kingdom William L. Clements Library, University of Michigan William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd ser. William Wentworth Muniments Manuscripts and Archives, Yale University Library

Notes Introduction 1. Benjamin Franklin to Lord Howe, July 20, 1776, and Franklin to the Marquis de Lafayette, May 14, 1781, in PBF, 22:520–521, 35:65. 2. Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, ed. R. H. Campbell and A. S. Skinner (Indianapolis, 1981), 947. 3. Thomas Pownall, A Memorial, Most Humbly Addressed to the Sovereigns of Europe, on the Present State of Affairs, Between the Old and New World, 2nd ed. (London, 1780), 6, 42–44, 80–82, 97–98. For Pownall’s criticisms of Smith, see A Letter from Governor Pownall to Adam Smith, L.L.D.F.R.S., Being an Examination of Several Points of Doctrine, Laid Down in His “Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations” (London, 1776). Thomas Paine made a similar point in Common Sense: Addressed to the Inhabitants of America, 2nd ed. (Philadelphia, 1776), 24, 32. 4. “Réflexions rédigés à l’occasion d’un Mémoire remis par Vergennes au Roi sur la Manière dont la France et l’Espagne doivent envisager les suites de la querelle entre Grande-Bretagne et ses Colonies,” in Oeuvres de Turgot et document le concernant, ed. Gustave Schelle, 5 vols. (Paris, 1923), 5:391, 398. Unless otherwise indicated, all translations are mine. 5. Pownall, Memorial, 6. As Frederick Cooper observes, there is an increasing awareness among scholars that there was no inevitable historical transition from “empire to nation”; Frederick Cooper, “Empire Multiplied: A Review Essay,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 46, no. 2 (Apr. 2004): 247–272. 6. On the illiberalism, authoritarianism, and rural paternalism of Britain’s empire during the first three decades of the nineteenth century, see C. A. Bayly, Imperial Meridian: The British Empire and the World, 1780–1830 (London, 1989). For the way in which civil disobedience moderated the authoritarian tendencies of that empire, see Miles Taylor, “The 1848 Revolutions and the British

251

252 n o t e s t o pa g e s 3 – 4 Empire,” Past and Present 166 (Feb. 2000): 146–160. On revenue extraction in late eighteenth-century India, see C. A. Bayly, Indian Society and the Making of the British Empire (Cambridge, 1988); and P. J. Marshall, Bengal: The British Bridgehead; Eastern India, 1740–1828 (Cambridge, 1987). For the case of Canada, in which relatively modest taxation coexisted with a sharply circumscribed civil society, see Alan Taylor, “The Late Loyalists Northern Reflections of the Early American Republic,” Journal of the Early Republic 27, no. 1 (Spring 2007): 1–34. On the extent to which the Canadian economy remained dominated by Britain into the twentieth century, see Thomas Piketty, Capital in the Twenty-First Century, trans. Arthur Goldhammer (Cambridge, Mass., 2014), 157–158. 7. Grover Clark, The Balance Sheet of Imperialism (New York, 1936), 23–24, 34–35; and Bayly, Indian Society, 116. 8. Piketty, Capital, 121. 9. Cooper, “Empire Multiplied,” 259; and Michael Doyle, Empires (Ithaca, N.Y., 1986), 265. On the political economy of the British Empire generally, see P. J. Cain and A. G. Hopkins, British Imperialism, 1688–2000, 2nd ed. (London, 2001). On the diverse forms of British imperial rule and its liberalization in Britain’s settler colonies after 1850, see John Darwin, Unfinished Empire: The Global Expansion of Britain (New York, 2012), 189–222. For a survey of the social and economic consequences of British dominance over imperial peripheries in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, see Philippa Levine, The British Empire: Sunrise to Sunset, 2nd ed. (London, 2013). 10. On Americans’ attachment to monarchy, see Brendan McConville, The King’s Three Faces: The Rise and Fall of Royal America, 1688–1776 (Chapel Hill, N.C., 2006), esp. 22; and Eric Nelson, The Royalist Revolution: Monarchy and the American Founding (Cambridge, Mass., 2014). Although in some respects a useful corrective, both of these accounts grossly overstate Americans’ attachment to absolutism while being unable to explain why mutual attachment to monarchy failed to preserve imperial unity. For a useful critique of this interpretation, see Craig Yirush, Settlers, Liberty, and Empire: The Roots of Early American Political Theory, 1675–1775 (Cambridge, 2011), 22. 11. On Americans’ embrace of empire, see Peter Onuf, Jefferson’s Empire: The Language of American Nationhood (Charlottesville, Va., 2000). Because the United States was a republic of theoretically equal citizens, many social scientists argue that it was not an empire, which they define as “effective control, whether formal or informal of a subordinated society by an imperial society.”

n o t e s t o pa g e 4

12. 13. 14.

15.

16.

253

Doyle, Empires, 30. See also Charles Maier, Among Empires: American Ascendancy and Its Predecessors (Cambridge, Mass., 2006), 24–25. However, because subordination and domination were undoubtedly part of its eighteenth- and nineteenth-century history, many historians argue that it was. See William Appleman Williams, The Roots of Modern American Empire: A Study of the Growth and Shaping of Social Consciousness in a Marketplace Society (New York, 1969); Walter Nugent, Habits of Empire: A History of American Expansion (New York, 2008); and Jay Sexton, The Monroe Doctrine: Empire and Nation in Nineteenth-Century America (New York, 2011). Smith, Wealth of Nations, 623. On the role of equality and U.S. expansion, see Onuf, Jefferson’s Empire, 53–79. Many scholars argue that the American Revolution helped consolidate the power of slave owners. See Robin Einhorn, American Taxation, American Slavery (Chicago, 2006); Adam Rothman, Slave Country: American Expansion and the Origins of the Deep South (Cambridge, Mass., 2005); Christopher Tomlins, Freedom Bound: Law, Labor, and Civic Identity in Colonizing English America, 1580–1865 (Cambridge, 2010), esp. 401–508; and George William Van Cleve, A Slaveholders’ Union: Slavery, Politics, and the Constitution in the Early American Republic (Chicago, 2010). For the consequences of American empire for Native Americans, see Anne F. Hyde, Empires, Nations, and Families: A New History of the North American West, 1800–1860 (Lawrence, Kans., 2011); Anthony Wallace, The Long, Bitter Trail: Andrew Jackson and the Indians (New York, 1993); and Richard White, The Middle Ground: Indians, Empire, and Republics in the Great Lakes Region, 1650–1815 (Cambridge, 1991), esp. 413–523. Piketty, Capital, 158–163. On the anticolonial imperialism of the nineteenthcentury United States, see Sexton, Monroe Doctrine, 6. For the checkered legacy of inequality and the growth of the United States, see Walter LaFeber, “Foreign Policies of A New Nation: Franklin, Madison, and the ‘Dream of a New Land to Fulfill with People in Self-Control,’ 1750–1804,” in From Colony to Empire: Essays in the History of American Foreign Relations, ed. William Appleman Williams (New York, 1972), 10–37; Aziz Rana, The Two Faces of American Freedom (Cambridge, Mass., 2010); and Robert J. Steinfeld, “Property and Suffrage in the Early American Republic,” Stanford Law Review 41, no. 2 (Jan. 1989): 335–376. On the competing impulses of union, nationalism, and imperialism in the nineteenth-century United States, see David C. Hendrickson, Union, Nation,

254 n o t e s t o pa g e 4 or Empire: The American Debate over International Relations, 1789–1941 (Lawrence, Kans., 2009). On the difficult and often hostile relationship between the United States and Britain, see Samuel W. Haynes, Unfinished Revolution: The Early American Republic in a British World (Charlottesville, Va., 2010). 17. See T. H. Breen, “An Empire of Goods: The Anglicization of Colonial America, 1690–1776,” Journal of British Studies 25, no. 4 (1986): 467–499; T. H. Breen, Marketplace of Revolution: How Consumer Politics Shaped American Independence (New York, 2004); and McConville, King’s Three Faces. See also John Murrin, “Anglicizing an American Colony: The Transformation of Provincial Massachusetts” (Ph.D. diss., Yale University, 1966); and John Murrin, “The Myths of Colonial Democracy and Royal Decline in Eighteenth-Century America: A Review Essay,” Cithara 5, no. 1 (Nov. 1965): 52–69. 18. See John Brewer, Party Ideology and Popular Politics at the Accession of George III (Cambridge, 1976); Joyce Chaplin, An Anxious Pursuit: Agricultural Innovation and Modernity in the Lower South, 1730–1815 (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1993); Istvan Hont, Jealousy of Trade: International Competition and the Nation-State in Historical Perspective (Cambridge, Mass., 2005); Alan Houston, Benjamin Franklin and the Politics of Improvement (New Haven, Conn., 2008); Peter Lake and Steve Pincus, “Rethinking the Public Sphere in Early Modern England,” Journal of British Studies 45 (Apr. 2006): 270–292; Ned Landsman, From Colonials to Provincials: American Thought and Culture, 1680–1760 (Ithaca, N.Y., 1997); Henry F. May, The Enlightenment in America (New York, 1976); Sophus Reinert, Translating Empire: Emulation and the Origins of Political Economy (Cambridge, Mass., 2011); John Robertson, The Case for the Enlightenment: Scotland and Naples, 1680–1760 (Cambridge, 2005); Philip J. Stern and Carl Wennerlind, eds., Mercantilism Reimagined: Political Economy in Early Modern Britain and Its Empire (New York, 2014); Michael Warner, Letters of the Republic: Publication and the Public Sphere in Eighteenth-Century America (Cambridge, Mass., 1990); and Kathleen Wilson, The Sense of the People: Politics, Culture and Imperialism in England, 1715–1785 (Cambridge, 1995). 19. For the British experience, see John Brewer, Sinews of Power: War, Money, and the English State, 1688–1783 (New York, 1988); Stephen Conway, War, State, and Society in Mid-Eighteenth-Century Britain and Ireland (Oxford, 2006); and Nancy Koehn, The Power of Commerce: Economy and Governance in the First British Empire (Ithaca, N.Y., 1994). For the American side, see Fred

n o t e s t o pa g e s 4 – 6

20. 21.

22.

23.

24.

25. 26.

27.

255

Anderson, Crucible of War: The Seven Years’ War and the Fate of Empire in British North America, 1754–1766 (New York, 2000); John Shy, Toward Lexington: The Role of the British Army in the Coming of the American Revolution (Princeton, N.J., 1965); and Steven Saunders Webb, Marlborough’s America (New Haven, Conn., 2013). Between 1700 and 1780, British military spending more than quintupled. B. R. Mitchell, British Historical Statistics (Cambridge, 1988), 578–580. On ancient models of empire and the Enlightenment, see Anthony Pagden, Lords of All the World: Ideologies of Empire in Spain, Britain, and France, c. 1500–c. 1800 (New Haven, Conn., 1998); Robertson, Case for the Enlightenment; and Caroline Winterer, “Model Empire, Lost City: Ancient Carthage and the Science of Politics in Revolutionary America,” WMQ 68, no. 1 (Jan. 2010): 3–30. Richard Price, “Letter on the Nature of Our Funds, Their Rise, Their Progress, Their Present Influence and Their Future Consequences,” after 1775, WLCL, Shelburne Papers, vol. 135. See Linda Colley, “Eighteenth-Century English Radicalism Before Wilkes, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society 31 (1981): 1–19; Bob Harris, Politics and the Nation: Britain in the Mid-Eighteenth Century (Oxford, 2002), 67–101; and Nicholas Rogers, Whigs and Cities: Popular Politics in the Age of Walpole and Pitt (Oxford, 1989), 46–86, 304–343. As John Brewer observes, “party was never a specific designation, but a broad generic term used variously to describe whigs and tories, oppositions, and proprietary parties such as the Bedford or Rockingham Whigs.” See Brewer, Party Ideology, 40, 43. Ibid., 55–76. On the Britain’s eighteenth-century fiscal-military state, see William J. Ashworth, Customs and Excise: Trade, Production, and Consumption in England, 1640–1845 (Oxford, 2003); Brewer, Sinews of Power; Conway, War, State, and Society; Joanna Innes, “The Domestic Face of the Fiscal-Military State: Government and Society in Eighteenth-Century Britain,” in Inferior Politics: Social Problems and Social Policies in Eighteenth-Century Britain (Oxford, 2009), 48–77; and Patrick O’Brien, “Fiscal Exceptionalism: Great Britain and Its European Rivals from Triumph at Trafalgar and Waterloo,” in The Political Economy of British Historical Experience, 1688–1914, ed. Donald Winch and Patrick K. O’Brien (Oxford, 2002), 245–266. Historians such as James Vaughn and Sarah Kinkel have usefully drawn attention to those conservative who advocated strengthening Britain’s imperial

256 n o t e s t o pa g e s 6 – 1 1

28.

29.

30.

31.

32. 33.

34. 35.

state and describe them, respectively, as “neo-Tories” and “authoritarian Whigs.” I use the term authoritarian reformer instead because the party labels “Whig” and “Tory” were increasingly ambiguous over the course of the eighteenth century and because many people with quite similar views about empire and government, such as George Grenville and Alexander Wedderburn, considered themselves defenders of Whig government while others, such as Samuel Johnson and the Earl of Bute, considered themselves Tories. Although recent debates over austerity have turned on the soundness of deficit spending to stimulate the economy, the concept of limiting consumption in order to promote moral and economic growth has a long history with roots in antiquity. See Florian Schui, Austerity: The Great Failure (New Haven, Conn., 2014). Caroline Robbins, The Eighteenth-Century Commonwealthman (Cambridge, Mass., 1959), 7; and Gordon S. Wood, The Creation of the American Republic (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1969), 14–15. In making this observation, I follow the pioneering work of James Vaughn. See “The Politics of Empire: Metropolitan Socio-Political Development and the Imperial Transformation of the British East India Company, 1675–1775,” (Ph.D. diss., University of Chicago, 2009). Michael Freeden, Ideology: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford, 2003), 2–3. Freeden’s definition follows his more sustained theoretical discussion in Ideologies and Political Theory: A Conceptual Approach (Oxford, 1996), esp. 19–23. For recent historiographical discussions of ideology and its role in political life, see Richard Huzzey, Freedom Burning: Anti-Slavery and Empire in Victorian Britain (Ithaca, N.Y., 2012), chap. 1; Adam Tooze, The Wages of Destruction: The Making and Breaking of the Nazi Economy (New York, 2006), esp. 1–36; and Frank Trentmann, Free Trade Nation: Commerce, Consumption, and Civil Society in Modern Britain (Oxford, 2008), esp. 13–23. One important example of this is the way in which slavery informed the politics of taxation. See Einhorn, American Taxation. Charles M. Andrews, The Colonial Background of the American Revolution (New Haven, Conn., 1924), 184. See also I. R. Christie, Crisis of Empire: Great Britain and the American Colonies, 1754–1783 (New York, 1966), 23. Anderson, Crucible, 746. Henry Lawrence Gipson, “The American Revolution as an Aftermath of the Great War for the Empire, 1754–1763,” Political Science Quarterly 65, no. 1 (Mar. 1950): 86–104, esp. 103. For a convincing critique of this view, see

n o t e s t o pa g e s 1 1 – 1 2

36.

37.

38.

39.

257

John Murrin, “The French and Indian War, the American Revolution, and the Counterfactual Hypothesis: Reflections on Henry Lawrence Gipson and John Shy,” Reviews in American History 1, no. 3 (Sept. 1973): 307–318. See Carl Becker, The History of Political Parties in the Province of New York, 1760–1776 (Madison, Wis., 1969); Edward Countryman, A People in Revolution: The American Revolution and Political Society in New York, 1760–1790 (Baltimore, 1981); Woody Holton, Forced Founders: Indians, Debtors, Slaves, and the Making of the American Revolution (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1999); Michael McDonnell, The Politics of War: Race, Class; Conflict in Revolutionary Virginia (Chapel Hill, N.C., 2007); Gary Nash, The Urban Crucible: The Northern Seaports and the Origins of the American Revolution, abridged ed. (Cambridge, Mass., 1986); Arthur M. Schlesinger, The Colonial Merchants and the American Revolution, 1763–1776 (New York, 1918). Marc Egnal and Joseph Ernst, “An Economic Interpretation of the American Revolution,” WMQ 29, no. 1 (Jan. 1972): 32. See also Egnal, A Mighty Empire: The Origins of the American Revolution (Ithaca, N.Y., 1988). Jack P. Greene, “Identity and Independence,” in A Companion to the American Revolution, ed. Jack P. Greene and J. R. Pole (Oxford, 2000), 233. For Greene ’s reconstruction of American constitutional arguments against British taxation, see Peripheries and Center: Constitutional Development in the Extended Politics of the British Empire and the United States, 1607–1788 (Athens, Ga., 1986); and The Constitutional Origins of the American Revolution (Cambridge, 2010). For a similar version of this story, one stressing the rights of English settlers in the colonies, see Yirush, Settlers, Liberty and Empire, 16–17. For a nuanced reconstruction of the constitutional arguments leading to American independence, see John Philip Reid, Constitutional History of the American Revolution, 4 vols. (Madison, Wis., 1986–1993). Bernard Bailyn, Ideological Origins of the American Revolution, enlarged ed. (Cambridge, Mass., 1992), 102. See also Bernard Bailyn, The Origins of American Politics (New York, 1968). In identifying an English radical Whig tradition, Bailyn followed in the footsteps of Robbins, Eighteenth-Century Commonwealthman. See also Pauline Maier, From Resistance to Revolution: Colonial Radicals and the Development of American Opposition to Britain, 1765– 1776 (New York, 1972). For a version of this account, stressing classical republicanism and civic humanism, see Wood, Creation of the American Republic, 3–45; and Gordon S. Wood, The Radicalism of the American Revolution (New York, 1991), 95–145. On civic humanism in the British Atlantic, see

258 n o t e s t o pa g e s 1 2 – 1 3

40.

41. 42.

43.

J. G. A. Pocock, The Machiavellian Moment: Florentine Political Thought and the Atlantic Republican Tradition (Princeton, N.J., 1975). See Alvin Rabushka, Taxation in Colonial America (Princeton, N.J., 2008); and John J. McCusker, “Annual Taxes Paid in Massachusetts and Virginia per Free Person, 1765–1796,” in Historical Statistics of the United States, Millennial Edition, ed. Susan B. Carter et al., 5 vols. (Cambridge, 2006), 5:709. The extent to which British imperial policy burdened the colonies was a subject of considerable discussion during the 1960s and 1970s. Unfortunately, this focused on the Navigation Acts, which only affected about 2 percent of colonial income and were never a major source of colonial grievances. For the debate, see Roger L. Ransom, “British Policy and Colonial Growth: Some Implications of the Burden from the Navigation Acts,” Journal of Economic History 28, no. 3 (Sept. 1968): 434; Oliver M. Dickerson, The Navigation Acts and the American Revolution (Philadelphia, 1951), 201; Robert Paul Thomas, “British Imperial Policy and the Economic Interpretation of the American Revolution,” Journal of Economic History 28, no. 3 (Sept. 1968): 436–440; Joseph B. Reid, “Economic Burden: Spark to the American Revolution?” Journal of Economic History 38, no. 1 (Mar. 1978): 81–100; and Joseph B. Reid, “On Navigating the Navigation Acts with Peter D. McClelland: Comment,” American Economic Review 60, no. 5 (Dec. 1970): 949–955. For a discussion of Britain’s North American colonies as a relatively low-tax zone, see Rabushka, Taxation in Colonial America. McCusker, “Imperial Taxes Collected Under Selected British Revenue Laws: 1765–1774,” in Historical Statistics, 5:707. Barington Rosier, “The Construction Costs of Eighteenth-Century Warships,” Mariner’s Mirror 96, no. 2 (May 2010): 161–172, esp. 163; Hebert S. Klein, The American Finances of the Spanish Empire: Royal Income and Expenditures in Colonial Mexico, Peru, and Bolivia, 1680–1809 (Albuquerque, N.M., 1998), 75; and John J. McCusker, Money and Exchange in Europe and America, 1600–1775: A Handbook (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1978), 10. Thank you to Sarah Kinkel for introducing me to Rosier’s work. For the relatively high economic toll of Spanish rule in the Americas, see Kenneth J. Andrien, The Kingdom of Quito, 1690–1830: The State and Regional Development (Cambridge, 1995), 165–221; and John Elliot, Empires of the Atlantic World: Britain and Spain in the Atlantic World, 1492–1830 (New Haven, Conn., 2006), esp. 325–368. For a recent effort to link colonial economic concerns to the origins of American independence, see Staughton Lynd and David Walstreicher, “Free

n o t e s t o pa g e s 1 3 – 1 4

44.

45.

46.

47. 48.

259

Trade, Sovereignty, and Slavery: Toward an Economic Interpretation of American Independence,” WMQ 68, no. 4 (Oct. 2011): 597–630. See Tim Hitchcock, Down and Out in Eighteenth-Century London (London, 2004); Frank O’Gorman, The Long Eighteenth Century: British Political and Social History, 1688–1832 (London, 1997); Robert B. Shoemaker, The London Mob: Violence and Disorder in Eighteenth-Century England (London, 2004); E. P. Thomson, Customs in Common: Studies in Traditional Popular Culture (New York, 1993); E. P. Thompson, Whigs and Hunters: The Origins of the Black Act (London, 1975); and Keith Wrightson, Earthly Necessities: Economic Lives in Early Modern Britain (New Haven, Conn., 2000), esp. chaps. 12–14. See Ashworth, Customs and Excise; P. G. M. Dickson, The Financial Revolution in England: A Study of the Development of Public Credit, 1688–1756 (London, 1967); and David Hancock, Citizens of the World: London Merchants and the Integration of the British Atlantic Community, 1735–1785 (Cambridge, 1995), 221–239. See Mark Knights, Representation and Misrepresentation in Later Stuart Britain: Partisanship and Political Culture (Oxford, 2005); and J. H. Plumb, “The Growth of the Electorate in England from 1600 to 1715,” Past and Present 45 (Nov. 1969): 90–116. William Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England, vol. 1 (Oxford, 1765), is the classic statement of this position. Patrick O’Brien points to the growing importance of excise taxation in raising revenue in eighteenth-century revenue and argues that these impositions “framed in order to minimize incidence on the poor.” “The Political Economy of British Taxation, 1660–1815,” Economic History Review, n.s. 41, no. 1 (Feb. 1988): 27. Although most British political elites sought to shield Britain’s poorest citizens from excessive taxation, O’Brien ignores the consequences of both excise and income taxation on the middle and working classes. Taxes on salt, soap, and beer were regressive. Furthermore, under the 1806 income tax act, the average clerk (income £150.44) paid the same income tax rate, 10 percent, as the Duke of Richmond (estimated income £28,550). See Edwin Robert Anderson Seligman, The Income Tax: A Study of the History, Theory, and Practice of Income Taxation at Home and Abroad (London, 1914), 93–103; Mitchell, British Historical Statistics, 153; and William C. Lowe, “Lennox, Charles, third duke of Richmond, third duke of Lennox, and duke of Aubigny in the French nobility (1735–1806),” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford, 2004), www.oxforddnb.com/vie w/ article/16451 (accessed July 10, 2014).

260 n o t e s t o pa g e 1 4 49. One notable exception is James J. Sack, From Jacobite to Conservative: Reaction and Orthodoxy in Britain, c. 1760–1832 (Cambridge, 1993). 50. Lewis Namier, The Structure of Politics at the Accession of George III, 2nd ed. (London, 1957), 2. See also Lewis Namier, England in the Age of the American Revolution (London, 1930). For a similar account of the stability and conservatism of British political culture, albeit one attentive to ideology, see J. C. D. Clark, English Society, 1688–1832 (Cambridge, 1985). On Namier’s interest in the origins of American independence, see Linda Colley, Lewis Namier (London, 1989), 12, 14, 49–50. 51. Ian Christie lays the blame for Britain’s loss of the American colonies on the “misjudgment and inadequacy of British politicians” while Franklin B. Wickwire describes politicians who “had little time to study administration.” Christie, Crisis of Empire, 69; and Franklin B. Wickwire, British Subministers and Colonial America, 1763–1783 (Princeton, N.J., 1966), 6. For a similar account of British politicians’ subordinating sound colonial policy to their political machinations, see James Henretta, Salutary Neglect: Colonial Administration Under the Duke of Newcastle (Princeton, N.J., 1972). 52. James Bradley, “The British Public and the American Revolution: Ideology, Interest and Opinion,” in Britain and the American Revolution, ed. H. T. Dickinson (London, 1998), 124–154; James Bradley, Popular Politics and the American Revolution in England: Petitions, the Crown, and Public Opinion (Macon, Ga., 1986); Brewer, Party Ideology; Linda Colley, “Radical Patriotism in Eighteenth-Century England,” in Patriotism: The Making and Unmaking of British National Identity, vol. 1, ed. Raphael Samuel (London, 1989), 176; John Sainsbury, Disaffected Patriots: London Supporters of Revolutionary America, 1769–1782 (Kingston and Montreal, 1987); and Wilson, Sense of the People. 53. Eliga Gould, The Persistence of Empire: British Political Culture in the Age of the American Revolution (Chapel Hill, N.C., 2000), 144. Frank O’Gorman likewise argues that opposition to authoritarian imperial policy in Parliament was “neither coherent nor effective nor popular.” See Frank O’Gorman, “Parliamentary Opposition to the Government’s American Policy, 1760– 1782,” in Britain and the American Revolution, ed. H. T. Dickinson (London, 1998), 97. For a similar view, see also H. T. Dickinson, “Britain’s Imperial Sovereignty: The Ideological Case Against the American Colonists,” in Britain and the American Revolution, 96; Paul Langford, “Old Whigs, Old Tories, and the American Revolution,” Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 8, no. 2 (1980): 106–130; P. J. Marshall, The Making and Unmaking of

n o t e s t o pa g e s 1 4 – 2 0

54.

55. 56.

57.

58.

59.

60.

261

Empires: Britain, India, and America, c. 1750–1783 (Oxford, 2005), esp. 6–9; P. D. G. Thomas, The Townshend Duties Crisis: The Second Phase of the American Revolution, 1767–1773 (Oxford, 1987); P. D. G. Thomas, Tea Party to Independence: The Third Phase of the American Revolution, 1773–1776 (Oxford, 1991); and P. D. G. Thomas, “Charles Townshend and American Taxation in 1767,” EHR 83, no. 326 (Jan. 1768): 34. Marshall, for example, argues that following the war, “it seemed imperative that the colonies, Ireland, and the East India Company should be required to contribute something to the cost of defending a worldwide empire.” Making and Unmaking, 276. Linda Colley likewise asserts, “Since the post-war National Debt was so corpulent that it sucked in almost five-eighths of the government’s budget in interest payments, it was crystal clear to almost every member of both Houses of Parliament that the Thirteen Colonies must be made to contribute more to the cost of their own defense.” Britons: Forging the Nation, 1707–1837 (New Haven, Conn., 1992), 135–136. David Hume, “Of Public Credit,” in Essays and Treatises on Several Subjects, 3rd ed., vol. 4 (London, 1754), 117. See Jack P. Greene, “Metropolis and Colonies: Changing Patterns of Constitutional Conflict in the Early Modern British Empire, 1607–1763,” in Negotiated Authorities: Essays in Colonial Political and Constitutional History (Charlottesville, Va., 1994), 73; and Nancy Koehn, Power of Commerce, esp. 1–24. Two good indications of Britain’s relative fiscal health are the percentage of British spending dedicated to servicing debt and the interest rate on new, long-term debt. Britain’s interest rates were lower in 1763 (4 percent) than they were in 1748 (4.4 percent), and debt service payments as a percentage of government spending increased only slightly from 23.8 to 26.3 percent. Sidney Homer and Richard Sylla, A History of Interest Rates, 3rd ed. (New Brunswick, N.J., 1991), 156; and British Historical Statistics, 578–578. Andrews, Colonial Background, 181. For more recent examples of attempts to set the American Revolution in world history, see David Armitage, The Declaration of Independence: A Global History (Cambridge, Mass., 2007); Christopher Leslie Brown, Moral Capital: Foundations of British Abolitionism (Chapel Hill, N.C., 2006); and Marshall, Making and Unmaking. Hannah Arendt, for example, dismisses the American Revolution as “an event of little more than local importance.” On Revolution (New York, 1965), 56. On the politics of tax reform and the state in France, see Gail Bossenga, The Politics of Privilege: Old Regime and Revolution in Lille (Cambridge, 1991);

262 n o t e s t o pa g e 2 0 Thomas Kaiser and Dale Van Kley eds., From Deficit to Deluge: The Origins of the French Revolution (Stanford, Calif., 2010); Michael Kwass, Privilege and the Politics of Taxation: Liberté, Egalité, Fiscalité (Cambridge, 2000); Michael Kwass, Contraband: Louis Mandrin and the Making of a Global Underground (Cambridge, Mass., 2014), 320–322; Jean-Clément Martin, Violence et révolution: Essai sur la naisance d’un mythe national (Paris, 2006), 44; Stephen Miller, State and Society in Eighteenth Century France: A Study of Political Power and Social Revolution in Languedoc (Washington, D.C., 2008); and Alexis de Tocqueville, The Old Regime and the French Revolution, ed. François Furet and François Melonio, trans. Alan S. Kahan (Chicago, 1998). 61. On the Bourbon reforms and their destabilizing effects throughout Spanish America, see Jeremy Adelman, Sovereignty and Revolution in the Iberian Atlantic (Princeton, N.J., 2006), 13–55; Kenneth J. Andrien, “Economic Crisis, Taxes, and the Quito Insurrection of 1765,” Past and Present 129 (Nov. 1990): 104–131; Kenneth J. Andrien, “The Politics of Reform in Spain’s Atlantic Empire During the Late Bourbon Period: The Visita of José García de León y Pizarro in Quito,” Journal of Latin American Studies 41, no. 4 (Nov. 2009): 637–662; D. A. Brading, Miners and Merchants in Mexico (Cambridge, 1971); John Lynch, Bourbon Spain, 1700–1808 (Oxford, 1989), 329–374; Carlos Marichal, Bankruptcy of Empire: Mexican Silver and the Wars Between Spain, Britain and France, 1760–1810 (Cambridge, 2007); Gabriel Paquette, Enlightenment, Governance, and Reform in Spain and Its Empire, 1759–1808 (Basingstoke, 2008); Stanley H. Stein and Barbara J. Stein, Apogee of Empire: Spain and New Spain in the Age of Charles III, 1759–1789 (Baltimore, 2003); and Stanley Stein, “Bureaucracy and Business in the Spanish Empire, 1759– 1804: Failure of a Bourbon Reform in Mexico and Peru,” Hispanic American Historical Review 61, no. 1 (Feb. 1981): 2–28. For a suggestive discussion of the significant debate in Bourbon Spain about what imperial reforms the government ought to undertake, see John Fisher, “Soldiers, Society, and Politics in Spanish America, 1750–1821” Latin American Research Review 17, no. 1 (1981): 217–222. 62. See Taylor, “1848 Revolutions,” 146–160. 63. For this reading of the Enlightenment, see Hont, Jealousy of Trade. See also Richard Whatmore, Against War and Empire: Geneva, Britain, and France in the Eighteenth Century (New Haven, Conn., 2012); Robertson, Case for the Enlightenment; Paquette, Enlightenment, Governance, and Reform; and Michael Sonenscher, Before the Deluge: Public Debt, Inequality, and the Intellectual Origins of the French Revolution (Princeton, N.J., 2007).

n o t e s t o pa g e 21

263

64. George Grenville to William Knox, Aug. 16 [original dated Aug. 15], 1768, HEH, GGL, vol. 2. 65. John Bullion, “ ‘To Know This Is the True Essential Business of a King’: The Prince of Wales and the Study of Public Finance, 1755–1760,” Albion: A Quarterly Journal Concerned with British Studies 18, no. 3 (Autumn 1986): 429–454; and Richard Drayton, Nature’s Government: Science, Imperial Britain, and the Improvement of the World (New Haven, Conn., 2000), 42–43. 66. [Samuel Johnson], Taxation No Tyranny: An Answer to the Resolution of the American Congress 4th ed. (London, 1775); and [Adam Ferguson], Remarks on a Pamphlet Lately Published by Dr. Price, Intitled, Observations on the Nature of Civil Liberty, the Principles of Government, and the Justice and Policy of the War with America, &c. (London, 1776). 67. On rural paternalism, see Fredrik Albritton Jonsson, Enlightenment Frontier: The Scottish Highlands and the Origins of Environmentalism (New Haven, Conn., 2013), esp. 3–4; and Bayly, Imperial Meridian, esp. chaps. 6 and 7. 68. See Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson, Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty (New York, 2012); Douglas Allan, The Institutional Revolution: Measurement and the Economic Emergence of the Modern World (Chicago, 2011); Hernando DeSoto, The Mystery of Capital: Why Capitalism Triumphs in the West and Fails Everywhere Else (New York, 2000); Douglas North and Barry Weingast, “Constitutions and Commitment: The Evolution of Institutional Governing Public Choice in Seventeenth-Century England,” Journal of Economic History 49, no. 4 (Dec. 1989):803–832; Douglas North, Institutions, Institutional Change and Economic Performance (Cambridge, 1990); Barry R. Weingast, “The Economic Role of Political Institutions: Market-Preserving Federalism and Economic Development,” Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization 11, no. 1 (Apr. 1995): 1–31. 69. See Acemoglu and Robinson, Why Nations Fail, 182–212; North and Weingast, “Constitutions and Commitment,” 803–832; Douglass C. North, John Joseph Wallis, and Barry R. Weingast, Violence and Social Orders: A Conceptual Framework for Interpreting Recorded Human History (Cambridge, 2009), 213–219; and Weingast, “Economic Role of Political Institutions,” 6–8. 70. Two good examples of this are the excise and the victualing board, which encouraged the concentration of capital in larger firms. See Ashworth, Customs and Excise, 35–52; and N. A. M. Rodger, The Command of the Ocean: A Naval History of Britain, 1649–1815 (New York, 2004), 307. 71. Piketty, Capital, 121.

264 n o t e s t o pa g e 2 2 72. Acemoglu and Robinson are skeptical of the long-term prospects of Chinese economic growth. Why Nations Fail, 124–151. For a less pessimistic assessment of institutional reform without democratic reform, see Gabriella Montinola, Yingyi Qian, and Barry R. Weingast, “Federalism, Chinese Style: The Political Basis for Economic Success in China,” World Politics 48, no. 1 (Oct. 1995): 50–81. 73. On American independence and economic growth, see Gavin Wright, “The Role of Nationhood in the Economic Development of the USA,” in Economic Change and the Nation State in History, ed. Alice Teichova and Herbert Matis (Cambridge, 2003), 387–403. For a perceptive account of the relationship between settlement empire, self-government, and the persistent exclusion of marginalized groups throughout American history, see Rana, Two Faces. 74. For the view that equality in the revolution was primarily about social distinctions and deference, see Wood, Radicalism. For an important discussion of how mitigating social and economic inequality were at the heart of the American and French Revolutions, see Pierre Rosanvallon, The Society of Equals, trans. Arthur Goldhammer (Cambridge, Mass., 2013), esp. 47–52, 251. For an account of the relationship between the American Revolution and the breaking down of hereditary inequality, see Holly Brewer, “Entailing Aristocracy in Colonial Virginia: ‘Ancient Feudal Restraints’ and Revolutionary Reform,” WMQ 54, no. 2 (Apr. 1997): 307–346. On the American state ’s persistent charge to preserve the general welfare, see Michelle Dauber, The Sympathetic State: Disaster Relief and the Origins of the American Welfare State (Chicago, 2012); and William J. Novak, The People’s Welfare: Law and Regulation in Nineteenth-Century America (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1996). 75. See Sven Beckert, Empire of Cotton: A Global History (New York, 2014); Christine Desan, Coin, Currency, and the Coming of Capitalism (Oxford, 2014); Sheldon Garon, Beyond our Means: Why America Spends While the World Saves (Princeton, N.J., 2012); Louis Hyman, Debtor Nation: The History of America in Red Ink (Princeton, N.J., 2011); David A. Moss, When All Else Fails: Government as the Ultimate Risk Manager (Cambridge, Mass., 2002); and Richard White, Railroaded: The Transcontinentals and the Making of Modern America (New York, 2011), esp. 253. In a contemporary context, see Joseph William Singer, No Freedom without Regulation: The Hidden Lesson of the Subprime Crisis (New Haven, Conn., 2015), esp. 4–6.

n o t e s t o pa g e s 2 4 – 2 5

265

1. Britain’s Controversial Empire 1. William Douglass, A Summary, Historical and Political, of the First Planting, Progressive Improvements, and Present State of the British Settlements in NorthAmerica, 2 vols. (Boston and London, 1755), 2:15. 2. Leo Francis Stock, ed., Proceedings and Debates of the British Parliaments Respecting North America, 5 vols. (Washington, D.C., 1924), 5:v. 3. See William Pencak, War, Politics, and Revolution in Provincial Massachusetts (Boston, 1981), 127–132; and John Mack Faragher, A Great and Noble Scheme: The Tragic Story of the Expulsion of the French Acadians from Their American Homeland (New York, 2005), 225–230. 4. Douglass, Summary, 1:491. See also The Case of His Majesty’s Province of the Massachusetts Bay in New-England, with Respect to the Expenses They Were at in Taking and Securing Cape Breton (Boston[?], 1747), 2. Massachusetts’s annual civil establishment was £18,000 in 1760. NAUK, CO 5/216, fol. 61. 5. See Arthur H. Buffington, “The Canada Expedition of 1746: Its Relationship to British Politics,” AHR 45, no. 3 (Apr. 1940): 555; and The Great Importance of Cape Breton: Demonstrated and Exemplified, by Extracts from the Best Writers, French and English (London, 1746). 6. Patrick K. O’Brien, “The Political Economy of British Taxation,” Economic History Review, 2nd ser. 41, no. 1 (1988): 2. 7. B. R. Mitchell, British Historical Statistics (Cambridge, 1988), 576, 579, 600; and Bedford to John Montagu, fourth Earl of Sandwich, Jan. 28, 1748, in Correspondence of John, Fourth Duke of Bedford, 3 vols. (London, 1842), 1:315. In August 1748, Henry Pelham, the prime minister, told Philip Yorke, first Earl Hardwicke, “it is not in my will, it is not in my power to undertake another session of Parliament upon the foot of expense we are now going into.” BL, Add. Ms. 35423, fol. 55. See also Thomas Pelham-Holles, first Duke of Newcastle to Prince William Augustus, Duke of Cumberland, May 6, 1748; Pelham to Newcastle, July 5, 1748, BL, Add. Ms. 37715, fols. 20–21, 300; and David Hume, “Of Public Credit,” in Essays and Treatises on Several Subjects. 3rd ed. (London, 1754), 4:117. 8. Rioting took place in Massachusetts and New Jersey in the late 1740s. See William Shirley to Josiah Willard, Nov. 19, 1747, Shirley to Lords of Trade, Dec. 1, 1747, in Correspondence of William Shirley: Governor of Massachusetts and Military Commander in America, 1731–1760, 2 vols. (New York, 1912), 1:410–419; James Alexander to Cadwallader Colden, Jan. 3, 1749, in LPCC, 4:87–89. On the controversy between the West India Lobby and the North

266 n o t e s t o pa g e s 2 5 – 2 6 American colonies, see William Patterson to William Wood, Esq., July 5, 1751, Bod., Ms. North a.6, fols. 173–181; Miscellaneous Reflections upon the Peace, and Its Consequences (London, 1749); The Case of the British Northern Colonies (London[?], ca. 1750). On the conflict between governors and the colonial assemblies, see Jack P. Greene, The Quest for Power: The Lower Houses of Assembly in the Southern Royal Colonies, 1689–1776 (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1963); Leonard Woods Labaree, Royal Government in America: A Study of the British Colonial System in America Before 1783 (New Haven, Conn., 1930), 177–217; and Governor George Clinton to Newcastle, Sept. 27, 1747, BL, Add. Ms. 33029, fols. 43–44. 9. On the Currency Act, see Joseph Albert Ernst, Money and Politics in America, 1755–1775: A Study in the Currency Act of 1764 and the Political Economy of Revolution (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1971), 36–42. On George Montagu Dunk, second Earl of Halifax’s efforts to unite the colonies under a commander in chief, see Fred Anderson, Crucible of War: The Seven Years’ War and the Fate of Empire in British North America, 1754–1766 (New York, 2000), 67–71. 10. See James Henretta, Salutary Neglect: Colonial Administration Under the Duke of Newcastle (Princeton, N.J., 1972), 297, 320, 347; and Jack P. Greene, “Metropolis and Colonies: Changing Patterns of Constitutional Conflict in the Early Modern British Empire, 1607–1763,” in Negotiated Authorities: Essays in Colonial Political and Constitutional History (Charlottesville, Va., 1994), 73–74. 11. This reflects the still influential view of Sir Lewis Namier that eighteenthcentury British politics was a struggle for power and position rather than a contest over government policy. Politicians sought to “make a figure” in Parliament rather than to “benefit humanity.” Lewis Namier, The Structure of Politics at the Accession of George III, 2nd ed. (London, 1957), 2. See also Bernard Bailyn, The Origins of American Politics (New York, 1968), 25–26; J. C. D. Clark, The Dynamics of Change: The Crisis of the 1750s and English Party Systems (Cambridge, 1982), 5–6, 7; and Henretta, Salutary Neglect, 319. 12. See J. C. D. Clark, “The Decline of Party, 1740–1760,” EHR 93, no. 368 (July 1978): esp. 505; and Clark, Dynamics of Change, esp. 80. 13. This follows a long tradition, one that goes back to Henry St. John, first Viscount Bolingbroke, of dividing mid-eighteenth-century British politics between a dominant Whig oligarchy and a patriotic opposition. In the modern historiography, see John Brewer, Sinews of Power: War, Money, and the English State, 1688–1783 (New York, 1988), 156–157; H. T. Dickinson, Liberty and Property: Political Ideology in Eighteenth-Century (New York, 1977), 121–192;

n o t e s t o pa g e s 2 6 – 2 7

14. 15.

16.

17. 18.

19.

267

Eliga Gould, “To Strengthen the King’s Hands: Dynastic Legitimacy, Militia Reform, and Ideas of National Unity in England 1745–1760,” HJ 34, no. 2 (June 1991): 329–348; and J. G. A. Pocock, “Machiavelli, Harrington, and the “English Political Ideologies in the Eighteenth Century,” WMQ 22, no. 4 (Oct. 1965): 549–583, esp. 565. Linda Colley dissents somewhat from this view, seeing Toryism as more than simply a country opposition. She describes a political program that intermingled with extra-parliamentary radicalism and called for improved political representation and populist tax policy. See Linda Colley, “Eighteenth-Century English Radicalism Before Wilkes,” Transactions of the Royal Historical Society 31 (1981): 1–19. Bob Harris, Politics and the Nation: Britain in the Mid–Eighteenth Century (Oxford, 2005), 96. See ibid., 45. Whether Pelham and Newcastle inherited Whig dominance or gained it through their skills as political managers is a matter of debate. Compare J. B. Owen, The Rise of the Pelhams (London, 1957), and J. H. Plumb, The Origins of Political Stability, England, 1675–1725 (Boston, 1967), to Clark, Dynamics of Change. More recently, historians have pointed to the limits public opinion placed on Whig government. See Paul Langford, A Polite and Commercial People England, 1727–1783 (Oxford, 1989), 225. On party politics following the Glorious Revolution, see Geoffrey Holmes, British Politics in the Age of Anne (London, 1987), 13–50; Julian Hoppit, A Land of Liberty? England, 1689–1727 (Oxford, 2000), 132–166; Mark Knights, Representation and Misrepresentation in Later Stuart Britain (Oxford, 2005), 1–66; and Steve Pincus, 1688: The First Modern Revolution (New Haven, Conn., 2009), 305–435. Quoted in John Brewer, Party Ideology and Popular Politics at the Accession of George III (Cambridge, 1976), 41. See also Harris, Politics and the Nation, 45. The debate has largely been between those historians who see the Tory party as irrelevant and those who see it as a declining, but still influential, force against Whig oligarchy. Compare Brewer, Party Ideology, 4, and Owen, Rise of the Pelhams, 4, with Clark, “Decline of Party,” 499–527, and Linda Colley, In Defiance of Oligarchy: The Tory Party, 1714–1760 (Cambridge, 1982). On Tory Patriotism, see Kathleen Wilson, Sense of the People: Politics, Culture, and Imperialism in England, 1715–1785 (Cambridge, 1995), esp. 84–136, 315–375; and Harris, Politics and the Nation, chap. 2. See Colley, “Eighteenth-Century English Radicalism”; and Nicholas Rogers, Whigs and Cities: Popular Politics in the Age of Walpole and Pitt (Oxford, 1989), esp. 22–44.

