Knollenberg Bernhard. Growth of the American Revolution: 1766-1775
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next [when the Stamp Act was to take effect] will be very trifling, and
the Two Shillings Duty on any Advertisement will knock off the greater
Part of them [advertisers] likewise.” In October he added, “To shew
you my fears were not groundless with respect to our Customers...,I
am sorry to tell you that we have already lost at least of them, and
if so many have dropped before, what may we not expect after the first
of November.”¹⁶ Franklin’s printer friend James Parker wrote in similar
vein from New York.¹⁷
Furthermore, the taxes levied by the Stamp Act¹⁸ were payable di-
rectly by tens of thousands of colonists in all walks of life throughout
all parts of the colonies. The Townshend Act duties, on the other hand,
were payable directly by relatively few of the colonists
—the great
planters in the southern colonies, who imported many articles directly
from merchants in Great Britain, and the merchant importers in the
principal colonial ports. Besides, only the former would have to bear
the entire burden of the Townshend Act duties payable by them; the
merchants could shift to their customers part of, if not the entire, bur-
den of the duties.¹⁹
The colonies finally were aroused to action against the Townshend
Act by a series of twelve weekly letters signed “A Farmer” published in
the Pennsylvania Chronicle, beginning December , . At least twenty
of the other twenty-six newspapers published in the thirteen colonies
during the first five months of ²⁰ reprinted all or some of these let-
ters,²¹ and they also were reprinted as pamphlets in Philadelphia (two
editions), Boston (two editions), and New York.²²* The letters had an in-
fluence beyond that of any other political writing in the Revolutionary
period except Paine’s Common Sense, published eight years later.²³
The “Farmer,” as it soon became known, was John Dickinson, a
thirty-five-year-old lawyer in Philadelphia, whose The Late Regulations
Respecting the British Colonies in America ...,²⁴ published in the winter of
–, was one of the ablest of the colonial pamphlets attacking the
Stamp Act and recent additional British restrictions on colonial trade
and currency.
’
* See Peter D. G. Thomas, The Townshend Duties Crisis: The Second Phase of the American Revolution,
– (Oxford: Clarendon Press, ), –; Milton Flower, John Dickinson: Conservative Revo-
lutionary (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, ), ch. . [B.W.S.]
Son of a well-to-do Delaware farmer and judge, Dickinson had
come to Philadelphia in , spent three years there as a law clerk, then
studied law for several years at the Middle Temple in London and in
entered practice in Philadelphia.²⁵ He was elected a member and
Speaker of the Delaware Assembly in . Transferring to Pennsyl-
vania, he served from to as one of the representatives of
Philadelphia County in the Pennsylvania Assembly, where he was an
outstanding opponent of the so-called Quaker Party of which Franklin
was a leading member,²⁶ and was a delegate from Pennsylvania to the
intercolonial Stamp Act Congress of .²⁷ However, defeated for a
fourth term in the fall of , Dickinson was no longer in the Assembly
when the Farmer’s Letters, which made him famous, appeared.²⁸
The first of the letters denounced the New York Restraining Act as
an effort to compel New York’s submission to taxation by Parliament
and called upon the other colonies to unite in protesting against the Re-
straining Act. The New York Legislature, as we have seen, had yielded
to the act before this letter was published, but the very fact of New York,
unsupported by her sister colonies, having yielded, gave point to the
chief message in Dickinson’s opening letter that “To divide, and thus to de-
stroy, is the first political maxim in attacking those who are powerful by
their union” and that only by recognizing “the cause of one is the cause
of all” could the colonists preserve their liberty.²⁹
The succeeding eleven letters were devoted primarily to arousing
united opposition to the Townshend Act.³⁰
In his second letter Dickinson wisely went to the heart of his cam-
paign against the act. Without attempting to defend or reconcile earlier
statements of Franklin and other colonists to the contrary, he insisted
that there was no difference in principle between “internal” and “ex-
ternal” taxes, when, as in the case of the Townshend Act, the “external”
taxes were imposed not to regulate trade, but to raise a revenue.³¹ Both,
he maintained, were unconstitutional.
Observing that Parliament’s authority not only to forbid the colo-
nists to import articles needed from abroad from any place but Great
Britain, but also to forbid colonial manufacturing³² had long been es-
tablished, Dickinson pointed out that if Parliament now succeeded in
establishing its asserted authority to impose duties on imports from
Great Britain, it could milk the colonies just as effectively by “external”
taxes as by stamp or other “internal” taxes. The colonies were, Dickin-
son declared, “in the situation of a city besieged, which is surrounded
by the works of the besiegers in every part but one. If that is closed up, no
step can be taken, but to surrender at discretion. If Great Britain can order
us to come to her for necessities we want, and can order us to pay what
taxes she pleases before we take them away, or when we land them here,
we are as abject slaves as France and Poland can shew in wooden shoes,
and with uncombed hair.”³³
The third letter was a blast against colonial defeatists “who shake
their heads with solemn motion” saying, “when we are strong enough
to resist, we shall attempt it, but now we are not strong enough, and...
if we should get into riots and tumults against it [the Townshend Act],
it will only draw down heavier displeasure upon us.”
