Knollenberg Bernhard. Growth of the American Revolution: 1766-1775
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COLONIAL GRIEVANCES
REMAINING AFTER THE REPEAL
OF THE STAMP ACT
A
of the stamp tax seemed assured, thirty-nine
English merchants trading with the North American colonies sent
a circular letter to their American correspondents reporting the prospec-
tive repeal. The merchants added the following admonition.
“You must be sensible,” they wrote, “what Friends the Colonies have
had in the present Ministry, and are doubtless informed what pains they
have taken to serve them. It is justice likewise to them to inform you that
they have had great difficulties to encounter in the Cause, the principal
of which were unhappily thrown in by the Colonies themselves, we
mean the intemperate proceedings of various Ranks of People on your
side the Water...[which] awakened the Honour of Parliament, and
thereby involved every Friend of the Repeal in the Imputation of be-
traying the Dignity of Parliament....
“If therefore you would make the proper returns to your Country, if
you have a Mind to do credit to your Friends and strengthen the hands
of your Advocates, hasten, we beseech you, to express filial Duty and
Gratitude to your Parent Country. Then will those who have been...
your Friends, plume themselves on the restoration of Peace to the Col-
onies....But if...it [repeal of the stamp tax] is talked of as a Victory,
If it is said the Parliament have yielded up the Right [to tax the colo-
nies] then indeed your Enemies here will have a Complete Triumph.
Your Friends must certainly lose all power to serve you. Your Taxmasters
probably be restored and such a train of ill consequences follow as are
easier for you to imagine than for us to describe....”¹
This circular letter is quoted at length because its tone explains the
unfavorable reaction to the letter in the colonies, described in a letter
of Benjamin Franklin to his friend Joseph Galloway.² Most important,
it strikingly illustrates the view among many Englishmen who, on the
whole, were friends of the colonists, that Parliament unquestionably
had the right to tax them and that any non-exercise or restraint on the
exercise of this right was a favor to the colonists for which they should
be duly grateful. If the colonists’ English friends held this view, what,
the colonists asked themselves, must they expect if and when their “En-
emies” (to use the merchants’ own term) were again in power?
On reading this letter (a copy of which was published in Hunter’s
Virginia Gazette of May , ), George Washington’s friend and neigh-
bor, George Mason, replied:
“Gentlemen:
“There is a letter of yours dated the th [should be th] of Febru-
ary in the public papers here...upon a very interesting subject. I shall,
without further preface or apology, exercise the right of a freeman in
making such remarks upon it as I think proper.
“The epithets of parent and child have been so long applied to Great
Britain and her colonies that...we rarely see anything from your side
of the water free from the authoritative style of a master to a schoolboy.
“We have [you say in effect] with infinite difficulty and fatigue got
you excused this one time; pray be a good boy for the future; do what
your papa and mama bid you, and hasten to return them your most
grateful acknowledgements for condescending to let you keep what is
your own; and then all your acquaintance will love you, and praise you
and give you pretty things;...but if you are a naughty boy, and...pre-
tend to judge for yourselves; when you are not arrived at the years of
discretion or capable of judging between good and evil, then everybody
will hate you, and say you are a graceless and undutiful child; your par-
ents and masters will be obliged to whip you severely, and your friends
will be ashamed to say anything in your excuse; nay, they will be blamed
for your faults.
“See your work [it will be said]
—see what you have brought the child
to. If he had been well scourged at first for opposing our absolute will
and pleasure, and daring to think he had any property of his own, he
would not have had the impudence to repeat the crime....³
“Is not this a little ridiculous when applied to three millions of as
loyal and useful subjects as any in the British dominions, who have been
only contending for their birth-right, and have now only gained, or
rather kept what could not, with common justice or even policy, be de-
nied them?...”⁴
The exasperating circular letter, however, was not the only reason
that, though repeal of the Stamp Act was hailed with relief and joy by
the colonists,⁵ they remained discontented.
The most obvious reason for the continuing discontent was the evi-
dence that repeal of the Stamp Act was not to be construed as a relin-
quishment by Parliament of its claim of right to tax the colonists as it
pleased. This was made perfectly clear not only by Parliament’s adop-
tion of the Declaratory Act as a corollary to the act of repeal, but by its
passage, before rising in , of two acts levying taxes on the colonies.