268 n o t e s t o pa g e s 2 7 – 3 0 20. On Walpole and the Whigs’ consolidation of power, see Plumb, Origins of Political Stability, 159–189; W. A. Speck, Stability and Strife England, 1714–1760 (Cambridge, Mass., 1977), 203–218; and Hoppit, Land of Liberty? 407–413. 21. Paul Langford, for example, argues that Pelham and Newcastle united the Whig party “on lines of interest if not ideology.” See Polite and Commercial People, 207. 22. Dickinson, Liberty and Property, 125. 23. Speck, Stability and Strife, 212. 24. William Hawkins, ed., The Statutes at Large, from Magna Charta to the Seventh Year of King George the Second, Inclusive, 9 vols. (London, 1735), 5:454–456, 493–496, 713–715. 25. Cobbett, 13:1036. Pelham made a similar argument in 1740 when he opposed the Place Bill, which would have prevented officeholders from serving in Parliament. Cobbett, 11:345–351. 26. Cobbett, 11:349–350. 27. True Patriot: And the History of Our Own Times, May 27, 1746, 3. 28. Speck, Stability and Strife, 164. 29. Simon Targett, “Government and Ideology During the Age of Whig Supremacy: The Political Argument of Sir Robert Walpole ’s Newspaper Propagandists,” HJ 37, no. 2 (June 1994): 290. 30. On Newcastle’s early life, see Reed Browning, The Duke of Newcastle (New Haven, Conn., 1975), 1–13. 31. True Patriot: And History of Our Own Times, May 13, 1746, 1; Remarks upon a Speech Lately Published: In a Letter Addres’d to Major S——w——n (London, 1747), 10–11; and Cobbett, 14:1122, 13:1034. 32. See P. G. M. Dickson, The Financial Revolution in England: A Study in the Development of Public Credit, 1688–1756 (London, 1967), 302; and Rogers, Whigs and Cities, 231, 334. 33. On public debt and political allegiance, see Bruce G. Caruthers, City of Capital: Politics and Markets in the English Financial Revolution (Princeton, N.J., 1996), 160–194; and David Stasavage, Public Debt and the Birth of the Democratic State: France and Great Britain, 1688–1789 (Cambridge, 2003), 129. On the representative nature of Parliament, see Cobbett, 13:1077–1090. 34. See Cobbett, 15:131; George Coade Jr., A Letter to the Honourable the Lords Commissioners of Trade and Plantations: Wherein the Grand Concern of Trade Is Asserted and Maintained (London, 1747), 53–60; Langford, Polite and Commercial People, 224; and T. W. Perry, Public Opinion, Propaganda, and

n o t e s t o pa g e s 3 0 – 3 3

35. 36.

37.

38. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46. 47. 48. 49. 50. 51. 52.

269

Politics in Eighteenth-Century England: A Study of the Jew Bill of 1753 (Cambridge, Mass., 1962). Cobbett, 14:1120–1122. A Letter to a Member of Parliament: In Relation to the Bill for Punishing Mutiny and Desertion, &c. (London, 1749), 3. See also The Antient and Present State of Military Law in Great Britain Consider’d (London, 1749); [Soldier], A Modest Defence of the Army: In Answer to a Late Pamphlet, Intitled, A Treatise Concerning the Militia (London, 1753); and Remarks upon a Speech, 19. Party Spirit in Time of Publick Danger, Considered (London, 1756), 30. On avoiding war, see Newcastle to Hardwicke, Sept. 26, 1756, BL, Add. Ms. 32732, fol. 39; and Cobbett, 11:1096. On trade and Britain’s commercial interest in maintaining the balance of power, see Cobbett, 14:187; and “Address of the Merchants of the City of London,” Daily Gazetteer, Sept. 16, 1745. On the Whig commitment to checking French power in Europe, see Brendan Simms, Three Victories and a Defeat: The Rise and Fall of the First British Empire, 1714– 1783 (London, 2007), chaps. 14–16; and Eliga Gould, The Persistence of Empire: British Political Culture in the Age of the American Revolution (Chapel Hill, N.C., 2000), chap. 1. Mitchell, British Historical Statistics, 448, 575–576. Daily Gazetteer, Sept. 20, 1745, 1. True Patriot: And History of Our Own Times, Mar. 11, 1746, 3. See also Party Spirit, 23; and Jacobite’s Journal, July 16, 1748, 1–2. Cobbett, 14:1122. Mitchell, British Historical Statistics, 576. See Paul Langford, The Excise Crisis: Society and Politics in the Age of Walpole (Oxford, 1975). See Cobbett, 11:1098. See Brewer, Sinews of Power, 132. O’Brien, “British Taxation,” 19–20. See also Cobbett, 14:170. See William J. Ashworth, Customs and Excise: Trade, Production, and Consumption in England, 1640–1845 (Oxford, 2003), 8–11, 209–210, 257. Cobbett, 12:1215. See also Cobbett, 12:1272–1276. Cobbett, 14:170. See also Cobbett, 14:590; and Old England, May 7, 1748, 1–2. Cobbett, 11:1120. Cobbett, 14:171. Newcastle, “Proposal for the Regulation & Reduction of the National Debt Amounting to 70 Millions on the National Debt,” Aug. 15, 1754, BL, Add. Ms. 32995, fols. 299–303.

270 n o t e s t o pa g e s 3 3 – 35 53. Theophilus Lindsey to Francis, Earl of Huntingdon, Feb. 20, 1755, HEH, Hastings Correspondence, box 88. 54. An Essay upon Publick Credit, in a Letter to a Friend: Occasioned by the Fall of Stocks (London, 1748); and Party Spirit. 55. Party Spirit, 18–20. See also [Nicolas Magens], The Universal Merchant: Containing the Rationale of Commerce, in Theory and Practice (London, 1753), 14, 25–26. 56. See Lucy Sutherland, “Samson Gideon and the Reduction of Interest, 1749– 50,” in Politics and Finance in the Eighteenth Century, ed. Aubrey Newman (London, 1984), 403. 57. On Gideon and Martin’s relationship with the Pelhams, see “Lists of Persons to be Talked with on the Raising of the Supplies,” BL, Add. Ms. 33029, fol. 418. On the connection between high finance and government, see Dickson, Financial Revolution, 222–230; and Sutherland, “Samson Gideon,” 387–413. 58. Daily Gazetteer, Sept. 26, 1745, 1. 59. P. J. Marshall rightly observes that the Newcastle ministry “did not have to be taught by Pitt or by any other opposition patriot” just how important the colonies were for Britain and its economy. P. J. Marshall, “Presidential Address: Britain and the World in the Eighteenth Century: I, Reshaping the Empire,” Transactions of the Royal Historical Society 8 (1998): 8. 60. William Baker, for example, defended trade regulations as the source of Britain’s commercial greatness. See Cobbett, 14:1222. 61. Coade, Letter to the Honourable the Lords Commissioners, v–vi. 62. Daily Gazetteer, Sept. 21, 1745. 63. Thomas Penn to James Hamilton, May 1, 1750, APS, Thomas Penn Correspondence, fol. 122. The Pelham ministry’s position was not without controversy. See Reasons Humbly Offered Against the Making of Iron in North-America, broadside (London, 1748). 64. See Penn to Hamilton, Mar. 17, 1748, and June 6, 1749, APS, Thomas Penn Correspondence, fols. 27, 55. For opposition to paper money in the colonies, see [William Douglass], A Discourse Concerning the Currencies of the British Plantations in America: Especially with Regard to Their Paper Money; With a Postscript Thereto (Boston, 1750). On the Currency Act, see Ernst, Money and Politics, 41. 65. Henry Pelham’s 1748 argument in favor of an impost on poundage illustrates this position. Cobbett, 14:150–157; On Hardwicke ’s defense of colonial fiscal autonomy, see Hardwicke to Newcastle, Aug. 25, 1754, BL, Add. Ms. 32736, fol. 342.

n o t e s t o pa g e s 35 – 3 7

271

66. “Some Thoughts on the Expediency and Manner of Supporting a Regular Military Force on the Continent of North America,” 1754, BL, Add. Ms. 32737, fols. 16–21. 67. Party Spirit, 3. 68. On the weakening position of the Tories, see Colley, Defiance of Oligarchy, 263–289; Harris, Politics and the Nation, 44; and Clark, “Decline of Party.” For a discussion of Toryism’s relationship to urban radicalism, see Colley, “Eighteenth-Century English Radicalism” and Rogers, Whigs and Cities, 87–133, 259–303. 69. These publications often republished articles from one another. See London Evening Post, May 21, 1751. 70. Henry St. John, Viscount Bolingbroke, Some Reflections on the Present State of the Nation (London, 1753), 377. Only a minority of Tories were Jacobites. On the relationship between the Tories and Jacobitism, see Ian Christie, “The Tory Party, Jacobitism, and the Forty-Five: A Note,” HJ 30, no. 4 (Dec. 1987): 921–932; Colley, Defiance of Oligarchy, 41; and Harris, Politics and the Nation, 44. 71. For accounts of imperial policy as the product of an ideologically neutral, if sometimes contested, governing strategy, see Greene, “Metropolis and Colonies”; Henretta, Salutary Neglect; and Alison Gilbert Olson, Anglo-American Politics, 1660–1775 (Oxford, 1973), esp. 142–158. On mercantilism and colonial policy, see Charles M. Andrews, The Colonial Period in American History: England’s Commercial and Colonial Policy (New Haven, Conn., 1938); and Nancy F. Koehn, The Power of Commerce: Economy and Governance in the First British Empire (Ithaca, N.Y., 1994). 72. [Josiah Tucker], A Brief Essay on the Advantages and Disadvantages Which Respectively Attend France and Great Britain, with Regard to Trade: With Some Proposals for Removing the Principal Disadvantages of Great Britain, 3rd ed. (London, 1753), 36; Tucker’s italics. See also A Landowner [Charles Townshend, third Viscount Townshend], National Thoughts, Recommended to the Serious Attention of the Public (London, 1751), 1, 3. 73. [Viscount Townshend], National Thoughts, 2; and Viscount Townshend to Josiah Tucker, Apr. 13, 1752, Historical Manuscripts Commission, The Manuscripts of the Marquess Townshend (London, 1887), 374. See also [Josiah Tucker], Elements of Commerce, and Theory of Taxes (Bristol[?], 1755), 41. On the relationship between Townshend and Tucker, see J. R. Raven, “Viscount Townshend and the Cambridge Prize for Trade Theory, 1754–1756,” HJ 28 no. 3 (Sept. 1985): 535–555.

272 n o t e s t o pa g e s 3 8 – 4 0 74. Matthew Decker, An Essay on the Causes of the Decline of the Foreign Trade, Consequently of the Value of the Lands of Britain, and on the Means to Restore Both, 2nd ed. (London, 1750), 15. 75. Francis Fauquier, An Essay on Ways and Means for Raising Money for the Support of the Present War (London, 1756), 18. 76. Charles Davenant, Remembrancer, Jan. 23, 1748, 42. The Remembrancer was a weekly periodical published by the Philadelphia-born printer James Ralph and bankrolled by Ralph’s Patron George Bubb Dodington, Baron Melcombe. On Ralph and the Remembrancer, see Robert W. Kenny, “James Ralph: An Eighteenth-Century Philadelphian in Grub Street,” Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography 64, no. 2 (Apr. 1940): 218–242. 77. [John Shebbeare], A Sixth Letter to the People of England on the Progress of National Ruin; In Which It Is Shewn, That the Present Grandeur of France, and Calamities of This Nation, Are Owing to the Influence of Hanover on the Councils of England (London, 1757), 47–48; and Fauquier, Essay on Ways and Means, 50. Estimates on the high level of taxation varied. Shebbeare argued it was “fourteen shillings in every twenty”; Postlethwayt estimated it was 31 percent. See, respectively, [John Shebbeare], Three Letters to the People of England, 6th ed. (London, 1756), 92; and Malachy Postlethwayt, GreatBritain’s True System: Wherein is Clearly Shown, I. That an Increase of the Public Debts and Taxes Must, in a Few Years, Prove the Ruin of the Monied, the Trading, and the Landed Interests. II. The Necessity of Raising the Supplies to Carry on War (London, 1757), 165. See also Decker, Decline, 11. 78. Postlethwayt, True System, 176. See also [Viscount Townshend], National Thoughts, 2; and [Tucker], Theory of Taxes, 41. On Postlethwayt, see R. J. Bennett, “Malachy Postlethwayt, 1707–67: Genealogy and Influence of an Early Economist and ‘Spin Doctor,’ ” Genealogists’ Magazine 30, no. 6 (2011): 187–194. 79. Decker, Decline, 90; [Tucker], Essay, 148–160; and Fauquier, Essay on Ways and Means, 41–42. On the growth of consumption among the British middle class, see Maxine Berg, Luxury and Pleasure in Eighteenth-Century Britain (Oxford, 2005), 15–16, 19–20, 195–246; John Brewer and Roy Porter, eds., Consumption and the World of Goods (London, 1993); Jan DeVries, The Industrious Revolution: Consumer Behavior and the Household Economy, 1650 to the Present (Cambridge, 2008), esp. 122–185; and Margaret R. Hunt, The Middling Sort: Commerce, Gender, and the Family in England, 1680–1780 (Berkeley, Calif., 1996). 80. [Tucker], Theory of Taxes, 20–21.

n o t e s t o pa g e s 4 0 – 4 3

273

81. Bolingbroke, Some Reflections, 379; and Fauquier, Essay on Ways and Means, 10. See also [Matthew Decker], Serious Considerations on the Several High Duties Which the Nation in General, (as Well as Its Trade in Particular) Labours Under: With a Proposal for Preventing the Running of Goods, Discharging the Trader from Any Search, and Raising All the Publick Supplies, by One Single Tax, 6th ed. (London, 1748), 20; and Postlethwayt, True System, 177–178. 82. Postlethwayt, True System, 182; and Fauquier, Essay on Ways and Means, 13. 83. See Decker, Decline, 182–183; Postlethwayt, True System, 275, 306; and [Tucker], Essay on Trade, 90. 84. On the distinction between core and periphery, see Immanuel Wallerstein, World-Systems Analysis: An Introduction (Durham, N.C., 2004). 85. James Abercromby, “An Examination of the Acts of Parliament Relative to the Trade and the Government of Our American Colonies (1752),” in A Magna Charta for America, ed. Jack P. Greene, Charles Frederic Mullett, and Edward C. Papenfuse Sr. (Philadelphia, 1986), 77; Halifax, “Some Considerations Relating to the Present Condition of the Plantations; With Proposals for a Better Regulation of Them,” NAUK, CO 5/5, fol. 314; and Henry McCulloh, “Essay, Pointing out the Best Way of Improving the Trade and Manufactures of America,” BL, Add. Ms. 11514, fol. 103. 86. McCulloh, “Essay,” BL, Add. Ms. 11514, fols. 103–104. On Henry McCulloh, see Jack P. Greene, “ ‘A Dress of Honor’: Henry McCulloh’s Objections to the Stamp Act,” Huntington Library Quarterly 26, no. 3 (May 1963): 253–262; Charles G. Sellers Jr., “Private Profits and British Colonial Policy: The Speculations of Henry McCulloh,” WMQ 8, no. 4 (Oct. 1951): 535–551; Alan D. Watson, “Henry McCulloh, Royal Commissioner in South Carolina,” South Carolina Historical Magazine, 75, no. 1 (1974): 33–48; and John Cannon, “Henry McCulloch and Henry McCulloh,” WMQ 15, no. 1 (Jan. 1958): 71–73. 87. Shirley to Henry Fox, Aug. 15, 1755, HEH, Loudoun Americana, box 14. 88. McCulloh, “Essay,” BL, Add. Ms. 11514, fol. 93. 89. Ibid., fols. 91–92, 95. Abercromby also proposed stamp duties. See Thomas Hay, Viscount Dupplin to “My Lord Duke,” Dec. 27, 1755, BL, Add. Ms. 40765, fol. 8. 90. William Keith, “Reasons Humbly Offr’d in Support of a Proposal Lately Made to Extend the Duties on Stampt Paper and Parchment All Over the British Plantations,” Dec. 17, 1742, BL, Add. Ms. 33028, fols. 376–377. 91. McCulloh, “Essay,” BL, Add. Ms. 11514, fols. 34–36, 38.

274 n o t e s t o pa g e s 4 3 – 4 6 92. See “Condition of the Plantations,” NAUK, CO 5/5, fols. 317–319; and McCulloh, “Essay,” BL, Add. Ms. 11514, fols. 31–32. 93. The political trajectory of William Beckford and the Monitor reflects the confused politics of the era. Beckford owed his rise to Tory support in the City of London, and the Monitor originally described itself as a “modern Tory” journal. Ideologically, “modern Toryism” strongly resembled True Whig ideology (although it remained critical of religious dissent), and by the end of the decade the Monitor described itself as a Whig paper. See Harris, Politics and the Nation, 53–58, 97; and Bob Harris, “The London Evening Post and Mid-Eighteenth-Century British Politics,” EHR 110, no. 439 (Nov. 1995): 1154. 94. On Beckford and the Monitor, see Perry Gauci, William Beckford: First Prime Minister of the London Empire (New Haven, Conn., 2013), esp. 83–85. 95. See London Evening Post, Sept. 9, 1755, 1. 96. John Brown, An Explanatory Defence of the Estimate of the Manners and Principles of the Times (London, 1758), 9. On Brown and the Estimate, see Caroline Robbins, The Eighteenth-Century Commonwealthman (Cambridge, Mass., 1959), 308–310; Bernard Bailyn, Ideological Origins of the American Revolution, enlarged ed. (Cambridge, Mass., 1992), 87; and Evan Haefeli and Kevin Sweeney, “ ‘The Redeemed Captive’ as Recurrent Seller: Politics and Publication, 1707–1853,” New England Quarterly 77, no. 3 (Sept. 2004): 355. 97. Cobbett, 12:526; Monitor, Sept. 6, 1755, 29; and John Brown, An Estimate of the Manners and Principles of the Times, 7th ed. (Boston, 1758), 17. See also William Beckford Sr. to John Kirke, May 25, 1754, BRBML, William Beckford Collection, fol. 81. 98. Brown, Estimate, 153; and Monitor, Mar. 6, 1756, 183. 99. On corruption and poor use of public funds, see Monitor, Aug. 16, 1755, 11; and Miscellaneous Reflections upon the Peace, and its Consequences (London, 1749), 5. On metropolitan improvements, see [Joseph Massie], An Essay on the Advantages Accruing to the Community, from the Superior Neatness, Conveniencies, Decorations, and Embellishments of Great and Capital Cities (London, 1754). For radical Whig commitment to defending North America, see Monitor, May 22, 1756, 251; and Miscellaneous Reflections, 42–43, 46–49, 51. 100. Miscellaneous Reflections, 6; and Cobbett, 12:526. 101. See Miscellaneous Reflections, 41–43. 102. Monitor, Aug. 16, 1755, 12. See also Sarah R. Kinkel, “Disciplining the Empire: Georgian Politics, Social Hierarchy, and the Rise of the British Navy, 1725–1775,” (Ph.D. diss., Yale University, 2012).

n o t e s t o pa g e s 4 6 – 5 0

275

103. The London Evening Post, despite its radical stance on a number of issues, took a hard line on debt, one that had more in common with Tories and authoritarian reformers. See “Britanicus,” Sept. 17, 1754; and Dec. 7, 1754. 104. Monitor, Sept. 20, 1755, 38–39. 105. Monitor, Aug. 16, 1755, 11; and [John Barnard], Considerations on the Proposal for Reducing the Interest on the National Debt (London, 1750), 8, 30–31. Some radical Whigs were, however, more critical of public debt. See [John Perceval, second Earl of Egmont], Thoughts on the Pernicious Consequences of Borrowing Money: With a Proposal for Raising a Supply for the Current Service: And Also for Taking off Part of Our Present Load of Taxes, 2nd ed. (London, 1759), esp. 20. 106. Brown, Explanatory Defence, 41. 107. Joseph Massie, Ways and Means for Raising the Extraordinary Supplies to Carry on the War for Seven Years . . . Without Doing Any Prejudice to the Manufacturies or Trade of Great Britain . . . Part I (London, 1757), 7–8; and Monitor, Mar. 6, 1756, 182–183, 185. 108. [Egmont], Pernicious Consequences, 9. 109. Monitor, Mar. 6, 1756, 181; and John Barnard, A Defence of Several Proposals for Raising of Three Millions for the Service of the Government, for the Year 1746 (London, 1746), 71. See also [Egmont], Pernicious Consequences, 33. 110. Monitor, Mar. 27, 1756, 199. See also Monitor, Mar. 6, 1756, 185. On the extent of the excise ’s surveillance of British business, see both Brewer, Sinews of Power, 101–114; and Ashworth, Customs and Excise. 111. [Joseph Massie], The Proposal, Commonly Called Sir Matthew Decker’s Scheme, for One General Tax upon Houses, Laid Open, and Shewed to Be a Deep Concerted Project to Traduce the Wisdom of the Legislature, Disquiet the Minds of the People, and Ruin the Trade and Manufacturies of Great Britain (London, 1757), 30, 114, 94–95, 67, 95. 112. Miscellaneous Reflections, 55. 113. Westminster Journal or New Weekly Miscellany, Aug. 3, 1745, 1; and London Evening Post, Feb. 12, 1754, 4. 114. Monitor, Aug. 16, 1755, 12. 115. “To the Author of Common Sense,” Common Sense or the Englishman’s Journal, Oct. 18, 1740. 116. Monitor, Aug. 16, 1755, 12; and Miscellaneous Reflections, 18. Radical Whigs opposed the pistole fee in Virginia because they believed it would discourage colonial settlement. See London Evening Post, Feb. 12, 1754, 4, and May 16, 1754, 1. For one scheme to encourage settlement in North America, see London Evening Post, July 30, 1754, 4.

276 n o t e s t o pa g e s 5 1 – 5 4 117. Miscellaneous Reflections, 54. 118. For radical Whig arguments against taxing colonial sugar imports, see London Evening Post, Aug. 13, 1751, 1; Monitor, Feb. 3, 1759, 1118–1120; and Cobbett, 13:640–641. 119. [Joseph Massie], Answers to the Queries, in Defence of the Malt Distillery (London, 1760), 3–4, 16. Although Massie was correct that absentee landlords were subject to taxes on British goods, most historians rightly disagree with his assessment. 120. Instructions to Governor Osborn of New York, NAUK, CO 5/200, fols. 875–964. The controversial article 39 was reprinted in The Universal Advertiser. Containing a Collection of Essays, Moral, Political, and Entertaining (Dublin, 1754), 111–113. Osborn’s instructions and the attribution of them to Charles Townshend are described in Bailyn, Origins of American Politics, 113; Labaree, Royal Government, 291–292, 340; and Robert J. Chaffin, “The Townshend Acts of 1767,” WMQ 27, no. 1 (Jan. 1970): 90–121, esp. 93–94. 121. Universal Advertiser, 110, 112. 122. Horace Walpole, Memoirs of the Reign of King George the Second, 2nd ed., 3 vols. (London, 1847), 1:397. 123. R. Charles to David Jones, Aug. 16, 1755, NYPL, William Smith Papers, box 1, lot 191, item 84.

2. Taxing America 1. Lieut. Col. Henry Bouquet et al., “Resolution sent to the Governor of South Carolina,” Dec. 2, 1757, HEH, Loudoun Americana, box 109. 2. John Campbell, fourth Earl of Loudoun to Bouquet, Dec. 25, 1757, HEH, Loudoun Americana, box 112. 3. See Charles Andrews, The Colonial Background of the American Revolution (New Haven, Conn., 1924), 40–44; Lawrence Henry Gipson, “The American Revolution as an Aftermath of the Great War for the Empire, 1754– 1763,” Political Science Quarterly 65, no. 1 (Mar. 1950): 86–104; Jack P. Greene, The Quest for Power: The Lower Houses of Assembly in the Southern Royal Colonies, 1689–1776 (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1963); and Leonard Labaree, Royal Government in America: A Study of the British Colonial System Before 1783 (New Haven, Conn., 1930). 4. Bernard Bailyn, The Origins of American Politics (New York, 1968), 10–15. For Bailyn’s account of this ideology of opposition, see The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution, enlarged ed. (Cambridge, Mass., 1992).

n o t e s t o pa g e s 5 4 – 5 6

277

See also Gordon S. Wood, The Creation of the American Republic, 1776–1787 (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1969), 3–45. 5. See Fred Anderson, Crucible of War: The Seven Years’ War and the Fate of Empire in British North America, 1754–1766 (New York, 2000); T. H. Breen, “ ‘Baubles of Britain’: The American and Consumer Revolutions of the Eighteenth Century,” Past and Present 119 (May 1988): 73–104; Marc Egnal, A Mighty Empire: The Origins of the American Revolution, 2nd ed. (Ithaca, N.Y., 2010); Brendan McConville, The King’s Three Faces: The Rise and Fall of Royal America, 1688–1776 (Chapel Hill, N.C., 2006); and Craig Yirush, Settlers, Liberty and Empire: The Roots of Early American Political Theory, 1675–1775 (Cambridge, 2011). Although the ideological categories described here differ somewhat from the ones suggested by Egnal, he convincingly argues that colonists were divided over issues of political economy and imperial expansion. 6. On the diversity of colonial American political culture, see Richard R. Beeman, The Varieties of Political Experience in Eighteenth-Century America (Philadelphia, 2004). 7. Colden to Shirley, July 25, 1749, in LPCC, 4:122–123. 8. [William Douglass], A Discourse Concerning the Currencies of the British Plantations in America: Especially with Regard to Their Paper Money: With a Postscript Thereto (Boston and London, 1751), 20, 59. 9. William Douglass, A Summary, Historical and Political, of the First Planting, Progressive Improvements, and Present State of the British Settlements in NorthAmerica, 2 vols. (Boston and London, 1755), 2:17–18; [Archibald Kennedy], Observations on the Northern Colonies Under Proper Regulations (New York, 1750), 9–10; and Colden to John Catherwood, Nov. 21, 1749, in LPCC, 4:161. 10. See Colden to John Mitchell, Aug. 17, 1751, in LPCC, 9:104–108; [Archibald Kennedy], The Importance of Gaining and Preserving the Friendship of the Indians to the British Interest, Considered (New York, 1751); and [Kennedy], Observations, 9. 11. See William West to “Mr. Penn,” Jan. 12, 1756, HEH, Loudoun Americana, box 17. 12. [Douglass], Discourse, 27. 13. [Archibald Kennedy], An Essay on the Government of the Colonies (New York, 1752), 17–20; Colden to John Mitchell, Aug. 17, 1751, in LPCC, 9:107–108; and [Kennedy], Observations, 7. For Colden’s analysis of the political consequences of weak royal government in the northern colonies, see his to John Catherwood, Nov. 21, 1749, in LPCC, 4:162–165.

278 n o t e s t o pa g e s 5 6 – 5 8 14. [Kennedy], Essay, 37. See also Kennedy, Serious Considerations on the Present State of the Affairs of the Northern Colonies (New York, 1754), 7. 15. See William Denny to Loudoun, Nov. 10, 1757, HEH, Loudoun Americana, box 105. 16. See William Johnson to Shirley, May 16, 1755, Johnson to Edward Braddock, May 17, 1755, and Johnson to Robert Orme, May 19, 1755, in PSWJ, 1:504–507, 512–516, 521–523. 17. Alexander Feey/Seey? to Lt. General Abercromby, June 27, 1756, BL, Add. Ms. 40760, fol. 258. 18. See William Thynne to Loudoun, Feb. 12, 1756, HEH, Loudoun Americana, box 18; and PDBPRNA, 1:115–116. Johnson even proposed paying Native American officers more than provincial ones. See his to Shirley, May 16, 1755, in PSWJ, 1:504–507. 19. Massachusetts General Court, Advertisement, Dec. 21, 1754. 20. For the earlier interpretation, see Paul S. Boyer, “Borrowed Rhetoric: The Massachusetts Excise Controversy of 1754,” WMQ 21, no. 3 (July 1964): 328–351. 21. The Voice of the People (Boston, 1754), 3. On the unconstitutionality of the Massachusetts excise, see [Samuel Cooper], The Crisis (Boston, 1754), 9; and The Eclipse (Boston, 1754), 7. 22. [Cooper], Crisis, 10. See also Voice of the People, 5; Eclipse, 4–5; and Some Observations on the Bill, Intitled, “An Act for Granting to His Majesty an Excise upon Wines, and Spirits Distilled, Sold by Retail or Consumed Within This Province, and upon Limes, Lemons, and Oranges” (Boston, 1754), 10. 23. Voice of the People, 3–5; [Cooper], Crisis, 9; and A Plea for the Poor and Distressed, Against the Bill for Granting an Excise upon Wines and Spirits Distilled, Sold by Retail, or Consumed Within This Province, &c. (Boston, 1754), 6–9. 24. Voice of the People, 6. See also The Relapse (Boston, 1754), 4. 25. The Monster of Monsters: The True and Faithful Narrative of a Most Remarkable Phaenomenon Seen in This Metropolis; to the Great Surprize and Terror of His Majesty’s Good Subjects (Boston, 1754), 5. On the arrest, see Boyer, “Excise Controversy,” 338. 26. [Rusticus], The Good of the Community Impartially Considered (Boston, 1754), 7–8, 17, 23–26, 28–29, 37–38. 27. On Massachusetts’s comparatively sophisticated system of taxation on polls and property, see Robin Einhorn, American Taxation, American Slavery (Chicago, 2006), 53–78.

n o t e s t o pa g e s 5 8 – 6 0

279

28. James Parker, A Letter to a Gentleman in the City of New-York: Shewing the Unreasonableness of the Present Stamp-Duty upon News-Papers, and the Great Burthen of That Duty upon the Printers (New York, 1759), 1. 29. See the exchange between Gov. Dinwiddie and the assembly, Nov. 27 and 28, 1753, in The Official Records of Robert Dinwiddie, Lieutenant-Governor of the Colony of Virginia, 1751–1758, ed. R. A. Brock, 2 vols. (Richmond, Va., 1883– 1884), 1:44–47; and Richard Bland, A Fragment on the Pistole Fee, Claimed by the Governor of Virginia, 1753, ed. Worthington Chauncey Ford (Brooklyn, N.Y., 1891), 39–40. 30. Independent Reflector, Dec. 14, 1752, 11. 31. Ibid., Dec. 7, 1752, 5–8, May 17, 1753, 99–102; Boston Gazette, July 7, 1755, 1; and [Rusticus], Good of the Community, 37. See also Boston Gazette, Aug. 4, 1755, 4. 32. See New American Magazine, Apr. 1759, 422. This view was often expressed using the language of “improvement.” On “improvement,” see Alan Houston, Benjamin Franklin and the Politics of Improvement (New Haven, Conn., 2008). 33. See [Benjamin Franklin], Observations Concerning the Increase of Mankind, Peopling of Countries, &c. (Boston, 1755), 9–10; and Independent Reflector, June 14, 1753, 115–118. 34. Thomas Barnard, A Sermon Preached in Boston, New-England, Before The Society for Encouraging Industry, and Employing the Poor, September 20. 1758 (Boston, 1758), 22–23; and Ezra Stiles to Jared Eliot, Sept. 24, 1759, BRBML, Ezra Stiles Papers, correspondence, fol. 280. See also Rules of Incorporation for the Society for Encouraging Industry and Employing the Poor (Boston, 1754). 35. Independent Reflector, Dec. 14, 1752, 10. See also Independent Reflector, Mar. 22, 1753, 67–70. 36. New American Magazine, Mar. 1759, 394; and William Clarke, Observations on the Late and Present Conduct of the French: With Regard to Their Encroachments upon the British Colonies in North America (Boston, 1755). See also [Franklin], Increase; and [Otis Little], The State of the Trade in the Northern Colonies Considered; with an Account of Their Produce, and a Particular Description of Nova Scotia (Boston, 1749), 21. 37. Benjamin Franklin, “A Plan for Settling Two Western Colonies,” in PBF 5:456–463; and Thomas Pownall, “Considerations on ye Means, Method & Nature of Settling a Colony on ye Lands South of Lake Erie,” 1754, HEH, Loudoun Americana, box 12. Pownall’s italics.

280 n o t e s t o pa g e s 6 1 – 6 3 38. Lewis Evans, Geographical, Historical, Political, Philosophical and Mechanical Essays (Philadelphia, 1755), 31. 39. Benjamin Franklin to Peter Collinson, May 28, 1754, and Benjamin Franklin to Shirley, Dec. 22, 1754, in PBF, 5:332, 449. 40. Pownall, “Considerations,” HEH, Loudoun Americana, box 12. See also New American Magazine, Mar. 1759, 394–395; and Evans, Essays, 32. 41. A Discourse Delivered to the Congregation of the Southern Parish in Ipswich, March 20th, 1755, Being a Day of Publick Fasting and Prayer (Boston, 1755); Clarke, Observations, 35; and Ezra Stiles to Jared Eliot, Sept. 24, 1759, BRBML, Ezra Stiles Papers, correspondence, fol. 280. 42. George Fothringham to Loudoun, Sept. 28, 1751, HEH, Loudoun Americana, box 10. 43. See James Maury to Moses Fontaine, Aug. 9, 1755, APS, Sol Feinstone Collection, item 919; Boston Gazette, Oct. 1, 1754, 1–3; Boston Evening Post, Aug. 12, 1754, 2; Colden to George Clinton, Aug. 8, 1751, in LPCC, 4:272– 288; Shirley to Earl of Holdernesse, Jan. 7, 1754, in N.Y. Docs., 6:822–824; Evans, Essays; and Kennedy, Serious Considerations. 44. Benjamin Franklin to Peter Collinson, May 28, 1754, in PBF, 5:332. 45. Colden to Benjamin Franklin, June 20, 1754, in PBF, 5:353–354. See also Boston Gazette, Nov. 5, 1754, 1; Robert Hunter Morris to Gov. Dinwiddie, 1754, in Pennsylvania Archives, 1st ser., ed. Samuel Hazard, 12 vols. (Philadelphia, 1853), 2:177; and Board of Trade to Lieut. Gov. James De Lancey, July 5, 1754, in N.Y. Docs., 6:846. 46. William Clarke to Benjamin Franklin, May 6, 1754, in PBF, 5:270. See also Benjamin Franklin, “Reasons and Motives for the Albany Plan of Union,” July 1754, in PBF, 5:399–400; and “Council of War held at the Camp at Alexandria in Virginia,” Apr. 14, 1754, HEH, Loudoun Americana, box 12. 47. Benjamin Franklin to Colden, July 21, 1754, in PBF, 5:394. For the initial charge for the Albany Congress, see Board of Trade, Circular Letter to the Governors of North America, Sept. 18, 1753, in N.Y. Docs., 6:802. 48. Albany Plan of Union, July 10, 1754, in PBF, 5:387–392. 49. See Franklin, “Reasons and Motives for the Albany Plan of Union,” July 1754, in PBF, 5:400; and “Council of War held at the Camp at Alexandria in Virginia,” Apr. 14, 1754, HEH, Loudoun Americana, box 12. 50. Franklin, “Reasons and Motives for the Albany Plan of Union,” July 1754, in PBF, 5:403. 51. Benjamin Franklin to William Shirley, Dec. 3, and 4, 1754, in PBF, 5:443–447.

n o t e s t o pa g e s 6 3 – 6 7

281

52. Franklin, “Reasons and Motives for the Albany Plan of Union,” July 1754, in PBF, 5:416. 53. James Alexander to Colden, June 9, 1754, in PBF, 5:340. 54. Pennsylvania Gazette, Aug. 29, 1754, 1. 55. New-York Mercury, Sept. 23, 1754, 1–2. 56. Colden to Benjamin Franklin, June 20, 1754, in PBF, 5:354. 57. Shirley to Thomas Robinson, Baron Grantham, Dec. 24, 1754, in Correspondence of William Shirley Governor of Massachusetts and Military Commander in America, 1731–1760, ed. Charles Henry Lincoln, 2 vols. (New York, 1912), 2:117. 58. Ibid., 2:113–114. On Shirley’s desire to have Parliament impose union on the colonies, see William Shirley to Robert Hunter Morris, Oct. 21, 1754, in Pennsylvania Archives, 2:181. 59. Arthur Rutledge to William Murray, later Lord Mansfield, Oct. 6, 1754, and Jan. 10, 1755, BL, Add. Ms. 32737, fols. 46, 143. 60. See Boston Weekly Newsletter, July 18, 1754, 2; New York Mercury, July 29, 1754, 2; and Pennsylvania Gazette, Aug. 1, 1754, 2. 61. Benjamin Franklin, The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin (New York, 1917), 167; and Robert Hunter Morris to Shirley, Nov. 10, 1755, in Pennsylvania Archives, 2:499 62. See New-York Mercury, Aug. 26, 1754, 1; Pennsylvania Gazette, Sept. 12, 1754, 1, Oct. 17, 1754, 1, Nov. 28, 1754, 2; Boston Post-Boy, Nov. 11, 1754, 2; Boston Gazette, Nov. 5, 1754, 1; and Kennedy, Serious Considerations, 14. 63. Boston Evening Post, Jan. 20, 1755, 2. On support for union, see Pennsylvania Gazette, Sept. 12, 1754, 1, Nov. 28, 1754, 2, Jan. 21, 1755, 1; Maryland Gazette, Dec. 12, 1754, 1; and Boston Gazette; or, Weekly Advertiser, Nov. 5, 1754, 1. 64. See Robert Hunter Morris to George Montagu Dunk, Earl of Halifax, Nov. 28, 1755, George Washington to Gov. Morris, Apr. 1756, in Pennsylvania Archives, 2:528 621; David Jones to R. Charles, June 17, 1755, Aug. 12, 1755, NYPL, William Smith Papers, box 1, lot 191, items 81, 83; and Benjamin Franklin to Colden, Aug. 30, 1754, in PBF, 5:427. 65. James Abercromby to Loudoun, Feb. 9, 1756, HEH, Loudoun Americana, box 18. 66. On the persistent divisions within colonial legislatures over wartime spending, see Egnal, Mighty Empire, esp. 17–121. 67. Edward Braddock to Robert Hunter Morris, Mar. 9, 1755, Robert Dinwiddie to Gen. William Shirley, Mar. 13, 1756, and William Denny to Loudoun, Nov. 10, 1757, HEH, Loudoun Americana, boxes 12, 20, 105. See also William

282 n o t e s t o pa g e s 6 7 – 6 8

68. 69.

70.

71.

72.

73. 74.

Shirley to Fox, Mar. 8, 1756, HEH, Loudoun Americana, box 20. On Braddock, see Anderson, Crucible, 68–72, 85–89, 108–119, 371, 519. See Edward Braddock to Robinson, Mar. 18, 1755, and Gov. Horatio Sharpe to Loudoun, Dec. 22, 1757, HEH, Loudoun Americana, boxes 12, 112. On the political conflict between the Penns and the Quaker party, see, APS, Thomas Penn Correspondence with James Hamilton, 1747–1771; [William Smith], A Brief State of the Province of Pennsylvania (London, 1755); [Cross?], An Answer to an Invidious Pamphlet, Intituled, A Brief State of the Province of Pensylvania . . . and the Several Transactions, Most Grossly Misrepresented Therein, Set in Their True Light (London, 1755); “Pennsylvania Assembly: Reply to the Governor,” Aug. 19, 1755, “Pennsylvania Assembly: Proposed Reply to the Governor,” Nov. 25, 1755, Robert Hunter Morris to Thomas Penn, Nov. 28, 1755, in PBF, 6:140–163, 262–266, 279–284; and “A Remonstrance to the Governor from the Assembly,” Apr. 8, 1758, HEH, James Abercromby Papers, box 3. See also Alan Tully, Forming American Politics: Ideals, Interests, and Institutions in Colonial New York and Pennsylvania (Baltimore, 1994), 145–59; and Benjamin H. Newcomb, Political Partisanship in the American Middle Colonies, 1700–1776 (Baton Rouge, La., 1995), 136–149. Benning Wentworth to Loudoun, Dec. 23, 1757, HEH, Loudoun Americana, box 112. See also Braddock to Robinson, Mar. 18, 1755, Thomas Pownall to Loudoun, Nov. 28, 1757, and Sharpe to Loudoun, Dec. 22, 1757, HEH, Loudoun Americana, boxes 12, 108, 112. See Robinson to William Johnson, Nov. 11, 1755, Robinson to Dinwidde, Nov. 11, 1755, Thomas Pownall to Loudoun, Nov. 28, 1757, HEH, Loudoun Americana, boxes 14, 108; Thomas Pownall to James Abercromby, Mar. 12, 1758, Abercromby to Pownall, Mar. 25, 1758, Abercromby to John Forbes, Apr. 25, 1758, Abercromby to William Pitt, May 22, 1758, HEH, James Abercromby Papers, boxes 1, 2, 4, 6; Francis Bernard to Jeffery Amherst, Apr. 4, 1761, HL, Sparks Mss., Francis Bernard Papers, vol. 2, fol. 103; and New-York Gazette, Mar. 30, 1761, 2–3. See Braddock to Robinson, Mar. 18, 1755, Thomas Pownall to Loudoun, Nov. 28, 1757, and Sharpe to Loudoun, Dec. 22, 1757, HEH, Loudoun Americana, boxes 12, 108, 112. Sharpe to Loudoun, Nov. 29, 1757, and Braddock to Robinson, Apr. 19, 1755, HEH, Loudoun Americana, boxes 108, 12. See William Henry Lyttelton, “Message to the Assembly of the Province of South Carolina,” Mar. 15, 1758, South Carolina General

n o t e s t o pa g e s 6 8 – 7 1

75. 76.

77.

78.

79.

80.

81. 82. 83. 84.

85.

283

Assembly, “Answer to Gov. Lyttelton’s Message,” Mar. 18, 1758, and Stephen Hopkins to James Abercromby, Mar. 27, 1758, HEH, James Abercromby Papers, boxes 1, 2. William Shirley to Henry Fox, Mar. 8, 1756, BL, Add. Ms. 40760, fols. 230–231. On the colonies’ insatiable demand for labor, see John J. McCusker and Russell R. Menard, The Economy of British America, 1608–1789, 2nd ed. (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1991), 236–257; Christopher Tomlins, Freedom Bound: Law, Labor, and Civic Identity in Colonizing English America, 1580–1865 (Cambridge, 2010), 21–66; and Daniel Vickers, Farmers and Fishermen: Two Centuries of Work in Essex County, Massachusetts, 1630–1850 (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1994). Pennsylvania General Assembly, House of Representatives, Address to Robert Hunter Morris, Feb. 11, 1756, HEH, Loudoun Americana, box 18; and Shirley to Robert Hunter Morris, Feb. 29, 1756, BL, Add. Ms. 40760, fols. 225–226. Hardwicke to William Barrington, Mar. 13, 1756, and R.F., “Reasons Against Enlisting of Servants for Soldiers in These Colonies,” Sept. 11, 1755, BL, Add. Ms. 73619, fols. 19–20, 5–6. See also Henry Fox, circular letter to the governors of Nova Scotia, Pennsylvania, Virginia, South Carolina, Newfoundland, Maryland, North Carolina, and Virginia, Mar. 13, 1756, and Loudoun, “Recruiting Instructions to Be Observed by All the Regiments in North America,” Nov. 1757, HEH, Loudoun Americana, boxes 20, 109. Eliga Gould, “Pownall, Thomas (1722–1805),” in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford, 2004), www.oxforddnb.com/view/ article/22676 (accessed Aug. 17, 2009). Pownall to Loudoun, Nov. 28, 1757, and Pownall to Barrington, memorandum regarding the quartering of troops in America, Nov. 1757, HEH, Loudoun Americana, boxes 108, 109. Loudoun to Duke of Cumberland, Oct. 17, 1757, YMA, Loudoun Cumberland Papers, box 1, fol. 11. Loudoun to Bouquet, Dec. 25, 1757, HEH, Loudoun Americana, box 112. Pownall to Loudoun, Nov. 28, 1757, HEH, Loudoun Americana, box 108. Pownall to Loudoun, Jan. 28, 1758, HEH, Loudoun Americana, box 118; and Henry Frankland to Thomas Pelham, Sept. 1, 1757, BL Add. Ms. 33087, fol. 353. See Thomas Robinson, to the Governors in N. America, Oct. 26, 1754, Henry Fox, first Baron Holland, to Captain Marshall, June 1755, Earl of Halifax,

284 n o t e s t o pa g e s 7 1 – 7 5

86. 87.

88. 89.

90. 91.

92. 93.

94.

95.

“Remarks on Affairs in North America,” 1755, and Loudoun to Bouquet, Dec. 25, 1757, HEH, Loudoun Americana, boxes 11, 13, 15, 112. Daniel Baugh, The Global Seven Years War, 1754–1763 (London, 2011), 644. See Robinson, “Sketch for the Operations in North America,” Nov. 16, 1754, Shirley to Robinson, Aug. 11, 1755, and Loudoun to Sharpe, Nov. 3, 1757, HEH, Loudoun Americana, boxes 11, 13, 104. See Shirley to Fox, Aug. 15, 1755, and Halifax, “Affairs in North America,” 1755, HEH, Loudoun Americana, boxes 14, 15. See James Abercromby, circular letter to the northern governors, Mar. 15, 1758, HEH, James Abercromby Papers, box 1. For the colonies’ fiscal contribution to the war effort, see Jack P. Greene, “The Seven Years’ War and the American Revolution: The Causal Relationship Reconsidered,” Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 8, no. 2 (Jan. 1980): 98; and Alvin Rabushka, Taxation in Colonial America (Princeton, N.J., 2008). Anderson, Crucible, 317–318. On the colonies’ reliance on currency finance, see Joseph Albert Ernst, Money and Politics in America, 1755–1775: A Study in the Currency Act of 1764 and the Political Economy of Revolution (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1973). Anderson, Crucible, 389. Votes and Proceedings of the House of Representatives of the Province of Pennsylvania (Philadelphia, 1774), 4:613–622, 848–856; 5:77–84, 122–127, 183–187; P. K. O’Brien, Power with Profit: The State and the Economy, 1688–1815 (London, 1991), 34. See also P. K. O’Brien, “The Political Economy of British Taxation, 1660–1815,” Economic History Review, n.s. 41, no. 1 (Feb. 1988): 2. Virginia General Assembly, House of Burgesses, “Resolutions re: the New York and South Carolina Independent Companies Sent to Virginia,” Sept. 2, 1754, HEH, Loudoun Americana, box 11. See also extract of a letter from Boston, Dec. 6, 1755, BL, Add. Ms. 73619, fol. 7; “General Assembly of the Governor and Company of His Majesty’s English Colony of Connecticut in New England in America Holden at New Haven in the Said Colony . . .,” Jan. 21, 1756, and Connecticut General Assembly, “Resolution for Borrowing Money,” Feb. 12, 1756, HEH, Loudoun Americana, boxes 17, 18. Both colonists and the British recognized this. See Rhode Island General Assembly, “An Act for Raising Five Hundred Men for the Expedition Design’d to Reduce the French Forts on Lake Champlain,” Feb. 23, 1756, Henry Fox to the Governors of North America, Mar. 13, 1756, HEH,

n o t e s t o pa g e s 7 5 – 7 7

285

Loudoun Americana, boxes 19, 20; and London Evening-Post, Dec. 14, 1754, 4. On British reimbursement expenses, see Julian Gwyn, “British Government Spending and the North American Colonies, 1740–1775,” Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 8, no. 2 (1980): 79. 96. Jeffery Amherst to William Pitt, Apr. 16, 1759, CKS, U1350/O25/6; and Francis Bernard to Amherst, Apr. 4, 1761, HL, Sparks Mss., Francis Bernard Papers, vol. 2, fol. 103. 97. Although inequality was increasing in eighteenth-century America, it was largely defined by race and slavery as the colonies offered white settlers greater economic mobility and significantly less poverty than Europe. See Stephen Innes, “Inequality in Early America” (review), Journal of Interdisciplinary History 31, no. 3 (Winter 2001): 468–469; John J. McCusker, “Colonial Statistics,” in Historical Statistics of the United States, Millennial Edition, ed. Susan B. Carter et al., 5 vols. (Cambridge, 2006), 5:632–634; and Gary Nash, Race, Class, and Politics: Essays on American Colonial and Revolutionary Society (Champaign, Ill., 1986). On the extent and limits of representation in colonial political institutions, see J. R. Pole, Political Representation in England and the Origins of the American Republic (New York, 1966).