“Are these men,” Dickinson exclaimed, “ignorant that usurpations,
which might have been successfully opposed at first, acquire strength
by continuance, and thus become irresistible?” Nor were “riots and tu-
mults” necessary to the assertion of colonial rights. Other measures to
secure redress were open and should initially be pursued.³⁴
The first step was to petition for redress, the second would be to pre-
vent “the oppressors reaping advantage from their oppressions,” that is, by boy-
cotting goods from Great Britain until the taxes protested against were
repealed. Only if both of these measures failed and it finally “became
that an inveterate resolution is formed to annihilate the lib-
erties of the governed” would resort to “force” be warranted.³⁵
In the fourth letter, Dickinson, reaffirming his stand that there was
no “material difference between the Stamp-Act and the late Act for laying
a duty on paper, etc.,” recognized that such a distinction had indeed
been made by some of the colonists, but he pointed out that the Stamp
Act Congress of had been with him in denouncing as unconstitu-
tional any kind of tax for revenue levied by Parliament on the colonies.³⁶
The fifth letter took up the argument that the colonists ought in fair-
ness pay some taxes to compensate Great Britain for her fostering and
protecting the colonies. Dickinson’s reply to this was that Great Britain
was already more than compensated for the benefits she bestowed on the
colonies by the commercial advantages she derived from her restrictions
’
on colonial trade and manufacturing. Quoting one British writer after
another on the value to Great Britain of its colonial trade, he exclaimed,
“How many British authors have demonstrated, that the present wealth,
power and glory of their country are founded upon these colonies?”
And they were right, for “as constantly as streams tend to the ocean,
have they [the colonists] been pouring the fruits of all their labors into
their mother’s lap.”³⁷
The sixth letter dealt with the argument that the distinction noted
in the second letter between duties for the regulation of trade and du-
ties for revenue was illusory because Parliament could elude the dis-
tinction simply by describing duties actually for revenue as being laid
for the regulation of trade. Granting, said Dickinson, that Parliament
might describe as a regulation of trade a duty or set of duties which were
in fact designed primarily for revenue, and that in some cases it might
be difficult to distinguish one from the other, yet “names will not change
the nature of things”; the true object could be perceived. Furthermore,
any argument based on the possible difficulty of drawing the distinction
was pointless in the present case, since the Townshend Revenue Act was
“formed expressly .”³⁸
The seventh and eighth letters warned the colonists not to let them-
selves be lulled by the moderateness of the duties imposed by the act.
“That is the very circumstance,” said Dickinson, “most alarming to me.
For I am concerned that the authors of this law would never have ob-
tained an act to raise so trifling a sum as it must do, had they not in-
tended by it to establish a precedent for future use. . . .” “The people of
Great Britain will be told,” he continued, “that they are sinking under
an immense debt
—that great part of this debt has been contracted in
defending the colonies
—that these are so ungrateful and undutiful that
they will not contribute one mite to its payment
—not even to the sup-
port of the army now kept up for their ‘defence and security’...that
the only way to retain them in ‘obedience’, is to keep a strict watch over
them, and to draw off part of their riches in taxes
—and that every bur-
den laid upon them, is taking off so much from Great Britain. These as-
sertions will be generally believed, and the people will be persuaded
that they cannot be too angry with the colonies, as that anger will be
profitable to themselves.”³⁹
The ninth and tenth letters were among the most meaty and impor-
tant of the series.
The ninth brought out the danger to the colonists of the provision in
the act for applying the revenue from the act to the “charge of the ad-
ministration of justice, and the support of civil government,” in the
colonies, including payment of the salaries of colonial judges and Gov-
ernors. In the past, the colonists had been able to counterbalance the
influence of the Crown over many Crown-appointed colonial judges
and Governors by their dependence on the colonial Legislatures for
their salaries. By making these officials independent of the colonial Leg-
islatures for their pay, the act would destroy this important source of co-
lonial influence. “Is it possible,” Dickinson exclaimed, “to form an idea
of slavery more compleat, more miserable, more disgraceful, than that of a
people where justice is administered, government exercized . . .
, and yet .”