3. The Seven Years’ War and the Politics of Empire 1. On the costs and logistics of the Seven Years’ War, see John Brewer, Sinews of Power: War, Money, and the English State, 1688–1783 (New York, 1988), 31–32, 35–37; David Hancock, Citizens of the World: British Merchants and the Integration of the British Atlantic Community, 1735–1785 (Cambridge, 1995), 227–233; and B. R. Mitchell, British Historical Statistics (Cambridge, 1988), 578–580. On the war effort in North America, see Fred Anderson, Crucible of War: The Seven Years’ War and the Fate of Empire in British North America, 1754–1766 (New York, 2000). On the reimbursement of the colonies, see Jack P. Greene, “The Seven Years’ War and the American Revolution: The Causal Relationship Reconsidered,” Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 8, no. 2 (Jan. 1980): 98. For the number of troops in the colonies, see “State Showing the Difference of the Expense to Government Between the Number of Infantry (Exclusive of the Foot Guards) Proposed for the Service of the Year 1763,” WLCL, Charles Townshend Papers, 8/35/15. On the population and dynamism of France under Louis XV, see Colin Jones, The Great Nation: France from Louis XV to Napoleon (London, 2002), 158–170.

286 n o t e s t o pa g e s 7 8 – 8 0 2. I. R. Christie, Crisis of Empire: Great Britain and the American Colonies, 1754– 1783 (New York, 1966), 23; Henry Lawrence Gipson, “The American Revolution as an Aftermath of the Great War for the Empire, 1754–1763,” Political Science Quarterly 65, no. 1 (Mar. 1950): 101; and P. J. Marshall, The Making and Unmaking of Empires (Oxford, 2005), 273–276. Jack P. Greene likewise argues that the war underscored the need for tighter metropolitan regulation of the colonies, although he convincingly argues that the case for reform developed before the war. See Jack P. Greene, “Origins of the New Colonial Policy, 1748–1763,” in A Companion to the American Revolution, ed. Jack P. Greene and Jack Pole (Oxford, 2000), 109. 3. Anderson, Crucible, 227–229; and John M. Murrin, “The French and Indian War, the American Revolution, and the Counterfactual Hypothesis: Reflections on Lawrence Henry Gipson and John Shy,” Reviews in American History 1, no. 3 (Sept. 1973): 314. 4. Anderson, Crucible, 454. 5. While Pitt remained in office, reimbursements totaled £641,118 or an average of £160,279 per year. On British spending, see Gwyn, “British Government Spending and the North American Colonies, 1740–1775,” Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 8, no. 2 (1980): 74–84, esp. 79. On the continuity between Newcastle and Pitt’s reimbursement policy, see Marie Peters, “The Myth of William Pitt, Earl of Chatham, Great Imperialist, Part I: Pitt and Imperial Expansion, 1738–1763,” Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 21, no. 1 (1993): 40, 43. Richard Middleton also questions Pitt’s reputation as a great imperialist and military strategist. See Richard Middleton, The Bells of Victory: The Pitt-Newcastle Ministry and the Conduct of the Seven Years’ War, 1757–1762 (Cambridge, 1982), 216–232. 6. See John L. Bullion, “ ‘To Know This Is the True Essential Business of a King’: The Prince of Wales and the Study of Public Finance,” Albion 18, no. 3 (Autumn 1986): 429–454. 7. Alison Gilbert Olson, “The British Government and Colonial Union, 1754,” WMQ 17, no. 1 (Jan. 1960): 23; Edmund S. Morgan, Benjamin Franklin (New Haven, Conn., 2002), 80–98; and Daniel Baugh, The Global Seven Years War, 1754–1763 (London, 2011), 79. 8. Thomas Hay, Lord Dupplin to William Barrington, second Viscount Barrington, June 27, 1754, BL, Add. Ms. 73679, fols. 5–6; Horatio Walpole to Thomas Pelham-Holles, Duke of Newcastle, June 22, and June 25, 1754, BL, Add. Ms. 32735, fols. 541, 566.

n o t e s t o pa g e s 8 0 – 8 2

287

9. See John Gordon, second Baronet of Invergordon, Cromarty to Newcastle, July 22, 1754, Newcastle to “Lord President” [John Carteret, second Earl Granville], Sept. 5, 1754, William Murray to Newcastle, Sept. 7, 1754, Newcastle to unknown, Sept. 28, 1754, BL, Add. Ms. 32736, fols. 66, 433, 438, 592; John Page to Newcastle, Oct. 10, 1754, BL, Add. Ms. 32737, fols. 98–99; and Mr. Killet to Horace Walpole, CUL, Ms. Add. 8708/44. On Newcastle’s willingness to spend money defending the colonies, see London Evening-Post, Dec. 14, 1754, 4; and Henry Fox to the Governors of North American, Mar. 13, 1756, HEH, Loudoun Americana, box 20. 10. Newcastle to Walpole, June 29, 1754, BL, Add. Ms. 32735, fol. 598. 11. Cabinet minute, June 13, 1754, BL, Add. Ms. 32995, fols. 266–267. 12. “Draught of a Plan or Project for a General Concert to Be Erected into by His Majesty’s Several Colonies upon the Continent of North America for Their Mutual and Common Defense, and to Prevent or Remove Any Encroachments upon His Majesty’s Dominions,” Aug. 9, 1754, in N.Y. Docs., 6:903–906. 13. Board of Trade to George II, Aug. 9, 1754, BL, Add. Ms. 35909, fols. 189–192. 14. Philip Yorke, first Earl Hardwicke to Newcastle, Aug. 25, 1754, BL, Add. Ms. 32736, fols. 340, 343. 15. Ibid., fol. 342. See also Hardwicke to Newcastle, Sept. 7, 1754, BL, Add. Ms. 32736, fol. 437; and James Henretta, Salutary Neglect: Colonial Administration Under the Duke of Newcastle (Princeton, N.J., 1972), 342. 16. See Townshend, “Remarks upon a Plan for a General Concert,” Sept. 1754, BL, Add. Ms. 32736, fols. 512–513; and Townshend to Newcastle, Sept. 13, 1754, BL, Add. Ms. 32736, fols. 508–509. For Murray’s enthusiastic concurrence with Townshend, see Murray to Newcastle, Oct. 6, 1754, BL, Add. Ms. 32737, fol. 45. 17. Townshend to Newcastle, Oct. 9, 1754, BL, Add. Ms. 32737, fol. 57. 18. For concerns about the Albany plan and colonial independence, see “Conference with the Speaker,” Sept. 9, 1754, BL, Add. Ms. 32995, fol. 310. For Washington’s defeat, see The Journal of Major George Washington, Sent by the Hon. Robert Dinwiddie, Esq. (London, 1754). For both implicit and explicit criticism of the Newcastle Administration’s cautious colonial policy, see London Evening Post, May 14, 1754, 1, June 6, 1754, 1, July 6, 1754, 4; Public Advertiser, Oct. 12, 1754, 2; [T.C.], A Scheme to Drive the French out of All the Continent of America (London, 1754), esp. 9; [Member of Parliament], A Letter from a Member of Parliament to his Grace the Duke of ***** upon the Present Situation of

288 n o t e s t o pa g e s 8 2 – 8 4

19.

20. 21.

22.

23. 24.

25.

26.

Affairs (London, 1755); and [John Shebbeare], A Letter to the People of England, on the Present Situation and Conduct of National Affairs. Letter I (London, 1755). Newcastle to “Lord Chancellor” [Hardwicke], Sept. 25, 1754, BL, Add. Ms. 32736, fol. 554. See also Newcastle to Lord Waldegrave, Oct. 27, 1754, BL, Add. Ms. 32737, fol. 220. Robinson to Newcastle, Sept. 22, 1754, BL, Add. Ms. 32736, fol. 564. On Braddock’s defeat, see Anderson, Crucible, 94–107. For a defense of the ministry’s North American strategy, see French Policy Defeated: Being, an Account of All the Hostile Proceedings of the French, Against the Inhabitants of the British Colonies in North America (London, 1755). On Fox’s frustrations with both the Newcastle administration and the popular outcry against the government, see Samuel Martin Jr., “Memorandum: Administration 1756,” BL, Add. Ms. 41356, fol. 5. William Pitt to Benjamin Keene, Aug. 23, 1757, BRBML, Osborn Mss., file 11963. See also Horatio Walpole, Memoirs of the Last Ten Years of the Reign of George the Second, 2 vols. (London, 1822), 1:202. On the importance of popular opinion and Pitt’s political prospects, see Paul Langford, “William Pitt and Public Opinion, 1757,” EHR 88, no. 346 (Jan. 1973): 54–80. See Martin, “Memorandum,” BL, Add. Ms. 41356, fols. 4–5. See J. C. D. Clark, The Dynamics of Change: The Crisis of the 1750s and English Party Systems (Cambridge, 1982), 233–234; Eliga Gould, “To Strengthen the King’s Hands: Dynastic Legitimacy, Militia Reform, and Ideas of National Unity in England, 1745–1760,” HJ 34, no. 2 (June 1991): 330; Marie Peters, Pitt and Popularity: The Patriot Minister and London Opinion During the Seven Years War (Oxford, 1980), 49–51; J. R. Western, The English Militia in the Eighteenth Century: The Story of a Political Issue, 1660–1802 (London, 1965); and Kathleen Wilson, The Sense of the People: Politics, Culture and Imperialism in England, 1715–1785 (Cambridge, 1995), 185–206. On the rioting prompted by the militia act, see Thomas Potter, Esq. to Pitt, Sept. 11, 1757, in Correspondence of William Pitt, Earl of Chatham, ed. William Stanhope Taylor and John Henry Pringle, 4 vols. (London, 1838–1840), 1:257–262. Both observers at the time and later historians have argued that supporters of militia reform were mostly Tories. While Tories such as John Shebbeare did support militia reform, the militia’s strongest advocates were radical Whigs. For Tories’ skepticism of militia reform, see Walpole to Hardwicke, Apr. 4, 1756, in Cobbett, 15:705–6; and Linda Colley, In Defiance of Oligarchy: The

n o t e s t o pa g e s 8 4 – 8 7

27. 28.

29. 30.

31. 32.

33. 34.

35. 36. 37. 38.

39.

289

Tory Party, 1714–1760 (Cambridge, 1982), 272–282. For a different perspective, see Gould, “Militia Reform,” 339. See The Monitor; or, British Freeholder, Aug. 15, 1755, 12. The Voice of the People: A Collection of Addresses to His Majesty, and Instructions to Members of Parliament by Their Constituents, upon the Unsuccessful Management of the Present War Both at Land and Sea; and the Establishment of a National Militia (London, 1756), 22. Cobbett, 15:762. See also Cobbett, 15:708–710. See George Townshend to Pitt, Feb. 28, 1758, NAUK, PRO 30/8/64, fols. 150–152; Anthony Ashley Cooper, fourth Earl of Shaftesbury to William Pitt, Apr. 14, 1758, NAUK, PRO 30/8/56, fol. 1; [John Perceval, Earl of Egmont], Things as They Are (London, 1758), 90; PDBPRNA, 1:110–111; and Bob Harris, Politics and the Nation: Britain in the Mid-Eighteenth Century (Oxford, 2002), 143–144. Samuel Martin Jr., “Memorandum: Administration 1756,” BL, Add. Ms. 41356, fol. 8. On Cumberland and the shortcomings of the militia during the Jacobite rebellion, see W. A. Speck, The Butcher: The Duke of Cumberland and the Suppression of the ‘45 (Oxford, 1981), 38, 55, 80. Charles Townshend, third Viscount Townshend, “Draft on the Militia,” n.d. [likely 1756 or 1757], BRBML, Osborn Shelves Townshend, box 4, fol. 8. Voice of the People, xiii. See also Cobbett, 15:743–744. For a similar view, from an establishment Whig perspective, see Edmund Burke ’s 1757 “Considerations on a Militia,” reprinted in Richard Bourke, “Party, Parliament, and Conquest in Newly Ascribed Burke Manuscripts,” HJ 55, no. 3 (Sept. 2012): 647–652. John Russell, fourth Duke of Bedford, “Draft of Speech on the Militia Bill,” n.d. [likely Apr. or May 1757], BL, Add. Ms. 15916, fols. 50–53. London Evening Post, Oct. 22, 1754, 1. See also See PDBPRNA, 1:37. PDBPRNA, 1:37. See also Middleton, Bells of Victory, 55. [Charles Chauncey], A Letter to a Friend: Giving a Concise, but Just, Account, According to the Advices Hitherto Received, of the Ohio-Defeat (Boston, 1755), 8–9; Henry Ellis to Loudoun, Nov. 28, 1757, HEH, Loudoun Americana, box 108; and Thomas Pownall to the colonels commanding the troops of Massachusetts Bay, Oct. 13, 1758, HEH, James Abercromby Papers, box 14. Braddock to Robinson, June 5, 1755, and William Denny to Loudoun, Nov. 10, 1757, HEH, Loudoun Americana, boxes 13, 105. See also George Montagu Dunk, Earl of Halifax, “Remarks on Affairs in North America,” 1755, and

290 n o t e s t o pa g e s 8 7 – 8 8

40. 41. 42. 43. 44.

45.

46. 47.

48.

49.

Robert Hunter Morris to Shirley, Feb. 9, 1756, HEH, Loudoun Americana, boxes 15, 18. See [John Shebbeare], Three Letters to the People of England, 6th ed. (London, 1756). On the tensions and ambiguities of Pitt’s relationship with the Tories, see Colley, Defiance of Oligarchy, 268–285; and Harris, Politics and the Nation, 42–45. Townshend to Lady Townshend, Oct. 18, 1757, BL, Add. Ms. 63079, fols. 109–110. See Peters, Pitt and Popularity, 80–125. Charles Lennox, third Duke of Richmond, to “My Dear Brother,” Jan. 21, 1758, BL, Loan Ms. 57/103, fol. 124; John Calcraft to Loudoun, Dec. 25, 1757, and Calcraft to Loudoun, Jan. 8, 1758, HEH, Loudoun Americana, boxes 112, 115. On Cumberland, see Evan Charteris, William Augustus, Duke of Cumberland and the Seven Years’ War (London, 1925); and Anderson, Crucible, 67–72, 123–131, 144–148, 172–177, 209–215, 299–300. [Member of Parliament], Letter, 23. See also Charles Lennox, third Duke of Richmond, to “My Dear Brother,” Jan. 21, 1758, BL, Loan Ms. 57/103, fol. 124. Calcraft to Loudoun, Dec. 25, 1757, HEH, Loudoun Americana, box 112. William Pitt to Benjamin Keene, Aug. 23, 1757, BRBML, Osborn Mss., files 11962–11963. On Britain’s military commitment in Europe and Pitt’s uneasy relationship with the Tories, see Peters, Pitt and Popularity, 115–176. Some Tories did support Pitt’s “German war.” See Basil Feilding, sixth Earl of Denbigh to Richard Grenville, Earl Temple, Oct. 8, 1761, WCRO, Denbigh Letterbook, vol. 1, p. 10. See A Letter from a Merchant of the City of London, to the R—— T H——Ble W.P. Esq, 2nd ed. (London, 1757), 24–25; PDBPRNA, 1:177; and Monitor, Dec. 15, 1758, 1077. On the Monitor, the London Evening Post, and the politics of patriotism, see Bob Harris, “The London Evening Post and Mid-Eighteenth-Century British Politics,” EHR 110, no. 439 (Nov. 1995): 1132–1156; and Marie Peters, “The Monitor and the Constitution: New Light on the Origins of English Radicalism,” EHR 86 (1971): 706–725. On the role of the London Common Council in popular politics, see Nicholas Rogers, Whigs and Cities: Popular Politics in the Age of Walpole and Pitt (Oxford, 1989), 87–129. Between 1758 and 1761, American grants totaled £725,765. See “State of the Supplies Granted by Parliament During the Present War, Distinguishing the Heads of Service,” WLCL, Charles Townshend Papers, 8/35/17.

n o t e s t o pa g e s 8 9 – 9 2

291

50. Anderson, Crucible, 411–412. 51. Monitor, Oct. 21, 1758, 1026–1028, and Feb. 3, 1759, 1118. 52. Robert Clive to Pitt, Jan. 1, 1759, NAUK, PRO 30/8/26; and John Malcolm, The Life of Robert Lord Clive: Collected from the Family Papers Communicated by the Earl of Powis, 3 vols. (London, 1936), 2:126. 53. Townshend to Lady Townshend, July 13, 1757, Aug. 25, 1757, BL, Add. Ms. 63079, fols. 44, 100–101; and William Baker to Loudoun, Nov. 10, 1757, HEH, Loudoun Americana, box 105. 54. See Anderson, Crucible, esp. 208–216; and Baugh, Global Seven Years War, 272–273. 55. This is calculated based on the difference between Britain’s annual net income and its annual spending. See Mitchell, British Historical Statistics, 576, 579. On Newcastle ’s role in raising the funds necessary to prosecute the war, see Middleton, Bells of Victory, esp. 60, 88, 113–118, 153–154, 158–159, 193–194, 205–206, 213. 56. John Brewer, Party Ideology and Popular Politics at the Accession of George III (Cambridge, 1976), 101. 57. See John Stuart, third Earl of Bute to Earl of Denbigh, Oct. 13, 1762, WCRO, Denbigh Letterbook, vol. 1, p. 14. For George III’s public image, see Linda Colley, Britons: Forging the Nation, 1707–1837 (New Haven, Conn., 1992), 206–208. 58. See Peters, Pitt and Popularity, 177–239. 59. See Pitt to Hardwicke, Oct. 20, 1759, BL, Add. Ms. 35423, fols. 194–195. 60. Pitt, speech to the HoC, ca. Oct. 1761, BL, Add. Ms. 38334, fol. 4. See also Pitt to Keene, Aug. 23, 1757, BRBML, Osborn Mss., file 11963. 61. Monitor, Oct. 6, 1764, 2800; The Conduct of the Ministry Impartially Examined. And the Pamphlet Entitled Considerations on the Present German War, Refuted from Its Own Principles (London, 1760); and A Review of Mr. Pitt’s Administration (London, 1763). 62. On the cost of the German campaign, see Peters, Pitt and Popularity, 188. For radical Whig criticisms of the war in Germany, see the Monitor’s brief misgivings, Feb. 14, Mar. 28, Apr. 4, and June 13, 1761, as well as Joseph Massie, Observations Relating to British and Spanish Proceedings, &c . . . on the Expediency of a Continental War (London, 1762). On Newcastle ’s persistence, see Anderson, Crucible, 482. 63. [Israel Mauduit], Considerations on the Present German War, 6th ed. (London, 1761), 62, 138; and Richard Rigby, “Speech on the War in Germany,” 1761, BL, Add. Ms. 38334, fol. 24.

292 n o t e s t o pa g e s 9 2 – 9 4 64. George III quoted in Peters, Pitt and Popularity, 178. See also Bute to John Philips, Feb. 23, 1763, BL, Add. Ms. 36797, fol. 35; and John Bullion, “Security and Economy: The Bute Administration’s Plans for the American Army and Revenue, 1762–1763,” WMQ 45, no. 3 (July 1988): 499–509. 65. William Beckford, speech to the HoC, 1761, and Pitt, speech to the HoC, ca. Oct. 1761, BL, Add. Ms. 38334, fols. 29–31, 2. On the beer duty and Pitt’s efforts at conciliation with Bute, see Peters, Pitt and Popularity, 179. For the unpopularity of the tax, which sparked rioting, see Monitor, Jan. 3, 1761, 1720; The Diary of the Late George Bubb Dodington, Baron of Melcombe Regis: From March 8, 1749, to February 6, 1761 (London, 1785), 432; Public Ledger; or, Daily Register of Commerce and Intelligence, Dec. 26, 1760, 1; London Evening Post, Dec. 20, 1760, 1; and Massie, Observations, 9. 66. Newcastle ’s minutes of the meeting of the council, Oct. 2, 1761, quoted in Peters, Pitt and Popularity, 202. See also Earl Temple to Denbigh, Oct. 13, 1761, WCRO, Denbigh Letterbook, vol. 1, p. 11. 67. See Sentiments Relating to the Late Negotiation (London, 1761). On the press war surrounding Pitt’s resignation and the war with Spain, see Baugh, Global Seven Years War, 561–563. 68. “Heads of a Pamphlet Given by Lord Bute,” July 1762, BL, Add. Ms. 88906/1/6; Henry Fox to William Petty, second Earl of Shelburne, Jan. 8, Feb. 9, 1762, BL, Add. Ms. 88906/1/9, fols. 71, 77–78; [Country-Gentleman], A Full Exposition of a Pamphlet Entitled, Observations on the Papers Relative to the Rupture with Spain (London, 1762), esp. 28, 33; and A Letter to the Right Honourable William Pitt, Esq; on the Present Negociations for a Peace with France and Spain (London, 1762). Such views were also expressed in private. See Fox to Shelburne, Dec. 29, 1761, BL, Add. Ms. 88906/1/9, fol. 65. 69. Thomas Villiers, first Earl of Clarendon, “A Paper on the Times,” Feb. 28, 1762, Bod., Mss. Clarendon dep. c.346, p. 315; Henry Ellis to Charles Wyndham, second Earl of Egremont, Jan. 16, 1762, Bod., Ms. North b.6, fol. 37. On Ellis’s efforts at imperial reform, see Edward Cashin, Governor Henry Ellis and the Transformation of British North America (Athens, Ga., 1994); Leland J. Bellot, William Knox: The Life and Thought of Eighteenth-Century Imperialist (Austin, Tex., 1977), 15–60; and Ellis’s “Hints Relative to the Division and Government of the Conquered and Newly Acquired Countries in America,” Mississippi Valley Historical Review 8, no. 4 (Mar. 1922): 367–373. 70. Bute to Grenville, May 3, 1762, BL, Add. Ms. 57809, fol. 17; Grenville to Charles Jenkinson, Apr. 14, 1762, BL, Add. Ms. 38191, fol. 76; and Anthony Chomier to William Wildman Barrington, second Viscount Barrington,

n o t e s t o pa g e s 9 4 – 9 5

71. 72.

73.

74. 75.

76.

77.

78. 79. 80.

81.

82.

293

Feb. 1, 1762, BL, Add. Ms. 73653, fol. 142. See also George Grenville ’s draft of the king’s speech for the close of Parliament, June 2, 1762, BL, Add. Ms. 57809, fol. 28. Mitchell, British Historical Statistics, 600–601. Ellis to Egremont, Jan. 16, 1762, Bod., Ms. North b.6, fols. 37–38; and Thomas Villiers, “A Speech on an Address to the King,” Bod., Mss. Clarendon dep. c.346, pp. 345–346. [John Shebbeare], The History of the Excellence and Decline of the Constitution, Religion, Laws, Manners and Genius of the Sumatrans, 2 vols. (London, 1762), 2:100–132. Although graduated, Shebbeare ’s proposed tax was far from progressive. On his “conservative and hierarchical” vision for Britain, see Harris, Politics and the Nation, 88–96, esp. 95. Treasury memorandum to “Dear Sir,” ca. 1763, Bod., Ms. North b.5, fols. 284–285. Ibid., fol. 281. The Tory politician Thomas George Skipwith expressed a similar sentiment. See his letter to Dashwood, n.d., rec. Aug. 25, 1762, Bod., Ms. D.D. Dashwood c.5, B 11/3/11. “Cyder Tax Discussion,” 1763, Bod., Ms. North b.5, fol. 85–86; and George Grenville, “Notes on the Cider Tax,” Sept. 1763, HEH, Stowe Grenville Correspondence, box 19, fol. 4. See “1762–1763, Ways and Means,” “1762–1763, On the Malt Tax,” Treasury memorandum to “Dear Sir,” ca. 1763, Bod., Ms. North b.5, fols. 191–192, 205–209, 281–285; “A Scheme for Raising a Fund to Pay the Interest of the Loan for the Service of the Year 1763,” Nov. 27, 1762, George Amyand, “Proposal for Levying a Duty Towards Paying the Interest of the Extraordinary Supplies to Be Raised for the Service of the Year 1763 by an Extension of the Stamp Duties,” ca. 1763, and John Fielding to John Dyson, Jan. 1762, Bod., Ms. D.D. Dashwood c.1, B 1/1/21, 38, 43. “Malt Tax,” Bod., Ms. North b.5, fols. 205–206. “Naval Argument,” after 1763, BL, Add. Ms. 38336, fol. 361. Bute to Bedford, Apr. 2, 1763, BL, Add. Ms. 36797, fol. 37. See also Bute to Shelburne, Apr. 1762, BL, Add. Ms. 88906/1/6, fol. 117; and Bute to Grenville, Oct. 10, 1762, BL, Add. Ms. 36797, fol. 14. Thomas Villiers, “Some Opinions Perhaps Errors of a Warm Friend to Mr. Grenville,” 1761, Bod., Mss. Clarendon dep. c.346, p. 281. See also Bute to George Henry Lee, third Earl of Litchfield, Apr. 6, 1763, BL, Add. Ms. 36797, fols. 41–42. See Brewer, Party Ideology, 79, 102.

294 n o t e s t o pa g e s 9 5 – 9 8 83. See Pitt, speech to the HoC, Oct. 1761, BL, Add. Ms. 38334, fol. 4. 84. North Briton, Dec. 11, 1762, 175–176; and Massie, Observations, 2. See also William Cavendish, fourth Duke of Devonshire to Newcastle, July 2, July 17, 1762, BL, Add. Ms. 32940, fols. 228–230, 383–384; and Monitor, May 15, 1762. 85. Frederick North, Lord North to Francis North, first Earl of Guilford, Nov. 11, 1762, and 25, 1762, Bod., Ms. North add. c.4, fols. 27–28, 38. 86. Bute to James Lowther, Nov. 17, 1762, BL, Add. Ms. 36797, fol. 23. For a similar view, see also Dashwood to Mr. Butcher, Sept. 10, 1762, Bod., Ms. North c.3, fol. 16; and Fox to Shelburne, Sept. 4, 1762, BL, Add. Ms. 88906/1/9, fol. 103. On the Bute administration’s press campaign, see Brewer, Party Ideology, 219–239. 87. George Montagu Dunk, second Earl of Halifax to Grenville, Aug. 27, 1763, Grenville to Halifax, Aug. 27, 1763, BL, Add. Ms. 57808, fols. 104, 110; Grenville to James Smith Stanley, Lord Strange, Oct. 15, 1763, HEH, GGL, vol. 1; and Charles Fane, second Viscount Fane to Dashwood, Dec. 28, 1763, BL, Eg. Ms. 2136, fols. 93–94. See also Grenville to Jenkinson, Apr. 29, 1762, BL, Add. Ms. 38191, fol. 81; and Bedford to Grenville, May 25, 1762, BL, Add. Ms. 57811, fol. 5. 88. Bute to John Manners, Marquess of Granby, Nov. 5, 1762, BL, Add. Ms. 36797, fol. 21. 89. Bedford to Bute, July 9, 1761, in Correspondence of John, Fourth Duke of Bedford: Selected from the Originals at Woburn Abbey, 3 vols. (London, 1842–1846), 3:23–24, 26–27. 90. Bute to Bedford, July 12, 1761, and Oct. 24, 1762, BL, Add. Ms. 36797, fols. 2–3, 16. For a similar view, see Unknown to John Calcraft, Sept. 11, 1761, BL, Add. Ms. 40765, fol. 14; and Campbell Dalrymple to Bute, June 2, 1762, Bod., Ms. North b.6, fol. 122. 91. Bute to Bedford, Apr. 2, 1763, BL, Add. Ms. 36797, fol. 38. 92. [William Burke], An Examination of the Commercial Principles of the Late Negotiation Between Great Britain and France in MDCCLXI, 2nd ed. (London, 1762), 102. 93. [William Burke], Examination, 102, 107; and [Edmund and William Burke], Remarks on the Letter Address’d to Two Great Men, 3rd ed. (London, 1760), 49–51. Some modern historians have repeated this argument. See Lawrence Henry Gipson, “The American Revolution as an Aftermath of the Great War for the Empire, 1754–1763, Political Science Quarterly 65, no. 1 (Mar. 1950): 86–104. For a convincing rebuttal, see John Murrin, “The French and Indian War, the American Revolution, and the Counterfactual Hypothesis:

n o t e s t o pa g e s 9 8 – 1 0 3

94. 95. 96.

97.

295

Reflections on Henry Lawrence Gipson and John Shy,” Reviews in American History 1, no. 3 (Sept. 1973): 307–318. Monitor, Apr. 10, 1762, 2119. See also “Debate on the Army [and Taxes],” 1763, Bod., Ms. North b.5, fol. 96. Cobbett, 15:1260, 1270; and Pitt, speech to the HoC, ca. Oct. 1761, BL, Add. Ms. 38334, fol. 5. Ezra Stiles to Jared Eliot, Oct. 22, 1759, BRBML, Ezra Stiles Papers, correspondence; New-York Gazette, Dec. 1, 1760, 1; and Benjamin Franklin to Richard Jackson, Mar. 8, 1763, in PBF, 10:208. For Franklin’s response to Burke, see The Interest of Great Britain Considered, with Regard to Her Colonies, and the Acquisitions of Canada and Guadaloupe, 2nd ed. (London, 1761). Bute to George Townshend, Apr. 8, 1763, BL, Add. Ms. 36797, fol. 43; and Grenville to Egremont, July 4, 1763, BL, Add. Ms. 57808, fol. 83.

4. The Rise and Fall of the Stamp Act 1. James West to Thomas Pelham-Holles, first Duke of Newcastle, Jan. 14, 1766, BL, Add. Ms. 32973, fol. 135; and Williamson’s Liverpool Advertiser, and Mercantile Chronicle, Mar. 21, 1766. On the popular outpouring of support for the Stamp Act’s repeal, see P. D. G. Thomas, British Politics, and the Stamp Act Crisis (Oxford, 1975), 234; and Edmund S. Morgan and Helen M. Morgan, The Stamp Act Crisis: Prologue to Revolution (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1953). 2. See G. H. Guttridge, English Whiggism and the American Revolution (Berkeley, Calif., 1942), 59; Brendan McConville, The King’s Three Faces: The Rise and Fall of Royal America (Chapel Hill, N.C., 2006), 105, 249–250; Robert Middlekauf, The Glorious Cause: The American Revolution, 1763–1789 (New York, 1982), 73–76; Morgan and Morgan, Stamp Act Crisis, 68–71; and Thomas, British Politics, 97–98. 3. See Guttridge, English Whiggism, 59; Michael Kammen, A Rope of Sand: The Colonial Agents, British Politics, and the American Revolution (Ithaca, N.Y., 1968); Morgan and Morgan, Stamp Act Crisis, 281; Frank O’Gorman, The Rise of Party in England: The Rockingham Whigs, 1760–82 (London, 1975), 136; and Thomas, British Politics, esp. 33. 4. Grenville to George III, June 30, 1763, and Grenville to Bedford, Sept. 5, 1763, HEH, GGL, vol. 1. On Grenville ’s personality, see Dora Mae Clark, “George Grenville as First Lord of the Treasury and Chancellor of the Exchequer, 1763–1765,” Huntington Library Quarterly 13, no. 4 (Aug. 1950): 383–397.

296 n o t e s t o pa g e s 1 0 3 – 1 0 5 5. Grenville to Jenkinson, July 2, and 4, 1764, HEH, GGL, vol. 1. See also John Fielding to Grenville, Oct. 19, 1763, HEH, Stowe Grenville Correspondence, box 21, fol. 57; Grenville to Stuart Mackenzie, June 17, 1763, and Grenville to Horatio Walpole, Sept. 8, 1763, HEH, GGL, vol. 1. 6. See Thomas Whately to John Temple, June 8, 1764, HEH, Stowe Ms. 264, Francis Bernard to Richard Jackson, Jan. 17, 1764, HL, Sparks Mss., Francis Bernard Papers, vol. 3, fol. 131; copy of a letter from Philadelphia, Nov. 28, 1764, SA, WWM/R/20/3; and William Henry Lyttelton to Stephen Fuller, July 14, 1765, Rubenstein, William Henry Lyttelton Letterbook, 1763–1766; An Act for the Further Improvement of His Majesty’s Revenue of Customs; and for the Encouraging of Officers making Seizures, 3 Geo. 3, chap. 22; An Act Granting Certain Duties in the British Colonies and Plantations in America, 4 Geo. 3, chap. 15; and An Act to Prevent Paper Bills of Credit, Hereafter to Be Issued in Any of His Majesty’s Colonies or Plantations in America, from Being Declared Legal Tender in Payments of Money, 4 Geo. 3, chap. 34. On the Currency Act, see Jack P. Greene and Richard M. Jellison, “The Currency Act of 1764 in Metropolitan-Colonial Relations, 1764–76,” WMQ 18 (1961): 485–518; Joseph Albert Earnst, Money and Politics in America, 1755–1775: A Study in the Currency Act of 1764 and the Political Economy of Revolution (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1973); and Thomas C. Barrow, Trade and Empire: The British Customs Service in Colonial America, 1660–1775 (Cambridge, Mass., 1967), 180–202. 7. [Thomas Whately], Considerations on the Trade and Finances of This Kingdom, and on the Measures of Administration, with Respect to Those Great National Objects Since the Conclusion of the Peace, 3rd ed. (London, 1769), 4. For a similar view, see also Charles Jenkinson, memorandum on taxing the American colonies, before July 1765, BL, Add. Ms. 38339, fols. 133–134. On Grenville’s concern for the landed gentry, see Grenville to Augustus Hervey, Sept. 28, 1766, Grenville to George Chalmers, Oct. 5, 1766, and Grenville to Armine Woodhouse, Oct. 10, 1767, HEH, GGL, vol. 2. 8. Grenville to Woodhouse, July 3, 1768, HEH, GGL, vol. 2. 9. Egremont to the Governors of North America, July 9, 1763, SA, WWM/R/35/21; [Thomas Whately], The Regulations Lately Made Concerning the Colonies: And the Taxes Imposed upon Them, Considered (London, 1765), 92; Grenville to William Knox, Aug. 16 [original dated Aug. 15], 1768 HEH, GGL, vol. 2; Henry McCulloh, “General Thoughts with Respect to Such Regulations as Are Humbly Conceived to Be Necessary in America and in the Islands in the West Indies Lately Ceded to Us by France,”

n o t e s t o pa g e s 1 0 5 – 1 0 7

10.

11.

12.

13.

14. 15. 16.

297

1764, HEH, Stowe Grenville Correspondence, box 12, fol. 28; An Act for the Better Securing and Further Improvement, of the Revenues of Customs, Excise, Inland and Salt Duties, 5 Geo. 3, chap. 43; and An Act for More Effectually Securing and Encouraging the Trade of His Majesty’s American Dominions, 5 Geo. 3, chap. 45. Richard Grosvenor, first Lord Grosvenor, “Hints Respecting the Military Establishments in the American Colonys,” Feb. 25, 1763, BL, Add. Ms. 38335, fol. 28. See also “Some Thoughts on the Settlement and Government of Our Colonies in North America,” Mar. 10, 1763, BL, Add. Ms. 38335, fol. 76. By the King, a Royal Proclamation (London, 1763); Barrington, memorandum on the redeployment of troops, May 1, 1766, BL, Add. Ms. 73618, fols. 15–16; Lord Grosvenor, “Hints Respecting the Settlement of Our American Provinces,” Feb. 25, 1763, William Knox, “Hints Respecting the Civil Establishments in the American Colonies,” Feb. 25, 1763, BL, Add. Ms. 38335, fols. 14–15, 28; and The Justice and Necessity of Taxing the American Colonies, Demonstrated: Together with a Vindication of the Authority of Parliament (London, 1766), 18. On the political economic aims of the proclamation of 1763, see Board of Trade to Lord Egremont, June 8, 1763, Bod., Ms. North b.6, fols. 266–278; and R. A. Humphreys, “Lord Shelburne and the Proclamation of 1763,” EHR 49, no. 149 (Apr. 1934): 241–264. Francis Bernard, “Principles of Law and Policy Applied to the British Colonies in America,” 1764, BL, Add. Ms. 38342, fol. 194. For a similar perspective, see William Knox, “Hints Respecting the Civil Establishments in the American Colonies,” Feb. 25, 1763, BL, Add. Ms. 38335, fols. 20, 23. Bernard, “Principles of Law and Policy,” BL, Add. Ms. 38342, fol. 195; and Knox, “Civil Establishments,” Feb. 25, 1763, BL, Add. Ms. 38335, fols. 21, 23. On Knox, see Leland J. Bellot, William Knox: The Life and Thought of an Eighteenth-Century Imperialist (Austin, Tex., 1977); Jack P. Greene, “William Knox’s Explanation for the American Revolution,” WMQ 30, no. 2 (Apr. 1973): 293–306; Rena Vassar, “William Knox’s Defense of Slavery (1768),” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 114, no. 4 (Aug. 1970): 310–326; and Franklin B. Wickwire, British Subministers and Colonial America, 1763–1783 (Princeton, N.J., 1966), esp. 42–44. See Whately, Regulations Lately Made, 100. Jenkinson to Richard Wolters, Jan. 18, 1765, BL, Add. Ms. 38304, fol. 114. See Grenville to Robert Clive, Dec. 11, 1763, Grenville to Humphry Morice, Mar. 10, 1764, Grenville to Clive, Mar. 12, 1764, and Grenville to Jenkinson,

298 n o t e s t o pa g e s 1 0 7 – 1 0 8

17.

18.

19.

20.

Apr. 29, 1764, HEH, GGL, vol. 1. On Clive, see Huw V. Bowen, “Lord Clive and Speculation in East India Company Stock, 1766,” HJ 30, no. 4 (Dec. 1987): 905–920; Bruce Lenman and Philip Lawson, “Robert Clive, the ‘Black Jagir,’ and British Politics,” HJ 26, no. 4 (Dec. 1983): 801–829; P. J. Marshall, Bengal: The British Bridgehead, Eastern India, 1740–1828 (Cambridge, 1987), 78–92, 116–119; Robert Travers, Ideology and Empire in Eighteenth-Century India: The British in Bengal (Cambridge, 2007); and James Vaughn, “The Politics of Empire: Metropolitan Socio-Political Development and the Imperial Transformation of the British East India Company, 1675–1775,” (Ph.D. diss., University of Chicago, 2009), esp. 506–543. Robert Clive to the Honourable the Court of Directors [of the British East India Company], Sept. 30, 1765, HEH, Stowe Grenville Correspondence, box 20, fol. 17. Jenkinson, notes for a speech to the HoC on the Stamp Act, ca. Feb. 1765, BL, Add. Ms. 38342, fols. 202–206; Henry McCulloh, “General Thoughts with Respect to Such Regulations as Are Humbly Conceived to Be Necessary in America and in the Islands in the West Indies Lately Ceded to Us by France,” 1764, HEH, Stowe Grenville Correspondence, box 12, fol. 28; and Jenkinson, memorandum on taxing the American colonies, before Feb. 1765, BL, Add. Ms. 38339, fol. 131. See also “Settlement and Government,” Mar. 10, 1763, BL, Add. Ms. 38335, fol. 76. As Jack Greene observes, McCulloh had reservations about Grenville’s Stamp Act proposal because he feared it would drain the colonies of specie. See “Henry McCulloh’s Objections to the Stamp Act,” Huntington Library Quarterly 26, no. 3 (May 1963): 253–262. Grenville to Knox, Aug. 16 [original dated Aug. 15], 1768, HEH, GGL, vol. 2. See also Whately to John Temple, Feb. 9, 1765, HEH, Stowe Grenville Correspondence, box 13, fol. 6, p. 12. American Stamp Act, 5 Geo. 3, chap. 12. This was a long-standing goal of authoritarian colonial reform. See Thomas C. Barrow, “Archibald Cummings’ Plan for a Colonial Revenue, 1722,” New England Quarterly 36, no. 3 (Sept. 1963): 383–393. On land speculation and British politics, see Clarence Walworth Alvord, The Mississippi Valley in British Politics: A Study of the Trade, Land Speculation, and Experiments in Imperialism Culminating in the American Revolution, 2 vols. (Cleveland, 1917); Marc Egnal, A Mighty Empire: The Origins of the American Revolution (Ithaca, N.Y., 1971); Jack M. Sosin, Whitehall in the Wilderness: The Middle West in British Colonial Policy, 1760– 1775 (Lincoln, Neb., 1961); and Cameron B. Strang, “The Mason-Dixon and Proclamation Lines: Land Surveying and Native Americans in Pennsylvania’s

n o t e s t o pa g e s 1 0 8 – 1 1 1

21.

22. 23.

24.

25. 26. 27.

28.

29.

299

Borderlands,” Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography 136, no. 1 (Jan. 2012): 5–23. Eighteenth-century Stamp duties were frequently used to circumscribe political debate. See Hugh Gough, The Newspaper Press in the French Revolution (London, 1988), 125–128, 141–142. PDBPRNA, 2:4, 13–14, 26–27. On Meredith, see the entry in The History of Parliament: The House of Commons, 1754–1790, ed. Lewis Namier and John Brooke (Oxford, 1964). Jenkinson, notes for a speech to the HoC on the Stamp Act, ca. Feb. 1765, BL, Add. Ms. 38342, fols. 202–206. See Jenkinson, notes on the debate in the HoC about the Stamp Act, 1764, BL, Add. Ms. 38337, fol. 259; Whately to John Temple, June 12, 1765, HEH, Stowe Grenville Correspondence, box 13, fol. 6, p. 21; and “Settlement and Government,” Mar. 10, 1763, BL, Add. Ms. 38335, fol. 76. Whately to John Temple, Feb. 9, 1765, HEH, Stowe Grenville Correspondence, box 13, fol. 6, p. 12. On Grenville’s disinclination to give the colonies a chance to provide alternative source of revenue, see Morgan and Morgan, Stamp Act Crisis, 54–60. PDBPRNA, 2:14, 31. See O’Gorman, Rise of Party, 84. George Onslow to Newcastle, Mar. 19, 1765, BL, Add. Ms. 32966, fol. 70. See also Considerations on Taxes, as They Are Supposed to Affect the Price of Labour (London, 1765); and the review in the Monthly Review; or, Literary Journal, vol. 32 (London, 1765), 389–390. Charles Yorke, who voted for the Stamp Act’s repeal while strongly supporting the Declaratory Act, was the most notable example of this. On Yorke, see O’Gorman, Rise of Party. David Hartley, The Budget, Inscribed to the Man Who Thinks Himself Minister, 11th ed. (London, 1765); The State of the Nation with a Preliminary Defence of the Budget (London, 1765); and John Almon to Richard Grenville, Earl Temple, Aug. 14, 1764, BL, Add. Ms. 57823, fol. 22. For the establishment Whig response, see Onslow to Newcastle, Mar. 24, 1765, and Newcastle to Onslow, Mar. 26, 1765, BL, Add. Ms. 32966, fols. 96–97, 103–104. For Whately’s response, see Remarks on the Budget; or, A Candid Examination of the Facts and Arguments Offered to the Public in That Pamphlet, 2nd ed. (London, 1765). Whately to John Temple, June 12, 1765, HEH, Stowe Grenville Correspondence, box 13, fol. 6, p. 22. On the colonial agents and the Stamp Act crisis, see Kammen, Rope of Sand, 108–124. On Grenville ’s dismissal, see O’Gorman, Rise of Party, 96–97.

300 n o t e s t o pa g e s 1 1 1 – 1 1 2 30. Between 1764 and 1766, English exports fell more than 14 percent, with the textile industry hit particularly hard. London wages fell by more than 10 percent. See B. R. Mitchell, British Historical Statistics (Cambridge, 1988), 155, 449, 469. In the same period, the value of American exports to England fell by 6 percent, although this was somewhat offset by the rise in exports to Scotland. See Historical Statistics of the United States, Millennial Edition, ed. Susan B. Carter et al., 5 vols. (Cambridge, 2006), 5:711, 714. Economic difficulty varied across the colonies but was particularly sharp in Philadelphia, which saw a precipitous increase in forced property sales, and in New York. See Egnal, Mighty Empire, 131; and Cathy Matson, Merchants and Empire: Trading in Colonial New York (Baltimore, 1997), 282–283. Many historians link resistance to the Stamp Act to the “depression” of the 1760s. See Morgan and Morgan, Stamp Act Crisis, 31–32, 281, 291–292; Joseph D. Reid Jr., “Economic Burden: Spark to the American Revolution?” Journal of Economic History 38, no. 1 (Mar. 1978): 81–100; and Egnal, Mighty Empire, 1–15, 81–100. 31. “Col. Mercer’s Examination Before the Commons Committee,” Jan. 31, 1766, in “Col. George Mercer’s Papers,” ed. J. E. Tyler, Virginia Magazine of History and Biography 60, no. 3 (July 1952): 419. 32. Aaron Baruto Lousadal to Mr. David Samuda, Mar. 8, 1764, and extract of a letter dated Kingston, Jamaica, Oct. 8, 1764, SA, WWM/R/35/7, 9a. 33. Extract of a letter from Mr. John Rhea, Merchant, dated Philadelphia, Oct. 11, 1765, in Dennys De Berdt to Dartmouth, Dec. 3, 1765, SRO, Dartmouth Papers, D(W)1778/2/119; and Providence Gazette, Aug. 24, 1765, 1. See also Virginia Committee of Correspondence to the Agent, July 28, 1764, in “Proceedings of the Virginia Committee of Correspondence, 1759–’67,” Virginia Magazine of History and Biography 12, no. 1 (July 1904): 9–10; James Otis, Thomas Cushing, Samuel Adams, and Thomas Grey to Dennys De Berdt, Dec. 20, 1765, in The Writings of Samuel Adams, ed. Harry Alonzo Cushing, 4 vols. (New York, 1904–1908), 1:62–64; Roger Hale to William Legge, second Earl of Dartmouth, Nov. 8, 1765, SRO, Dartmouth Papers, D(W)1778/2/106; “The Petition of the Council and House of Representatives of His Majesty’s Province of Massachusetts to the Honourable the Commons of Great Britain in Parliament Assembled,” Nov. 10, 1764, HEH, Stowe Ms. 264; James and Drinker to David Barclay and Sons, July 23, 1764, HSP, James and Drinker Letterbook, vol. 13, pp. 287–290; and Boston Town Meeting, “Instructions to Newly-Elected Representatives,” May 24, 1764, NYPL, Samuel Adams Papers, box 1.

n o t e s t o pa g e s 1 1 2 – 1 1 3

301

34. On opposition to the Sugar Act, see Mr. Russell to Dennys De Berdt, Nov. 11, 1765, Roger Hale to Dartmouth, Nov. 8, 1765, SRO, Dartmouth Papers, D(W)1778/2/110, 106; Considerations upon the Act of Parliament, Whereby a Duty Is Laid of Six Pence Sterling per Gallon on Molasses (Boston, 1764); and Reasons Against the Renewal of the Sugar Act, as It Will Be Prejudicial to the Trade, Not Only of the Northern Colonies, but to That of Great-Britain Also (Boston, 1764). On the money shortage, see John Watts to General Monckton, Apr. 14, 1764, in Aspinwall Papers, ed. Thomas Aspinwall, 2 vols., Collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society, 4th ser., 10 (Boston, 1871), 2:521–522; “Resolutions of the Importers of European Goods, Philadelphia,” in Pennsylvania Advertiser and Daily Gazette, Nov. 14, 1765; and “Instructions Voted by the Inhabitants of Portsmouth, New Hampshire, Dec., 1765,” in Pennsylvania Journal and Weekly Advertiser, Jan. 30, 1766. 35. New York merchant quoted in Ernst, Money and Politics, 90–91. On the economic situation in the colonies, see John Hubbard to Ezra Stiles, Jan. 2, 1766, BRBML, Ezra Stiles Papers, correspondence, fol. 529; Sons of Liberty of Portmouth, N.H., to the Sons of Liberty of Boston, Feb. 8, 1766, MHS, Jeremy Belknap Papers, box OS 2, fol. 113; Marc Egnal, “The Economic Development of the Thirteen Continental Colonies, 1720 to 1775,” WMQ 32, no. 2 (Apr. 1975): 206; Egnal, Mighty Empire, 131, 133, 136; John J. McCusker, “How Much Is That in Real Money? A Historical Price Index for Use as a Deflator of Money Values in the Economy of the United States,” Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society 101, no. 2 (Oct. 1991): 325, 360; and Gary Nash, “Urban Wealth and Poverty in Prerevolutionary America,” in Race, Class, and Politics: Essays on American Colonial and Revolutionary Society (Urbana, Ill., 1986), 182. 36. American Stamp Act, 5 Geo. 3, chap. 12; Col. Mercer’s Examination, Jan. 31, 1766, 415; and Temple to Grenville, Dec. 9, 1764, HEH, Stowe Grenville Correspondence, box 23, fol. 29. 37. Charles Williams to William Legge, second Earl of Dartmouth, July 3, 1766, SRO, Dartmouth Papers, D(W)1778/2/218. See also “The Address of the Council and House of Representatives of the Massachusetts Bay to Governor Bernard in the Governor’s Letter,” Nov. 10, 1765, Governor Fitch to Halifax, Nov. 13, 1764, HEH, Stowe Ms. 264, fols. 156, 159; Jonathan Boucher to John James, Dec. 9, 1765, in “Jonathan Boucher Correspondence,” Maryland Historical Magazine 7, no. 2 (June 1912): 296; Virginia Committee of Correspondence to the Agent, July 28, 1764, in “Proceedings of the Virginia Committee of Correspondence,” 9; Chauncey Whittelsey to Stiles, Apr. 16,

302 n o t e s t o pa g e s 1 1 3 – 1 1 5

38.

39.

40.

41.

42.

1765, BRBML, Ezra Stiles Papers, correspondence, fol. 486; and copy of a letter from Philadelphia, Nov. 28, 1764, SA, WWM/R/20/3. [James Otis], Considerations on Behalf of the Colonists: In a Letter to a Noble Lord (London, 1765), 33. See also Jared Ingersoll to Thomas Fitch, Feb. 11, 1765, in The Fitch Papers: Correspondence and Documents During Thomas Fitch’s Governorship of the Colony of Connecticut, 1754–1766, 2 vols. (Hartford, 1918–1920), 2:317–326; and American Stamp Act, 5 Geo. 3, chap. 12. On colonial legal culture and the economy, see Cornelia Hughes Dayton, Women Before the Bar: Gender, Law and Society in Connecticut, 1639–1789 (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1995); Bruce H. Mann, Neighbors and Strangers: Law and Community in Early Connecticut (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1987); Gary Nash, The Urban Crucible: The Northern Seaports and the Origins of the American Revolution, abridged ed. (Cambridge, Mass., 1986), 208; Jacob M. Price, Capital and Credit in British Overseas Trade: The View from the Chesapeake, 1700–1776 (Cambridge, Mass., 1980); and Claire Priest, “Currency Policies and Legal Development in Colonial New England,” Yale Law Journal 110 (2001): 1303. [Daniel Dulany], Considerations on the Propriety of Imposing Taxes in the British Colonies, for the Purpose of Raising a Revenue, by Act of Parliament, 2nd ed. (Annapolis, Md., 1765), 24. See also American Stamp Act, 5 Geo. 3, chap. 12. William Smith Jr. to General Monckton, May 30, 1765, John Watts to Monckton, Apr. 14, 1764, and Watts to Monckton, Sept. 24, 1765, in Aspinwall Papers, 2:521–522, 570–571, 576. See also David Clarkson to “My Worthy Friend,” Nov. 23, 1765, HEH, David Clarkson Letterbook, p. 3; and Benjamin Hallowell to Charles Knowles, Dec. 6, 1765, SRO, Dartmouth Papers, D(W)1778/2/121. Boucher to John James, Dec. 9, 1765, 295; and James and Drinker to David Barclay and Sons, Oct. 14, 1765, HSP, James and Drinker Letterbook, vol. 14, p. 239. Livingston to Monckton, Nov. 8, 1765, in Aspinwall Papers, 2:559–560, 565; and Clarkson to “My Dear Friend,” Mar. 15, 1766, HEH, David Clarkson Letterbook, pp. 12–13. See also John Watts to Monckton, Nov. 9, 1765, in Aspinwall Papers, 2:583; Clarkson to “My Worthy Friend,” Jan. 6, 1766, HEH, David Clarkson Letterbook, pp. 5–6; extract of a letter from William Allason, Sept. 8, 1765, in Richmond College Historical Papers, ed. D. R. Anderson, 2 vols. (Richmond, Va., 1915–1917), 2:137; and James and Drinker to David Barclay and Sons, Oct. 14, 1765, HSP, James and Drinker Letterbook, p. 239.

n o t e s t o pa g e s 1 1 5 – 1 1 7

303

43. Richard Waln to David Barclay and Sons, Feb. 1, 1766, HSP, Richard Waln Letterbook, 1766–1799; extract of a letter from William Allason, Sept. 8, 1765, 2:137–138; Clarkson to “My Worthy Friend,” Dec. 28, 1765, HEH, David Clarkson Letterbook, p. 4; and Livingston to Monckton, Nov. 8, 1765, in Aspinwall Papers, 2:559. See also James and Drinker to David Barclay and Sons, Oct. 14, 1765, HSP, James and Drinker Letterbook, pp. 239–240. 44. See Clarkson to “My Dear Friend,” June 26, 1766, HEH, David Clarkson Letterbook, p. 20; Dr. William Smith, Stephen Watts, and Joseph Reed, “Eulogium,” “Dissertation II,” and “Dissertation III,” in Four Dissertations, on the Reciprocal Advantages of a Perpetual Union Between Great-Britain and Her American Colonies (Philadelphia, 1766); Watts to Monckton, Nov. 9, 1765, in Aspinwall Papers, 2:583; and [Dulany], Considerations, 28–30. For a statement celebrating the establishment Whig ideals of “civil liberty,” “toleration,” “the Protestant religion,” and “moderation,” see Smith, “Eulogium,” in Four Dissertations, 11–12. 45. Four Dissertations, 55; Clarkson to “My Worthy Friend,” Jan. 6, 1766, HEH, David Clarkson Letterbook, p. 5; and William Smith Jr. to Monckton, May 30, 1765, in Aspinwall Papers, 2:570–571. See also Hasenclever to Thomas Dampier, Aug. 8, 1765, Hasenclever to Dartmouth, Jan. 15, 1766, SRO, Dartmouth Papers, D(W)1778/2/92, 152; Watts to Monckton, Sept. 24, 1765, in Aspinwall Papers, 2:576; and [Dulany], Considerations, 28–33. On Watts’s exploits in Louisiana, see David Narrett, Adventurism and Empire: The Struggle for Mastery in the Louisiana-Florida Borderlands, 1762–1803 (Chapel Hill, N.C., 2015), 93. 46. [Dulany], Considerations, 47. See also Hallowell to Knowles, Dec. 6, 1765, Hasenclever to Dartmouth, Jan. 15, 1766, SRO, Dartmouth Papers, D(W)1778/2/121,152; and John Watts to Moses Franks, Apr. 27, 1765, in Letter Book of John Watts: Merchant and Councillor of New York, ed. Dorothy C. Barck (New York, 1928), 348. 47. Clarkson to “My Worthy Friend,” Jan. 6, 1766, HEH, David Clarkson Letterbook, p. 6; and [Dulany], Considerations, 47. See also Waln to David Barclay and Sons, Feb. 1, 1766, HSP, Richard Waln Letterbook, 1766–1799; and Clarkson to “My Dear Friend,” Mar. 15, 1766, HEH, David Clarkson Letterbook, pp. 12–13. For a critique of colonial manufacturing, see Stephen Watts, “Dissertation II,” in Four Dissertations, 70–73. 48. See Samuel Adams to John Smith, Dec. 19, 1765, in Writings of Samuel Adams, 1:45–46; Boston Evening-Post, Aug. 19, 1765, 2. On the stability of

304 n o t e s t o pa g e s 1 1 7 – 1 1 9

49.

50. 51. 52.

53.

54.

republics, see Boston Gazette, and Country Journal, June 11, 1764, 2; and Providence Gazette, Extraordinary, Mar. 12, 1766, 2–3. Samuel Adams to George Wyllys, Nov. 13, 1765, in Writings of Samuel Adams, 1:37–38. See also Richard Bland, An Inquiry into the Rights of the British Colonies (Williamsburg, Va., 1766), 26; James Otis, The Rights of the British Colonies Asserted and Proved (London, 1765), 56; and New-York Gazette, Nov. 25, 1765. Otis, Rights, 13, 33; [Otis], Considerations, 5; and Boston Gazette, and Country Journal, June 11, 1764, 2. Boston Town Meeting, “Instructions,” May 24, 1764, NYPL, Samuel Adams Papers, box 1. [Stephen Hopkins], The Grievances of the American Colonies Candidly Examined (London, 1766), 7; and Samuel Adams to John Smith, Dec. 19, 1765, in Writings of Samuel Adams, 1:47–48. See also Providence Gazette, Extraordinary, Mar. 12, 1766, 2–3; “Resolve of the Virginia Assembly Relating an Address to the King,” 1765, APS, Mss. Relating to NonImportation Resolutions, Philadelphia, 1766–1775, vol. 1, fol. 3; Christopher Gadsen to James Pearson, Feb. 20, 1766, SRO, Dartmouth Papers, D(W)1778/2/169; New-York Gazette, Nov. 25, 1765; and “New York Son of Liberty to a Friend of Liberty,” Mar. 6, 1766, APS, Sol Feinstone Collection, item 1312. New-York Gazette, Dec. 23, 1765, 3. See also [Thomas Fitch], Reasons Why the British Colonies, in America, Should Not Be Charged with Internal Taxes, by Authority of Parliament; Humbly Offered, for Consideration, in Behalf of the Colony of Connecticut (New Haven, Conn., 1764), 22. For the Stamp Act as a form of enslavement, see [Hopkins], Grievances, 31–32. For its economic consequences, see Lawrence Swinney, New Year’s Ode for the Year 1766, broadside (New York, 1765). On paranoia, see Bernard Bailyn, Ideological Origins of the American Revolution, enlarged ed. (Cambridge, Mass., 1992). On slavery discourse among colonial radicals, see Gary Nash, The Unknown American Revolution: The Unruly Birth of Democracy and the Struggle to Create America (New York, 2005), 210–216. For the “republican” idea that liberty depends on non-domination and that to be slave is to be “subject to the jurisdiction of someone else,” see Quentin Skinner, Liberty Before Liberalism (Cambridge, 1998), 41. [Stephen Hopkins], The Rights of Colonies Examined (Providence, R.I., 1765), 9, 19; Bland, Inquiry, 25–26; [Hopkins], Grievances, 5, 17; and Samuel Adams to John Smith, Dec. 19, 1765, in Writings of Samuel Adams, 1:45.

n o t e s t o pa g e s 1 1 9 – 1 21

305

55. Boston Town Meeting, “Instructions,” May 24, 1764, NYPL, Samuel Adams Papers, box 1; [Hopkins], Rights, 16; and “From John Macomb etc.,” in PSWJ, 4:716. 56. Stiles to John B. Hubbard, Feb. 22, 1765, BRBML, Ezra Stiles Papers, correspondence, fol. 476; and Chauncey Whittlesey to Stiles, Apr. 16, 1765, BRBML, Ezra Stiles Papers, correspondence, fol. 486. See also John Smith to Dartmouth, 1765, Otis, Cushing, Adams, and Gray to De Berdt, Dec. 20, 1765, SRO, Dartmouth Papers, D(W)1778/2/145, 161; Massachusetts House of Representatives, “Committee to Consider a Letter from Mr. Agent Mauduit, Draught of a Letter to Mr. Agent Mauduit,” June 13, 1764, HEH, Stowe Ms. 264, fols. 370–371; [Hopkins], Rights, 16–17; Providence Gazette, Mar. 12, 1766, 2–3; and New-York Gazette, Dec. 9, 1765, 2. On colonists’ willingness to grant funds, see Samuel Adams to John Smith, Dec. 19, 1765, in Writings of Samuel Adams, 1:47–48; Landon Carter, “Address to the Freeholders of the County of Richmond,” June 3, 1765, HEH, Brock Collection, box 229, fol. 27; and Bland, Inquiry, 22–23. 57. See “Extracts from the Journal of the House of Representatives of Massachusetts Bay,” Nov. 6, 1765 to Nov. 8, 1765, HEH, Stowe Ms. 264, fols. 29–30. 58. John Smith to Dartmouth, 1765, SRO, Dartmouth Papers, D(W)1778/2/145. See also Massachusetts House of Representatives, “Draught of a Letter to Mr. Agent Mauduit,” June 13, 1764, HEH, Stowe Ms. 264, fols. 370–371; [Hopkins], Grievances, 34; and New-York Gazette, Dec. 9, 1765, 2. 59. [Otis], Considerations, 29; and Otis, Rights, 65, 97–98. 60. John Adams, “ ‘A Dissertation on the Canon and the Feudal Law,’ No. 4,” in Papers of John Adams, ed. Robert J. Taylor et al., 18 vols. (Cambridge, Mass., 1977–), 1:128; and Benjamin Franklin to David Hall, Feb. 14, 1765, in PBF, 12:65–66. See also [Dulany], Considerations, 1; and Hall to William Strahan, Sept. 19, 1765, APS, David Hall Papers, ser. 2. For the increase in advertisement prices, see Arthur M. Schlesinger Sr., “The Colonial Newspapers and the Stamp Act,” New England Quarterly 8, no. 1 (March 1935): 66–67. On the conversion to Maryland currency, see John J. McCusker, Money and Exchange in Europe and America, 1600–1775: A Handbook (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1978), 199. 61. James Parker to Benjamin Franklin, Aug. 8, 1765, in PBF, 12:230; Hall to Benjamin Franklin, Oct. 14, 1765, APS, David Hall Papers, ser. 2; and NewYork Gazette, Dec. 9, 1765, 2. 62. Samuel Adams to John Smith, Dec. 19, 1765, in Writings of Samuel Adams, 1:43. See also Cushing and Samuel Adams to “Dear Sir,” Nov. 11, 1765, SRO,

306 n o t e s t o pa g e s 1 21 – 1 2 3

63.

64.

65.

66.

67.

68.

69.

Dartmouth Papers, D(W)1778/2/109; Providence Gazette, Aug. 24, 1765, 1–2; and Boston Town Meeting, “Instructions,” May 24, 1764, NYPL, Samuel Adams Papers, box 1. See New-York Gazette, Dec. 2, 1765, 1; Edward Shippen to Joseph Shippen, Dec. 25, 1765, APS, Edward Shippen Papers; Benjamin Franklin to Jackson, June 10, 1763, in PBF, 10:285–286; and [Hopkins], Grievances, 27. [Otis], Considerations, 18; and The Lamentation, of Pennsylvania, on Account of the Stamp-Act, broadside (Philadelphia, 1765). See also Samuel Adams to John Smith, Dec. 19, 1765, in Writings of Samuel Adams, 1:43; Otis, Rights, 114–115; and Gadsen to James Pearson, Feb. 20, 1766, SRO, Dartmouth Papers, D(W)1778/2/169. “Petition to the House of Commons,” in Proceedings of the Congress at New York (Annapolis, Md., 1766), 23; [Otis], Considerations, 32; The Examination of Doctor Benjamin Franklin, Before an August Assembly, Relating to the Repeal of the Stamp-Act, &c. (Philadelphia, 1766), 10; John Adams, “Instructions Adopted by the Braintree Town Meeting,” Sept. 24, 1765, and “Dissertation,” in Papers of John Adams, 1:138, 128. On the Sons of Liberty and the boycott, see Maier, Resistance to Revolution, 74–76; Morgan and Morgan, Stamp Act Crisis, 210–211; and T. H. Breen, Marketplace of Revolution: How Consumer Politics Shaped American Independence (New York, 2004), 195–234. See, respectively, Edmund S. Morgan, “The Puritan Ethic and the American Revolution,” WMQ 24, no. 1 (Jan. 1967): 3–43; and Margaret Ellen Newell, From Dependency to Independence: Economic Revolution in Colonial New England (Ithaca, N.Y., 1998), 266–283. Providence Gazette, Aug. 8, 1765, 1; and Boston Evening-Post, Feb. 4, 1765, 1. See also Nathaniel Lyttleton Savage to John Norton, July 22, 1766, HEH, Brock Collection, box 18, fol. 3; [Oxenbridge Thacher], Considerations on the Lowering the Value of Gold Coins Within the Province of Massachusetts Bay (Boston, 1762), 25; and To the Publick of Connecticut, broadside (New Haven, Conn., 1765). [John Trenchard and Thomas Gordon], Cato’s Letters, or Essays on Liberty, Civil and Religious, and Other Important Subjects, 3rd ed., 4 vols. (London, 1733), 4:4; and Resolution of the New York Assembly, Dec. 18, 1765, in Journal of the Votes and Proceedings of the General Assembly of the Colony of New-York, 2 vols. (New York, 1764–1766) 2:808. See also Jonathan Mayhew to Thomas Hollis, Aug. 19, 1765, in “Thomas Hollis and Jonathan Mayhew, Their Correspondence, 1759– 1766,” Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society, 3rd ser., 69 (Oct.

n o t e s t o pa g e s 1 2 3 – 1 2 6

70.

71.

72. 73.

74.

75.

76.

77.

78.

307

1947–May 1950): 176; Samuel Adams to John Smith, Dec. 19, 1765, in Writings of Samuel Adams, 1:41–42; Otis, Cushing, Adams, and Gray to De Berdt, Dec. 20, 1765, SRO, Dartmouth Papers, D(W)1778/2/161; and Bland, Inquiry, 13–14. Stiles to John Hubbard, June 12, 1764, BRBML, Ezra Stiles Papers, correspondence, fol. 432. See also Bland, Inquiry, 13; [Hopkins], Grievances,13–14; [Otis], Considerations, 24; and Otis, Rights, 37, 41, 58–59. Otis, Rights, 61. See also Sons of Liberty of Portsmouth, N.H., to the Sons of Liberty of Boston, Feb. 8, 1766, MHS, Jeremy Belknap Papers, box OS 2, fol. 113; [Oxenbridge Thacher], The Sentiments of a British American (Boston, 1764), 16; and Bland, Inquiry, 29–30. New-York Gazette, June 9, 1766, 2. See also Newport Mercury, Dec. 9, 1765, 1; Otis, Considerations, 32; and [Hopkins], Grievances, 19–21. John Smith to Dartmouth, 1765, and Otis, Cushing, Adams, and Gray to De Berdt, Dec. 20, 1765, SRO, Dartmouth Papers, D(W)1778/2/145, 161. See also Otis, Considerations, 32; Stiles to Thomas Hutchinson, Oct. 5, 1765, BRBML, Ezra Stiles Papers, correspondence, fol. 508; Pennsylvania Journal and Weekly Advertiser, Mar. 13, 1766, 1; and PDBPRNA, 2:144. Stamp Act Notebook, n.d., BRBML, Ezra Stiles Papers, misc. papers, fol. 372, p. 67; and Colin Nicolson, “Governor Francis Bernard, the Massachusetts Friends of Government, and the Advent of the Revolution,” Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society, 3rd ser., 103 (1991): 24–113, esp. 27, 52. For the population figures, see Historical Statistics of the United States, 5:562. [Martin Howard], A Letter from a Gentleman at Halifax, to His Friend in Rhode-Island (Newport, R.I., 1765), 17; Howard to Benjamin Franklin, Nov. 16, 1764, in PBF, 11:459; and William Johnson to Thomas Gage, July 13, 1765, in PSWJ, 11:844–845. See also Colden to Johnson, Jan. 6, 1765 in PSWJ, 11:523. Newport Mercury, Apr. 23, 1764, 1; and Cadwallader Colden, “State of the Province of New York,” Dec. 6, 1765, SRO, Dartmouth Papers, D(W)1778/2/120. The Newport editorialist was likely either Martin or his friend Thomas Moffatt. See Morgan and Morgan, Stamp Act Crisis, 48–50. [Howard], Letter, 14, 18; Newport Mercury, Apr. 23, 1764, 1; Johnson to Colden, Dec. 5, 1763, Gage to Johnson, Sept. 30, 1765, Colden to Johnson, Oct. 1, and Dec. 10, 1764, in PSWJ, 4:261–262, 852, 11:367–368, 499–500. Galloway writing as “Americanus” in Pennsylvania Journal and Weekly Advertiser, Aug. 29, 1765, 1; [Martin Howard], A Defence of the Letter from a Gentleman at Halifax, to His Friend in Rhode-Island (Newport, R.I., 1765), 1,

308 n o t e s t o pa g e s 1 2 6 – 1 2 8

79.

80.

81.

82.

83.

84.

85.

4, 7; and James Murray to Dr. John Murray, Nov. 13, 1765, in Letters of John Murray, Loyalist, ed. Nina Moore Tiffany (Boston, 1901), 154. See also Johnson to Gage, Sept. 12, 1765, in PSWJ, 11:931. Johnson to Colden, Sept. 30, 1765, in PSWJ, 4:844; and Cadwallader Colden, “Remarks to the Council Held at Fort George in the City of New York,” Sept. 4, 1764, HEH, Stowe Ms. 264. See also Johnson to Colden, Oct. 11, 1765, Johnson to Gage, Sept. 12, 1765, Thomas Moncrieffe to Johnson, Jan. 20, 1766, in PSWJ, 4:857, 11:930–931, 12:12–13; Colden, “State of the Province,” Dec. 6, 1765, SRO, Dartmouth Papers, D(W)1778/2/120; “Extract of a Private Letter from a Merchant at Charles Town,” Oct. 29, 1765, HEH, Stowe Ms. 264, fol. 67; and [Howard], Defence, 5–7, 31. Gage to Johnson, Sept. 30, 1765, Colden to Johnson, Dec. 15, 1765, in PSWJ, 4:851–852, 883–884; and John Hughes to the Commissioners of Customs, Nov. 2, 1765, HEH, Stowe Ms. 264, fols. 124–125. See also Johnson to Colden, Oct. 11, 1765, in PSWJ, 4:857; James Murray to Dr. John Murray, Nov. 13, 1765, in Letters of John Murray, 154; and Peter Oliver to Thomas Hutchinson, Mar. 6, 1766, NYPL, Samuel Adams Papers, box 1. Samuel Adams to John Smith, Dec. 20, 1765, in Writings of Samuel Adams, 1:59; Mayhew to Hollis, Aug. 19, 1765, in “Hollis-Mayhew Correspondence,” 174–175; Hall to Benjamin Franklin, Sept. 6, 1765, APS, Hall Papers, ser. 2; and Swinney, New Year’s Ode. See also Liberty, Property, and No Excise: A Poem Composed on the Sight Seen on the Great Trees, (So Called) in Boston, New-England, on the 14th of August, 1765, broadside (Boston, 1765). John Hughes to John Penn, Sept. 17, 1765, APS, Mss. Relating to NonImportation Resolutions, Philadelphia, 1766–1775, vol. 1, fol. 5; Hall to William Strahan, Sept. 6, 1765, APS, David Hall Papers, ser. 2; and Colden, “Remarks to the Council,” Sept. 9, 1764, HEH, Stowe Ms. 264, fol. 16. Samuel Adams to John Smith, Dec. 20, 1765, in Writings of Samuel Adams, 1:59; No Stamped Paper to Be Had, broadside (Philadelphia, Nov. 7, 1765); and Newport Mercury, Nov. 4, 1765, 3. Otis, Cushing, Adams, and Gray to De Berdt, Dec. 20, 1765, SRO, Dartmouth Papers, D(W)1778/2/161. See also Samuel Adams to W[yllys], Nov. 13, 1765, and James Otis on behalf of the Town of Boston to De Berdt, Oct. 22, 1766, in Writings of Samuel Adams, 1:38, 95–96. See Samuel Adams to W[yllys], Nov. 13, 1765, Samuel Adams to John Smith, Dec. 19, 1765, and Samuel Adams to John Smith, Dec. 20, 1765, in Writings of Samuel Adams, 1: 35–36, 40, 60. See also Otis on behalf of the Town of Boston to De Berdt, Oct. 22, 1766, in Writings of Samuel Adams, 1:95–96.

n o t e s t o pa g e s 1 2 8 – 1 3 0

309

86. Mayhew to Hollis, Aug. 19, and Oct. 1, 1765, in “Hollis-Mayhew Correspondence,” 175–176, 180–181. See also Edward Shippen to Joseph Shippen, Dec. 25, 1765, APS, Edward Shippen Papers; and Samuel Adams to John Smith, Dec. 20, 1765, in Writings of Samuel Adams, 1:56–57. 87. Samuel Adams to John Smith, Dec. 20, 1765, in Writings of Samuel Adams, 1:57–58. 88. Peter Oliver to Thomas Hutchinson, Dec. 16, 1765, NYPL, Samuel Adams Papers, box 1; Colden, “State of the Province,” Dec. 6, 1765, SRO, Dartmouth Papers, D(W)1778/2/120; and William Henry Lyttleton to Knox, Oct. 20, 1765, WLCL, William Knox Papers, box 1, fol. 17. 89. See Pennsylvania Journal and Weekly Advertiser, Dec. 26, 1765, 3; New-York Gazette, Jan. 20, 1766, 3; Ezra Stiles, personal notes, and Stamp Act Notebook, BRBML, Ezra Stiles Papers, misc. papers, fols. 361, 364, 372, p. 70. 90. New-York Gazette, Dec. 9, 1765, 2; Newport Mercury, Oct. 15, 1764, 2; Liberty, Property, and No Excise; and Pennsylvania Journal and Weekly Advertiser, Apr. 10, 1766, 2. 91. See Mayhew to Hollis, Aug. 19, 1765, Jan. 7, 1766, in “Hollis-Mayhew Correspondence,” 176, 184; extract of a letter from William Allason, Sept. 8, 1765, 2:137; Johnson to Colden, Sept. 13, 1765, in PSWJ, 4:843–844; Chauncey Winstanley to Stiles, Dec. 24, 1765, Stiles to Thomas Clap, Jan. 23, 1766, and Thomas Moffat to Stiles, Mar. 18, 1766, BRBML, Ezra Stiles Papers, correspondence, fols. 528, 532, 549. 92. Bradley and Harrison to Messrs. Walker and Dawson, Feb. 21, 1765, and extract of a letter dated Kingston, Jamaica, Oct. 8, 1764, SA, WWM/R/35/14, 9a. 93. James and Drinker to John Robert Samuel and Emmanuel Elam, Nov. 28, 1765, HSP, James and Drinker Letterbook, pp. 287–288; John Scott to Dartmouth, Feb. 19, 1766, Gadsen to Pearson, Feb. 20, 1766, SRO, Dartmouth Papers, D(W)1778/2/167, 169; Mayhew to Hollis, Sept. 26, 1765, in “HollisMayhew Correspondence,” 179; and Dr. William Smith to Josiah Tucker, Philadelphia, Dec. 15, 1765, HSP, Abstracts of the Papers of Dr. William Smith, vol. 1, pp. 36–37. 94. See Andrew Jackson O’Shaughnessy, An Empire Divided: The American Revolution and the British Caribbean (Philadelphia, 2000), esp. 81–108. 95. See William Henry Lyttelton to William Knox, Jan. 10, July 14, Oct. 20, 1765, WLCL, William Knox Papers, box 1, fols. 15–17; and William Henry Lyttelton to Stephen Fuller, July 14, 1765, Rubenstein, William Henry Lyttelton Letterbook, 1763–1766.

310 n o t e s t o pa g e s 1 3 0 – 1 3 3 96. Samuel Martin to Christopher Baldwin, June 22, 1765, BL, Add. Ms. 41350, fol. 14. See also extract of a letter dated Kingston, Jamaica, Oct. 8, 1764, SA, WWM/R/35/9a; William Whitehead to the Commissioners of Stamps, Barbados, Nov. 10, 1765, SA, WWM/R/24/56; [John Dickinson], An Address to the Committee of Correspondence in Barbados (Philadelphia, 1766); [Kenneth Morison], An Essay Towards the Vindication of the Committee of Correspondence in Barbados (Barbados, 1766); [John Gay Alleyne], A Letter to the North American, on Occasion of His Address to the Committee of Correspondence in Barbados (Bridgetown, Barbados, 1766); and Candid Observations on Two Pamphlets (Bridgetown, Barbados, 1766). See also Jack P. Greene, “Barbados: Changing Identities,” in Imperatives, Behaviors, and Identities: Essays in Early American Cultural History (Charlottesville, Va., 1992), 61. 97. Samuel Martin to James Gondan, July 28, 1765, BL, Add. Ms. 41350, fols. 19–20; and Stamp Act Notebook, BRBML, Ezra Stiles Papers, misc. papers, fol. 372, p. 69. 98. William Bollan to Charles Watson-Wentworth, second Marquess of Rockingham, Nov. 13, 1765, SA, WWM/R/24/1; De Berdt to Dartmouth, Dec. 3, 1765, SRO, Dartmouth Papers, D(W)1778/2/119; Newcastle to Barlow Trecothick, Sept. 24, 1765, BL, Add. Ms. 32970, fol. 55; and “Petition of London Merchants Trading to N. America,” Jan. 1766, SA, WWM/R/57/1. See also “London Merchants’ Petition with Mr. Trecothick’s Proofs and Observations,” Jan. 1766, SA, WWM/R/57/6; and Kammen, Rope of Sand, 118. 99. See Gazetteer and New Daily Advertiser, Dec. 23, 1765, 1, Jan. 17, 1766, 1, Jan. 23, 1766, 1, Feb. 4, 1766, 1; Public Advertiser, Jan. 25, 1766, 1–2; Lloyd’s Evening Post, Aug. 19, 1765, 179; [William Knox], The Claim of the Colonies to an Exemption from Internal Taxes Imposed by Authority of Parliament, Examined (London, 1765); [Josiah Tucker], A Letter from a Merchant in London to His Nephew in North America, Relative to the Present Posture of Affairs in the Colonies (London, 1766); and [Soame Jennyns], The Objections to the Taxation of Our American Colonies, by the Legislature of Great Britain, Briefly Consider’d, 2nd ed. (London, 1765). 100. “Anti-Sejanus,” in Public Advertiser, Jan. 22, 1766, 1; The Rights of Parliament Vindicated on Occasion of the Late Stamp-Act (London, 1766), 42; and Gazetteer and New Daily Advertiser, Jan. 15, 1766, 4. 101. Public Ledger, Aug. 23, 1765, 806. See also [Knox], Claim, 25; [Tucker], Letter, 40, 42; and Gazetteer and New Daily Advertiser, Nov. 7, 1765, 1.

n o t e s t o pa g e s 1 3 3 – 1 3 6

311

102. Public Advertiser, Feb. 26, 1766, 4. See also St. James’s Chronicle or the British Evening Post, Nov. 21, 1765, 4; Public Advertiser, Feb. 22, 1766, 1–2; and [Tucker], Letter, 44. 103. Public Advertiser, Oct. 26, 1765, 1, Jan. 22, 1766, 1; and Justice and Necessity, 8. See also Gazetteer and New Daily Advertiser, Feb. 11, 1766, 1. 104. Public Advertiser, Jan. 22, 1766, 1, and Jan. 25, 1766, 1–2. See also [Knox], Claim, 2; and Gazetteer and New Daily Advertiser, Mar. 7, 1766, 1. 105. See Lloyd’s Evening Post, Aug. 19, 1765, 179; Public Ledger, Aug. 23, 1765, 1–2; Public Advertiser, Jan. 25, 1766, 2; [Jennyns], Objections, 22; and [Tucker], Letter, 23, 29–30. 106. Public Advertiser, Jan. 22, 1766, 1, Jan. 25, 1766, 2; Gazetteer and New Daily Advertiser, Jan. 15, 1766, 4, and Mar. 15, 1766, 1. See also Public Ledger, Aug. 23, 1765, 1–2; Rights of Parliament, 41, and [Knox], Claim, 24. For the colonists’ conspicuous consumption, see [Tucker], Letter, 20. 107. Justice and Necessity, 19–20. 108. Gazetteer and New Daily Advertiser, Jan. 23, 1766, 4; and Public Advertiser, Mar. 1, 1766, 1–2. The author has located nearly a hundred newspaper articles critical of the Stamp Act published in London newspapers between Apr. 1765 and Apr. 1766. 109. Public Advertiser, Jan. 22, 1766, 1. See also Gazetteer and New Daily Advertiser, Jan. 2, 1766, 2, Jan. 27, 1766, 1; and Public Ledger, Nov. 7, 1765, 1066. In addition to his A Collection of the Most Interesting Tracts, Lately Published in England and America, on the Subjects of Taxing the American Colonies, and Regulating Their Trade (London, 1766), Almon republished Dickinson, Dulany, Hopkins, and Otis. For Almon’s radical connections and opposition to the Stamp Act, see his to John Wilkes, Oct. 23, 1764, BL, Add. Ms. 30868, fol. 137; and Memoirs of a Late Eminent Bookseller (London, 1790), 32–34. 110. Gazetteer and New Daily Advertiser, Nov. 14, 1765, 1, Dec. 3, 1765, 4; and Public Advertiser, Dec. 30, 1765, 1–2. 111. The Crisis; or, A Full Defence of the Colonies (London, 1766); [Nicholas Ray], The Importance of the Colonies of North America, and the Interest of Great Britain with Regard to Them, Considered (London, 1766); and Public Advertiser, Feb. 4, 1766, 1. 112. Public Advertiser, Feb. 4, 1766, 1. See also Public Ledger, Nov. 8, 1765, 1069; Gazetteer and New Daily Advertiser, Sept. 3, 1765, 1, Jan. 27, 1766, 1, Feb. 3, 1766, 1–2; and St. James’s Chronicle or the British Evening Post, July 13, 1765, 2. 113. See St. James’s Chronicle or the British Evening Post, Dec. 7, 1765, 1; London Evening Post, Jan. 28, 1766, 3; Public Ledger, Dec. 4, 1765, 2057; Gazetteer

312 n o t e s t o pa g e s 1 3 6 – 1 3 9

114.

115.

116.

117.

118.

119.

120. 121.

and New Daily Advertiser, Jan. 1, 1766, 1; and Gazetteer and New Daily Advertiser, Feb. 18, 1766, 1. Gazetteer and New Daily Advertiser, Dec. 24, 1765, 1; St. James’s Chronicle or the British Evening Post, Jan. 16, 1766, 4; and Public Advertiser, Mar. 1, 1766, 1–2. [John Fothergill], Considerations Relative to the North American Colonies (London, 1765), 21; and Lloyd’s Evening Post, Jan. 22, 1766, 83. See also London Evening Post, Oct. 29, 1765, 1. See “Memorandums for Lord Rockingham,” Sept. 11, 1765, BL, Add. Ms. 32969, fol. 365; Public Advertiser, Jan. 23, 1766, 1–2; Gazetteer and New Daily Advertiser, Nov. 22, 1765, 1, Jan. 1, 1766, 1; Public Ledger, Dec. 25, 1765, 2132; [Ray], Importance of the Colonies, 13–14; [Fothergill], Considerations, 8; and [Joshua Steele], An Account of a Late Conference on the Occurrences in America: In a Letter to a Friend (London, 1766), esp. 38–40. On Powell’s view that Parliament had a right to tax, see [Thomas Pownall], The Administration of the Colonies, 3rd ed. (London, 1766), 89–90. Pownall eventually concluded that Parliament could only legitimately tax the colonies if it allowed them representation. See [Thomas Pownall], The Administration of the Colonies, 4th ed. (London, 1768), 162–164. On Pownall’s intellectual and political evolution, see G. H. Guttridge, “Thomas Pownall’s The Administration of the Colonies: The Six Editions,” WMQ 26, no. 1 (Jan. 1969): 31–46. William Strahan to David Hall, Jan. 11, 1766, in “Correspondence Between William Strahan and David Hall, 1763–1777,” Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography 10, no. 1 (Apr. 1886): 92; Public Advertiser, Jan. 27, 1766, 2; Gazetteer and New Daily Advertiser, Dec. 28, 1765, 1; and “Magna Britannia: Her Colonies Reduc’d (Explanation and Moral),” in PBF, 13:71. For Franklin’s newspaper writings criticizing the Stamp Act, see PBF, vols. 12–13. Newcastle to Thomas Cant, Feb. 15, 1766, BL, Add. Ms. 32974, fol. 5; and PDBPRNA, 2:168, 89, 284. Rockingham’s advisor, Robert Carter, made a similar point. See his to Rockingham, Dec. 1, 1765, SA, WWM/R/24/40. See John Brewer, Sinews of Power: War, Money, and the English State, 1688– 1783 (New York, 1988); and William Ashworth, Customs and Excise: Trade, Production, and Consumption in England, 1640–1845 (Oxford, 2003). See PDBPRNA, 2:151, 289. PDBPRNA, 2:81–88.

n o t e s t o pa g e s 1 4 1 – 1 4 3

313

122. PDBPRNA, 2:95–97, 104, 184–194, 234; and Mercer’s Examination, Jan. 31, 1766, in “Mercer’s Papers,” 418. On Trecothick’s consultation with Newcastle, see James West to Newcastle, Feb. 2, 1766, BL, Add. Ms. 32973, fol. 411. 123. Rockingham to Newcastle, Jan. 2, 1766, BL, Add. Ms. 32973, fol. 13; and Rockingham to Yorke, Jan. 25, 1766, BL, Add. Ms. 35430, fol. 39. See also Henry S. Conway to Francis Fauquier, Sept. 14, 1765, BL, Add. Ms. 32969, fol. 383; Henry S. Conway to Francis S. Conway, Feb. 12, 1766, LWL, Ms. 84, fol. 46; and Rockingham to Yorke, Jan. 17, 1766, BL, Add. Ms. 35430, fol. 32. Wilkes’s friend Lauchlin Macleane concluded that the “majority of the House of Lords and the Butean part of the administration” supported the act; Wilkes to Macleane, Jan. 22, 1766, BL, Add. Ms. 30869, fol. 16. 124. Henry S. Conway to Francis S. Conway, Mar. 5, 1766, LWL, Ms. 84, fol. 48; Duke of Bedford, “Thoughts on the Proper Manner of Proceeding in the House, on the Papers Laid Before the House, by H. Majesty’s Command, in Relation to the Tumults &c in No. America, Laid Before the Lords at Ld Halifax’s,” Jan. 24, 1766, WA, Bedford Letterbook, vol. 53, p. 16; and Grenville to Robert Nugent, June 21, 1766, HEH, GGL, vol. 2. See also James West to Newcastle, Feb. 7, 1766, BL, Add. Ms. 32973, fol. 377. 125. De Berdt to Samuel White, Feb. 15, 1766, in “Letters of Dennys De Berdt, 1757–1770,” ed. Albert Matthews, The Publications of the Colonial Society of Massachusetts 13 (1911): 311; and James West to Newcastle, Feb. 7, 1766, BL, Add. Ms. 32973, fol. 377. On the debate over enforcing the Stamp Act, see PDBPRNA, 2:166–177. 126. PDBPRNA, 2:315; and Rockingham to Newcastle, Feb. 22, 1766, BL, Add. Ms. 32974, fol. 68. 127. Newcastle to John White, July 25, 1766, BL, Add. Ms. 32976, fol. 85; The Repeal; or, The Funeral Procession of Miss Americ-Stamp, 1766 or later, etching with engraving, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.; and E. P. Richardson, “Stamp Act Cartoons in the Colonies,” Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography 96, no. 3 (July 1972): 291–293. 128. De Berdt to William Smith, Mar. 1766, in “Letters of De Berdt,” 314; and “Some Occurrences That Passed Yesterday Sent to Mr. White,” June 28, 1766, BL, Add. Ms. 32975, fol. 522. See also Lyttelton to Fuller, Dec. 12, and Feb. 28, 1765, Rubenstein, William Henry Lyttelton Letterbook, 1763–1766. 129. See De Berdt to William Smith, Mar. 1766, in “Letters of De Berdt,” 314–315; Samuel Ward to Sir [Henry Seymour Conway?], June 25, 1766, Townshend Papers, reel 1; and William Brattle to Dartmouth, June 4, 1766, SRO, Dartmouth Papers, D(W)1778/2/205.

314 n o t e s t o pa g e s 1 4 3 – 1 4 8 130. Samuel Ward to “Sir,” June 25, 1766, Townshend Papers, reel 1. 131. See William Gibberne to Dartmouth, May 30, 1766, New York Sons of Liberty Circular Letter, May 31, 1766, SRO, Dartmouth Papers, D(W)1778/2/201–202; and Hollis to Mayhew, May 8, 1766, in “HollisMayhew Correspondence,” 187. 132. Political Debates (Paris [i.e., Philadelphia or New York?], 1766); Entry for Apr. 22, 1767, BRBML, Ezra Stiles Papers, itineraries II, fol. 5, p. 145; Mayhew to Hollis, May 4, 1766, in “Hollis-Mayhew Correspondence,” 188; Pennsylvania Journal and Weekly Advertiser, Apr. 24, 1766, 2; and Joseph W. Barnwell, “The Correspondence of Charles Garth: The Pitt Statue,” South Carolina Historical and Genealogical Magazine 28, no. 2 (Apr. 1927): 79–93. 133. See Samuel Ward to “Sir,” June 25, 1766, extract of a letter from Francis Fauquier to Henry Seymour Conway, June 27, 1766, Townshend Papers, reel 1; William Brattle to Dartmouth, June 4, 1766, Williamos to Dartmouth, July 3, 1766, SRO, Dartmouth Papers, D(W)1778/2/205, 218; John Devotion to Stiles, May 10, 1766, and Stiles to Samuel Langdon, May 24, 1766, BRBML, Ezra Stiles Papers, correspondence, fols. 556–557. 134. See “Some Occurrences That Passed Yesterday Sent to Mr. White,” June 28, 1766, BL, Add. Ms. 32975, fols. 528–529. Rockingham received thank you letters from port cities and industrializing towns, including Manchester, Leeds, Hull, Kingston Upon Thames, Lancaster, Sheffield, Halifax, Leicester, York, and Bristol. See SA, WWM/R/59.