“If,” he declared, “we can find no relief from this infamous situation...
we may bow down our necks, with all the stupid serenity of servitude, to
any drudgery which our lords and masters shall please to command.”⁴⁰
The tenth letter pointed to Ireland as a timely object lesson of what
might be expected to befall the colonists if they should submit to the
yoke of British taxation. Following the establishment of a permanent
revenue for the Crown in Ireland, the revenue had been applied not
chiefly to the benefit of the people of that nation, but to the support of
a horde of British pensioners and holders of sinecure offices. To the ex-
tent of around £, a year
—the private revenue of the King—the
pensions were not subject to criticism; but they had long far exceeded
that amount and in two recent years alone had been increased by more
than £,. “Besides the burdens of pensions in Ireland,” Dickinson
pointed out, “almost all the offices in that poor kingdom have been...
bestowed upon strangers....In the same manner shall we unques-
tionably be treated, as soon as the late taxes levied upon us shall make
posts in the ‘government’ and the ‘administration of justice’ [quoting
the Townshend Act] here worth the attention of people of influence in
Great-Britain.⁴¹
“Some persons,” he continued, reverting to the theme of his seventh
and eighth letters, “may imagine the sums to be raised by the Townshend
’
Act are but small, and therefore may be inclined to acquiesce under it.
A conduct more dangerous to freedom, as before has been observed, can
never be adopted. Nothing is wanted at home but a , the force
of which shall be established by the tacit submission of the colonists.”⁴²
The eleventh letter brilliantly elaborated this theme by showing how
in England seemingly innocuous precedents had been used as the basis
for extremely oppressive measures, ending with expression of Dickin-
son’s conviction that the Townshend Act was “an experiment made of our
disposition ...,a bird sent out over the waters, to discover whether the
waves that lately agitated this part of the world with such volume, are
yet subsided.”⁴³
The twelfth and last letter, published February , , was devoted
to recapitulating and stressing the main points presented in the preced-
ing eleven.⁴⁴
Governor Bernard wrote his friend Richard Jackson, former Lon-
don Agent for the Massachusetts House and a member of Parliament,
enclosing “a compleat Set of the Pennsylvania Farmer’s Letters,” with
the warning that if the “System of American Policy” set forth in these
letters, “artfully wrote and...universally circulated, should receive no
Refutation...it will become a Bill of Rights in the Opinion of the
Americans.”⁴⁵
No refutation of any consequence appeared, and the Farmer’s Let-
ters became, as Bernard predicted, a kind of colonial Bill of Rights.⁴⁶
PROTESTS, NON-IMPORTATION
AGREEMENTS, AND
HILLSBOROUGH’S PROVOCATIVE
LETTERS
O
D , , Dickinson wrote James Otis, “The Liber-
ties of our Common Country appear to me to be at this moment
exposed to the most imminent Danger; and this Apprehension has en-
gag’d me to lay my Sentiments before the Public in Letters of which I
send you a Copy....Only one has yet been publish’d and what there
Effect may be, cannot yet be known, but whenever the Cause of Amer-
ican Freedom is to be vindicated, I look towards the Province of
Massachusetts Bay. She must, as she has hitherto done, first kindle the
Sacred Flame, that on such occasions must warm and illuminate the
Continent....”¹
Otis’ reply² has not been found; but he evidently took prompt action.
On December , Boston newspapers published the first two of the
Farmer’s Letters,³ and the following day, a Boston town meeting, pre-
sided over by Otis, instructed the town’s members in the Massachusetts
House of Representatives to propose a petition to the King for repeal of
the Townshend Act.⁴
On January , , the House adopted a petition to the King de-
nouncing Parliament’s taxation of the colonists for revenue as violating
their “sacred right” as Englishmen “of being taxed only by representa-
tives of their own free election,” and begging for relief.⁵
Furthermore, pursuant to a resolution of the House, its Speaker,
Thomas Cushing, sent a circular letter, dated February , , to the
Speakers of the other colonial Assemblies in North America, describing
the House’s proceedings and expressing the hope that the other As-
semblies would likewise take “such constitutional measures...as are
proper” in the matter.⁶
At the opening of the spring session of the Virginia Legislature, Pey-
ton Randolph, Speaker of the House of Burgesses, laid the Massachu-
setts letter before the House,⁷ which promptly (April ) adopted, with-
out a dissenting voice, a Petition to the King, a Memorial to the House
of Lords, and a Remonstrance to the House of Commons, maintaining
that any tax levied by Parliament on the colonies primarily for revenue,
rather than for the regulation of trade, was unconstitutional.⁸
The House requested the Acting Governor, John Blair, to send these
protests to the Secretary of State in charge of colonial affairs for pre-
sentation to the King and the respective Houses of Parliament. It also
directed the Speaker to report its proceedings to other colonial Assem-
blies in North America, with the suggestion that the colonies “unite in
a firm but decent Opposition to every Measure which may affect the
Rights and Liberties of the British Colonies in America.”⁹
New Jersey and Connecticut were the next colonies to act. On May ,
the New Jersey Assembly adopted a Petition to the King, referring to the
duties recently imposed by Parliament on the colonies for revenue, de-
claring that one of the “Rights and Liberties vested in the People of this
Colony is the Privilege of being exempt from any Taxation but such as is
imposed on them by themselves or their Representatives,”¹⁰ and, early in
June, the Connecticut Assembly adopted a similar Petition to the King.¹¹
Before discussing the action of the Assemblies of the other thirteen
colonies on the Massachusetts circular letter, we turn to another recent
development in Great Britain. This was the establishment of a third
Secretary of State, a Secretary to deal exclusively with colonial affairs,
and the appointment of Lord Hillsborough to the new office. Because
of the very important part played by Hillsborough in colonial affairs
from to and the absence of any biography of him, a sketch of
his background will be given.*
* S. E. Rees, “The Political Career of Wills Hill, Earl of Hillsborough (–): With Particu-
lar Reference to His American Policy” (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Wales, ). [B.W.S.]