5. Britain’s Authoritarian Ascendancy 1. George Grenville to Armine Woodhouse, July 3, and Oct. 10, 1767, HEH, GGL, vol. 2. 2. P. D. G. Thomas, for example, argues that “political opinion was overwhelmingly hostile to the colonists, and little controversy arose because of the lack of any sustained defense of American views and behavior.” “Charles Townshend and American Taxation in 1767,” EHR 83, no. 326 (Jan. 1968): 34. See also Thomas C. Barrow, Trade and Empire: The British Customs Service in Colonial America, 1660–1775 (Cambridge, Mass., 1967), 213; Robert Chaffin, “The Townshend Acts of 1767,” WMQ 27, no. 1 (Jan. 1970): 101; and H. T. Dickinson, “Britain’s Imperial Sovereignty,” in Britain and the American Revolution, ed. H. T. Dickinson (London, 1998), 65, 81.

n o t e s t o pa g e s 1 4 9 – 1 5 0

315

3. See John Brewer, Party Ideology and Popular Politics at the Accession of George III (Cambridge, 1976), 87, 105–110; and John Brooke, The Chatham Administration, 1766–1768 (London, 1956), 1–19. 4. For Chatham’s views on Townshend, see his to Augustus Henry, third Duke of Grafton, Dec. 7, 1766, in Autobiography and Political Correspondence of Augustus Henry, Third Duke of Grafton, K.G., ed. William R. Anson (London, 1898), 110–111. 5. Philip Yorke, second Earl of Hardwicke to Charles Yorke, Feb. 24, 1767, in George Thomas Keppel, Earl of Albemarle, Memoirs of the Marquis of Rockingham and His Contemporaries, 2 vols. (London, 1852), 2:40; and Cobbett, 16:362–363. See also A List of the Majority in the House of Commons, Who on Friday the 27th of February, 1767, Voted for Reducing the Land Tax, to Three Shillings in the Pound, broadside (Pairs [i.e., London?], 1767), 2, 7–8; and Charles Jenkinson, notes for a speech against the reduction of the land tax, 1767, BL, Add. Ms. 38340, fols. 51–53. 6. Public Advertiser, Mar. 6, 1767, 2, Mar. 10, 1767, 2; and [Soame Jenyns], Thoughts on the Causes and Consequences of the Present High Price of Provisions, 2nd ed. (London, 1767), 19. 7. See George Savile to Marquess of Rockingham, n.d., Hardwicke to Charles Yorke, Feb. 11, Feb. 24, 1767, in Memoirs of Rockingham, 2:34–40; Edmund Burke to Charles O’Hara, Feb. 28, 1767, in The Correspondence of Edmund Burke, ed. Thomas W. Copeland et al., 10 vols. (Cambridge, 1958–1978), 1:296–297; Grenville to Whately, Oct. 9, 1766, HEH, GGL, vol. 2; Public Advertiser, Feb. 25, 1767, 1, Mar. 2, 1767, 2; Gazetteer and New Daily Advertiser, Mar. 4, 1767, 1; London Chronicle, Mar. 12, 1767, 252; and The Gentleman’s Magazine and Historical Chronicle, Mar. 1767, 141. 8. Benjamin Franklin to Joseph Galloway, Aug. 8, 1767, in PBF, 14:229. 9. List of the Majority, 8. For the Chatham administration’s position on the land tax, see Grafton to William Pitt, Earl of Chatham, Jan. 21, Feb. 28, and Mar. 29, 1767, in Correspondence of William Pitt, Earl of Chatham, ed. William Stanhope Taylor and John Henry Pringle, 4 vols. (London, 1838–1840), 3:168–170, 224–225, 239. 10. Public Advertiser, Feb. 28, 1767, 1–2; and [Regulus], “Regulus; or, A View of the Present State of Public Affairs: With Certain Proposals, Addressed to the Independent Electors of Great Britain,” Political Register and Impartial Review of New Books 2, issue 12 (1768): 235. See also London Evening Post, Mar. 5, 1767, 3; Public Advertiser, Mar. 13, 1767, 1; Gazetteer and New Daily Advertiser, May 15, 1767, 1; London Magazine; or, Gentleman’s Monthly

316 n o t e s t o pa g e s 1 5 0 – 1 5 3

11.

12. 13.

14.

15. 16.

17.

Intelligencer, Apr. 1767, 161–164; and [James Murray], Sermons to Asses (London, 1768), 46. Charles Garth to South Carolina, Jan. 31, 1767, South Carolina Historical and Genealogical Magazine 29, no. 2 (Apr. 1928): 132. See also Whately to John Temple, May 2, 1767, HEH, Stowe Grenville Correspondence, box 13, fol. 28. See PDBRNA, 1:94. Charles Townshend to [Adam Smith], [Nov. or Dec. 1766], WLCL, Charles Townshend Papers, 8/48/2. See also Autobiography of Grafton, 126–127; Shelburne to Chatham, Feb. 1, 1767, in Correspondence of William Pitt, 3:182– 188; Townshend, “History of the Sinking Fund,” WLCL, Charles Townshend Papers, 8/48/1; and PDBPRNA, 2:410, 457, 464–472. For Shelburne’s revenue program, see Shelburne to Thomas Gage, Dec. 11, 1766, WLCL, Shelburne Papers, 53:363–366; and “Reasons for Not Diminishing American Expense This Year,” Mar. 30, 1767, WLCL, Shelburne Papers, 85:103–110. For the bill itself, An Act for Granting Certain Duties in the British Colonies and Plantations in America, 7 Geo. 3, chap. 46. For a different perspective on Townshend’s aims, see P. D. G. Thomas, The Townshend Duties Crisis: The Second Phase of the American Revolution 1767–1773 (Oxford, 1987), 30. See PDBPRNA, 2:465, 467, 472; Grenville to General Fraser, Feb. 17, 1767, Grenville to Whately, Aug. 30, 1767, Grenville to Bedford, Nov. 6, 1767, HEH, GGL, vol. 2; [Thomas Whately], Considerations on the Trade and Finances of This Kingdom, and on the Measures of Administration, with Respect to Those Great National Objects Since the Conclusion of the Peace, 3rd ed. (London, 1769), 118; [Jenyns], Thoughts, 19–21; the review of Jenyn’s pamphlet in, The Gentleman’s Magazine and Historical Chronicle 37 (1767): 596–599; Jenkinson, notes for a speech on the land tax, Feb. 1767, BL, Add. Ms. 38340, fols. 51–52; and Villiers, “Hints to the Opposition,” 1769, Bod., Mss. Clarendon dep. c.346, p. 390. See Benjamin Franklin to Galloway, Apr. 14, and Aug. 8, 1767, in PBF, 14:122–125, 228–232. Chatham to Shelburne, Feb. 3, Mar. 22, 1767, Shelburne to Chatham, Feb. 16, 1767, BL, Add. Ms. 88906/1/6, fols. 55–56, 76, 64; and PDBPRNA, 2:482, 485. See also Beckford to Shelburne, Feb. 14, 1767, BL, Add. Ms. 88906/3/2, fol. 61. See Chatham to Grafton, Jan. 23, 1767, Henry S. Conway, “Response to E.I.C. Proposals,” 1767, in Autobiography of Grafton, 113–114, 121–122; and Beckford to Chatham, Jan. 27, 1767, in Correspondence of William Pitt,

n o t e s t o pa g e s 1 5 3 – 1 5 4

18.

19.

20.

21.

317

3:177. Historians usually treat efforts to reform the East India Company as an effort to acquire additional revenue. See H. V. Bowen, Revenue and Reform: The Indian Problem in British Politics, 1757–1773 (Cambridge, 1991), 49; Brooke, Chatham Administration, 72; and Lucy Sutherland, The East India Company in Eighteenth-Century Politics (Oxford, 1962), 149. My interpretation differs substantially from than these earlier accounts and is deeply indebted to James Vaughn, “The Politics of Empire: Metropolitan Socio-Political Development and the Imperial Transformation of the British East India Company, 1675–1775,” (Ph.D. diss., University of Chicago, 2009). When reports arrived that Hyder Ally and the Subah of Decan threatened Madras, they caused a dramatic fall in company stock that eviscerated the finances of politicians from across the political spectrum. See Charles Lloyd to Grenville, June 1769, BL, Add. Ms. 57818, fol. 170; and Frederick North, Lord North to Francis North, first Earl of Guilford, May 30, 1769, Bod., Ms. North add. c.4, fol. 133. Chairman and Deputy Chairman of the East India Company to Grafton, Jan. 6, 1767, in Correspondence of William Pitt, 3:164. On the Townshend Duties as an attempt to improve the East India Company’s finances, see P. D. G. Thomas, The Townshend Duties Crisis: The Second Phase of the American Revolution,1767–1773 (Oxford, 1987), 18. For colonists’ understanding of the act, see William Samuel Johnson to William Pitkin, June 9, 1767, in “Trumbull Papers,” Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society, 5th ser., 9 (1885): 236. On Dowdeswell’s influence, see Cornelius Forster, The Uncontrolled Chancellor: Charles Townshend and His American Policy (Providence, R.I., 1978), 135. See Chatham to Charles Townshend, Jan. 6, 1767, in Correspondence of William Pitt, 3:157–158; Chatham to Grafton, Jan. 10, 1767, in Autobiography of Grafton, 110–111; Gazetteer and New Daily Advertiser, Apr. 11, 1767, 1; and L. Scrafton to Clive, Apr. 12, 1766, quoted in Sutherland, East India Company, 148. George Colebrooke, speech to the HoC, Feb. 27, 1769, in Sir Henry Cavendish’s Debates of the House of Commons, During the Thirteenth Parliament of Great Britain, Commonly Called the Unreported Parliament, ed. J. Wright (London, 1841), 1:259. See also Grenville to Alexander Wedderburn, Sept. 28, 1766, HEH, GGL, vol. 2; Grenville to Robert Clive, Nov. 22, 1766, BL, Add. Ms. 42084, fol. 213–214; and Charles Yorke, speech to the HoC, April 14, 1767, in “Parliamentary Diaries of Nathaniel Ryder, 1764–7,” ed. P. D. G. Thomas, Camden Miscellany XXIII, 4th ser., 7 (Dec. 1969): 339.

318 n o t e s t o pa g e s 1 5 4 – 1 5 5 22. Charles Townshend to Chatham, Jan. 4, 1767, in Correspondence of William Pitt, 3:156; Chatham to Shelburne, Jan. 31, 1767, BL, Add. Ms. 88906/1/6, fols. 54–55; and Clive to Rockingham, Sept. 6, 1766, SA, WWM/R/66/1. 23. For radical Whigs’ critique of the Company, see Bowen, Revenue and Reform, 19–20, 48–55; Sutherland, East India Company, 30–31, 147–155; and Vaughn, “Politics of Empire.” See also An Attempt to Pay Off the National Debt by Abolishing the East-India Company of Merchants; And All Other Monopolies: With Other Interesting Measures (London, 1767). To some extent, the E.I.C. was already a state within a state. See Phillip Stern, The Company State: Corporate Sovereignty and the Early Modern Foundations of the British Empire in Asia (New York, 2011). 24. Maurice Morgann, “Paper Considering Problems Facing England in Political Divisions in Parliament; Scotland, Ireland, India, and America, West Indies,” WLCL, Shelburne Papers, vol. 168, box 3; Gazetteer and New Daily Advertiser, Apr. 13, 1767, 4, Apr. 23, 1767, 1, May 1, 1767, 4; and William Beckford, “Speech to the Committee of East Indian Affairs,” Feb. 27, 1769, BL, Eg. Ms. 218, fol. 118. See also William Beckford to Chatham, Jan. 27, 1767, in Correspondence of William Pitt, 3:178. 25. See The Conduct of the East India Company with Regard to Their Wars (London, 1767); and Whately to Grenville, June 20, 1767, BL, Add. Ms. 57817A, fols. 103–104. 26. Robert Clive to Grenville, Feb. 3, 1766, BL, Add. Ms. 42084, fols. 9–10. Grenville similarly linked British and Indian disorder; see his to J. Walsh, Oct. 22, 1766, Thomas Whately, Aug. 21, 1769, HEH, GGL, vol. 2; and Robert Clive, Nov. 22, 1766, BL, Add. Ms. 42084, fol. 213. 27. See Robert Clive to Grenville, Feb. 3, 1766, Grenville to Clive, Nov. 22, 1766, BL, Add. Ms. 42084, fols. 9–10, 214; Robert Clive to Richard Clive, Sept. 25, 1765, BL, Add. Ms. 32970, fol. 71; Robert Clive, speech to the HoC, Feb. 27, 1769, in Cavendish’s Debates, 260–264; Grenville to Walsh, Sept. 14, 1766, HEH, GGL, vol. 2; and Robert Clive to Claude Russell, Feb. 10, 1769, in John Malcolm, The Life of Robert, Lord Clive: Collected from Family Papers, 3 vols. (London, 1836), 3:241–242. 28. Charles Townshend to William Pitt, Earl of Chatham, Jan. 4, 1767, in Correspondence of William Pitt, 3:156; and George Grenville, speech to the HoC, Feb. 27, 1769, in Cavendish’s Debates, 266–267. 29. William Beckford to Chatham, Jan. 27, 1767, and Townshend to Chatham, Jan. 4, 1767, in Correspondence of William Pitt, 3: 176–177, 156.

n o t e s t o pa g e s 1 5 5 – 1 5 7

319

30. Gazetteer and New Daily Advertiser, Apr. 15, 1767, 4. See also “East India Inquisitor,” in Gazetteer and New Daily Advertiser, Mar. 18, Apr. 6, May 1, 1767; Thomas Walpole to Chatham, Sept. 9, 1766, Chatham to Charles Townshend, Jan. 6, 1767, in Correspondence of William Pitt, 3:63–64, 157–158; Chatham to Grafton, Dec. 7, 1766, Chatham to Grafton, Jan. 23, 1767, in Autobiography of Grafton, 110–111, 113–114; L. Scrafton to Clive, Apr. 12, 1766, quoted in Sutherland, East India Company, 148; and Chatham to Shelburne, Feb. 3, 1767, BL Add. Ms. 88906/1/6, fol. 58. 31. See Chatham to Shelburne, Feb. 3, 1767, BL, Add. Ms. 88906/1/6, fols. 57–58; Lawrence Sullivan to Shelburne, Mar. 13, 1767, BL, Add. Ms. 88906/3/24, fol. 66; Rockingham to Marchioness of Rockingham, Apr. 30, 1767, SA, WWM/R/156/16; Shelburne to Chatham, Feb. 1, 1767, in Correspondence of William Pitt, 3:184; Edmund Burke to Charles O’Hara, Mar. 17, 1767, in Correspondence of Edmund Burke, 1:300–301; and Sutherland, East India Company, 164–176. 32. Extract of a letter relative to change in administration, July 20, 1767, BL, Add Ms. 88906/7/1, fol. 114; Basil Feilding, Earl of Denbigh to H. Wilmot, July 25, 1767, and Denbigh to Charles Pratt, first Earl Camden, Oct.[?] 19, 1767, WCRO, Denbigh Letterbook, vol. 1, pp. 46, 59. See also Richard Rigby to Grenville, July 21, 1767, BL, Add. Ms. 57811, fol. 138; and John Almon to John Wilkes, July 29, 1767, BL, Add. Ms. 30869, fol. 151. On the inability of Bedford and Grenville ’s supporters to find common ground with those of Newcastle and Rockingham, see Brewer, Party Ideology, 90–91. 33. See Whately to Grenville, July 29, 1767, BL, Add. Ms. 57817A, fol. 127; Newcastle to Duke of Portland, Sept. 8, 1768, BL, Add. Ms. 32991A, fol. 77; and Lady Chatham to Shelburne, Nov. 9, 1767, BL, 88906/1/6, fol. 93. 34. Shelburne to Lady Chatham, Dec. 13, 1767, BL, Add. Ms. 88906/1/6, fols. 95–96. On Bedford’s growing influence, see Grenville to Thomas Whately, Jan. 9, 1768, BL, Add. Ms. 57817A, fols. 168–169. 35. See Autobiography of Grafton, 229–230; Lord Camden to “My Lord” [Hillsborough], ca. June 9, 1769, CKS, U840 C8; and “Minutes of a Meeting of the King’s Servants,” May 1, 1769, CKS, U840 O136/2. 36. An Act for the Better Securing the Dependency of His Majesty’s Dominions in America upon the Crown and Parliament of Great Britain, 6 Geo. 3, chap. 12. 37. See Whately to John Temple, May 2, 1767, HEH, Stowe Grenville Correspondence, box 13, fols. 29–30; Robert Mackintosh, “Comments on the Growing Breach Between the American Colonies and England,” ca. 1769, HEH, Stowe

320 n o t e s t o pa g e s 1 5 7 – 1 5 8

38.

39.

40.

41.

Grenville Correspondence, box 192, fol. 62; Grenville to William Knox, June 27, 1768, HEH, GGL, vol. 2; Lord North, speech to the HoC, Dec. 7, 1768, BL, Eg. Ms. 215, fol. 286; [Allan Ramsay], Thoughts on the Origin and Nature of Government, Occasioned by the Late Disputes Between Great Britain and Her American Colonies: Written in the Year 1766 (London, 1769); and [William Knox], The Controversy Between Great Britain and Her Colonies Reviewed (London, 1769), 53. [Edmund Burke], Observations on a Late State of the Nation, 4th ed. (London, 1769), 122; and Rockingham to Harrison, Oct. 2, 1768, in Memoirs of Rockingham, 2:80–81. See Isaac Barré, speech to the HoC, Nov. 8, 1768, Henry Seymour Conway, speech to the HoC, Dec. 7, 1768, BL, Eg. Ms. 215, fols. 129–130, 320; note in Chatham’s hand, n.d., NAUK, PRO 30/8/74, fols. 435–437; and [Thomas Pownall], The Administration of the Colonies, 4th ed. (London, 1768), 162–164. Although Pownall supported representing the colonies at Westminster, not all radical Whigs agreed that this was desirable. As an alternative, they proposed creating a provincial congress that would voluntarily contribute funds in response to parliamentary requisitions. See William Pitt, Earl of Chatham, “Rough Sketch of Provincial Plan,” n.d., NAUK, PRO 30/8/74, fols. 161–176. See John Cannon, Parliamentary Reform, 1640–1832 (Cambridge, 1973), 54; Paul Langford, “Property and ‘Virtual Representation’ in EighteenthCentury England,” HJ 31, no. 1 (Mar. 1988): 85–87; Frank O’Gorman, Voters, Patrons, and Parties: The Unreformed Electoral System of Hanoverian England, 1734–1832 (Oxford, 1989), 179; J. H. Plumb, “The Growth of the Electorate in England from 1600–1715,” Past and Present 45 (Nov. 1969): 116. John A. Phillips makes a strong case for significant electoral activity and contested elections after 1760. See Electoral Behavior in Unreformed England: Plumpers, Splitters, and Straights (Princeton, N.J., 1982). Christopher Chalklin, The Rise of the English Town, 1650–1850 (Cambridge, 2001), 8. As Paul Langford observes, “One of the strongest arguments against reform was that it would bring Parliament more completely under the control of the landed gentry.” See Public Life and the Propertied Englishman (Oxford, 1991), 320. On the transformation of public disorder and changing attitudes toward popular politics, see Robert B. Shoemaker, The London Mob: Violence and Disorder in an Eighteenth-Century City (London, 2004); and Langford, Public Life, 464–477. On the growth of cities, see Chalklin, English Town, 9–16; and Paul Langford, A Polite and Commercial People England, 1727–1783 (Oxford, 1989), 417–432.

n o t e s t o pa g e s 1 5 8 – 1 5 9

321

42. Benjamin Franklin to John Ross, May 14, 1768, in PBF, 15:128–130; Whately to Grenville, Apr. 14, 1768, BL, Add. Ms. 57817A, fol. 179; and George Grenville, speech to the HoC, May 14, 1768, Eg. Ms. 215, fol. 25. In the southeast of England, the number of “contentious gatherings” rose from 12 in 1759 to 111 in 1768, and the number of people killed in such assemblies rose from 1 to 75. Charles Tilly, Popular Contention in Great Britain, 1758–1834 (Cambridge, Mass., 1995), 88, 92. See also Kathleen Wilson, The Sense of the People: Politics, Culture and Imperialism in England, 1715–1785 (Cambridge, 1995), 232–235; and George Rudé, Wilkes and Liberty: A Social Study of 1763 to 1774 (Oxford, 1962), esp. 100–104. 43. Rigby to John Russell, fourth Duke of Bedford, Aug. 4, 1769, WA, Bedford Letterbook, vol. 58, p. 126; Wedderburn to Grenville, Apr. 3, 1768, BL, Add. Ms. 42086, fol. 10; Michael Herries to Richard Oswald, Sept. 29, 1769, BRBML, Osborn Mss. 62, vol. 3; and Villiers, “Humble Opinions, Offered to the King Thro’ Mr. H.,” Bod., Mss. Clarendon dep. c.346, p. 437. 44. Wedderburn to Grenville, Apr. 3, 1768, BL, Add. Ms. 42086, fol. 11. See also Villiers, “Humble Opinions,” Bod., Mss. Clarendon dep. c.346, pp. 437–438; Charles Lloyd to Grenville, June 30, 1768, BL, Add. Ms. 57818, fols. 134–135; and Michael Collinson to Cadwallader Colden, Feb. 6, 1769, in LPCC, 7:153–155. 45. See Lord North, speech to the HoC, May 16, 1768, BL, Eg. Ms. 215, fols. 63–64; George III to Barrington, Mar. 28, Mar. 29, 1768, BL, Add. Ms. 73546, fols. 25, 27; Herries to Oswald, Oct. 5, 1769, BRBML, Osborn Mss. 62, vol. 3; Grenville to Earl of Suffolk, May 5, 1768, HEH, GGL, vol. 2; Lord North to Lord Guilford, Nov. 14, 1768, Bod., Ms. North d.24; and George III to Lord North, Apr. 25, 1768, in The Correspondence of King George the Third from 1760 to December 1783, ed. John Fortescue, 6 vols. (London, 1927–1928), 2:21. 46. Alexander Wedderburn, speech to the HoC, May 14, 1768, BL, Eg. Ms. 215, fols. 45–46. 47. Grenville to William Knox, July 15, 1768, HEH, GGL, vol. 2. See also Grenville to Knox, Oct. 22, 1769, HEH, GGL, vol. 2; William Wildman Barrington, second Viscount Barrington to Gage, Aug. 1, 1768, BL, Add. Ms. 73634, fol. 56; and Lord North, speech to the HoC, Dec. 7, 1768, BL, Eg. Ms. 215, fol. 301. 48. Wedderburn, speech to the HoC, Dec. 9, 1768, BL, Eg. Ms. 215, fol. 366. See also Villiers, “Humble Opinions,” Bod., Mss. Clarendon dep. c.346, pp. 437–439. 49. Grenville to Lord Hyde, Aug. 13, 1769, HEH, GGL, vol. 2. See also Grenville to Rev. Dr. Miles, Jan. 4, 1769, HEH, GGL, vol. 2; Lord Hyde to

322 n o t e s t o pa g e s 1 5 9 – 1 6 0

50.

51.

52.

53.

54. 55.

56.

57.

Mr. Langford, Dec. 1768, Bod., Mss. Clarendon dep. c.347; and Lord Hyde, “Proposals for Reforms at Eton College,” HEH, Stowe Grenville Correspondence, box 199, fol. 6. See Grenville to Bedford, Nov. 6, 1767, HEH, GGL, vol. 2; and Barrington to Thomas Gage, Aug. 1, 1768, BL, Add. Ms. 73634, fol. 55. See also Charles Townshend to William Petty, second Earl of Shelburne, May 30, 1767, BL, Add. 88906/3/26, fol. 94; and Lord North, speech to the HoC, May 14, 1768, BL, Eg. Ms. 215, fol. 32. See Barrington to Gage, Sept. 2, 1768, BL, Add. Ms. 73634, fol. 80; Whately to Grenville, July 29, 1768, BL, Add. Ms. 57817B, fols. 40–41; Josiah Martin to Samuel Martin, Aug. 7, 1767, BL, Add. Ms. 41361, fol. 110; and PDBPRNA, 2:464. [William Knox], The Present State of the Nation: Particularly with Respect to Its Trade and Finances, 3rd ed. (London, 1768); and [William Knox], The Controversy Between Great Britain and Her Colonies Reviewed (London, 1769). For Grenville’s contribution to Knox’s pamphlets, see Grenville to Knox, July 15, and Oct. 9, 1768, HEH, GGL, vol. 2. For Knox’s defense of the Stamp Act, see [Knox], Claim. Lord North, speech to the HoC, Dec. 7, 1768, BL, Eg. Ms. 215, fol. 301. For a similar view, see Robert Mackintosh, “Growing Breach,” ca. 1769, HEH, Stowe Grenville Correspondence, box 192, fol. 62. Barrington to Gage, Aug. 1, 1768, BL, Add. Ms. 73634, fol. 54. Grenville to Knox, Aug. 16 [original dated Aug. 15], 1768, HEH, GGL, vol. 2. See also Barrington to Shelburne, Aug. 26, 1767, BL, Add. Ms. 88906/3/2, fols. 27–28. William Beckford, speech to the HoC, May 14, Nov. 25, 1768, BL, Eg. Ms. 215, fols. 30, 248; and Thomas Pelham-Holles, first Duke of Newcastle to William Henry Canvendish-Bentick, third Duke Portland, Sept. 24, 1768, BL, Add. Ms. 32991A, fols. 125–126. See also Portland to Newcastle, Oct. 8, 1768, BL, Add. Ms. 32991A, fols. 208–209; and William Dowdeswell, speech to the HoC, May 16, 1768, BL, Eg. Ms. 215, fol. 73. “Instructions Given to Sir Robert Ladbroke, Knt.; William Beckford, Esq; the Right Hon. Thomas Harley, Esq; and Barlow Tecothick, Esq; Representatives of the City of London: By Their Constituents,” broadside, Feb. 10, 1769, BRBML, William Beckford Collection, vol. 10. See also [Youth of Eighteen], “To all Gentlemen Soldiers and Englishmen,” broadside, 1768, BL, Add. Ms. 73631; and Dowdeswell, speech to the HoC, May 16, 1768, BL, Eg. Ms. 215, fol. 73.

n o t e s t o pa g e s 1 6 0 – 1 6 1

323

58. London Magazine, June 1768, 329. For Wilkes’s break with Chatham, see [John Wilkes], A Letter to His Grace the Duke of Grafton, on the Present Situation of Public Affairs, 8th ed. (London, 1767). For the Rockinghamite connection to Wilkes, see Edmund Burke, speech to the HoC, Jan. 27, Feb. 17, and Mar. 17, 1769, BL, Eg. Ms. 216, fols. 209–211, Eg. Ms. 217, fols. 349–353, Eg. Ms. 219, fols. 116–118. See also, Arthur Cash, John Wilkes: The Scandalous Father of Civil Liberty (New Haven, Conn., 2006), 192–197, 239, 295, 337; and Rudé, Wilkes and Liberty, 35–37, 105–148, 200–202. 59. [Edmund Burke], Thoughts on the Cause of the Present Discontents, 4th ed. (London, 1770), esp. 12–14; and [Burke], Observations, 4, 41, 51–52, 138. See also Rockingham to Edmund Burke, June 29, 1769, Edmund Burke to Rockingham, Nov. 6, Nov. 24, Dec. 5, Dec. 18, 1767, in Correspondence of Edmund Burke, 2:39–40, 107, 113, 114–116, 121–122; Rockingham to Portland, Dec. 5, 1769, UNMSC, PW F 9023; and the review of Knox’s Present State of the Nation in the Bristol Gazette, Nov. 10, 1768. On Burke and Rockingham, see John Brewer, “Party and the Double Cabinet: Two Facets of Burke ’s Thoughts,” HJ 14, no. 3 (1971): 483–484; and Brewer, Party Ideology, 229–239. For rising prices, see B. R. Mitchell, Abstract of British Historical Statistics (Cambridge, 1988), 720, 745, 750, 755, 765, 766, 770. 60. Junius to the printer of the Public Advertiser, June 21, 1769, BRBML, Osborn Mss., file 8227; “Frugalitas to the Printer of the London Evening Post,” London Evening-Post, Jan. 28, 1768; [Regulus], “Regulus; or, A View of the Present State of Public Affairs: With Certain Proposals, Addressed to the Independent Electors of Great Britain,” The Political Register and Impartial Review of New Books 2, issue 12 (1768): 238; and Beckford to Shelburne, Oct. 1, 1768, Add. Ms. 88906/3/2, fol. 64. 61. Richard Price, An Appeal to the Public, on the Subject of the National Debt (London, 1772), 48–49; Richard Champion to Caleb and John Lloyd, Nov. 18, 1769, in The American Correspondence of a Bristol Merchant, 1766– 1776: Letters of Richard Champion, ed. G. H. Guttridge (Berkeley, Calif., 1934), 16. See also Price, Appeal, 50; Richard Price, Observations on Reversionary Payments, 3rd ed. (London, 1773), 160–162; and [Regulus], “Regulus,” 218. Price was, however, clear that the national debt had “benefited every order of the state; that it has extended trade, promoted freedom and happiness, and secured order and public peace.” See Richard Price, “Letter on the Nature of Our Funds, Their Rise, Their Progress, Their Present Pnfluence and Their Future Consequences,” WLCL, Shelburne Papers, vol. 135.

324 n o t e s t o pa g e s 1 6 1 – 1 6 4 62. “Instructions Given to Sir Robert Ladbroke,” Feb. 10, 1769, BRBML, William Beckford Collection, vol. 10. See also [Regulus], “Regulus,” 221, 223–224, 228–229, 237. 63. [Burke], Thoughts, 17, 19, 21 25, 29, 97; and Burke, speech to the HoC, Feb. 17, 1769, BL, Eg. Ms. 217, fols. 349–350. 64. See Brewer, “Party and the Double Cabinet,” 484. For Burke ’s critique of Chatham, see Edmund Burke to Rockingham, July 9, 1769, in Correspondence of Edmund Burke, 2:43–46. 65. Isaac Barré, speech to the HoC, Jan. 25, 1769, BL, Eg. Ms. 216, fol. 97. See also William Beckford, speech to the HoC, Dec. 7, 1768, BL, Eg. Ms. 215, fols. 290–291. Beckford’s resolution on behalf of the colonies failed 133 to 70, suggesting significant support for a less authoritarian imperial policy. See “Question Put for Referring Alderman Beckford’s American Petition,” Jan. 25, 1769, BL, Eg. Ms. 216, fol. 104; and “Junius to the Printer of the Public Advertiser,” June 21, 1769, BRBML, Osborn Mss., file 8227. 66. William Meredith to Portland, July 20, 1768, Rockingham to Portland, Oct. 15, 1768, UNMSC, PW F 6727, 9011. See also [Burke], Observations, 126–127; Newcastle to Rockingham, Sept. 12, 1768, BL, Add. Ms. 32991A, fol. 95; Rockingham to Joshua Harrison, Oct. 2, 1768, in Memoirs of Rockingham, 2:80–81; and Barlow Trecothick, speech to the HoC, Dec. 7, 1768, BL, Eg. Ms. 215, fol. 296. 67. William Beckford, speech to the HoC, Nov. 15, and 25, 1768, BL, Eg. Ms. 215, fols. 153, 248. See also Thomas Pownall, speech to the HoC, Apr. 19, 1769, BL, King’s Ms. 202, fol. 44. 68. Barlow Trecothick, speech to the HoC, Dec. 7, 1768, BL, Eg. Ms. 215, fol. 295; [William Bollan], Continued Corruption, Standing Armies, and Popular Discontents Considered; And the Establishment of the English Colonies in America (London, 1768), 76; and Henry Seymour Conway, speech to the HoC, Dec. 7, 1768, BL, Eg. Ms. 215, fol. 320. See also “Instructions Given to Sir Robert Ladbroke,” Feb. 10, 1769, BRBML, William Beckford Collection, vol. 10; Champion to Caleb and John Lloyd, Nov. 18, 1769, in Letters of Richard Champion, 17; London Magazine, Nov. 1767, 559; and [John Erskine], Shall I Go to War with My American Brethren? A Discourse from Judges the XXth and 28th (London, 1769), 11–12. 69. See Benjamin Franklin to Galloway, Mar. 14, 1767, Benjamin Franklin to William Franklin, Aug. 28, 1767, Franklin to Thomas Wharton, Feb. 20, 1768, in PBF, 14:87–88, 242–244, 15:54–56; Arthur Lee to Richard Henry Lee, Sept. 18, and Dec. 3, 1769, APS, Richard Henry Lee Papers, fols. 19–20,

n o t e s t o pa g e s 1 6 4 – 1 6 6

70.

71. 72. 73.

74.

75.

325

57–58. Lee ’s essays appeared in the Gazetteer and New Daily Advertiser, Middlesex Journal or Chronicle of Liberty, St. James’s Chronicle or the British Evening Post, and many were republished in The Political Detection; or, The Treachery and Tyranny of Administration, Both at Home and Abroad; Displayed in a Series of Letters, Signed “Junius Americanus” (London, 1770). For Arthur Lee ’s enthusiasm for Junius, see his to Richard Henry Lee, Aug. 15, 1769, APS, Richard Henry Lee Papers, fol. 45–46. On Lee’s activities and connections in London, see A. R. Riggs, “Arthur Lee: A Radical Virginian in London, 1768–1776,” Virginia Magazine of History and Biography 73, no. 3 (July 1970): 269; and John Sainsbury, “The Pro-Americans of London, 1769 to 1782,” WMQ 35, no. 3 (July 1978): 423–425. Wilkes to the Boston Sons of Liberty, July 19, 1768, BL, Add. Ms. 30870, fol. 46; and Thomas Pownall to Samuel Cooper, Sept. 25, 1769, BL, King’s Ms. 202, fol. 19. On Wilkes’s connections to the American resistance movement, see Pauline Maier, From Resistance to Revolution: Colonial Radicals and the Development of American Opposition to Britain, 1765–1776 (New York, 1972), 162–169. Diary of an unidentified Bostonian, Dec. 8, 1768, Jan. 7, and Apr. 10, 1769, HEH, Mss. HM 175, fols. 5, 19–20, 52–53. Considerations on Policy, Commerce, and the Circumstances of the Kingdom (London, 1771), 37. On Wilkes and the controversy over imprisoning printers and their political allies in the City of London for reprinting parliamentary debates, see Cash, Wilkes, 267–311; Wilson, Sense of the People, 219, 343, 413; and P. D. G. Thomas, John Wilkes, a Friend to Liberty (Oxford, 1996), 125–140. See Thomas Dampier to Francis North, first Earl of Guilford, Feb. 26, Mar. 11, 1770, Bod., Ms. North d.13, fols. 29, 41; Michael Herries to Richard Oswald, Feb. 21, 1775; James Townsend Oswald to Richard Oswald, Mar. 1, 1775, BRBML, Osborn Mss. 62, vol. 4; and PDBPRNA, 5:437, 446–447. See also Andrew O’Shaughnessy, The Men Who Lost America: British Leadership, the American Revolution, and the Fate of the Empire (New Haven, Conn., 2013), 50–52, 54–61. “Petition to the Treasury from Franklin and Others for a Grant of Land,” Jan. 4, 1770, in PBF, 17:8–11; Samuel Wharton to Thomas Walpole, Jan. 31, 1771, Sept. 15, Nov. 19, 1772, July 3, 1773, memorandum of the proprietors of the Ohio Company, late 1772 or 1773, and “Rough Articles for the Co-Partnership of the Ohio Company in the Colony of Vandalia,” VHS, Matthew Fetherstonhaugh Papers. See also George Croghan to William Johnson, May 10,

326 n o t e s t o pa g e s 1 6 6 – 1 6 8

76.

77.

78.

79.

80.

81.

1770, in PSWJ, 7:651; and “Copy of a Representation of the Board of Trade to the King on the Application of Mssr. Walpole &c. for a Grant of Lands on the Ohio,” May 6, 1773, SRO, Dartmouth Papers, 1778/2/609. See Samuel Wharton to Fetherstonhaugh, Dec. 4, 14, 23, 1771, Thomas Walpole to Hillsborough, July 14, 1770, Samuel Wharton to Fetherstonhaugh, July 19, Dec. 4, Dec. 14, Dec. 23, 1771, and Jan. 25, 1772, VHS, Matthew Fetherstonhaugh Papers. On John Pownall and the Vandalia company more generally, see Peter Marshall, “Lord Hillsborough, Samuel Wharton and the Ohio Grant, 1769–1775,” EHR 80, no. 317 (Oct. 1965): 717–739. Thomas Walpole to Hillsborough, July 14, 1770, Samuel Wharton to Walpole, Jan. 31, 1771, unsigned to unknown, July 9, 1770, Samuel Wharton to Fetherstonhaugh, Nov. 22, 1771, memorandum of the Proprietors, late 1772 or 1773, VHS, Matthew Fetherstonhaugh Papers; and [Samuel Wharton], Report of the Lords Commissioners for Trade and Plantations on the Petition . . . for a Grant of Lands on the River Ohio, in North America . . . With Observations and Remarks (London, 1772), 17–18, 109. The colony also offered many leading politicians and their relations valuable investment opportunities. See “Rough Articles of Co-Partnership of the Ohio Company,” ca. 1772, and Samuel Wharton to Matthew Fetherstonhaugh, Oct. 22, 1772, VHS, Matthew Fetherstonhaugh Papers. On the approval of the grant, see Thomas Walpole to Matthew Fetherstonhaugh, Aug. 20, 1772, VHS, Matthew Fetherstonhaugh Papers. On Hillsborough’s resignation as well as North’s frustration with losing a valued cabinet colleague over the Ohio venture, see his to Dartmouth, Aug. 3, 1772, SRO, Dartmouth Papers, 1778/2/373. On Dartmouth’s appointment, see Samuel Wharton to Thomas Walpole, Sept. 15, 1772, Wharton to Matthew Fetherstonhaugh, Nov. 14, 19, 21, 1772, VHS, Matthew Fetherstonhaugh Papers; and Benjamin Franklin to William Franklin, Aug. 17, 1772, in PBF, 19:243–244. See Edmund Burke to Dowdeswell, Oct. 27, 1772, BRBML, Osborn Mss., file 2261; and John R. McLane, Land and Local Kingship in Eighteenth-Century Bengal (Cambridge, 1993), 194–207. For the connection between North, his supporters, and Clive, see Lord Suffolk to William Eden, Sept. 15, 1772, and John Lee to Eden, Oct. 11, 1772, BL, Add. Ms. 34412, fols. 182, 189–190. Robert Clive, Lord Clive’s Speech in the House of Commons (London, 1772), 49, 57–60; and Robert Clive, “The Present Melancholy Situation of the East India Company’s Affairs . . .,” Nov. 24, 1772, BL, India Office Library, Mss.

n o t e s t o pa g e s 1 6 8 – 1 7 0

82.

83.

84.

85.

86.

87.

327

Eur. K46, fols. 121, 125–127, 132; See also William Strahan to David Hall, Aug. 31, 1772, APS, David Hall Papers, ser. 1. See Cobbett, 17:850–856; John Lee to William Eden, Oct. 11, 1772, BL, Add. Ms. 34412, fols. 189–190; East India Company Regulating Act, 13 Geo. 3 chap. 63, secs. 1–3, 7–9, 13–16, 18, 23–24; Tea Act, 13 Geo. 3 chap. 44; and East India Company Relief Act, 13 Geo. 3, chap. 64, secs. 1, 13. See Edmund Burke to Dowdeswell, Oct. 27, 1772, BRBML, Osborn Mss., file 2261; Dowdeswell to Rockingham, Oct. 18, 1772, WLCL, William Dowdeswell Papers, box 1, fol. 21; Rockingham to Dowdeswell, Jan. 12, 13, 1771, Nov. 17, 1772, WLCL, William Dowdeswell Papers, Letterbook, pp. 38–42, 63; “Note in Response to the Regulating Act [in Rockingham’s hand],” ca. 1773, SA, WWM/R/81/3; “Dissentient to the House of Lords, East India Company Regulating Bill and the East India Company Loan Bill,” Journal of the Hose of Lords, 33:490–492, 680–682; and Cobbett, 17:898, 900–902. Thomas Pownall, The Right, Interest, and Duty of the State, as Concerned in the Affairs of the East Indies (London, 1773), 42–43; Chatham to Shelburne, Jan. 22, June 17, Sept. 17, 1773, BL, 88906/1/7, fols. 17, 27, 31; and The Present State of the British Interest in India: With a Plan for Establishing a Regular System of Government in that Country (London, 1773), 25–26, 36. See also Richard Price to Josiah Quincy, Apr./May 1775, APS, Richard Price Papers. Chatham to Shelburne, May 24, June 17, July 17, 1773, BL, 88906/1/7, fols. 25–29, 31–32; and Cobbett, 17:867. See also “Conversation between Sr. G. Colebroke & Gen’l Barré,” before 1773, and Isaac Barré, speech to the HoC, 1772[?], BL, Add. Ms. 88906/1/4, fols. 56, 58. See Rockingham to Portland, Jan. 8, 1773, UNMSC, PW F 9064; Charles Lennox, third Duke of Richmond to Dowdeswell, May 20, 1771, WLCL, William Dowdeswell Papers, box 1, fol. 19; and Rockingham to Dowdeswell, Feb. 14, 1771, WLCL, William Dowdeswell Papers, Letterbook, pp. 46–50. Grenville Sharp, A Declaration of the People’s Natural Right to a Share in the Legislature: Which Is the Fundamental Principle of the British Constitution of State (London and New York, 1774); Joseph Priestley, An Essay on the First Principles of Government, and on the Nature of Political, Civil, and Religious Liberty, 2nd ed. (London, 1771), 22–23; Cobbett, 17:322–327, 690–692; and Chatham to Shelburne, Apr. 22, 1771, BL, Add. Ms. 88906/1/6, fol. 149. See also William Beckford, Mayor, “A Common Council Holden in the Chamber of the Guildhall of the City of London . . .,” May 14, 1770, NAUK, PRO 30/8/74, fol. 58; An Inquiry into the Late Mercantile Distresses, in Scotland and

328 n o t e s t o pa g e s 1 7 0 – 1 7 1

88.

89.

90. 91.

92.

93.

England (London, 1772), 134; A Short Introduction to an Inquiry into the Present State of the Bodies Elective of the People’s Part of the Legislature (London, 1772), esp. 5–6; and Gazeteer and New Daily Advertiser, Apr. 27, 1774, 2. See Richmond to Dowdeswell, May 20, 1771, WLCL, William Dowdeswell Papers, box 1, fol. 19; Rockingham to Dowdeswell, Mar. 28, 29, 1771, WLCL, William Dowdeswell Papers, Letterbook, pp. 53–54; Edmund Burke, “Speech on the Printers’ Case,” Mar. 20, 1771, in Writings and Speeches of Edmund Burke, ed. Paul Langford (Oxford, 1981–), 2:352–356; and [John Cartwright], Take Your Choice! Representation and Respect: Imposition and Contempt. Annual Parliaments and Liberty: Long Parliaments and Slavery (London, 1776), 43. For Shelburne ’s approval of Cartwright’s draft, see Richard Price to John Cartwright, Apr. 2, 1776, in The Correspondence of Richard Price, ed. Bernard W. Peach and D. O. Thomas, 3 vols. (Durham, N.C., 1983), 1:245. For the Whig establishment’s more critical response, see Cartwright to Duke of Portland, Feb. 22, 1777, UNMSC, PW F 2567/1. PDBPRNA, 3:315. See also Boston Port Act, 14 Geo. 3, chap. 19; New England Administration of Justice Act, 14 Geo. 3, chap. 39; Massachusetts Government Act, 14 Geo. 3, chap. 45; North American Quartering Act, 14 Geo. 3, chap. 54; PDBPRNA, 4:56–64; and Lord North to Lord Guilford, May 10, 1771, Bod., Ms. North Add. c.4, fol. 154. Barrington to Lord Dartmouth, Nov. 12, 1774, BL, Add. Ms. 73634, fol. 148. See also Barrington to North, Dec. 23, 1774, BL, Add. Ms. 73634, fols. 150–151. For the radical and establishment Whig opposition’s difficulties in responding to the dumping of tea in Boston harbor, see Cobbett, 17:1179–1192; Chatham to Shelburne, Oct. 24, 1773, Mar. 20, 1774, Shelburne to Chatham [draft], Apr. 4, 1774, BL, Add. Ms. 88906/1/7, fols. 45, 76–79, 83–84; and draft of Rockingham’s speech on the dumping the tea in Boston Harbor, SA, WWM/R/81/83. Barrington to Dartmouth, Dec. 24, 1774, BL, Add. Ms. 73634, fols. 150–151. See also Benjamin Franklin to Galloway, Nov. 3, 1773, in PBF, 20:461–462; Champion to Willing, Morris & Co., Sept. 30, 1774, HEH, Robert Morris Collection, box 1; Thomas Hutchinson to “Dear Sir,” Oct. 10, 1774, Hutchinson to Gage, Oct. 20, 1774, Hutchinson to Thomas Oliver, Oct. 29, 1774, BL, Eg. Ms. 2661, fols. 63–64, 70, 72; and [Samuel Johnson], Taxation No Tyranny: An Answer to the Resolutions and Address of the American Congress (London, 1775), 82. [Johnson], Taxation No Tyranny, 14; and [Adam Ferguson], Remarks on a Pamphlet Lately Published by Dr. Price, Intitled, Observations on the Nature of

n o t e s t o pa g e s 1 7 1 – 1 7 4

329

Civil Liberty, the Principles of Government, and the Justice and Policy of the War with America, &c. (London, 1776), 32. See also An Answer to the Printed Speech of Edmund Burke, Esq: Spoken in the House of Commons, April 19, 1774 (London, 1775), 60; [Henry Goodricke], Observations on Dr. Price’s Theory and Principles of Civil Liberty and Government, Preceded by a Letter to a Friend, on the Pretensions of the American Colonies, in Respect of Right and Equity (York, 1776), esp. 24–32; and [William Knox], The Interest of the Merchants and Manufacturers of Great Britain: In the Present Contest with the Colonies, Stated and Considered (London, 1774), esp. 41–50. 94. Cobbett, 17:1176, 1214, 1269–1270. 95. Benjamin Franklin to William Franklin, “Journal of Negotiations in London,” Mar. 22, 1774, in PBF, 21:548. See also Franklin to Thomas Cushing, Sept. 27, 1774, in PBF, 21:318–319. 96. Jonathan Shipley, A Speech, Intended to Have Been Spoken on the Bill for Altering the Charters of the Colony of Massachusetts-Bay (London, 1774); and Benjamin Franklin to Jonathan Shipley, Sept 28, 1774, in PBF, 21:321. 97. See Benjamin Franklin’s “Hints, or Terms for a Durable Union,” Feb. 4–6, and Benjamin Franklin, “Journal of Negotiations in London,” Mar. 22, 1774, in PBF, 21:365–368, 545–562. 98. Chatham, speech to the House of Lords, Jan. 20, 1775, in Correspondence of William Pitt, 4:378, 383; Benjamin Franklin to Thomas Cushing, Jan. 28, 1775, in PBF, 21:456–457; and Thomas Hutchinson to unknown, Jan. 21, 1775, Eg. Ms. 2661, fol. 112. 99. William Pitt, Earl of Chatham, “Provisional Act for Settling the Troubles in America and for Asserting the Supreme Legislative Authority and Superintending Power of Great Britain over the Colonies,” Jan. 1, 1775, HEH, Thomas Townshend Papers, HM 810; and Franklin’s notes for a conversation with Lord Chatham, Benjamin Franklin, “Journal of Negotiations,” Mar. 22, 1774, in PBF, 21:459–462, 576–586. 100. Franklin, memorandum on Chatham’s Plan of Conciliation, on or after Feb. 1, 1775, and Benjamin Franklin to the New Jersey Committees of Correspondence, Feb. 14, 1775, in PBF, 21:463–464, 489–490. See also Benjamin Franklin to Galloway, Feb. 5–7, 1775, in PBF, 21:468–471. 101. Dampier to Lord Guilford, Feb. 27, 1775, Bod., Ms. North d.16, fols. 19–20. See also O’Shaughnessy, Men Who Lost America, 54–61; P. D. G. Thomas, Tea Party to Independence: The Third Phase of the American Revolution, 1773– 1776 (Oxford, 1991), 200–219; and Ian Gruber, “Lord Howe and Lord

330 n o t e s t o pa g e s 1 7 4 – 1 7 8

102. 103.

104. 105.

106.

107.

108.

George Germain, British Politics and the Winning of American Independence,” WMQ 22, no. 2 (Apr. 1965): 226–227. PDBPRNA, 5:432–433, 441, 445–446. Chatham to Thomas Townshend, Feb. 20, 1775, HEH, Thomas Townshend Papers, box 1; Benjamin Franklin, “Journal of Negotiations,” Mar. 22, 1774, in PBF, 21:594–596; and PDBPRNA, 5:447–450. Benjamin Franklin, “Journal of Negotiations,” Mar. 22, 1774, in PBF, 21:598. Gazeteer and New Daily Advertiser, Mar. 2, 1775, 1; Chatham, extract of a letter on America, Mar. 9, 1776, APS, Sol Feinstone Collection, item 1165; and Richard Price, Observations on the Nature of Civil Liberty, the Principles of Government, and the Justice and Policy of the War with America, 9th ed. (London, 1776), esp. 16–20. For the collaboration between Price, Shelburne, and Barré, see Price to Shelburne, Jan. 6, and Jan. 22, 1776, in Correspondence of Richard Price, 1:237–240. See also Richard Champion to Willing, Morris, & Co., Nov. 1775, Dec. 5, 1776, HEH, Robert Morris Collection, box. 1; and PDBPRNA, 6:258–273. Shelburne to Price, Jan. 1775[?], Bod., Ms. Eng. misc. c.132. See also “Guildhall, Bristol,” broadside, Sept. 27, 1775, UNMSC, PW F 2716; and Isaac Barré, “Rough Draft of a Petition on American Affairs,” ca. 1775, WLCL, Shelburne Papers, vol. 88, fol. 36. Price, Observations, 33; Champion to Willing, Morris, & Co., Jan. 31, 1775, HEH, Robert Morris Collection, box 1; and Camden to Robert Stewart, Oct. 2, 1775, CKS, U840 C173/4. See also Shelburne to Price, Oct. 15, 1775, Bod., Ms. Eng. misc. c.132, fol. 51; Richmond to James Adair, Jan. 22, 1776, BL, Add. Ms. 50829, fol. 20; memorandum of a declaration made by Lord Chatham to Dr. Addington, July 1776, BL, Add. Ms. 88906/1/7, fols. 108–109; Champion to Willing, Morris, & Co., Mar. 13, 1775, HEH, Robert Morris Collection, box 1; Gazeteer and New Daily Advertiser, Jan. 2, 1775, 4; and [Regulus], A Defence of the Resolutions and Address of the American Congress, in Reply to Taxation No Tyranny (London, 1775), 8–9, 69. See PDBPRNA, 6:258–273.

6. Sons of Liberty, Sons of Licentiousness 1. [Alexander Hamilton], A Full Vindication of the Measures of the Congress, from the Calumnies of Their Enemies; in Answer to a Letter, Under the Signature of A. W. Farmer (New York, 1774), 25.

n o t e s t o pa g e s 1 7 8 – 1 8 0

331

2. On the colonial tax burden, see Oliver M. Dickinson, The Navigation Acts and the American Revolution (Philadelphia, 1951), 201. On Hamilton’s views on the state and taxation, see Roger H. Brown, Redeeming the Republic: Federalists, Taxation, and the Origins of the Constitution (Baltimore, 1993); and Max M. Edling and Mark D. Kaplanoff, “Alexander Hamilton’s Fiscal Reform: Transforming the Structure of Taxation in the Early Republic,” WMQ 61, no. 4 (Oct. 2004): 713–744. 3. See T. H. Breen, American Insurgents, American Patriots: The Revolution of the People (New York, 2010). 4. On representative institutions in the colonies, see J. R. Pole, Political Representation in England and the Origins of the American Republic (New York, 1966). On the strength of radical Whig political culture in the colonies, see Bernard Bailyn, The Origins of American Politics (New York, 1968), 51–52; and Gordon Wood, The Radicalism of the American Revolution (New York, 1991), 109–123, 171–174. On urban radicalism, see Benjamin L. Carp, Rebels Rising: Cities and the American Revolution (New York, 2007). 5. On inequality and the squeezing of middling sorts between 1760 and 1776, see T. H. Breen, Tobacco Culture: The Mentality of the Great Tidewater Planters on the Eve of Revolution (Princeton, N.J., 1985); Edward Countryman, A People in Revolution: The American Revolution and Political Society in New York, 1760–1790 (Baltimore, 1981), esp. 5–71; Eric Foner, Tom Paine and Revolutionary America (New York, 1976), esp. 19–70, 107–144; Kenneth Lockridge, “Land, Population, and the Evolution of New England Society, 1630–1790,” Past and Present 39 (Apr. 1961): 62–80; Michael McDonnell, The Politics of War: Race, Class, and Conflict in Revolutionary Virginia (Chapel Hill, N.C., 2007), 25–33; The Urban Crucible: The Northern Seaports and the Origins of the American Revolution, abridged ed. (Cambridge, Mass., 1986); Margaret Ellen Newell, From Dependency to Independence: Economic Revolution in Colonial New England (Ithaca, N.Y., 1998), 266–298; Bruce Raggesdale, A Planters’ Republic: The Search for Economic Independence in Revolutionary Virginia (Madison, Wis., 1996); and Billy G. Smith, “Inequality in Late Colonial Philadelphia: A Note on Its Nature and Growth,” WMQ 41, no. 4 (Oct. 1984): 629–645. 6. The colonies that declared independence had a significantly smaller British military presence relative to their populations than those that remained loyal. See John Shy, Toward Lexington: The Role of the British Army in the Coming of the American Revolution (Princeton, N.J., 1965), 328, 419. On the Caribbean, see Andrew O’Shaughnessy, An Empire Divided: The American Revolution

332 n o t e s t o pa g e s 1 8 0 – 1 8 1 and the British Caribbean (Philadelphia, 2000), esp. 46–49. On Quebec, see Hugh Finlay to Anthony Todd, Oct. 20, 1770, Bod., Ms. D.D. Dashwood c.2, B 2/2/3; Guy Carleton to William Legge, second Earl of Dartmouth, June 7, June 26, Sept. 21, 1775, NAUK, CO 5/7, fols. 314–318, 325–326; Jon Clarke to Thomas Hutchinson, Sept. 14, 1775, BL, Eg. Ms. 2659, fols. 172–173; and Michael Herries to Richard Oswald, Oct. 24, 1775, BRBML, Osborn Mss. 62, vol. 1. 7. Ann Hulton to Elizabeth Lightbody, Apr. 10, 1769, in Henry Hulton and the American Revolution: An Outsider’s View, ed. Neil York (Boston, 2010), 227. 8. See Colin Nicolson, “Governor Francis Bernard, the Massachusetts Friends of Government, and the Advent of the Revolution,” Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society, 3rd ser., 103 (1991): 52; Patricia Bonomi, A Factious People: Politics and Society in Colonial New York (New York, 1971), 248–267; and Alan Tully, Forming American Politics: Ideals, Interests, and Institutions in Colonial New York and Pennsylvania (Baltimore, 1994), 250–256. On the relatively wide colonial franchise, see Chilton Williamson, American Suffrage: From Property to Democracy, 1760–1860 (Princeton, N.J., 1960), 20–39, esp. 38. Paul H. Smith estimates that roughly one-fifth of North American colonists were loyalists. “The American Loyalists: Notes on Their Organization and Numerical Strength,” WMQ 25, no. 2 (Apr. 1968): 259–277. 9. Dennys De Berdt to James Otis, July 2, 1766, in “Letters of Dennys De Berdt, 1757–1770,” ed. Albert Matthews, The Publications of the Colonial Society of Massachusetts 13 (1911): 317. See also Samuel Mather to Thomas Hollis, July 8, 1766, in “Hollis-Mayhew Correspondence, 1759–1766,” Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society, 3rd ser., 69 (Oct. 1947– May 1956): 192. 10. See Benjamin Franklin to Lord Kames, Feb. 25, 1767, in PBF 14:62–71; and [John Dickinson], Letters from a Farmer in Pennsylvania to the Inhabitants of the British Colonies (Philadelphia, 1768), 29–32. 11. [Dickinson], Letters from a Farmer, 7–20; Rind’s VG, July 21, 1768, 1; and Joseph Warren, An Oration; Delivered March Sixth, 1775 (Boston, 1775), 12. See also Purdie and Dixon’s VG, Dec. 8, 1768, 2; and Rind’s VG, Apr. 27, 1769, 2. 12. New York Journal; or, The General Daily Advertiser, Apr. 14, 1768, 2–3; “To the Manufacturers and Mechanics of Philadelphia, the Northern Liberties, and District of Southwark,” June 8, 1774, APS, Sol Feinstone Collection, item 878; [Dickinson], Letters from a Farmer, 12; and Scaevola [Thomas

n o t e s t o pa g e s 1 8 1 – 1 8 3

13.

14.

15.

16.

17.

18.

333

Mifflin], “To the Commissioners Appointed by the East-India Company, for the Sale of Tea, in America,” APS, Mss. Relating to Non-Importation Resolutions, Philadelphia, 1766–1775, vol. 2. See also Richard Henry Lee to John Dickinson, Nov. 26, 1768, APS, Richard Henry Lee Papers; and Benjamin Franklin to Cushing, Jan. 13, 1772, in PBF, 19:16–24. See Cushing to Charles Watson-Wentworth, second Marquess of Rockingham, Nov. 1, 1767, SA, WWM/R/63/10; and [Dickinson], Letters from a Farmer, 43. On popular sovereignty, see Larry D. Kramer, The People Themselves: Popular Constitutionalism and Judicial Review (New York, 2004), 9–34; Thomas C. Grey, “Origins of the Unwritten Constitution: Fundamental Law in American Revolutionary Thought,” Stanford Law Review 30, no. 5 (May 1978): 843–893, esp. 857–858; and Edmund S. Morgan, Inventing the People: The Rise of Popular Sovereignty in England and America (New York, 1988), 209–233. [Dickinson], Letters from a Farmer, 33–38, 56–57. See also Dixon and Purdie’s VG, Apr. 13, 1769, 1; Pennsylvania Gazette, June 29, 1769, 2; Province of Massachusetts Bay, House of Representatives, Feb. 11, 1768, BL, 73619, fol. 96; Samuel Adams to Dennys De Berdt, May 14, 1768, APS, Richard Henry Lee Papers; and [Loyal Patriot], Some Observations of Consequence, in Three Parts. Occasioned by the Stamp-Tax, Lately Imposed on the British Colonies (Philadelphia, 1768), 31. Samuel Adams to Dennys De Berdt, May 14, 1768, APS, Richard Henry Lee Papers; and Warren, An Oration, 19. See also Province of Massachusetts Bay, House of Representatives, Feb. 11, 1768, BL, Add. Ms. 73619, fol. 95; [Dickinson], Letters from a Farmer, 18–22; and “From the Merchants and Traders of Philadelphia, in the Province of Pennsylvania, to the Merchants and Manufacturers of Great Britain,” ca. 1767, APS, Mss. Relating to Non-Importation Resolutions, Philadelphia, 1766–1775, vol. 2, fol. 4. [Dickinson], Letters from a Farmer, 39; and Pennsylvania Chronicle, and Universal Advertiser, Dec. 14, 1767, 191. See also “Merchants and Traders of Philadelphia,” ca. 1767, APS, Mss. Relating to Non-Importation Resolutions, Philadelphia, 1766–1775, vol. 2, fol. 4. Rind’s VG, Nov. 3, 1768, 2; Pennsylvania Gazette, June 4, 1767, 3; Rind’s VG, Apr. 21, 1768, 1; and John Neufville to the [nonimportation] committee at Philadelphia, July 7, 1770, APS, Sol Feinstone Collection, item 1002. “Merchants and Traders of Philadelphia,” APS, Mss. Relating to Non-Importation Resolutions, Philadelphia, 1766–1775, vol. 2, fol. 4. See also George Mason to [George Brent?], Dec. 6, 1770, in The Papers of George

334 n o t e s t o pa g e s 1 8 3 – 1 8 6

19.

20.

21.

22.

23.

24.

25.

Mason, 1725–1792, ed. Robert A. Rutland, 3 vols. (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1970), 1:127; Dixon and Purdie’s VG, Oct. 27, 1768, 1–2; South Carolina Gazette; and Country Journal, Jan. 2, 1770, 1, June 23, 1772, 1; Boston Evening-Post, Sept. 23, 1771, 1; and New-York Journal, May 24, 1770, 46. On support for Wilkes, see Pauline Maier, “John Wilkes and American Disillusionment with Britain,” WMQ 20, no. 3 (July 1763): 373–395. Robert Auchmuty to Thomas Hutchinson, Mar. 3, 1775, Peter Oliver to Polly Hutchinson, May 26, 1775, BL, Eg. Ms. 2659, fols. 141, 149; Henry Hulton to Stuart, Aug. 9, 1769, James Murray to Charles Steuart, Sept. 30, 1769, Coffin to Steuart, Oct. 30, 1769, NLS, Ms. 5025, fols. 161, 201, 224; The Journal of Samuel Curwen, Loyalist, ed. Andrew Oliver (Cambridge, Mass., 1972), 1. See also Joshua Harrison to Rockingham, Feb. 26, 1769, SA, WWM/R/63/13. For attacks against authoritarian reformers in North America and the Caribbean, see Daniel Mac Lean to the Commissioners of His Majesty’s Customs, Jan. 6, 1769, HEH, Stowe Grenville Correspondence, box 13, fol. 11; and Douglass Adair and John A. Schutz, eds., Peter Oliver’s Origin and Progress of the American Rebellion: A Tory View (Stanford, Calif., 1961), 152–157. Harrison to Rockingham, 26 Feb. 1769, SA, WWM/R/63/13. See also Josiah Martin to Samuel Martin Jr., Aug. 7, 1767, BL, Add. Ms. 41361, fol. 111; Boston Commissioners of the Customs in America to Lords of Treasury, Feb. 12, 1768, BL, Add. Ms. 38340, fols. 208–209; and James Murray to Steuart, Nov. 12, 1769, NLS, Ms. 5025, fol. 232. Henry Hulton to de Ruling, Aug. 23, 1768, in Henry Hulton and the Revolution, 224. See also William Smith, “Notes for Mr. Hamilton on the American Disputes,” Nov. 1775, NYPL, William Smith Papers, box 2, lot 194, item 1. Thomas Young to Hugh Hughes, Mar. 22, 1770, HEH, HM 41550; and Boston Commissioners of the Customs in America to Lords of Treasury, Feb. 12, 1768, BL, Add. Ms. 38340, fol. 208. See also Thomas Gage to Wills Hill, Viscount Hillsborough, Oct. 31, 1768, SA, WWM/R/63/5. Dixon and Purdie ’s VG, Oct. 27, 1768, 4; Essex Gazette, Oct. 11, 1768, 46; and Mrs. Barnes to Elizabeth Smith, June 1770, in Letters of John Murray, Loyalist, ed. Nina Moore Tiffany (Boston, 1901), 176. Gage to Barrington, Oct. 7, 1769, BL, Add. Ms. 73549, fol. 82; and Comptroller and Collector of Boston to the Chairman, June 12, 1768, BL, Add. Ms. 38340, fol. 267. Boston Commissioners of the Customs in America to Lords of Treasury, May 12, 1768, BL, Add. Ms. 38340, fol. 232; Daniel MacLean to

n o t e s t o pa g e s 1 8 6 – 1 8 8

26.

27.

28.

29.

30.

31.

335

the Commissioners of His Majesty’s Customs, Jan. 6, 1769, HEH, Stowe Grenville Correspondence, box 13, fol. 11; and Harrison to Rockingham, June 17, 1768, SA, WWM/R/63/1. Boston Commissioners of the Customs in America to Lords of Treasury, Feb. 12, 1768, BL, Add. Ms. 38340, fol. 208; Francis Bernard to William Barrington, second Viscount Barrington, Jan. 28, 1768, BL, Add. Ms. 73560, fol. 47; Ann Hulton to Lightbody, June 30, 1768, in Henry Hulton and the Revolution, 220–221; and Gage to Barrington, Sept. 9, 1769, BL, Add. Ms. 73549, fol. 76. For attacks on British radicals in Mein and Draper’s newspapers, see Boston Weekly News-Letter, Mar. 23, 1769, 1; Boston Chronicle, Mar. 28, 1768, 132, June 14, 1770, 189, May 24, 1770, 165; and Massachusetts Gazette and the Boston Weekly News-Letter, Aug. 17, 1775, 1. For a similar attack, see Dixon and Purdie’s VG, Aug. 30, 1770, 1–2. Pennsylvania Gazette, June 4, 1767, 2; Dickinson to Richard Henry Lee, Aug. 10, 1768, APS, Richard Henry Lee Papers; Dixon and Purdie ’s VG, Nov. 17, 1768, 1–2, Dec. 8, 1768, 1; and [Dickinson], Letters from a Farmer, 69. John Adams to Abigail Adams, July 6, 1774, in Adams Family Correspondence, ed. L. H. Butterfield et al., 12 vols. (Cambridge, Mass., 1963–), 1:126; and Richard Henry Lee to Dickinson, Nov. 26, 1768, APS, Richard Henry Lee Papers. See also Mercy Otis Warren to Hannah Quincy Lincoln, Sept. 3, 1774, in Mercy Otis Warren: Selected Letters, ed. Jeffrey Richards and Sharon Harris (Athens, Ga., 2009), 34–36. On popular resistance and the Sons of Liberty, see Pauline Maier, From Resistance to Revolution: Colonial Radicals and the Development of American Opposition to Britain, 1765–1776 (New York, 1972), 51–157; and Benjamin H. Irvin, “Tar, Feathers, and the Enemies of American Liberties, 1768–1776,” New England Quarterly 76, no. 2 (June 2003): 197–238. T. H. Breen, Marketplace of Revolution: How Consumer Politics Shaped American Independence (New York, 2004), 288. “Atticus” was the Virginian radical George Mason. “Monitor” was Arthur Lee. The identity of “Philo-Patriae” is unknown. Meeting of the principal Merchants and Traders of Philadelphia, Mar. 26, 1768, SA, WWM/R/63/4. See also Richard Henry Lee to Dickinson, Nov. 26, 1768, APS, Richard Henry Lee Papers; George Washington to George Mason, Apr. 5, 1769, in Mason Papers, 1:96–98; Arthur M. Schlesinger, The Colonial Merchants and the American Revolution, 1763–1776 (New York, 1918), 120–130; Richard Alan Ryerson, The Revolution Is Now

336 n o t e s t o pa g e s 1 8 8 – 1 9 1

32.

33.

34. 35.

36.

37.

38.

Begun: The Radical Committees of Philadelphia, 1765–1776 (Philadelphia, 1978), esp. 27–60, 98–99; and Breen, Marketplace, 245. Dixon and Purdie’s VG, May 11, 1769, 1; and Rind’s VG, Apr. 14, 1768, 1. On radicals’ efforts to limit violence, see Maier, Resistance to Revolution, esp. 27–48. [Dickinson], Letters from a Farmer, 36; Mason writing as “Atticus,” in Pennsylvania Chronicle, and Universal Advertiser, Dec. 14, 1767, 1; [Linen Draper], The Commercial Conduct of the Province of New-York Considered . . . 1767 (New York, 1767), 7–8; and Pennsylvania Gazette, June 8, 1769, 2. See also Warren, An Oration, 18. For a different view, see Edmund S. Morgan, “The Puritan Ethic and the American Revolution,” WMQ 24, no. 1 (Jan. 1967): 8–9; and Woody Holton, Forced Founders: Indians, Debtors, Slaves, and the Making of the American Revolution (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1999), 79. More recently, historians have argued that the nonimportation movement sought to foster liberal or bourgeois virtues. See Newell, Dependency to Independence, 285; and Breen, Marketplace, 264. Rind’s VG, Mar. 31, 1768, 1; and Pennsylvania Gazette, Nov. 12, 1767, 1. See also [Linen-Draper], Commercial Conduct, 19–20. Nash, Urban Crucible, 214; “Meeting of the Freeholders and Other Inhabitants of the Town of Boston, Oct. 28, 1767,” in A Report of the Record Commissioners of the City of Boston Containing the Boston Town Records, 1758–1769 (Boston, 1886), 224; June 26, 1770, in Diary and Autobiography of John Adams, ed. John L. H. Butterfield, Leonard C. Faber, and Wendell D. Garrett (Cambridge, Mass., 1962), 1:351; and Mason writing as “Atticus,” in Dixon and Purdie ’s VG, May 11, 1769, 1. See also Rind’s VG, Apr. 14, 1768, 1. Newell, Dependency to Independence, 288. For republicanism as anticapitalist, see John Pocock, The Machiavellian Moment: Florentine Political Thought and the Atlantic Republican Tradition (Princeton, N.J., 1975), 458–505. See also Gordon Wood, The Creation of the American Republic, 1776–1787 (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1969), 15–17. Lee writing in Rind’s VG, Apr. 14, 1768, 1; At the General Assembly of the Governor and Company of the English Colony of Rhode-Island and Providence Plantations in New-England in America (Newport, R.I., Feb. 1768), 123; “Meeting of the Freeholders,” 226, 228; and The Following Resolves Pass’d the Hon. House of Representatives on Friday Last, broadside (Boston, 1768). Mason writing as “Atticus,” in Dixon and Purdie ’s VG, May 11, 1769, 1; Cooper to Pownall, Feb. 18, 1769, HEH, Samuel Cooper Papers; and

n o t e s t o pa g e s 1 9 1 – 1 9 4

39.

40.

41.

42.

43.

44.

45.

46.

47.

337

Merchants and Traders of Philadelphia, ca. 1767, APS, Mss. Relating to NonImportation Resolutions, Philadelphia, 1766–1775, vol. 2, fol. 4. Ruggels, in Boston Chronicle, Mar. 7, 1768, 111–112; Peter Oliver to Polly Hutchinson, May 26, 1775, BL, Eg. Ms. 2659, fol. 150; and Frederick Smyth, speech delivered to the grand jury of Middlesex, Apr. 1776, APS, Frederick Smyth Papers. See also [Samuel Seabury], A View of the Controversy Between Great-Britain and Her Colonies . . . Enemies (New York, 1774), 25–26. Harrison to Lord Rockingham, June 17, 1768, SA, WWM/R/63/1; Boston Commissioners of the Customs in America to Lords of Treasury, Feb. 12, 1768, BL, Add. Ms. 38340, fol. 208; and John Maunsell to Barrington, New York, Aug. 4, 1774, BL, Add. Ms. 73621, fol. 142. [Daniel Leonard], Massachusettensis (Boston, 1775), 8; James Parker to Charles Steuart, New York, Oct. 20, 1769, NLS, Ms. 5025, fol. 219; and Bernard to Barrington, Jan. 28, 1768, BL, Add. Ms. 73560, fols. 45–49. John Neufville, by order of the general committee of Charleston, S.C., to the committee at Philadelphia, July 3, 1770, APS, Sol Feinstone Collection, item 1002; and Address to the Electors of the City of Philadelphia, broadside (Philadelphia, 1776). See also Thomas Cushing, Samuel Adams, John Hancock, and William Phillips to Benjamin Franklin, Dec. 21, 1773, in PBF, 20:509–512. Ezra Stiles Notebook, July 25, 1766, BRBML, Ezra Stiles Papers, misc. papers, fol. 402, pp. 19, 21. See also diary of an unidentified Bostonian, Jan. 29, 1769, HEH, Mss. HM 175, fol. 11. There were numerous reports in North American newspapers of greed, famine, and mismanagement in India. See New-York Gazette and Weekly Mercury, May 20, 1771, 2; Massachusetts Spy, May 23, 1771, 47; Dixon and Purdie ’s VG, June 13, 1771, 2; and South Carolina Gazette; and Country Journal, June 2, 1772, 1. Jonathan Shipley, A Speech, Intended to Have Been Spoken on the Bill for Altering the Charters of the Colony of Massachusetts-Bay (New York, 1774), 2; and Thomas Cushing, Samuel Adams, John Hancock, and William Phillips to Benjamin Franklin, Dec. 21, 1773, in PBF, 20:509–512. On the Tea Act and colonial resistance, see Benjamin L. Carp, Defiance of the Patriots: The Boston Tea Party and the Making of America (New Haven, Conn., 2010); Breen, Marketplace, 294–331; and Maier, Resistance to Revolution, 275–278. Charles Chauncy to Richard Price, May 30, 1774, APS, Richard Price Papers. See also James Duane to John Tabor, Oct. 11, 1774, APS, Sol Feinstone Collection, item 283; Abigail Adams to John Adams, July 16, 1775, and Apr.

338 n o t e s t o pa g e s 1 9 4 – 1 9 7

48.

49.

50.

51.

52.

53.

54.

14, 1776, in Adams Family Correspondence, 1:245–251, 378–380. People from every mainland colony, the Caribbean, and London contributed to Boston’s relief. East Hampton, New York, even levied a tax to support the city. See Breen, American Insurgents, 110–121. Boston Commissioners of the Customs in America to Lords of Treasury, Feb. 12, 1768, BL, Add. Ms. 38340, fol. 208; Daniel MacLean to the Commissioners of His Majesty’s Customs, Jan. 6, 1769, HEH, Stowe Grenville Correspondence, box 13, fol. 11; Gage to Barrington, June 28, 1768, Feb. 4, and July 23, 1769, BL, Add. Ms. 73549, fols. 49–50, 61, 74. John Maunsell to Barrington, Aug. 4, 1774, BL, Add. Ms. 73621, fol. 143; and Peter Oliver to Thomas Hutchinson, Nov. 27, 1775, BL, Eg. Ms. 2659, fol. 184. See “The Freeholders, Merchants, and Other Inhabitants of Prince William County, Virginia, Resolves,” June 6, 1774, in Mason Papers, 1:191; and New York Sons of Liberty, Proceedings at a Numerous Meeting of the Citizens of New-York, broadside (New York, 1773). Josiah Martin to Samuel Martin, Aug. 7, 1767, BL, Add. Ms. 41361, fol. 111; Henry Hulton to de Ruling, Apr. 23, 1769, in Henry Hulton and the Revolution, 224; and [Leonard], Massachusettensis, 26. See also Adair and Schutz, eds., American Rebellion, 50; and Dixon and Purdie’s VG, June 18, 1767, 1. [Thomas Jefferson], A Summary View of the Rights of British America (Williamsburg, Va., 1774), 12, 14; Marblehead, Mass., Committee of Correspondence to the Committee of Correspondence or Selectmen of Haverhill, Aug. 16, 1774, APS, Sol Feinstone Collection, item 880; and The Crisis, no. 3, 1775, 23–24. Benjamin Franklin to Massachusetts House of Representatives, in PBF, 20:283; and Crisis, nos. 2 and 5, 1775, 14–15, 35–36. The Crisis reached an audience of eight to ten thousand and was nearly as influential as Paine’s Common Sense. See Breen, American Insurgents, 262–274. On increasing hostility toward George III, see Maier, Resistance to Revolution, 239–241, 288. [Jefferson], Summary View, 12–13; and Washington to Mason, Apr. 5, 1769, in Mason Papers, 1:97. See also Continental Congress [John Jay], “Address to the People of Great Britain, Philadelphia, Oct. 21, 1774,” in The Selected Papers of John Jay, 1760–1779, ed. Elizabeth M. Nuxoll (Charlottesville, Va., 2010), 101. On Parliament’s right to regulate the economy, see Jack P. Greene, Peripheries and Center: Constitutional Development in the Extended Polities of the British Empire and the United States 1607–1788 (Athens, Ga., 1986), 105–128.

n o t e s t o pa g e s 1 9 7 – 1 9 9

339

55. Rind’s VG, July 14, 1774, 1; and [Jefferson], Summary View, 16–17. See also Fairfax County Resolves, July 18, 1774, in Mason Papers, 1:207. 56. Thomas Greenough to John Greenough, Mar. 28, 1774, HEH, Greenough Family Papers. 57. Samuel Adams to Richard Henry Lee, July 15, 1774, APS, Richard Henry Lee Papers, fol. 62. 58. Thursday, Oct. 20, 1774, in JCC, 1:75–80; Tea permits issued by Elisha Williams to Leonard Chester, June–Dec. 1775, HEH, HM 70291–70302; and Philadelphia Committee Order to the Association of the Butchers, Dec. 5, 1774, in American Archives, Fourth Series . . . States, ed. Peter Force, 6 vols. (Washington, D.C., 1837–1846), 1:1050–1051. On the Association, see Jerrilyn Marston, King and Congress: The Transfer of Political Legitimacy, 1774–1776 (Princeton, N.J., 1987), 100–130; and Breen, American Insurgents, 168. 59. Massachusetts Gazette and the Boston Weekly News-Letter, July 14,1774, 2; James Pemberton to Daniel Mildred, Dec. 6, 1774, HSP, Pemberton Papers, vol. 27, p. 36; and James and Drinker to Pigou and Booth, Sept. 24, 1774, HSP, Henry Drinker Foreign Letters, p. 225. See also Edward Stabler to Israel Pemberton, Dec. 9, 1774, HSP, Pemberton Papers, vol. 27, p. 30; James and Drinker to Robert Nathan Hyde, Sept. 16, 1774, HSP, Henry Drinker Foreign Letters, p. 223; and Jonathan Boucher to John James, Nov. 16, 1773, in “Letters of Rev. Jonathan Boucher,” Maryland Historical Magazine 8, nos. 2–3 (1913): 183–185, 238–240. 60. [Thomas Chandler], What Think Ye of the Congress Now? An Enquiry, How Far the Americans Are Bound to Abide by, and Execute the Decisions of, the Late Congress (New York, 1775), 25, 27. See also [Leonard], Massachusettensis, 3–9, 45–52; [Joseph Galloway], Candid Examination of the Mutual Claims of Great-Britain and the Colonies . . . Principles (New York, 1775), 4; Samuel Auchmuty to John Montresor, Apr. 15, 1775, APS, Sol Feinstone Collection, item 2; and William Smith to General Haldimand [draft], Oct. 6, 1775, NYPL, William Smith Papers, box 3, lot 208, item 10. 61. Joseph Galloway’s plan of union, Sept. 28, 1774, Joseph Galloway to William Franklin, Feb. 28, 1775, in LDC, 1:117–127, 318; and [Joseph Galloway], A Reply to an Address to the Author of a Pamphlet, Entitled, “A Candid Examination of the Mutual Claims of Great Britain and Her Colonies,” &c. (New York, 1775), 9. On Galloway, see Robert M. Calhoon, “ ‘I Have Deduced Your Rights’: Joseph Galloway’s Concept of His Role, 1774–1775,” in Tory Insurgents: The Loyalist Perception and Other Essays, rev. ed., ed. Robert M.

340 n o t e s t o pa g e s 1 9 9 – 2 0 1

62.

63.

64.

65.

66.

Calhoon, Timothy M. Barnes, and Robert S. Davis (Columbia, S.C., 2010); and Benjamin Newcomb, Franklin and Galloway: A Political Partnership (New Haven, Conn., 1972). “Notes of Debates in the Continental Congress,” Sept. 28, 1774, in Adams Diary, 2:142; “James Duane ’s Propositions Before the Committee on Rights,” Sept. 7–22, 1774, in LDC, 1:38; Edward Shippen to Joseph Shippen, May 13, 1775, APS, Edward Shippen Papers; “Intended Vindication and Offer from Congress to Parliament,” July 21, 1775, in PBF, 22:118–119; “Notes for Mr. Hamilton on the American Disputes,” Nov. 1775, NYPL, William Smith Papers, box 2, lot 194, item 1; and John Jay, “Revolutionary War Address,” Dec. 11, 1775, APS, Sol Feinstone Collection, item 626. See also [Thomas Jefferson], “Virginia Resolutions on Lord North’s Conciliatory Proposal,” June 10, 1775, in The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, ed. Julian P. Boyd et al., 34 vols. (Princeton, N.J., 1950–2010), 1:170–174; and “Report on Lord North’s Motion,” in JCC, 2:225–234. Joseph Reed to Earl of Dartmouth, July 25, 1774, in William B. Reed, The Life and Correspondence of Joseph Reed, 2 vols. (Philadelphia, 1847), 1:72. See also Benjamin Franklin to Joseph Priestley, May 16, 1775, in PBF, 22:44. Warren to Samuel Adams, May 14, 1775, in Richard Frothingham, The Life and Times of Joseph Warren (Boston, 1865), 483. See also John Adams to Joseph Hawley, June 27, 1774, in Papers of John Adams, ed. Robert J. Taylor et al., 18 vols. (Cambridge, Mass., 1977–), 2:101; and Jack N. Rakove, The Beginnings of National Politics: An Interpretive History of the Continental Congress (New York, 1979), 56–59. Pinkney’s VG, Feb. 2, 1775, 2. See also Joseph Warren to Samuel Adams, May 14, 1775, in Frothingham, Life and Times of Joseph Warren, 483; Fairfax County Committee of Safety Proceedings, Jan. 17, 1775, in Mason Papers, 1:212; Proceedings of Congress, June 10, 1775, in JCC, 2:85–86; New-York Provincial Congress, Mar. 1776, in Force, ed., Archives, 5:390–392; A Journal of the Honorable House of Representatives of the Colony of the Massachusetts-Bay in New-England (Boston, 1775), 215, 225; The Journals of Each Provincial Congress of Massachusetts in 1774 and 1775 and of the Committee of Safety (Boston, 1838), 46–47, 148–150, 165, 207–208, 456; John Adams’s “Notes of the Debates in the Continental Congress,” Oct. 3 [i.e. 4], 1775, “Draft Resolutions for Encouraging Agriculture and Manufactures,” Feb.–Mar. 1776, in Adams Diary, 2:191, 234; and Pennsylvania Gazette, Dec. 21, 1774, 2–3. Thomas Jefferson’s “Notes on Financial and Military Estimates,” July[?] 1775, in LDC, 1:689–691; June 23, 1775, Journals of the House of Burgesses of

n o t e s t o pa g e s 2 0 1 – 2 0 6

67.

68.

69.

70.

71.

341

Virginia, 1773–1776, ed. John Pendleton Kennedy (Richmond, Va., 1905), 278–279; and Charles Lee to Richard Henry Lee, Dec. 12, 1775, APS, Richard Henry Lee Papers. Novanglus [John Adams], “V. To the Inhabitants of the Colony of Massachusetts-Bay,” Feb. 20, 1775, and “VII. To the Inhabitants of the Colony of Massachusetts-Bay,” Mar. 6, 1775, in Papers of John Adams, 2:278, 322; Mercy Otis Warren to Hannah Tolman Winthrop, before June 1774, Mercy Otis Warren to Catharine Macaulay, Dec. 29, 1774, and Mercy Otis Warren to John Adams, Jan. 30, 1775, in Warren Letters, 28, 30, 38, 46. Oliver to Thomas Hutchinson, Dec. 7, 1775, BL, Eg. Ms. 2659, fols. 190–191; and John Murray to his Aunt, June 9, 1776, in Letters of John Murray, 250. On Paine, see Foner, Tom Paine; Jack Fruchtman Jr., The Political Philosophy of Thomas Paine (Baltimore, 2010); and Sophia Rosenfeld, Common Sense: A Political History (Cambridge, Mass., 2011), 136–180. [Thomas Paine], Common Sense Addressed to the Inhabitants of America, 2nd ed. (Philadelphia, 1776), 24, 32, 125–126; and Benjamin Franklin to Sir Richard Howe, July 20, 1776, in PBF, 22:519. On the idea of res publica, see Nigel Smith, Literature and Revolution in England, 1640–1660 (New Haven, Conn., 1994), 190. For the radical Whigs’ conception of the public good, see Peter N. Miller, Defining the Common Good: Empire, Religion and Philosophy in Eighteenth-Century Britain (Cambridge, 1994), 15, 214–265. On the American Revolution as a bourgeois revolution, see Breen, Marketplace, 26, 263–264.

7. English Blood by English Hands 1. Adam Smith, “Thoughts on the State of the Contest with America,” Feb. 1778, WLCL, Alexander Wedderburn Papers, box 2, fol. 8. 2. Josiah Tucker, An Humble Address and Earnest Appeal to Those Respectable Personage in Great Britain and Ireland. . . . Whether a Connection, or a Separation from the Continental Colonies of America, Be Most for the National Advantage, and the Lasting Benefit of These Kingdoms (London, 1776). 3. See James E. Bradley, Popular Politics and the American Revolution in England: Petitions, the Crown, and Public Opinion (Macon, Ga., 1986), 210. 4. See Eliga Gould, The Persistence of Empire: British Political Culture in the Age of the American Revolution (Chapel Hill, N.C., 2000), 154–155. For a similar view, see H. T. Dickinson, “Britain’s Imperial Sovereignty: The Ideological

342 n o t e s t o pa g e s 2 0 6 – 2 0 8 Case Against the American Colonists,” in Britain and the American Revolution, ed. H. T. Dickinson (London, 1998), 64–96. 5. For the lives and liberty view, see Bernard Bailyn, The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution, enlarged ed. (Cambridge, Mass., 1992); Robert Middlekauf, The Glorious Cause: The American Revolution, 1763–1789 (New York, 1982); and T. H. Breen, American Insurgents, American Patriots: The Revolution of the People (New York, 2010). The phrase “who should rule at home” is Carl Becker’s; see The History of Political Parties in the Province of New York, 1760–1776 (Madison, Wis., 1909), 22. For the American Revolution as a sociopolitical conflict among Americans, see Gary B. Nash, The Unknown American Revolution: The Unruly Birth of Democracy and the Struggle to Create America (New York, 2005); Michael A. McDonnell, The Politics of War: Race, Class, and Conflict in Revolutionary Virginia (Chapel Hill, N.C., 2007), esp. 4–15; and Terry Bouton, Taming Democracy: “The People,” the Founders, and the Troubled Ending of the American Revolution (New York, 2007). For the effort to draw attention to the British side of the story, see Andrew O’Shaughnessy, The Men Who Lost America: British Leadership, the American Revolution, and the Fate of the Empire (New Haven, Conn., 2013), 7, 9. For the attempt to downplay differences, see Bouton, Taming Democracy, 61; and Maya Jasanoff, Liberty’s Exiles: American Loyalists in the Revolutionary World (New York, 2011), esp. 23–39. 6. See Washington to John Hancock, Sept. 8, 1776, in Papers of George Washington: Revolutionary War Series, ed. Philander D. Chase et al., 22 vols. (Charlottesville, Va., 1985–), 6:248–253. 7. “A Sketch to Lord Howe from Lord Hyde,” 1776, Bod., Mss. Clarendon dep. c.347, p. 37. See also William Knox, “Account of the First Peace Commission of 1776,” 1776, WLCL, William Knox Papers, box 10, fol. 23; George Germain to William Howe, Oct. 18, 1776, Germain to Guy Carleton, Aug. 22, 1776, WLCL, George Sackville Germain Papers, vol. 5; Francis Rawdon to Earl of Huntingdon, Sept. 23, 1776, HEH, HA 5119; Alexander Oswald to Michael Herries, Sept. 30, 1776, BRBML, Osoborn, Mss. 62, vol. 5; and Ira D. Gruber, “Lord Howe and Lord George Germain, British Politics and the Winning of American Independence,” WMQ 22, no. 2 (Apr. 1965): 228. 8. Henry Strachey to Christopher D’Oyly, July 14, 1777, WLCL, Henry Strachey Papers; Charles Jenkinson to Gen. Clavering, Dec. 13, 1776, BL, Add. Ms. 38306, fols. 54; and John Montagu, fourth Earl of Sandwich to John Campbell, fourth Earl of Loudoun, Oct. 13, 1776, HEH, Loudoun Americana, box 134.

n o t e s t o pa g e s 2 0 8 – 21 0

343

9. “Sketch to Lord Howe,” 1776, WLCL, William Knox Papers, box 10, fol. 23; William Knox, “Ideas of What Might Facilitate an Accommodation Under the Intended Commission,” WLCL, George Sackville Germain Papers, vol. 5; “Knox Account of the First Peace Commission; Separate Instruction to the American Commissioners,” May 6, 1776, WLCL, Henry Strachey Papers; and George III, “Orders and Instructions to Richard, Lord Viscount Howe and Sir William Howe,” May 8, 1776, WLCL, William Knox Papers, box 9, fol. 19. On colonial taxes, see Oliver M. Dickerson, The Navigation Acts and the American Revolution (Philadelphia, 1951), 201. 10. Memorandum of a declaration made by Lord Chatham to Dr. Addington, July 1776, BL, Add. Ms. 88906/1/7, fol. 108. 11. Cobbett, 18:1329; and The Parliamentary Register; or, History of the Proceedings and Debates of the House of Commons, 17 vols. (London, 1775–1780), 3:348. See also Fothergill to John Bartram, May 6, 1776, WLCL, Schoff Revolutionary War Collection, box 1; Cobbett, 18:1355; John Lloyd to John Almon, Aug. 22, and Oct. 9, 1776, BL, Add. Ms. 20733, fols. 73, 75. 12. Ralph Izard to John Almon, Aug. 4, 1776, BL, Add. Ms. 20733, fol. 58; Robert Morris to Joseph Reed, July 21, 1776, Charles Carroll of Carrollton to Charles Carroll Sr., July 20, 29, 1776, in LDC, 4:511, 496, 559; and Richard Viscount Howe and William Howe Esq., “Declaration,” July 14, 1776, WLCL, George Sackville Germain Papers, vol. 5. See also Joseph Mifflin to John Mifflin, July 14, 1776, WLCL, Mifflin Family Papers; and John Adams to Abigail Adams, Apr. 6, 1776, in LDC, 3:492. Price ’s pamphlet enjoyed a wide audience in North America and was reprinted in four American cities. 13. Edmund Quincy to Henry Quincy, Aug. 12, 1776, WLCL, Edmund Quincy Letters. See also [Thomas Paine], The American Crisis, Number II: To Lord Howe (Norwich, Conn., 1777), 16; and [John Jay], “Final Version of an Address of the Convention of the Representatives of the State of New York to Their Constituents,” Dec. 23, 1776, in The Selected Papers of John Jay, ed. Elizabeth M. Nuxoll et al., 3 vols. (Charlottesville, Va., 2010), 1:337–347. 14. William Tilghman to Walter Stewart, Aug. 27, 1776, WLCL, Schoff Revolutionary War Collection, box 2; and extract of a letter from General Sir Guy Carleton to Lord George Germain, July 8, 1776, NAUK, CO 5/7, fol. 344. See also Nathaniel Lyttleton Savage to John Norton, Jan. 1777, HEH, Brock Collection, box 19, fol. 21; William Smith, draft of letter to the commissioner of the Congress in answer to their summons of June 27, 1776, July 4, 1776, NYPL, William Smith Papers, box, 1, lot 192, item 3; Thomas Hutchinson to Philip Yorke, second Earl of Hardwicke, Aug. 16, 1776, BL,

344 n o t e s t o pa g e s 21 0 – 21 2

15.