In December, , the King and Cabinet decided to carry out a
project previously considered, but dropped several times in the past,
to appoint a third Secretary of State, a Secretary for the Colonies and
transfer the direction of colonial affairs from the Secretary for the
Southern Department to the new Secretary.¹²
Lord Shelburne, Secretary for the Southern Department, was offered
the new Department,¹³ but he rejected the offer, stating, “I see so many
difficulties in the framing and modelling any such new office, that I can-
not think of taking it upon me.”¹⁴ Whereupon the new Secretaryship
was given (January , ) to Hillsborough,¹⁵ who, soon afterward
was also appointed President of the Board of Trade,¹⁶ thus closely link-
ing the two offices which had most to do with the details of colonial
administration.¹⁷
Hillsborough had been in political life for many years. He had sat in
the House of Commons from to , and since then in the House
of Lords. He was an officer of the King’s household from to
during the Newcastle Ministry, President of the Board of Trade from
to in the Grenville Ministry, President of the Board again in
the first few months of the Chatham Ministry, and thereafter joint Post-
master General until his appointment as Secretary of State.¹⁸
His close attention to business as President of the Board of Trade
gave promise that he would faithfully apply himself to the administra-
tion of colonial affairs,¹⁹ but what stand he would take in matters of
broad colonial policy was unpredictable. Though apparently closer to
Grenville than to any other outstanding political leader,²⁰ Hillsborough
was not classified as one of his followers (“friends” in eighteenth-
century political parlance)²¹ and people, including Grenville himself,
were much puzzled as to what his colonial policy was likely to be.²²
In March, , Hillsborough wrote General Thomas Gage de-
nouncing the reported efforts in the colonies “to lessen the Importation
of British manufactures” as showing “a malevolent & ungrateful Dis-
position,” and in a conversation with Benjamin Franklin, he censured
“the doctrines” set forth in the Farmer’s Letters “as extremely wild etc.”²³
He therefore probably approved, if he did not initiate, the following
important letters signed by him as Secretary of State, dated April
and , .²⁴
-
The first, a circular letter to colonial Governors in North America,
stated:
“I have his Majesty’s commands to transmit to you the inclosed copy
of a letter from the speaker of the House of Representatives of the col-
ony of Massachusetts Bay, addressed by order of that House to the
Speaker of the Assembly of each colony upon the continent of North
America.
“As his Majesty considers this measure to be of a most dangerous &
factious tendency,...it is his Majesty’s pleasure that you should im-
mediately upon receipt hereof exert your utmost influence to defeat this
flagitious attempt to disturb the public peace by prevailing upon the As-
sembly of your province to take no notice of it, which will be treating it
with the contempt it deserves....But if, notwithstanding these expec-
tations and your most earnest endeavours, there should appear in the
Assembly of your province a disposition to receive or give any counte-
nance to this seditious paper, it will be your duty to prevent any pro-
ceeding upon it by an immediate prorogation or dissolution.”²⁵
The second, a letter to Governor Francis Bernard of Massachusetts,
stated:
“It gives great concern to his Majesty to find that...[the Massa-
chusetts House] have presumed to...resolve upon a measure of so in-
flammatory a nature as that of writing to the other colonies on the sub-
ject of intended representations against some late acts of parliament...
and therefore it is the King’s pleasure that...you should require of the
House of Representatives, in his Majesty’s name, to rescind the resolu-
tion which gave birth to the circular letter...[and if] the new assembly
should refuse to comply...it is the King’s pleasure that you should im-
mediately dissolve them....”²⁶
The demand for rescission, when presented by Bernard to the Mas-
sachusetts House of Representatives, was rejected June , , by a vote
of to . In reporting this to Hillsborough, Bernard stated that those
voting against rescission included “many members who were scarce
ever known, upon any other occasion, to vote against the government-
side of a question.”²⁷ Of the seventeen who voted for rescission, twelve
held offices under appointment by Bernard or his predecessors as Gov-
ernor of the province.²⁸