16.

17.

18.

19.

20.

Add. Ms. 35427, fol. 98; James Townsend Oswald to Richard Oswald, July 31, 1776, BRBML, Osborn, Mss. 62, vol. 4; Henry Strachey, Diary, July 12, and 18, 1776, WLCL, Henry Strachey Papers. Henry Strachey to Christopher D’Oyly, Aug. 11, 1776, Henry Strachey to Jane Strachey, Sept. 3, 1776, WLCL, Henry Strachey Papers; Richard Howe to George Washington, July 13, 1776, WLCL, Richard and William Howe Collection. John Adams, “Autobiography, Part One to October 1776,” Sept. 17, 1776, in Diary and Autobiography of John Adams, ed. L. H. Butterfield et al., 4 vols. (Cambridge, Mass., 1962), 3:421; Richard Howe to Germain, Sept. 20, 1776, WLCL, Shelburne Papers, vol. 88, fol. 18; Benjamin Rush to Mrs. Rush, Sept. 14, 1776, in Letters of Benjamin Rush, ed. L. H. Butterfield, 2 vols. (Princeton, N.J., 1951), 1:109; and Rawdon to Earl of Huntingdon, Sept. 23, 1776, HEH, HA 5119. Richard and William Howe, “Declaration,” Sept. 19, 1776, WLCL, George Sackville Germain Papers, vol. 5; Henry Strachey to Jane Strachey, Sept. 25, 1776, WLCL, Henry Strachey Papers; and John Thompson to Earl of Huntingdon, Sept. 25, 1776, HEH, HA 12822. See also Rawdon to Earl of Huntingdon, Sept. 23, 1776, HEH, HA 5119; Josiah Martin to Samuel Martin Jr., Sept. 30, 1776, BL, Add. Ms. 41361, fols. 297–298; Alexander McCaul to Charles Stuart, Oct. 2, 1776, NLS, Ms. 5029, fol. 220; Pat Tonyn to Jane Strachey, Nov. 8, 1776, WLCL, Henry Strachey Papers; and William Smith letter extract, Oct. 2, 1776, NYPL, William Smith Papers, box 3, lot 208, item 19. Edmund Quincy to Henry Quincy, Sept. 15, 1776, WLCL, Edmund Quincy Letters; and [Thomas Paine], The American Crisis. Number I (Norwich, Conn., 1776), 9. See also Silas Deane to Shelburne, Oct. 17, 1776, WLCL, Shelburne Papers, vol. 66, fol. 10; William Sharpe to Cornelius Harnett, July 27, 1776, WLCL, Schoff Revolutionary War Collection, box 2; and [Paine], American Crisis II, 16, 24–31. See Francis Rawdon to Earl of Huntingdon, Nov. 28, 1776, HEH, HA 5121; James Murray to Charles Steuart, Dec. 26, 1776, NLS, Ms. 5029, fol. 254; John Thompson to Huntingdon, Sept. 25, 1776, HEH, HA 12822; “A Copy of a Letter from the Earl of Clarendon to Ld. Viscount Howe,” Nov. 29, 1776, Bod., Mss. Clarendon dep. c.347, pp. 63–65; and Charles Jenkinson to Mrs. Johnson, Dec. 10, 1776, BL, Add. Ms. 38306, fols. 50–51. Extract of a letter from Lord George Germain to Mr. Stuart, Superintendent of Indian Affairs, Nov. 6, 1776, and William Tryon to Germain, Dec. 24,

n o t e s t o pa g e s 21 2 – 21 5

21.

22.

23.

24.

25.

26.

345

1776, WLCL, George Sackville Germain Papers, vol. 5; By Richard Viscount Howe of the Kingdom of Ireland, and William Howe, Esq; General of His Majesty’s Forces in America, broadside (New York, 1776); Richard and William Howe to Germain, Nov. 30, 1776, WLCL, Shelburne Papers, vol. 88, fol. 16; Richard and William Howe to Germain, Dec. 22, 1776, NAUK, CO 5/177; James Campbell to the Earl of Loudoun, Nov. 29, 1776, HEH, Loudoun Americana, box 134; and Henry Strachey to Jane Strachey, Dec. 28, 1776, WLCL, Henry Strachey Papers. John Bourke to Philip Francis, Oct. 29, 1776, BL, Add. Ms. 40763, fol. 72; “Lord Shelburne ’s answer to Dean’s letter of Oct. 17, 1776 [draft],” WLCL, Shelburne Papers, vol. 66, fol. 12; and Richard Champion to Willing, Morris & Co., Dec. 5, 1776, HEH, Robert Morris Collection, box 1. See also Thomas Walpole to Augustus FitzRoy, third Duke of Grafton, Aug. 1776, CUL, Ms. Add. 8710/27. The Committee of Secret Correspondence to Silas Deane, Aug. 7, 1776, HEH, Robert Morris Collection, box 1. See also Elbridge Gerry to John Wendell, Nov. 11, 1776, Oliver Wolcott to Matthew Griswold, Nov. 18, 1776, in LDC, 5:472, 513; and Secret Committee of Correspondence to William Bingham, Sept. 21, 1776, HEH, Robert Morris Collection, box 1. Germain to Lord Howe and William Howe, May 18, 1777, WLCL, Henry Strachey Papers; Basil Feilding, sixth Earl Denbigh to the Earl of Loudoun, July 7, 1776, HEH, Loudoun Americana, box 134. See also Joseph Yorke, Baron Dover to Jeffrey Amherst, Nov. 15, 1776, CKS, U1350/C41/83; Hugh Elliot to William Eden, July 3, 1776, BL, Add. Ms. 34413, fol. 59; and Jenkinson to John Clavering, Dec. 13, 1776, BL, Add. Ms. 38306, fol. 54. See Charles Lee to Rush, Nov. 2, 1776, APS, Sol Feinstone Collection, item 791; William Hooper to Samuel Johnson, Sept. 26, 1776, Wolcott to Matthew Griswold, Nov. 18, 1776, Robert Morris to George Washington, Mar. 6, 1777, Sherman to Jonathan Trumbull, Mar. 4 [6], 1777, Charles Carroll of Carrollton to Benjamin Franklin, Aug. 12, 1777, in LDC, 5:247, 513, 6:402– 404, 7:463; and Rush to Richard Henry Lee, Dec. 30, 1776, in Letters of Benjamin Rush, 1:121. John Adams, Thoughts on Government, Applicable to the Present State of the American Colonies: In a Letter from a Gentleman to His Friend (Philadelphia, 1776), 4–5; and John Adams to Abigail Adams, Sept. 8, 1777, in LDC, 7:627. See Hooper to Robert Morris, Feb. 1, 1777, Thomas Burke to Richard Caswell, Feb. 16, 1777, and New York Delegates to the New York Convention, Apr. 29, 1777, in LDC, 6:193, 299–300, 686–687.

346 n o t e s t o pa g e s 21 5 – 21 7 27. John Adams to James Warren, Feb. 12, 1777, in LDC, 6:261. See also Thomas Cushing to John Hancock, July 18, 1776, HEH, HM 25003; Francis Hopkinson, John Nixon, and John Wharton to Continental Naval Board, June 14, 1777, HEH, HM 25025; “Resolved,” Feb. 15, 1777, in JCC, 7:124–126; Hooper to Samuel Johnson, Sept. 26, 1776, Hooper to Joseph Hewes, Nov. 5, 1776, and Wolcott to Matthew Griswold, Nov. 18, 1776, in LDC, 5:247, 439–440, 513–514. 28. “Draft of a Resolution Empowering George Washington to Raise an Army,” Dec. 27, 1776, APS, Documents Relating to the Province of Pennsylvania and to the American Revolution, 1728–1816, fol. 40; and Dec. 27, 1776, in JCC, 6:1045–1046. See also the resolution of Congress, Oct. 31, 1776, and Committee on Departments, Report, Apr. 8, 1777, in JCC, 6:916, 7:241–242; Elbridge Gerry to John Adams, Jan. 8, 1777, Samuel Adams to John Adams, Jan. 9, 1777, and Executive Committee [Robert Morris and George Clymer] to John Hancock, Feb. 4, 1777, in LDC, 6:51–52, 66, 212. 29. See John Hancock to Philip Schuyler, Jan. 15, 1777, Whipple to Bartlett, Feb. 7, 1777, John Adams to James Warren, Feb. 12, 1777, Henry Laurens to John Lewis Gervais, Aug. 5, 1777, and Charles Carroll of Carrollton to Benjamin Franklin, Aug. 12, 1777, in LDC, 6:107, 236, 260–262, 7:423–424, 463–464. On the fortunes of the continental currency, see Robert Morris to John Hancock, Dec. 23, 1776, John Adams to Thomas Jefferson, May 26, 1777, in LDC, 5:647–648, 7:121; and Charles W. Calomiris, “Institutional Failure, Monetary Scarcity, and the Depreciation of the Continental,” Journal of Economic History 48, no. 1 (Mar. 1988): 55. 30. Laurens to John Lewis Gervais, Aug. 5, 1777, in LDC, 7:423–424; and Robert Morris to John Bradford, Dec. 24, 1776, HEH, Robert Morris Collection, box 1. See also John Hancock to Philip Schuyler, Jan. 15, 1777, Executive Committee [Robert Morris and George Clymer] to Hancock, Feb. 4, 1777, William Williams to Jonathan Trumbull Sr., July 5, 1777, Laurens to John Rutledge, Aug. 12, 1777, Laurens to Christopher Zahn, Aug. 13, 1777, in LDC, 6:107, 213–214, 7:303, 470–471, 477; [Thomas Paine], The American Crisis. Number III (Philadelphia, 1777), 53–54; and Rush to Richard Henry Lee, Dec. 30, 1776, in Letters of Benjamin Rush, 1:120. 31. See Edward Rutledge to Robert R. Livingston, Oct. 2, 1776, Hooper to Hewes, Nov. 1, 5, 1776, William Ellery to Nicholas Cooke, May 8, 1777, in LDC, 5:295, 424, 439–440, 7:47; resolution of Congress, Dec. 27, 1776, in JCC, 6:1046; Rush to Richard Henry Lee, Dec. 30, 1776, in Letters of Benjamin Rush, 1:120; and “Draft of a Resolution,” Dec. 27, 1776, APS,

n o t e s t o pa g e s 21 7 – 21 8

347

Documents Relating to the Province of Pennsylvania and the American Revolution, 1728–1816, fol. 40. For Congress’s recommendation, see its resolution, June 24, 1776, in JCC, 5:475–476. Many of the states passed laws against counterfeiting continental bills even before Congress issued its resolutions. See An Act to Punish Those Who Shall Counterfeit or Alter, Knowing Them to Be Counterfeit, the Certificates Issued by the Late Houses of Assembly, or the Continental or Colonial Currency, Which Hath Been Already or Shall be Hereafter Issued. Passed the 9th Day of April 1776 (Charleston, S.C., 1776); Acts and Laws, Made and Passed by the General Court or Assembly of the State of Connecticut, in New-England, in America, Holden at New-Haven, in Said State, on the Second Thursday of October, Anno Dom. 1776 (New London, Conn., 1776), 434–435; Proceedings of the Convention of the Province of Maryland, Held at the City of Annapolis, on Friday the Twenty-First of June, 1776 (Annapolis, Md., 1776), 22; The Journal of the Proceedings of the Provincial Congress of North-Carolina, Held at Halifax on the 4th day of April, 1776 (Newbern, N.C., 1776), 37–38; Virginia Convention, Ordinances Passed at a General Convention of Delegates and Representatives, from the Several Counties and Corporations of Virginia, Held at the Capitol, in the City of Williamsburg on Monday the 6th of May, Anno Dom: 1776 (Williamsburg, Va., 1776), 27; Minutes of the Proceedings of the Convention of the State of Pennsylvania, Held at Philadelphia, the Fifteenth Day of July, 1776 (Philadelphia, 1776), 17; and The Acts and Resolves Passed, Public and Private, of the Province of Massachusetts Bay, 21 vols. (Boston, 1869–1922), 5:639–640. 32. Thomas Burke to Caswell, Feb. 16, 1777, Elbridge Gerry to Robert Treat Paine, Oct. 29, 1777, in LDC, 6:299, 8:211; and Town of Boston, Committee of Correspondence, Inspection, and Safety to the Town of Sandwich, Mass., Feb. 27, 1777, APS, Sol Feinstone Collection, item 97. See also “Resolution,” Feb. 15, 1777, in JCC, 7:125; “Benjamin Rush’s Notes of Debates,” Feb. 14, 1777, John Hancock “to the States Gentlemen,” Feb. 20, 1777, John Adams to Abigail Adams, May 28, Sept. 8, 1777, John Witherspoon to William Churchill Houston, Jan. 27, 1778, in LDC, 6:274–276, 331–332, 7:137, 628, 8:669–670; John Adams to Abigail Adams, Feb. 7, 1777, in Adams Family Correspondence, 2:153; and Breck P. McAllister, “Price Control by Law in the United States: A Survey,” Law and Contemporary Problems 4 (1937): 274–275. 33. John Adams to Joseph Palmer, Feb 20. 1777, William Williams to Jonathan Trumbull, Sept. 30, 1777, in LDC, 6:327, 8:35; and John Adams to Abigail Adams, Aug. 19, 1777, in Adams Family Correspondence, 2:320. See also William Whipple to Josiah Bartlett, Feb. 7, 1777, John Adams to Joseph

348 n o t e s t o pa g e s 21 8 – 2 2 0

34.

35.

36.

37.

38. 39.

40.

Palmer, Feb. 20. 1777, Charles Carroll of Carrollton to Charles Carroll Sr., May 27, 1777, William Duer to John Jay, May 28, 1777, James Lovell to Wolcott, Aug. 21, 1777, James Lovell to Horatio Gates, Oct. 5, 1777, Daniel Roberdeau to Thomas Wharton, Oct. 14, 1777, Harnett to Thomas Burke, Nov. 20, 1777, Richard Henry Lee to Samuel Adams, Nov. 23, 1777, John Witherspoon to William Churchill Houston, Jan. 27, 1778, in LDC, 6:236– 327, 7:135, 138–139, 524–525, 8:57–58, 121–122, 290, 311, 669–672; and [Paine], American Crisis. Number III, 54. [Paine], American Crisis III, 54–55; and Francis Lightfoot Lee to Samuel Adams, Dec. 22, 1777, in LDC, 8:459–460. See also William Whipple to Josiah Bartlett, Apr. 1, 1777, Daniel Roberdeau to Thomas Wharton, Oct. 14, 1777, and James Lovell to Whipple, Nov. 3, 1777, in LDC, 6:522, 8:121–122, 225. Peter R. Livingston, “Maxims as Fundamental Principles on Which the Constitution of This State Ought to be Erected,” Sept. 1776, NYPL, William Smith Papers, box 2. Rush to Anthony Wayne, Sept. 24, 1776, in Letters of Benjamin Rush, 1:114– 115; and Pennsylvania Journal and the Weekly Advertiser, June 11, 1777, 1. See also Hooper to Hewes, Nov. 1, 1776, James Lovell to Joseph Trumbull, Sept. 7, 1777, in LDC, 5:425, 7:625; Robert Galbraith to President Wharton, Oct. 31, 1777, in Pennsylvania Archives, ed. Samuel Hazard, 12 vols. (Philadelphia, 1853), 5:730; Pennsylvania Journal, Mar. 26, 1777, 2; and Pennsylvania Evening Post, Mar. 13, 1777, 139. Pennsylvania Evening Post, May 17, 1777, 272; and [Benjamin Rush], Observations upon the Present Government of Pennsylvania in Four Letters to the People of Pennsylvania (Philadelphia, 1777), 21. For Congress’s efforts, see its resolution, Apr. 15, 1777, in JCC, 7:267–270. Pennsylvania Evening Post, Mar. 13, 1777, 139; and [Rush], Observations, 6, 12–13. Rush to Anthony Wayne, Apr. 2, 1777, in Letters of Benjamin Rush, 1:137; Pennsylvania Evening Post, May 22, 24, 1777, 279–281; “Whitlock” in Dunlap’s Pennsylvania Packet, or General Advertiser, June 10, 1777, 2; Pennsylvania Evening Post, May 27, 1777, 285; Paine in Pennsylvania Packet, Dec. 5, 1778, 2, Dec. 12, 1778, 2; and Dunlap’s Pennsylvania Packet, or General Advertiser, June 10, 1777, 2. See also Pennsylvania Packet, Mar. 18, 1777, 2. Pennsylvania Gazette, Mar. 26, 1777, 3. See also Pennsylvania Evening Post, Mar. 20, 1777, 156; and Dunlap’s Pennsylvania Packet, or General Advertiser, June 10, 1777, 2.

n o t e s t o pa g e s 2 2 0 – 2 2 2

349

41. [Rush], Observations, 4, 9; Pennsylvania Packet, Dec. 1, 1778, 2, and Dec. 5, 1778, 2. Despite his commitment to a wide franchise, Paine believed that paupers’ and servants’ dependence precluded their political participation. On the history of denying voting rights to the poor, see Robert J. Steinfeld, “Property and Suffrage in the Early American Republic,” Stanford Law Review 41, no. 2 (Jan. 1989): 335–376. 42. Journal and the Weekly Advertiser, June 11, 1777, 1; [Rush], Observations, 15–16; Rush to John Adams, Aug. 8, 1777, in Letters of Benjamin Rush, 1:152; and Pennsylvania Packet, Dec. 12, 1778, 2. For the elitism, see Hooper to Samuel Johnson, Sept. 26, 1776, in LDC, 5:248. For the view that Rush and his allies had abandoned earlier radical Whig commitments, see Bouton, Taming Democracy, 64–66. 43. See New York Delegates to the New York Convention, Apr. 21, 1777, William Duer to Jay, May 28, 1777, in LDC, 6:631, 7:138; and The Constitution of the State of New-York (Fishkill, N.Y., 1777). See also Daniel Husselbosch, Constituting Empire: New York and the Transformation of Constitutionalism in the Atlantic World (Chapel Hill, N.C., 2005), 170–202. 44. This view originated with arguments in favor of the U.S. Constitution, the most comprehensive of which remains, Hamilton, Madison, and Jay’s “Federalist” essays. More recently, see Merrill Jensen, The Articles of Confederation: An Interpretation of the Social-Constitutional History of the American Revolution, 1774–1781 (Madison, Wis., 1940): Jack N. Rakove, The Beginnings of National Politics: An Interpretive History of the Continental Congress (New York, 1979), 133–240; and Jack P. Greene, Peripheries and Center: Constitutional Development in the Extended Polities of the British Empire and the United States, 1607–1788 (Athens, Ga., 1986), 153–180. 45. Thomas Burke to Caswell, May 23, 1777, John Adams to Jefferson, May 26, 1777, Samuel Adams to James Warren, June 30, 1777, and John Hancock to the Delaware and Virginia Assemblies, July 18, 1777, in LDC, 7:109, 120, 271–272, 352. See also Jay to James Duane, Dec. 23, 1777, in Jay Papers, 1:498. 46. Arthur Lee to Richard Price, Apr. 20, 1777, APS, Richard Price Papers; Thomas Burke ’s remarks on the Articles of Confederation, ante Dec. 16, 1777, Thomas Burke ’s notes on the Articles of Confederation, ca. Dec. 18, 1777, in LDC, 8:419, 435. See also Abraham Clark to John Hart, Feb. 8, 1777, Samuel Adams to James Warren, Oct. 29, 1777, in LDC, 6:240, 8:209; and “Resolution,” Feb. 15, 1777, in JCC, 7:125. 47. Duane to Jay, Dec. 23, 1777, in Jay Papers, 1:498; and John Adams to Robert Morris, July 11, 1783, in Papers of John Adams, ed. Robert J. Taylor

350 n o t e s t o pa g e s 2 2 2 – 2 2 3 et al., 18 vols. (Cambridge, Mass., 1977–), 15:101. See also Charles Carroll of Carrollton to Benjamin Franklin, Aug. 12, 1777, Charles Carroll of Carrollton to Charles Carroll Sr., Oct. 5, 1777, Williams to Jabez Huntington, Oct. 22, 1777, Elbridge Gerry to Joseph Trumbull, Nov. 27, 1777, and Thomas Burke’s notes, ca. Dec. 18, 1777, in LDC, 7:463, 8:50, 162, 326–327, 435. On European state building, see Michael Braddick, State Formation in Early Modern England, c. 1550–1700 (Cambridge, 2000); John Brewer, Sinews of Power: War, Money, and the English State, 1688–1783 (New York, 1988); James B. Collins, The State in Early Modern France, 2nd ed. (Cambridge, 2009); Max Edling, A Revolution in Favor of Government: Origins of the U.S. Constitution and the Making of the American State (New York, 2003), 47–58; and Charles Tilly, Coercion, Capital and European States, a.d. 990–1992 (Oxford, 1990). 48. JCC, 6:1079–1080. See also “Notes of Debates on the Articles of Confederation,” July 30, Aug. 1, 1776, in Diary and Autobiography of John Adams, 2:245– 248; Harnett to Caswell, Oct. 10, 1777, Henry Laurens to John Laurens, Oct. 10, 1777, William Williams to Jonathan Trumbull Sr., Oct. 11, 1777, Nathaniel Folsom to Meshech Weare, Oct. 27, 1777, Samuel Adams to James Warren, Oct. 29, 1777, Harnett to Thomas Burke, Nov. 13. 1777, Richard Henry Lee to Sherman, Nov. 24, 1777, Harnett to William Wilkinson, Nov. 30. 1777, Thomas Burke ’s remarks, ante Dec. 16, 1777, in LDC, 8:98, 100–101, 108, 198, 209, 255, 319–320, 348–349, 419; and Duane to Jay, Dec. 23, 1777, in Jay Papers, 1:498. On slavery, taxation, and the Articles, see Robin Einhorn, American Taxation, American Slavery (Chicago, 2006), 124–145. 49. Samuel Livermore to Meshech Weare, Nov. 6, 1781, in LDC, 18:183. On Witherspoon’s influence, see Einhorn, American Taxation, 123–124. Under the Articles of Confederation, states with small slave populations paid a disproportionate share of Congress’s expenses relative to their population. For example, between 1781 and 1788, Massachusetts’s tax quota was approximately 83 percent more per capita than Virginia’s and 76 percent more than South Carolina’s. In terms of actual payments to Congress, it paid 65 percent and 23 percent more, respectively. See Roger H. Brown, Redeeming the Republic: Federalists, Taxation, and the Origins of the Constitution (Baltimore, 1993), 14; and John J. McCusker, “Population, by Race and by Colony or Locality: 1610–1780,” in Historical Statistics of the United States, Millennial Edition, ed. Susan B. Carter et. al., 5 vols. (Cambridge, 2006), 5:563. On the concessions to slavery in the articles, see George William Van

n o t e s t o pa g e s 2 2 3 – 2 2 5

50.

51.

52.

53.

54.

55.

351

Cleve, A Slaveholders’ Union: Slavery Politics, and the Constitution in the Early American Republic (Chicago, 2010), 45–50; and Einhorn, American Taxation, 124–145. See Charles Carroll to Benjamin Franklin, Aug. 12, 1777, in PBF, 24:417–421; Richard Henry Lee to Roger Sherman, Nov. 24, 1777, James Madison to Edmund Pendleton, Nov. 27, 1781, in LDC, 8:319–320, 18:216; and JCC, 21:1087–1092, 23:564–572. On the intense pressure to create a confederation that could secure ratification by the states, see Rakove, Beginnings, 160–164. The states’ contributions were about one third of Congress’s requisitions. See Brown, Redeeming the Republic, 14. In an important correction to Brown, George William Van Cleve notes that the states paid most of Congress’s requisitions after mid-1787 using heavily depreciated indents (meaning that their payments were worth far less than their face value) and that they failed for political (rather than economic) reasons to levy taxes that would defray domestic debts. See George William Van Cleve, Stalemate Government: The Collapse of the Confederation, 1783–1787 (forthcoming), chap. 2. See John Adams to Thomas Jefferson, May 26, 1777, Richard Henry Lee to Sherman, Nov. 24, 1777, and Harnett to Wilkinson, Nov. 30. 1777, in LDC, 7:120, 8:319–320, 348–349. Thomas Burke ’s remarks, ante Dec. 16, 1777, and Thomas Burke ’s notes on the Articles of Confederation, ca. Dec. 18, 1777, in LDC, 8:419–420, 436–437. Even as it prompted a fierce debate about the nature of state sovereignty, the move to amend the Articles to grant Congress a 5 percent impost on imports drew support from revolutionaries as diverse as Thomas Paine, John Adams, Robert Morris, and James Madison. See Paine, “Six Letters to Rhode Island,” in Complete Writings of Thomas Paine, ed. Philip Foner, 2 vols. (New York, 1945), 2:333–366; John Adams to Robert Morris, July 11, 1783, in Papers of John Adams, 15:100–102; and James Madison to Edmund Randolph, Nov. 19, 1782, in Papers of James Madison: Congressional Series, ed. William T. Hutchinson and William M. E. Rachal, 17 vols. (Chicago, 1962–1991), 5:288–292. See Samuel Cooper to Benjamin Franklin, Oct. 25, 1777, HEH, Samuel Cooper Papers, box 1; Samuel Adams to James Warren, Jan. 1, 1777, Elbridge Gerry to John Adams, Jan. 8, 1777, Harnett to Caswell, Oct. 10, 1777, in LDC, 6:3, 51–52, 8:98; and Arthur Lee to Samuel Loudon, Paris, Oct. 7, 1777, BL, Add. Ms. 46490, fols. 74–75. Memoire of Arthur Lee to Frederick the Great of Prussia, July 29, 1777, in Life of Arthur Lee, LL.D.: Joint Commissioner of the United States to the Court of

352 n o t e s t o pa g e s 2 2 5 – 2 2 6

56.

57.

58.

59.

France, and Sole Commissioner to the Courts of Spain and Prussia, During the Revolutionary War, 2 vols. (Boston, 1829), 1:92, 95. See also Franklin and Deane to Committee for Foreign Affairs, May 25, 1777, in PBF, 24:73–77; Robert Morris to John Hancock, Jan. 6, 1777, Robert Morris to the Commissioners at Paris, Mar. 7, 1777, Duane to the New York Convention, May 6, 1777, in LDC, 6:42–43, 415, 7:31; and Cooper to Benjamin Franklin, Oct. 25, 1777, HEH, Samuel Cooper Papers, box 1. On America’s need for a French alliance, see Charles Carroll of Carrollton to Benjamin Franklin, Aug. 12, 1777, and Henry Laurens to Christopher Zahn, Aug. 13, 1777, in LDC, 7:462, 476–477. On the economic consequences of the blockade, see Richard Buel, In Irons: Britain’s Naval Supremacy and the American Revolutionary Economy (New Haven, Conn., 1998). Cooper to Benjamin Franklin, Oct. 25, 1777, HEH, Samuel Cooper Papers, box 1. See also Germain to Earl of Buckingham, Dec. 22, 1777, WLCL, George Sackville Germain Papers, vol. 6; and Charles Pratt, first Earl Camden to Robert Stewart, Dec. 3, 1777, CKS, U840 C173/19. Thomas Walpole, “Reasons Why It Is Not Probable America Will Depart from Her Declaration of Independence,” 1777, CUL, Ms. Add. 8710/33; Camden to Stewart, July 19, 1777, CKS, U840 C173/17; William Pitt, Earl of Chatham to William Petty, second Earl Shelburne, Dec. 18, 1777, BL, Add. Ms. 88906/1/7, fols. 123–126, 128. See also [Richard Burke], The Letters of Valens (Which Originally Appeared in the London Evening Post) with Corrections, Explanatory Notes, and a Preface by the Author (London, 1777), xiv; Willoughby Bertie, fourth Earl of Abingdon, Thoughts on the Letter of Edmund Burke, 2nd ed. (Oxford, 1777), 59; Champion to Izard, July 16, 1777, HEH, Robert Morris Collection, box 1; Izard to Almon, Oct. 16, 1777, BL, Add. Ms. 20733, fols. 59–60; Arthur Lee to Price, Apr. 20, 1777, and Price to John Winthrop, June 15, 1777, APS, Richard Price Papers. Abingdon, Thoughts, 64. See also Shelburne to Price, Sept. 24, 1777, in The Correspondence of Richard Price, ed. W. Bernard Peach and D. O. Thomas, 3 vols. (Durham, N.C., 1983), 1:313; [Richard Burke], The Letters of Valens (London, 1777), v; Arthur Lee to Price, Apr. 20, 1777, APS, Richard Price Papers; and Izard to Almon, Aug. 4 and Oct. 16, 1777, BL, Add. Ms. 20733, fols. 58–60. See Abingdon, Thoughts, 41–43; Camden to Robert Stewart, June 4, 1777, CKS, U840 C173/15; and Shelburne to Price, Sept. 24, 1777, BL, Add. Ms. 88906/3/29, fol. 82. For Burke ’s pamphlet, which nonetheless defended the

n o t e s t o pa g e s 2 2 6 – 2 2 8

60.

61.

62.

63.

64.

353

American cause, see A Letter from Edmund Burke Esq; . . . on the Affairs of America (Bristol, 1777). Charles Watson-Wentworth, second Marquess of Rockingham, Nov. 19, 1777, SA, WWM/R/151/7; “Proposition for a Meeting ‘in Common Hall’ of Some Principal Citizens,” ca. 1777, MSC Not., PW F 2569; and Cobbett, 19:316–320, 344. See also Chatham to Rockingham, Nov. 18, 27, 1777, Rockingham to Chatham [draft], Nov. 28, 1777, SA, WWM/R/151; Camden to Stewart, June 3, July 2, 1777, CKS, U840 C173/14, 16; John Cartwright to William Cavendish-Bentinck, third Duke of Portland, Feb. 22, Mar. 31, 1777, MSC Not., PW F 2567–2568; Walpole, “Reasons Why,” 1777, CUL, Ms. Add. 8710/33; Abingdon, Thoughts, 59; and [Burke], Valens, 3, 69. Jenkinson, memo, 1776 or 1777, BL, Add. Ms. 38342, fols. 282–284; Jenkinson to North, June 26, July 9, 1777, BL, Add. Ms. 38306, fol. 72–74; and Jenkinson, “Plan for the North American Colonies,” 1777, BL, Add. Ms. 38342, fols. 172–184. See also [William Barron], History of the Colonization of the Free States of Antiquity: Applied to the Present Contest Between Great Britain and her American Colonies (London, 1777); and Jenkinson to Barron, June 11, 1777, BL, Add. Ms. 38306, fol. 70. On the tyranny of republican government, see “Political Remarks on the Present State of Affairs, in Respect to the Rebellion in America and the Danger of Its Involving Us in a War in Europe,” Mar. 18, 1777, WLCL, George Sackville Germain Papers, vol. 5. Adam Ferguson to John Macpherson, Dec. 1777, in The Correspondence of Adam Ferguson, ed. Vincenzo Merolle, 2 vols. (London, 1995), 1:163; and North to George III, Jan. 12, 1778, in The Correspondence of King George the Third from 1760 to December 1783, ed. J. W. Fortesque, 6 vols. (London, 1927–1928), 4:13. Britain’s combined military expenses in 1775, 1776, and 1777 totaled £20.2 million. B. R. Mitchell, British Historical Statistics (Cambridge, 1988), 579. Elliot to Eden, Mar. 20, 1778, HEH, HM 22541. See also Eden to Paul Wentworth, Dec. 5, 1777, in B. F. Stevens’s Facsimiles of Manuscripts in European Archives Relating to America, 1773–1783, ed. Benjamin Franklin Stevens, 25 vols. (London, 1889–1895), no. 483; David Hartley to Franklin, Feb. 13, 18, 20, 1778, in PBF, 25:662–665, 689–692, 699–700; and O’Shaughnessy, Men Who Lost America, 61. William Eden, “Measures for an Accommodation with America,” Jan. 1778, in Stevens’s Facsimiles, no. 346. See also Alexander Wedderburn, “Paper Sent to L.N. upon the State of Affairs in America Containing Heads of a Plan for a Treaty,” Jan. 1778, WLCL, Alexander Wedderburn Papers, box 2; Hutton to

354 n o t e s t o pa g e s 2 2 8 – 2 3 0

65. 66.

67.

68.

69. 70. 71.

Germain, Jan. 26, 1778, John Fisher to Germain, Feb. 2, 1778, WLCL, George Sackville Germain Papers, vol. 7; Joseph Yorke to Jeffrey Amherst, Feb. 10, 1778, CKS, U1350/C41/122; Wedderburn note to Eden, 1778, [Alexander Thurlow], “Resolution Relative to the Taxation of the American Colonies,” Jan. 1778, [William Eden], “First Sketch of an Idea for a Conciliating Act,” Feb. 1778, Wedderburn to Eden, Feb. 1778, Eden note to Wentworth, Dec. 5, 1777, in Stevens’s Facsimiles, nos. 347, 349, 355, 367, 483; Ferguson to Macpherson, Dec. 1777, in Correspondence of Adam Ferguson, 1:163; James Hutton to Benjamin Franklin, Jan. 27, and Feb. 1, 1778, in PBF, 25:529–530, 562–563. Parliamentary Register, 8:379–385, 404–405; and London Chronicle, Feb 19, 1778, 177. Cobbett, 19:767; Charles Jenkinson to Sir John Blaquiere, Feb. 19, 1778, BL, Add. Ms. 38306, fols. 84–85; and Hutchinson to Hardwicke, Aug. 3, 1778, BL, Add. Ms. 35427, fol. 137. See also O’Shaughnessy, Men Who Lost America, 62. Cobbett, 19:369, 870; Franklin to William Pulteney, Mar. 30, 1778, in PBF, 26:195; and John Dalrymple, “Thoughts on Instructions to the American Commissioners,” Mar.[?] 1778, WLCL, George Sackville Germain Papers, vol. 7. See also Henry Laurens to Caswell, June 11, 1778, in LDC, 10:73–74; and Franklin to Hartley, Feb. 26, 1778, in PBF, 25:712–714. For the peace proposals of North’s supporters, see Wedderburn to Eden, Apr. 1, 1778, BL, Add. Ms. 46491, fols. 18–19; Joseph Yorke to Jeffrey Amherst, Mar. 3, 1778, CKS, U1350/C41/125; Elliot to Eden, Mar. 20, 1778, HEH, HM 22541; and [William Pulteney], Thoughts on the Present State of Affairs with America, and the Means of Conciliation, 5th ed. (London, 1778), 63, 70. George III to North, Mar. 15[?], 1778, and North to George III, Mar. 29, 1778, in Correspondence of George III, 4:58, 84. For radical Whig attitudes, see Chatham to Rockingham, Jan. 27, 1778, SA, WWM/R/151/10; Camden to Shelburne, Apr. 7, 1778, BL, Add. Ms. 88906/3/4, fol. 110; and Camden to Robert Stewart, Mar. 29, 1778, CKS, U840 C173/29. Camden to Stewart, Mar. 29, Apr. 30, 1778, CKS, U840 C173/29, 31; and “On Chatham’s Funeral,” May 1778, WLCL, Pitt Family Papers, box 1. Joseph Yorke to Jeffrey Amherst, May 17, 1778, CKS, U1350/C41/132. See “William Knox’s Explanation for the American Revolution,” ed. Jack P. Greene, WMQ 30, no. 2 (Apr. 1973): 293–306; Price to Franklin, May 10, 1778, in Correspondence of Richard Price, 2:19–20; James Hutton to Franklin, May 19, 1778, in PBF, 26:507–510; Edward Smith to Eden, July, 10, 1778, BL, Add. Ms. 46491, fol. 41; and [Pulteney], Thoughts, 63.

n o t e s t o pa g e s 2 3 0 – 2 3 4

355

72. [William Knox], “Secret Instructions for the Commissioners,” Apr. 1778, “An Account of the Number of Persons Who Have Taken the Oath of Allegiance at Philadelphia from the 30th of September 1777 to the 17th June 1778,” WLCL, George Sackville Germain Papers, vol. 7; Eden to “My Dear Sir,” June 19, 1778, and Eden to Germain, June 19, 1778, BL, Add. Ms. 46491, fols. 28–29. See also Price to Franklin, May 10, 1778, in Correspondence of Richard Price, 2:19–20; Charles Grey to Shelburne, June 15, 1778, BL, Add. Ms. 88906/1/16, fol. 11; Germain to Henry Clinton, Mar. 8, 1778, and George Germain, “Draft to the Commissioners,” July 1778, WLCL, George Sackville Germain Papers, vol. 7. 73. Extract of the letter of His Majesty’s Commissioners to the President of the Congress, June 10, 1778, NAUK, CO 5/7, fol. 13, 15–16. See also Charles Carroll of Carrollton to Charles Carroll Sr., June 15, 1778, in LDC, 10:94. 74. Pennsylvania Packet, and Daily Advertiser, Sept. 19, 1778, 1. See also Pennsylvania Packet, and Daily Advertiser, Sept. 12, 1778, 2–4; and John Witherspoon to unknown, Sept. 3, 1778, in LDC, 10:557. 75. Reed to George Johnstone, June 13, 1778, APS, Sol Feinstone Collection, item 1192. See also Dr. Samuel Adams to Sally Preston Adams, Aug. 5, 1778, Thomas McKean to Caesar Rodney, Apr. 20, 1778, Thomas Paine to Dr. Samuel Adams, Jan. 5, 1778, APS, Sol Feinstone Collection, items 29, 860, 1051; William Henry Drayton to the Carlisle Commissioners, June 17, 1778, Robert Morris to Duane, Sept. 8, 1778, in LDC, 10:116–121, 607; Rush to James McHenry, May 17, 1778, in Letters of Benjamin Rush, 1:215; and Pennsylvania Gazette, June 20, 1778. 76. William Henry Drayton to the Carlisle Commissioners, June 17, 1778; John Witherspoon to unknown, Sept. 3, 1778, in LDC, 10:116–121, 557; Morris in Pennsylvania Packet, and Daily Advertiser, Sept. 19, 1778, 1–2. See also Pennsylvania Packet, and Daily Advertiser, Sept. 12, 1778, 2–4. 77. Rush to Jonathan Bayard Smith, Apr. 20, 1778, in Letters of Benjamin Rush, 1:211; Reed to Johnstone, June 13, 1778, APS, Sol Feinstone Collection, item 1192; and Richard Henry Lee to John Adams, June 20, 1778, in LDC, 10:153–154. See also Charles Carroll of Carrollton, to Charles Carroll Sr., June 7, 1778, William Henry Drayton to the Carlisle Commissioners, June 17, 1778, and Richard Henry Lee to John Adams, June 20, 1778, in LDC, 10:42, 116–121, 153–154. 78. Franklin to Hartley, Oct. 26, 1778, in PBF, 27:629–630. See also Dr. Samuel Adams to Sally Preston Adams, Aug. 5, 1778, APS, Sol Feinstone Collection, item 29; and George Johnstone to Ferguson, Sept. 22, 1778, in Correspondence of Adam Ferguson, 1:185.

356 n o t e s t o pa g e s 2 3 4 – 2 3 7 79. Adam Ferguson, Henry Clinton, William Eden, and the Earl of Carlisle, Manifesto and Proclamation: To the Members of the Congress, the Members of the General Assemblies or Conventions of the Several Colonies, broadside (New York, 1778). 80. Cobbett, 19:1400, 20:12. See also Pennsylvania Packet; or, The General Advertiser, Oct. 29, 1778, 1–2. 81. Extract of a letter from New York, Dec. 27, 1778, WLCL, George Sackville Germain Papers, vol. 8; Public Advertiser, Jan. 2, 1779, 4; [James Ramsay], Plan of Re-Union Between Great Britain and Her Colonies (London, 1778), 94–95; [Joseph Galloway], A Candid Examination of the Mutual Claims of Great-Britain and the Colonies (New York, 1780), 76; and Germain to His Majesty’s Commissioners, Oct. 15, 1778, BL, Add. Ms. 46491, fols. 54–55. See also Germain, “Draft to the Commissioners,” July 1778, WLCL, George Sackville Germain Papers, vol. 7; Germain to the Commissioners [draft], Nov. 4, 1778, extract of a letter from New York, Dec. 27, 1778, Ramsey to Germain, “Hints for the Conduct of Britain Towards America in the Proposed New Compromise,” 1778, WLCL, George Sackville Germain Papers, vol. 8; Germain to Knox, July 23, 1778, WLCL, William Knox Papers, box 4, fol. 17; extract of a letter from the Commissioners for Restoring Peace to Lord George Germain, Mar. 8, 1779, WLCL, Alexander Wedderburn Papers, box 1, fol. 14; Eden to “My Dear Sir,” Sept. 22, 1778, BL, Add. Ms. 46491, fols. 52–53; Cobbett, 19:1397–1398, 20:22; Adam Ferguson, “Notes on the Enquiry into General Sir William Howe ’s Conduct in the American War,” May 10, 1779, in Correspondence of Adam Ferguson, 2:566, and London Chronicle, Jan. 23, 1777, 85. 82. John Berkenhout, “Journal of an Excursion from New York to Philadelphia in the Year 1778,” July 24, 1778, WLCL, George Sackville Germain Papers, vol. 8. 83. See Gouverneur Morris to George Clinton, Sept. 2, 1778, Robert Morris to Duane, Sept. 8, 1778, in LDC, 10:551, 607; and Rush to Jonathan Bayard Smith, Apr. 20, 1778, in Letters of Benjamin Rush, 1:211–212. 84. John Adams to Hendrik Calkoen, Oct. 26, 1780, in Papers of John Adams, 10:243. See also Henry Marchant to William Greene, July 20, 1778, John Elmer to Ebenezer Elmer, July 23, 1778, in LDC, 10:323, 340; and the American Commissioners to the Comte de Vergennes, Dec. 7, 1778, in Papers of John Adams, 7:259–262. 85. Franklin to Cooper, Apr. 22, 1779, Benjamin Franklin, “Of the Paper Money of America,” ca. 1780, in PBF, 29:355–356, 34:228–232. See also John Jay,

n o t e s t o pa g e s 2 3 7 – 2 3 9

86.

87.

88.

89.

90.

357

“Circular Letter from Congress to Their Constituents,” Sept. 13, 1779, in Jay Papers, 1:672; Thomas Paine to Dr. Samuel Adams, Jan. 5, 1778, APS, Sol Feinstone Collection, item 1051; Marchant to John Carter, July 14, 1778, in LDC, 10:279; John Adams to Edmund Jenings, Feb. 25, 1780, John Adams to Edme Jacques Genet, May 28, 1780, John Adams to Hendrik Calkoen, Oct. 26, 1780, and John Adams to Joan Derk van der Capellen tot den Pol, Jan. 21, 1781, in Papers of John Adams, 8:364–365, 9:353–354, 10:235–237, 11:65–66. Benjamin Franklin, Arthur Lee, and John Adams to Price, Oct. 6, 1778, and Price to Franklin, Arthur Lee and John Adams, Jan. 18, 1779, in Correspondence of Richard Price, 2:29–20, 34–35. John Robinson to George III, Oct. 25, 1778, BL, Add. Ms. 37834, fols. 36–37; and Cobbett, 20:990. See also Robinson to George III, Aug. 30, 1778 [unsent draft], BL, Add. Ms. 37833, fols. 239–240; William Eden, Letters to the Earl of Carlisle, from William Eden, Esq., 3rd ed. (London, 1780), 9–10, 92–101, 111; and [Pulteney], Thoughts, 6, 56. See [Pulteney], Thoughts, 45–48; Eden, Letters, 94, 98, 101–131; and John Berkenhout, Lucubrations on Ways and Means: Humbly Addressed to the Right Hon. Lord North (London, 1780), esp. 14–52. Berkenhout’s proposal included taxes on beer, bachelors, ice houses, farms, minstrels, fiddlers, dancing masters, masquerades, horse-racing, cockfighting, hair dressers, lawyers, dentists, Jews, boarding schools for young ladies, circulating libraries, milliners, hairpowder, gloves, hats, buckles, lace, ribbons, cloth, silk, cushions worn by ladies on their heads, pistols, guns, dogs, parrots, diamonds, greenhouses, liveries, swords, coats of arms, servants, and saddle horses as well as licenses for pubs, teahouses, chocolate houses, and chophouses. There would also be new stamp taxes on cards, prints, charts, engravings, handbills, music, books, and bills of exchange. On financing the American War, see Mitchell, British Historical Statistics, 601; and Stephen Dowell, A History of Taxation and Taxes in England: From the Earliest Times to the Present Day, 4 vols. (London, 1884), 2:165–176. John Sykes to Almon, Mar. 11, Apr. 17, 1778, BL, Add. Ms. 20733, fols. 122, 126; and Camden to Stewart, Sept. 27, 1779, CKS, U840 C4/6. See also “W.W.” to Almon, Jan. 14, 1778, BL, Add. Ms. 20733, fols. 132–133; and Mitchell, British Historical Statistics, 450. David Hartley, Letters on the American War, 5th ed. (London, 1779), 1, 3; Joseph Massie, To the Principal Land-Holders of England, and to the Principal Citizens of London, broadside (London, 1779); Hartley, Letters, 3; and London Evening Post, Mar. 2, 1779, 4. See also General Advertiser and

358 n o t e s t o pa g e s 2 3 9 – 2 4 3

91.

92.

93.

94. 95. 96.

97.

98.

Morning Intelligencer, Jan. 12, 1779, 4; and Public Advertiser, Dec. 4, 1778, 1–2. William Knox, “Considerations on the Great Question What Is to Be Done with America? Part the Second,” spring 1778, Galloway to Germain, Mar. 18, 1779, WLCL, George Sackville Germain Papers, vols. 17, 9; and [Ramsay], Plan of Re-Union, 4–6, 13, 28–29, 35–36, 42–43, 171, 187. George III to Robinson, Aug. 29, 30, 1778, BL, Add. Ms. 37833, fols. 236, 240; and Jenkinson to John Scott, Aug. 25, 1778, BL, Add. 38306, fol. 94. See also Thomas Browne to Germain, Nov. 28, 1778, WLCL, George Sackville Germain Papers, vol. 8; Henry Addison to Jonathan Boucher, Oct. 14, 1778, WLCL, Henry Addison Papers; Robinson to George III [draft], June 7, 1778, BL, Add. Ms. 37833, fols. 227–228; George III to Robinson, Nov. 6, 1778, BL, Add. Ms. 37834, fol. 39; Adam Ferguson, “Notes on the Enquiry,” in Correspondence of Adam Ferguson, 2:565; and Eden, Letters, 17. Adam Ferguson, “Memorial Respecting the Measures to be Pursued on the Present Immediate Prospect of a Final Separation of the American Colonys from Great Britain,” in Correspondence of Adam Ferguson, 2:558; Berkenhout, Lucubrations, 16, 63; and Eden, Letters, 56–57. Hartley, Letters, 51. Berkenhout, Lucubrations, 18–19; and “Memorandum of the King’s Speech to his Cabinet,” June 21, 1779, WLCL, William Knox Papers, box 10, fol. 26. John Jay, “Circular Letter from Congress to Their Constituents,” Sept. 13, 1779, in Jay Papers, 1:667, 674–675. Those excluded from citizenship—slaves, women, Native Americans, and the very poor—fared far worse. See Christopher Tomlins, Freedom Bound: Law, Labor, and Civic Identity in Colonizing English America, 1580–1865 (Cambridge, 2006). Henry Laurens to George Washington, Nov. 20, 1778, in LDC, 11:229–230. See also Pennsylvania Packet; or, The General Advertiser, Jan. 26, 1779, 2–3; Jay, “Circular Letter,” 1:672; and JCC, 15:1135–1136. Robert Morris to Stacey Hepburn, Sept. 23, 1779, HEH, Robert Morris Collection, box 2. On the difficulties of the war, see Woody Holton, Unruly Americans and the Origins of the Constitution (New York, 2007); and McDonnell, Politics of War.

Conclusion 1. Benjamin Rush to David Ramsay, Nov. 5, 1778, in Letters of Benjamin Rush, ed. L. H. Butterfield, 2 vols. (Princeton, N.J., 1951), 1:219; and David Ramsay,

n o t e s t o pa g e s 2 4 3 – 2 4 7

359

An Oration on the Advantages of American Independence (Charlestown, S.C., 1778), 1–6, 16–19. 2. Ramsay, Oration, 7–19. 3. For one example of radical Whig racism, see An American [Arthur Lee], An Essay in Vindication of the Continental Colonies of America, from a Censure of Mr. Adam Smith, in His Theory of Moral Sentiments (London, 1764). 4. Thomas Pownall, A Memorial, Most Humbly Addressed to the Sovereigns of Europe, on the Present State of Affairs, Between the Old and New World, 2nd ed. (London, 1780), 3–4, 44, 105–106; John Adams to the President of Congress, Apr. 19, 1780, in Papers of John Adams, ed. Robert J. Taylor et al., 18 vols. (Cambridge, Mass., 1977–), 9:164–196; and Thomas Pownall to Samuel Cooper, Apr. 19, 1778, HEH, Samuel Cooper Papers, box 1. 5. Richard Price, Observations on the Importance of the American Revolution and the Means of Making It a Benefit to the World (London, 1784), 5–6. 6. George III, speech to the HoC, Nov. 30, 1774, in The Annual Register, or a View of the History, Politics, and Literature, for the Year 1775 (London, 1783), 40. For the relationship between the American Revolution and conservative critiques of slavery in Britain, see Christopher Leslie Brown, Moral Capital: Foundations of British Abolitionism (Chapel Hill, N.C., 2006). 7. On the persistent influence of Britain on the political culture and economy of the nineteenth-century United States, see Sam W. Haynes, Unfished Revolution: The Early American Republic in a British World (Charlottesville, Va., 2010). 8. Benjamin Vaughan to William Petty, second Earl of Shelburne, Nov. 1, 1782, BL, Add. Ms. 88906/1/18, fol. 255; and Oswald to Shelburne, July 10, 1782, WLCL, Shelburne Papers, vol. 70, pp. 43–44. See also Richard Oswald to Thomas Townshend, Oct. 8, 1782, Richard Oswald, “Minutes of Sundry Articles Recommended in My Instructions, Not Included in the Treaty,” Oct. 11, 1782, WLCL, Shelburne Papers, vol. 70, pp. 299–300, 311–314; “Orders and Instructions to Richard Oswald, Peace Commissioner” [draft], 1782, WLCL, Shelburne Papers, vol. 71, pp. 14–15; and Vaughan to Shelburne, Jan. 5, 1783, BL, Add. Ms. 88906/1/18, fol. 279. 9. On democratization in the new American republic, see Sean Wilentz, The Rise of American Democracy: Jefferson to Lincoln (New York, 2005). On the very gradual curtailing of slavery in northern United States, see James J. Gigantino II, The Ragged Road to Abolition: Slavery and Freedom in New Jersey, 1775–1865 (Philadelphia, 2014). On economic development, see Gavin Wright, “The Role of Nationhood in the Economic Development of the

360 n o t e s t o pa g e s 2 4 7 – 2 4 8 USA,” in Economic Change and the Nation State in History, ed. Alice Teichova and Herbert Matis (Cambridge, 2003), 387–403. 10. On growing inequality, see Peter Lindert and Jeffrey Williamson, “American Incomes, 1774–1860,” NBER Working Paper, no. 18396 (Sept. 2012). On the legal constraints to freedom in the new republic, see Christopher Tomlins, Freedom Bound: Law, Labor, and Civic Identity in Colonizing English America, 1580–1865 (Cambridge, 2010); and Christopher Tomlins, Law, Labor, and Ideology in the Early American Republic (Cambridge, 1993). On the symbiotic relationship between slavery and the American state, see David Ericson, Slavery in the American Republic: Developing the Federal Government, 1791– 1861 (Lawrence, Kans., 2011); Padraig Riley, Slavery and the Democratic Conscience: Political Life in Jeffersonian America (Philadelphia, 2015); and George William Van Cleve, A Slaveholders’ Union: Slavery, Politics, and the Constitution in the Early American Republic (Chicago, 2010). On the tensions between liberalism, exclusion, and authoritarianism in American history, see Gary Gerstle, Liberty and Coercion: The Paradox of American Government (Princeton, N.J., 2015); Aziz Rana, The Two Faces of American Freedom (Cambridge, Mass., 2010); and Rogers M. Smith, Civic Ideals: Conflicting Visions of Citizenship in U.S. History (New Haven, Conn., 1999).

Index Abercromby, James, 41, 43, 66, 88 Abingdon, fourth Earl of (Willoughby Bertie), 226, 229, 234 Adams, John, xvi, 8, 19, 215, 216, 222, 245–246; advocacy for government-sponsored manufacturing, 189–190; criticism of the Stamp Act, 120, 122; defense of mobs, 187; and the Howe Commission, 210–211; opposition to price controls, 217; republicanism of, 201; support for high taxes, 218, 236; Thoughts on Government, 214–215 Adams, Samuel, xvi, 117, 119, 121, 124, 128, 182 Administration of Justice Act (1774), 193 Albany plan, 62–66, 76, 79, 82 Allason, William, 115 Almon, John, xvi, 110, 134, 150 American Independence, 197–198; attachment to, 207, 212, 232–234, 243–244; economic, 179, 191, 196–197, 198; European reactions to, 1–3, 205, 224–230; precariousness of, 207, 215–216, 220, 221; republicanism and, 207 American Revolution: causes of, 8–9, 11–13, 18–19, 52, 54, 177, 180, 202–204; as unexceptional, 20; economic interpretation, 12–13; and equality, 4, 5, 22, 201–204, 205–206, 207, 219–221, 243–245, 247–248; as libertarian, 12–13; compared to other revolutions, 20; and state building, 215, 217–218, 221, 222–224, 236–237; and support for government, 220, 241–242, 243–244 American War of Independence, 176; American confidence during, 214–215, 225, 233–234, 241–242, 243–244; colonial difficulties, 211–212, 214, 215, 217, 236, 242; economic consequence in Britain, 238–239;

inflation, 211–212, 216, 225, 236–237; violence against loyalists, 8, 201, 202, 204, 211, 218, 231 Amherst, Jeffery, 75 Anderson, Fred, 11 Andrews, Charles M., 1, 11, 19 “Anti-Sejanus” (James Scott), 132, 133, 134 Articles of Confederation, 207, 221–225; and foreign assistance, 224–225; and pubic borrowing, 222; and slavery, 223, 350n49; and taxation, 222–224, 350–351n49, 351nn50 & 53 Auchmuty, Robert, 184, 198 austerity, 8, 15, 17–18, 23, 26, 79, 91, 95, 96, 100, 111, 131, 146, 206, 256n28. See also under authoritarian reformers authoritarian reformers, 7–9, 18, 21, 256–257n27; and austerity, 79, 92–95, 102, 103, 148, 151, 161, 225, 237–238, 240, 246; attacks on colonial boycotts, 129, 184–185, 191, 198; and colonial democracy, 65, 127, 184–185; and colonial subordination, 42–43, 64–65, 76, 82, 106, 125–127, 198–199, 208, 227, 239–240; and colonial taxation, 42–43, 51, 102, 106, 109, 134, 150–152, 157, 171, 177, 194–195, 199, 227; confidence in the British war effort against America, 212–214; and consumption, 39–40, 56, 59–60, 157; critique of Whig governance, 36, 37–38, 79, 83, 90, 91–92, 133, 147, 151, 158–159, 230; criticism of elites for encouraging disorder, 37, 109, 124–125, 126, 133, 159, 172, 185–186, 230, 240, 241; criticism of colonial behavior, 41, 51, 55, 70–71, 86–87, 103–106, 111, 125–127, 132–134, 144, 172, 184–185, 191, 198, 211, 231, 240; desire to emulate France, 37, 43; dislike

361

362 i n d e x authoritarian reformers (continued) of Chatham and his allies, 133, 152, 186, 230, 240, 241; and East India Company reform, 107, 153, 154–155, 167–168; economic views, 37–42, 93–94, 103–104, 126, 133–134, 151, 191, 227–228, 234–236, 237–238, 240; efforts to negotiate with rebellious colonies, 207–208, 210–212, 228, 234–236; and excise taxes, 37, 39–40, 57–58, 94–95, 104, 238; faith in the better sort of colonists, 177, 191–192; fear of colonial development, 42, 106, 127, 159–160; fear of colonial independence, 24, 42, 80, 104–105, 106, 124, 126, 147, 152, 157, 184; foreign policy of, 18, 37, 52, 78–79, 90–94, 97; and George III, 8–9, 17–18, 79, 91–92, 95, 98, 149, 165, 230, 240–241, 246; and geopolitical rivalry with France, 37, 39, 40, 43, 86, 90, 92, 93–94, 97, 151, 240–241; and imperial expenses, 82, 93–94, 98, 105, 109, 151, 168, 171, 227, 230, 240; inability to achieve reforms, 177, 227–228; and liberty, 6–8, 56, 90, 94, 106, 124, 125–126, 147, 184–185, 211, 217, 227, 246; and militia reform, 85–86; and Native Americans, 56–57, 125–126; and North’s conciliatory resolution, 198; opposition to republicanism, 65, 126, 184–185, 191; opposition to westward expansion, 105, 159–160; and parliamentary sovereignty, 109, 125, 133, 147–148, 152, 156–157, 171, 184, 195; perception of anarchy in revolutionary America, 127, 170, 184, 185, 234–236; political strategy, 40, 95, 96, 149–150, 155–156, 177; and public debt, 40, 55–56, 59, 79, 90, 91, 94, 97, 103–104, 107, 109–110, 126, 133–134, 149–151, 159, 171, 235, 237–238; and regulating colonial trade, 42–43, 65, 104–105, 125–126, 134, 174; responses to disorder, 36, 37, 55–56, 90, 95–96, 100, 103, 104, 111, 151, 158–159, 177; and Stamp Act, 42–43, 103–104, 105–106, 107–108, 109–110, 124, 126–127, 132–134, 139, 144, 147, 149, 150–151, 184, 227, 235, 241; strengthening colonial government, 42–43, 56, 82, 103, 106, 126, 177, 208, 239–240; support for low wages and inequality, 37–38, 39, 40, 104; support for military intervention in North

America, 105, 107, 120, 159, 170, 174, 194, 210, 228, 240–241; and Tory influence, 27, 38–39, 40, 56, 79, 97; vision of empire, 37, 41–43, 62, 97, 102, 106, 127, 177, 246; and weakness of colonial government, 55–56, 65, 106, 124, 185–186 authoritarianism, 21, 251n6 Baker, William, 35, 90 Bank of England, 34 Barclay, David, 172 Barnard, John, Sir, 44, 48 Barnard, Thomas, 60 Barré, Isaac, xvi, 5, 108, 129, 169, 174, 175 Barrington, William Wildman (second Viscount), xii, 105, 159, 170 Battle of Saratoga, 225, 227 Beckford, William, xvi, 44, 45, 86, 93, 108, 153, 160, 162, 324n65 Bedford, fourth Duke of (John Russell), xii, 6, 24, 25, 36, 79, 97, 98–99; and austerity, 92–93; authoritarian reform, 141–142, 155, 156; influence in Grafton administration, 156; rioting against, 158; support for the Militia Act, 86 Bengal, 21; famine, 167 Berkenhout, John, 236, 238, 240, 241 Bernard, Francis, xii, 75, 106, 186, 192 Bland, Richard, 119 Board of Trade, 79–80, 81–82, 125–126, 129, 166–167 Bolingbroke, Viscount (Henry St. John), 36, 266n13 Bollan, William, 132 Boston: manufacturing, 189; occupation of, 148, 159, 179, 193–194; tea party, 170, 193, 198; town meeting, 118, 119, 128, 217 Boston Massacre, 166 Boston Port Act, 170, 179, 193 Boston Society for Encouraging Trade and Commerce, 112 Boucher, Jonathan, 114–115 Bouquet, Henry, 53–54, 70–71, 75 Bourbon reforms, 20 Braddock, Edward, 66, 68, 83, 86 Breen, T. H., 188

index Britain: eighteenth-century transformation of, 13, 157–158; electoral system, 13–14; fiscal health, 261n57; increasing conservatism, 157, 165, 177 British East India Company. See East India Company Brown, John, 45, 47 Burgoyne, John, 225 Burke, Edmund, xv, 5, 15, 138, 160, 161–162; attack on the Carlisle Commission, 234; conciliatory motion, 177; criticism of, 226; defense of the East India Company, 168; and elite rule, 162; and “influence,” 161–162; preference for West Indian colonies, 97–98; Thoughts on the Cause of the Present Discontents, 160; views on colonial taxation, 157 Burke, Thomas, xvi, 221, 224 Burke, William, 97–98 Bute, third Earl of (John Stuart), xii, 6, 99, 100, 141, 149; administration of, 94–98; and authoritarian reform, 141; attacks on, 151, 200; and the Enlightenment, 21; influence at the accession of George III, 79, 91–93 Camden, first Earl of (Charles Pratt), xvi, 174, 177, 187, 226, 230, 238; colonial popularity, 183; criticism of, 152, 186; drafting of the Ohio colony’s constitution, 166 Canada, 97–98, 100, 124, 179–180 Cannon, James, 218 capitalism, history of, 22 Carroll, Charles (of Carrollton), 209 Cartwright, John, 170 Caribbean, 97, 98, 179–180; and revenue collection, 186; trade with, 112, 142; unpopularity of the Stamp Act in, 114, 129, 130–131; unwillingness to revolt, 130–131, 179–180 Carlisle Commission, 230–232; attacks on Continental Congress, 234; failure of, 237; origins of, 228–229; promises of peace for obedience, 234 Carlisle, fifth Earl of (Frederick Howard), 230 Cato’s Letters (Trenchard and Gordon), 117, 123 Chamier, Anthony, 93–94 Champion, Richard, 177, 214 Chandler, Thomas, 198

363 Chatham, first Earl of (William Pitt), xvi, 9, 27, 78–79, 99, 151, 225; administration of, 149–156, 168; aggressive foreign and military policy, 79; criticism of the Stamp Act, 138, 139; criticism of authoritarian imperial reform, 226; collaboration with Franklin, 172, 173–174, 179; concerns about colonial disorder, 152; criticism of Lord North’s conciliatory resolution, 174; defense of the American Congress, 173; desire for peace with the rebellious colonies, 209; and the East India Company, 153, 155, 169; and electoral reform, 170; frustrations with establishment Whigs, 110; funeral of, 230; and military force in the colonies, 173, 226–227; and militia reform, 83–84, 85; opposition to the Treaty of Paris, 99; plan for reconciliation with the colonies, 173–174; popularity in America, 129, 144–145, 183; as radical Whig, 44–46; and reimbursement of the colonies, 74–75, 78–79, 88–93; as secretary of state, 83–93; unwillingness to accept American independence, 225–226; views on imperial governance, 149, 153, 175; and Wilkes, 160 Chauncy, Charles, 86, 194 Cholmondeley, George (third Earl of ), 32 Church of England, 166 cider tax, 94, 136, 142, 146 cities, and colonial taxation, 148 Clarendon, first Earl of (Thomas Villiers), 94, 95, 158, 208 Clarke, William, 60, 62 Clarkson, David, 115 Clive, Robert, xii, 90, 107, 154–155, 167–169 Cohen, Sheldon S., 1 Colden, Cadwallader, xii, 55, 62, 64–65, 67, 115, 125, 127 Colebrooke, George, 154 Colley, Linda, 14 Colley, Thomas, The Reconciliation Between Britania and Her Daughter America, 247 colonial boycott, 18, 122–123, 128, 188; and the Association, 197; and British manufacturing, 164, 188–191; and colonial manufacturing, 122; as colonial self-sufficiency, 123; limited effectiveness of, 192; moderate criticisms of, 192

364 i n d e x colonial money shortage, 74–75, 112, 113 colonial assemblies: clashes with colonial executives, 54, 56, 71, 106; criticisms of, 25, 43, 51, 53–54, 56, 66–68, 125, 185, 195; defenses of, 35, 63, 69, 174; demands for fiscal autonomy, 54, 65; negotiations with governors, 66–67, 71, 72, 82; willingness to raise funds, 66 colonial union, 79–82; Albany plan, 62–66, 76, 79, 82 colonies, American: British hostility toward, 170; and fiscal independence, 11, 175; and fiscal-military state building, 17, 71–75; growing similarity to Britain, 4; lobbying of Parliament, 24, 111, 131, 137–138; and manufacturing, 18–19, 34–35, 49, 50, 60, 122–123, 166–167, 173, 184, 189–191, 197–198, 201, 202; resistance against British taxation, 10–12, 18, 116, 128, 131, 141, 171, 177, 179, 187–188, 192, 194; and trade, 4, 6, 15, 26, 34–35, 42, 61, 65, 74, 90, 105–106, 112, 114–116, 132, 136–137, 139, 142, 143, 146, 148, 162, 166, 174, 181–183, 187–188, 189–192, 196–197 colonists, American: English identity of, 12, 127; familiarity with British debates, 75–76, 129–131, 143–145, 183, 187, 195–196, 200; and raising funds for imperial expenses, 63, 66–67, 71–74, 180–181, 199; sense of economic vulnerability, 179–180 Connecticut, 189–190, 211–212, 218 conservatism, ix, 20–21 Continental Congress: borrowing, 201, 215–216; boycott of British goods, 197; Chatham’s praise of, 173; and economic management, 217; diplomatic efforts, 224–225; efforts at conciliation, 199; encourages colonial manufacturing, 201; Hamilton’s defense of, 178; limited powers of, 217; measures against counterfeiting, 217; military mobilization, 201; and paper money, 215–216; and raising money, 215–216; struggle for American loyalty, 215, 217; and taxation, 217–218, 223–224, 242 Conway, Henry Seymour, xvi, 108, 150 Cooper, Samuel, xvi, 57, 190–191, 225 Cornwall, Frederick, 171 Crisis, The, 196

Cumberland, Duke of (William Augustus), 70, 85, 87–88 Currency Act (1751), 25, 35 Currency Act (1764), 103; colonial frustrations with, 112; economic consequences of, 112 Curwen, Samuel, 184 Cushing, Thomas, 124 customs duties, 42, 103, 168, 171, 173, 192 Dalrymple, John, 229 Dampier, Thomas, 174 Dartmouth, second Earl of (William Legge), xv, 129, 144, 167, 174; seeking peace with the colonies, 208–209; support for Ohio colony, 167 Dashwood, Francis, Sir, 6, 94 Davenant, Charles, 39 Dawkins, Henry, 196 De Berdt, Dennys, xviii, 132, 142, 180 Decker, Matthew, xii, 20, 36, 38, 39–40, 48; universal tax on houses, 39, 94 Declaration of Independence, 209, 214, 236; Adam Smith’s response to, 205–206 Declaratory Act, 141–142, 152, 156–157 Delany, Daniel, 114 Denbigh, Earl of (Basil Feilding), 156, 214 Denny, William, 86 Dickinson, John, xvi, 181, 182–183, 187, 189, 218; Letters from a Farmer in Pennsylvania to the Inhabitants of the British Colonies, 181 Dickson, H. T., 28 Dinwiddie, Robert, 50, 66; and pistole fee, 58–59 diwani of Bengal, Bihar, and Orissa, 90, 107, 153–155, 168, 193 Douglass, William, 55 Dowdeswell, William, 153 Draper, Richard, 186 Drayton, William Henry, 232 Drinker, Henry, 114, 198 Duane, James, 199, 222 Dulany, Daniel, 114, 116 Dunlap, William, 144 Dupplin, Lord (Thomas Hay), 80 East India Company, 3, 34, 107, 151, 153, 167, 317n18; attacked in the American colonies, 192–193, 196; and Parliamentary Inquiry,

index 153–155; revenue of, 168–169; and reducing Britain’s debts, 168 economic downturn (of the mid-1760s), 111–113 economic institutions, 21 economic growth, 21 Eden, William, xiii, 20, 228, 230, 238, 241 Egmont, second Earl of (John Perceval), 44 Elliot, Hugh, 228 Ellis, Henry, 86 empire: concept of, 1–3, 11, 22, 26; and the United States, 4, 22, 201–202, 207, 214–215, 221, 237, 243–244 Enlightenment, 1–2, 20–21 equality, 4, 12, 22, 58, 76, 107, 117–118, 124, 179, 195, 201–202, 203–204, 205, 207, 221, 243, 245, 248 establishment Whigs, 7, 16–17, 26–28; and colonial liberties, 51, 69–70, 81–82, 177; common ground with radical Whigs, 26, 51–52, 83, 87, 88, 91, 95, 102, 108, 110, 175–176, 177, 226, 229; conservatism of, 28–29, 35, 161; and corruption in British politics, 161–162; criticism of political opposition, 29, 30; criticism of war against American colonies, 226–227, 229; defense of the British economy, 160; defense of the East India Company, 153–154, 168; and fiscalmilitary state, 6, 26, 30–31, 32, 33–34, 34–35; foreign policy views, 30–31, 80, 97–98; and inequality, 6, 28–29, 35–36, 149, 161–162; opposition to austerity, 29, 102, 110; opposition to colonial taxation, 30–31, 35, 102, 110, 148, 162, 177; opposition to the Stamp Act, 108–109, 111, 134–138, 141; opposition to using military force against the colonies, 176, 177, 212, 234; and overseas trade and empire, 34–36, 80–82, 102, 110, 136, 157, 162, 175, 176, 212, 229; and Parliament’s right to tax colonies, 6, 136, 141–142, 156–157, 175; and patronage politics, 27–28, 35; and popular politics, 29, 30, 115, 160, 162, 163; and public debt, 28, 31, 32–33, 91, 160; and regressive taxation, 31–32, 149–150; relations with authoritarian reformers, 155–156; support for a professional military, 30; support for Wilkes, 160, 162; tensions with radical Whigs, 46, 47,

365 78, 79, 83, 84, 85, 87, 144–145, 149, 153–154, 160–162, 169–170, 175, 226; ties to London finance, 29–30, 33–34 Eton, 159 excise, 6, 14, 31–32, 39–40, 47, 48, 55, 57–59, 94, 150, 155, 259n48 Fauquier, Francis, 39, 40. Ferguson, Adam, 171, 227, 240 fiscal austerity. See austerity fiscal-military state, 6, 13, 16–17, 20, 26, 30–31, 34, 35–36, 43, 45, 52, 54, 55, 66, 71–76, 92 Fothergill, John, xvii, 136 Fox, Charles James, 228, 230 Fox, Henry, xv, 33, 92 France, 20, 21, 23, 30, 32, 61, 80; alliance with the United States, 224–225, 239–241; colonies of, 2–3, 43, 62, 86, 123 Franklin, Benjamin, xvii, 2, 21, 61, 62–63, 65–66, 98, 100, 121, 122, 164, 210, 228; and Anglo-American reconciliation, 172–173, 247; appearances in the House of Lords, 173, 174; assessment of British politics, 150, 195–196; collaboration with Chatham, 172, 173–179; confidence in the American war effort, 214; confidence in the continental currency, 216, 237; criticism of North’s conciliatory resolution, 174; criticism of the Carlisle Commission, 229, 234; and land speculation, 108; lobbying against the Stamp Act, 137–138; opposition to slavery, 223; as radical Whig, 5, 63; rejection of Britain, 175, 203; views on inflation, 237; and westward expansion, 166, 172; writings in the British press, 164 Frederick the Great, 225 French and Indian War. See Seven Years’ War French Revolution, 20 “friends of government.” See loyalists Gage, Thomas, xiii, 125, 127, 170, 186, 194 Galloway, Joseph, xiii, 126, 235; proposed imperial reforms of, 240; plan of reconciliation, 198–199 general warrants, 110, 136 George III, xiii, 9, 17, 79, 91–92, 95, 100, 111, 145, 149, 230, 240, 241, 246; relationship with authoritarian reform, 79, 103, 165

366 i n d e x Germain, George, xiii, 208, 212 Gideon, Samson, 34 Glorious Revolution, 13, 21, 55 Glyn, John, 165 Gould, Eliga, 14 Grafton, third Duke of (Augustus Henry Fitzroy), xv, 156; administration of, 156, 161, 162, 164, 165, 168; colonial criticism of, 183 Granville, John Carteret, 81 Gray, Thomas, 124 Greene, Jack P., 12 Greenough, Thomas, 197 Grenville, George, xiii, 17, 20, 93, 96, 100, 149, 246; and austerity, 103, 104, 110; Bengal revenue, 104, 154–155; customs enforcement, 103, 104–105; colonial disorder, 103, 147; and colonial reform, 112, 156, 159–160; constitutional concerns, 103, 147; economic views, 103–104; empire, 103; fear of public debt, 104; foreign policy views, 103; as gentle shepherd, 134; licentiousness in Britain, 104, 147, 159; relationship with George III, 103, 111; and the Stamp Act, 103, 109–110, 139, 147; support for colonial taxes to replace Stamp Act, 151, 183 Grosvenor, Lord (Richard), 105 Halifax, second Earl of (George Montague Dunk), xiii, 36, 41, 42, 43, 80, 96 Hall, David, 121 Hallowell, Benjamin, 114 Hamilton, Alexander, 178 Hancock, John, 221 Hardwicke, first Earl of (Philip Yorke), xv, 32–33, 69, 80, 81–82, Hardwicke, second Earl of (Philip Yorke), 149 Hartley, David, xv, 209, 238–239, 241; The Budget, 110, 228 Herries, Michael, 158 Hillsborough, Earl of (Wills Hill), xiii, 149, 156; objections to western settlement, 166–167 Hogarth, William, 38; Gin Lane, 38; Beer Street, 41; The Times, 97, 98 Hollis, Thomas, 128, 134 Hopkins, Stephen, 118, 119 Hose, John, 140

Hovering Act, 103, 112; colonial opposition to, 112; economic consequences of, 112 Howard, Martin, xiii, 125 Howe, Richard (Earl of ), 208, 210 Howe, William, 208, 230 Howe Peace Commission, 208, 209–211, 212 Hughes, John, 127 Hulton, Ann, 186 Hulton, Henry, 185, 186 Hume, David, 15 Hutchinson, Thomas, 229 ideology: as a concept, 9–10, 12–13, 23 industrial revolution, 23 inequality, 5, 10, 12, 20, 21, 22, 40, 122, 203, 219–220, 248, 285n97 Izard, Ralph, 209 Jackson, Richard, 132 Jacobitism, 6, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 34, 36, 43, 121 Jamaica, 111–112, 130 James, Abel, 115 Jay, John, xvii, 199, 241 Jefferson, Thomas, xvii, 19, 22, 108, 195, 197 Jenkinson, Charles, xiii, 106, 107, 109, 149, 174, 229; proposal to reform the colonies, 227 Jennyns, Soame, 132 Jewish Naturalization Act, 30 Johnson, John, 210 Johnson, Samuel, 171 Johnson, William (first Baronet), xiii, 57, 126, 129 Johnstone, George, 228, 232 “Junius,” 160, 164, 183 Keith, William, 43 Kennedy, Archibald, xiii, 56 Knox, William, xiv, 106, 159; colonial reforms, 208, 239–240; strategy for ending the American War of Independence, 208 landed interest, 18, 40, 92, 99, 103–104, 148–150, 157, 185; support for colonial taxation, 150 land speculation, 108, 114, 227 land tax, 31, 32, 47, 48, 98–99, 134, 136–137, 149–150, 155, 187

index Laurens, Henry, 216, 242 Lee, Arthur, xvii, 164, 183, 190, 225 Lee, Charles, 201 Lee, Francis Lightfoot, 218 Lee, Richard Henry, xvii, 114, 187–188 Leicester House, 44 Leonard, Daniel, 192 Livermore, Samuel, 223 Livingston, Robert R., 114, 115 Locke, John, 21, 109, 118 Loudoun, fourth Earl of (John Campbell), xiv, 53–54, 70–71, 87–88 loyalists, 8, 114, 185, 191, 194, 198, 211, 219 Lynch, Thomas, 223 MacLean, Daniel, 194 Mansfield, Earl of (William Murray), 36, 65, 80, 82 Martin, Joseph, 34 Martin, Josiah, 195 Martin, Samuel, 85, 130 Mason, George, xvii, 188, 189, 190, 197 Massachusetts, 24, 25, 45, 57–58, 60, 67, 70–71, 75, 112–113, 124. 148, 190; and taxation, 72 Massachusetts Government Act, 18, 170, 179, 193, 195 Massie, Joseph, xvii, 44, 48–49, 96, 175, 239 Matlack, Timothy, 218 Mauduit, Israel, 92 Maunsell, John, 191, 194 Mayhew, Jonathan, 64, 128, 144 McCulloh, Henry, xiv, 41, 42, 43, 105 McKean, Thomas, 218 Mein, John, 186, 187 Meredith, William, 108, 162 Mifflin, Thomas, 181 militia reform, 84 Mississippi Land Company, 114 moderate colonists, 114–116, 184, 192, 198, 199, 211; criticism of parliamentary taxation, 179–180; and fear of disorder, 115, 180, 210; views on imperial trade, 116 Monitor; or, The British Freeholder, 44, 48, 50, 88, 117 Montesquieu, 117 Morgan, Edmund and Helen, 109 Morgann, Maurice, 154 Morris, Gouverneur, 232, 233

367 Morris, Robert, 209, 214, 217, 242 Mughal Empire, 77, 107 Murray, James, 126, 202 Mutiny Act, 181, 182 Namier, Lewis, 14, 266n11 Native Americans, 35, 56 Navigation Acts, 34, 104, 157, 196–197, 258n40 Newcastle, Thomas Pelham-Holles, first Duke of, xv, 16, 17, 29, 35, 78, 79, 80, 81, 82, 91–93, 110, 151, 154; criticism of the Stamp Act, 138, 142, 145; and mobs, 160 Newcastle-Pitt Ministry, 17, 83, 87 Newell, Margaret Ellen, 190 New York, 56, 58, 59, 67, 112, 115; state constitution, 221; manufacturing, 189 North, Frederick, Lord North, xiv, 156, 159; administration of, 19, 165, 167, 208; authoritarian reform, 174, 177; colonial criticism of, 183; colonial taxation, 174; conciliatory resolution, 174, 199; East India Company reform, 168–169; efforts to suppress disorder, 170; efforts to fund the American War without borrowing, 237–238; desire to avoid war, 174; seeking peace, 207–208, 225 nonexportation. See colonial boycott nonimportation. See colonial boycott Ohio Company, 166–168 Oliver, Andrew, 127, 128 Oliver, Peter, xiv, 191, 194, 202 Onslow, George, 110 Osborn, Danvers, 51 Oswald, Richard, 247 Otis, James, xvii, 113, 118, 120, 121, 122, 123, 124, 129, 180 Paine, Thomas, xvii, 202, 215, 218, 221; American Crisis, 212; Common Sense, 202–203; support for Pennsylvania state constitution, 218–219, 220 Paoli, Pasquale, 183 Parker, James (printer), 58, 121 Parker, James (trader), 192 parliamentary sovereignty, 5, 14, 109, 125, 132, 133–134, 136, 147–148, 152, 156–157, 171, 174, 175, 184, 195, 204, 240

368 i n d e x party politics, 6, 9, 87 patriotism, 26 Peale, Charles Willson, 220 Pelham, Henry, xv, 16, 28, 29, 31, 35 Pemberton, James, 198 Pennsylvania, 183, 188; colonial political controversies, 66–67, 69, 75, 86; debate over state constitution, 218–221 Penn, Thomas, 6, 35 petitioning, 69, 108, 160; against American taxation, 128, 176, 197 pistole fee, 275n116 Pitt, William. See Chatham, first Earl of popular protest: American, 68, 129, 131, 134, 156, 188, 194–197; British, 96, 102, 158–159, 176, 177, 202, political economy, 16–18, 20, 22–23, 26, 38, 39, 44, 54–55, 59, 79, 92, 93, 142–143, 179, 188, 190, 193 Postlethwayt, Malachy, 39, 121 Pownall, John, 166 Pownall, Thomas, xvii, 2, 67, 70–71, 86, 137, 153, 164, 166, 245; Administration of the Colonies, 312n116; criticism of the East India Company, 169; proposed Ohio colony, 60–61, Memorial, Most Humbly Addressed to the Sovereigns of Europe, 245 Price, Richard, xvii, 5–6, 8, 21, 175, 246–247; invitation to manage Congress’s finances, 237; Observations on the Nature of Civil Liberty, 175, 209; and public debt, 161, 176–177 price controls, 217 Priestley, Joseph, 170 Privy Council, 167 progressive historians, 11–12 public debt, 15–16, 22 Pulteney, William, 205, 228 Quartering Act, 67, 152–153 Quincy, Edmund, 210, 211–212 radical Whigs, 8, 18, 44; attacks on the Grafton administration, 161; and British criticism of the American War, 209, 212, 214, 226–227, 229–230, 234, 238–239; and British manufacturing, 47–49, 50, 60, 165; and British support for American independence,

214, 226; and class politics, 44, 47–49, 165, 192; and consumption, 45–46, 50, 59–60, 188–189; and colonial manufacturing, 18–19, 49–50, 60, 122–123, 154, 164, 173, 187, 188–191, 197–198, 201; and colonial representation in Parliament, 123–124, 201, 320n39; and colonial rights, 55, 70, 175, 177; common ground with establishment Whigs, 52, 83, 87, 102, 175–176, 177, 226; constitutional views, 117–118, 139, 161; and corruption, 161, 165, 182; critique of Whig elites, 47; criticism of the East India Company, 153–154, 169, 192–193; fear of authoritarian reform, 144, 195, 199; and fiscal-military state, 45–46, 76; and foreign policy, 46, 83, 88, 91–92, 95–96, 98–99; and France, 64, 83, 123, 203; and government accountability to the public, 55, 59, 76, 85, 117, 120–121, 169, 182; and government’s obligation to support the public’s welfare, 22, 117, 164, 201–202, 207, 221, 243, 245; and the land tax, 47, 98–99, 136–137, 150; and liberalism, 204; limited egalitarianism, 203; and militia, 45, 84–86, 87, 120, 201, 288n26; and moral decline, 45; and the Navigation Acts, 182–183; opposition to austerity, 15, 52, 102, 110, 134–135, 149; opposition to excise taxes, 47–48, 57–59; opposition to parliamentary taxation of the colonies, 50–51, 89–90, 102, 111, 118, 138–139, 157, 162, 163, 165, 174, 177, 181–182, 199, 275n116; opposition to the Stamp Act, 108–109, 111, 118, 135–139, 144; opposition to using military force against the colonies, 212, 226–227, 229; and oppressive taxation, 48, 69, 111, 118–119, 136, 239; political economic views, 44–51, 58–61, 173–174, 179, 181, 188–190, 192–193, 207; and political liberty, 91, 108, 117–119, 124, 136, 143, 144, 169, 173–174, 175, 181, 187, 202, 203, 222; and political reform, 136, 161, 170; and popular protest, 160, 187–188; and popular sovereignty, xvi, 8, 117, 120–121, 182, 184, 218, 221; and public debt, 46–47, 91, 95, 160–161; and republicanism, 117–118, 201, 204, 207, 247; and requisitions as a means of raising colonial revenue, 138, 157, 173, 174; and slavery, 63, 69, 118–119, 181, 197, 241;

index and standing armies, 87; and state-sponsored manufacturing, 190, 201; tensions with establishment Whigs, 110, 143–144, 157, 160, 168–170, 226; transatlantic connections, 49–50, 70, 163, 164, 165, 180, 183, 195–196, 237; vision of empire, 44, 49, 83, 88–90, 102, 111, 123, 135–136, 139, 182, 201–202, 203, 207; and western settlement, 50, 60–61, 166–167, 172, 243–244 Ramsay, David, xviii, 243–244 Ramsay, James, 235, 240 Randolph, John, 144 Reed, Joseph, 199, 232 republican imperialism, 111, 117, 120, 175, 180, 201–202, 207, 237, 241, 243–244 republicanism, 21, 117 Revenue Act (1766), 112 Revere, Paul, 145, 200 Richmond, Duke of (Charles Lennox), 87 Rigby, Richard, 92 rioting: American, 148, 160, 194; British, 148, 158, 160 Robinson, Thomas, 82 Rockingham, Charles Watson-Wentworth, second Marquess of, xv, 18, 27, 97, 102, 110, 111, 153, 161; opposition to Britain’s war against its colonies, 226; and Declaratory Act, 157; defense of the East India Company, 168; ministry of, 129–130, 131, 142–143, 145, 180; negotiations with authoritarian reformers, 155–156; opposition to austerity, 131; popularity of, 145; and repeal of the Stamp Act, 139–140, 141–143, 145; support for Wilkes, 160 Ruggels, Timothy, 191 Rush, Benjamin, xviii, 217, 218–219, 233; Observations upon the Present Government of Pennsylvania, 219 Rutledge, Andrew, 65 Rutledge, Edward, 210 Saint George’s Fields massacre, 158, 195 salutary neglect, 54, 75 Sandwich, Earl of (John Montagu), 156, 174 Sawbridge, John, 170 Scott, James (“Anti-Sejanus”), 132, 133, 134 Seven Years’ War, 11, 15, 17, 83; and borrowing, 72–73; and British political debate, 83–100;

369 colonial cooperation, 67, 71–72, 75; colonial political debate, 66–68; colonial property rights, 68–69; and early British setbacks, 83–84, 87–88; expense of, 77–78, 91; and French encroachment, 17, 61, 80, 83; and peace negotiation, 96–99; and political divisions, 90–91, 93–94, 97–100; and postwar colonial recession, 112–113; and requisition and reimbursements, 72, 78, 88; and taxation, 66–70, 72–76, 82, 84–85, 89–90, 91–92, 93–95, 97, 98–99, 103 Sharpe, Horatio, 68 Shebbeare, John, xiv, 36, 39 Shelburne, William Petty, second Earl of, xviii, 19, 151, 152–153, 174, 175, 176, 226; and electoral reform, 170 Shipley, Jonathan, 193 Shirley, William, xiv, 63, 65, 69–70, slavery, 4, 22, 69, 197, 223, 241, 246, 247, 248, 253n14; as unrepresentative taxation, 69, 118–119, 181 Smith, Adam, 2, 205, 241 Smith, William, 130 Smith, William, Jr., 114, 116, 198, 199 Smyth, Frederick, 191 Sons of Liberty, 122, 144, 164, 180, 184, 187 Spanish Empire, 20, 43 Stamp Act, 18; American opposition to, 111–124, 126–130; American support of, 111, 124–127; as an attack on consumption, 121–122; as authoritarian reform, 103–104, 108–109, 123; and Britain’s public finances, 102, 103–105, 107, 109–110, 126, 133–135, 138–139; celebration of repeal, 101–102, 143–145; and colonial obedience, 108, 125; and colonial printing industry, 120–121; colonial protests against, 126–129, 132, 144; and colonists’ inability to pay, 113–114; and Declaratory Act, 141–142; economic consequences of, 130, 136, 141, 145–146, 300n30; establishment Whig opposition to, 131, 135, 141; and imperial expenses, 109; as imperial reform, 119–121, 123, 125–126, 132; introduction of, 108; and military expenses, 120, 134; moderate opposition to, 114–115; parliamentary inquiry into, 139–141; parliamentary representation, 123–124; passage of, 108–110; perceived economic

370 i n d e x Stamp Act (continued) consequences in Britain, 102, 137–140, 143, 146; petitions against, 132, 140; press campaign against, 134–135; and preventing land speculation, 108, 114; and public opinion, 141; as regressive, 111, 113, 121–122; repeal of, 18, 101–102, 141–143, 145; right of Parliament to tax, 109, 132; as social reform, 108, 125–126; and sovereignty, 132–133; and Stamp Act Congress, 122, 128; as a tax on legal services, 113, 122; transatlantic opposition to, 128, 132, 143; in the West Indies, 130–131 state building, 34; American, 19, 22, 74, 214–215, 222–224, 237; and economic growth, 21 Stiles, Ezra, xviii, 60, 100, 123, 124, 129, 131, 193 Strachey, Henry, 212 Sugar Act, 103, 130; colonial opposition to, 112 Sykes, John, 238 taxation, 4, 10–11, 23, 55, 62, 233–234; of Britain, 14, 21, 239; in the colonies, 17, 57–59, 67–70, 73–74, 82, 113; of the colonies by Parliament, 5, 9, 12, 15, 18, 21, 26, 42, 51, 75, 110, 116, 118–119, 137–139, 144, 149, 151–153, 157, 171, 177, 179, 180–183, 184, 186–188, 190, 193, 195–196, 198–199, 203, 209, 228; and inequality, 10–11, 150; progressive, 47–48, 59; regressive, 31, 48, 59, 93, 111, 160, 182, 206; and representation, 5, 118, 170, 229; as social control, 37, 39–41, 43, 107–108, 159–160, 177, 194; and sovereignty, 5, 109, 152, 157, 171, 182, 184, 195; in the United States, 215, 217–218, 236–237; as unjust, 8, 48, 57–58, 68–70 Temple, Earl of (Richard Grenville), 85 Temple, John, 113 Thompson, John, 211 Thurlow, Alexander, 229 Tilghman, William, 210 Tories, 5–6, 26–27, 36, 44, 79, 83, 87, 88, 95, 141 Townshend, Charles, xiv, 41, 80, 82, 90, 149, and colonial taxation, 151; and East India Company, 154–155; efforts to reduce colonial independence, 151 Townshend, third Viscount (Charles), 27, 36, 39, 85, 87

Townshend duties, 18, 147–148, 151, 156, 162; colonial opposition to, 181–183, 187, 188; repeal of, 166, 171, 192 trade regulation. See Navigation Acts Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle, 25, 61 Treaty of Paris (1763), 15, 96–97, 98–100 Treaty of Utrecht (1713), 92 Trecothick, Barlow, 132, 140, 162 Trenchard, John, 117, 123 Tucker, Josiah, xiv, 37, 130, 132 Turgot, Anne-Robert Jacques, 1–3 United States, 3–4, 210–211; constitution, 242; economic growth of, 22; egalitarian aspirations, 207, 243–245, 247–248; as republican empire, 22, 207, 241, 247–248; state building, 207, 215, 222–224 Vandalia. See Ohio Company Vaughn, Benjamin, 246 Vergennes, Comte de (Charles Gravie), 224 Villiers, Thomas. See Clarendon, first Earl of Virginia, 50, 66, 80, 115, 144, 188, 190, 192, 201, 218 Waln, Richard, 114–115 Walpole, Horace, 27, 35, 51, 80 Walpole, Robert, 27 Walpole, Thomas, 166, 226 Ward, Samuel, 143 War of Austrian Succession, 15, 24; in the American colonies, 24–25 Warren, Joseph, xviii, 181, 182, 201 Warren, Mercy Otis, xviii, 202 Washington, George, 20, 82, 108, 114, 197; as commander in chief of the Continental Army, 215 Watts, John, 114, 116 Wedderburn, Alexander, xiv, 158, 159, 171, 228 Wentworth, Benning, 67 West Indies. See Caribbean Wharton, Samuel, 166–167 Whately, Thomas, xiv, 5, 105, 109, 110, 158; Regulations Lately Made, 129 Wheelwright, Nathaniel, 112–113 Whig Party, 26–27

index Whittlesey, Chauncey, 120 Wilkes, John, xviii, 96, 108, 151, 158, 159, 160, 164, 165, 183, 187 Williams, William, 218 Wilson, James, 223 Witherspoon, John, xviii, 217, 233

371 Wood, Gordon, 8 Woodhouse, Armine, 147 Yorke, Charles, 141, 299n27 Yorke, Joseph, 230 Young, Thomas, 185