One levied a duty, clearly for revenue (and not, as before, a regulation
of trade) on all imports of molasses into the colonies;⁶ the other, in effect
levying a tax on the colonies in which British troops were quartered in
barracks for partial maintenance of these troops.⁷
A second reason was continuance of a colonial currency act passed
in severely restricting the issuance of paper money by all but the
New England colonies,⁸ which were already covered by a similar, though
somewhat less restrictive, act.⁹
A third was continuance of an act ( Geo. III ch. , hereafter re-
ferred to as the Act of , or the American Act of )* passed in
levying duties for revenue on several colonial imports¹⁰ and imposing
additional restrictions on colonial exports and imports.¹¹
The Navigation Act of and later British acts prohibiting the ex-
portation of colonial tobacco, sugar, fur, and a number of other colonial
products to any overseas countries except Great Britain had left many
important colonial products untouched.¹² The American Act of
extended the restriction on exportation by prohibiting the exportation
* Nowadays historians usually refer to this legislation as the Sugar Act. [B.W.S.]
of colonial lumber and iron to Ireland or any part of continental Europe
and of colonial hides, potash, whalebone, coffee, pimento, and cocoa to
Ireland or any part of continental Europe north of Cape Finisterre in
Spain.¹³ Any of these articles consigned to these areas must first be
brought to a British port and be unloaded and reloaded there before the
carrying vessel could legally proceed to its destination.
An act of prohibiting the importation into the colonies of most
of the products of continental Europe and adjacent islands other than
Great Britain excepted wine of Madeira and the Azores.¹⁴ Thanks to
this exception, the colonists had built up a flourishing direct trade with
these islands, sending out cargoes of foodstuffs, barrel staves, and other
colonial products and bringing back return cargoes of wine.¹⁵ The
American Act of struck a blow at this direct trade by levying a
much heavier duty on wine imported directly from these islands than
imported by way of Great Britain.¹⁶
An act of further restricting colonial trade by forbidding the im-
portation of any East Indian product into the colonies except via Great
Britain, had been somewhat alleviated by allowing a refund of part of
the British import duties on East Indian goods reexported to the colo-
nies.¹⁷ The American Act of repealed the refund, thus making this
restriction more burdensome.¹⁸
A fourth reason for continuing colonial discontent was the rigorous
enforcement of all British restrictions, old and new, on colonial trade,
the basis for which was laid by the so-called Hovering Act of and
new enforcement provisions of the American Act of .
The Hovering Act of provided for the seizure of dutiable or pro-
hibited goods in vessels of fifty tons or less hovering off the coast of the
colonies;¹⁹ for the use of vessels of the British navy to help enforce all
British acts of trade and revenue applying to the colonies; and for the di-
vision among the officers and men of these vessels of part of the net pro-
ceeds from the sale of condemned cargo and vessels seized by them.²⁰
Soon after the act was passed, twenty British naval vessels were sent
to the North American coast,²¹ whose commanders were to be com-
missioned by the English Customs Board²² as customs officers.²³ British
naval vessels had long been authorized to seize foreign vessels forbid-
den to enter colonial ports for purposes of trade,²⁴ and the navy was, of
course, empowered to seize vessels engaged in trade with an enemy in
time of war;²⁵ but apparently the navy had never before been used, at
least in colonial waters, in time of peace as a general arm of the English
customs service.
Furthermore, as contemplated by the act, the King promptly held out
a strong financial incentive to naval officers to act energetically in their
new office by issuing an order for payment to them of a substantial part
of the net proceeds from the sale of vessels or cargo seized by them and
duly condemned²⁶
—an order promptly followed by several seizures.²⁷
To round out the new enforcement program, all customs officers on
leave were ordered to their posts and colonial Governors and the Com-
mander in Chief of the British army in North America were ordered to
assist in preventing illegal trade in the colonies.²⁸
The enforcement provisions of the American Act of were even
more grievous.
It is a challenge to the reader’s attention and patience to follow these
provisions; but a comprehension of them is essential to an understand-
ing of the attitude of colonial merchants and shipowners, not only im-
mediately after repeal of the Stamp Act, but throughout the remaining
years of the pre-Revolutionary period.
In many respects, North American colonial merchants and ship-
owners were greatly and obviously benefited by the inclusion of the
American colonies in the British Empire. Their vessels were given un-
restricted access to British, Irish, and British West Indian ports. They
shared on an equal footing with British and Irish vessels the monopoly
of the British colonial trade established by a British act of exclud-
ing foreign vessels from colonial ports. Their trade with the Mediter-
ranean was protected by the issuance of passes protecting their vessels
and cargo from seizure by raiders from the Barbary Coast. The expan-
sion of their overseas trade was encouraged by the long-term credits al-
lowed by British merchants.
It is reasonable to suppose that, however ready the colonists in gen-
eral might be to risk a break with Great Britain over the issue of British
taxation of the colonies, the merchants, out of strong self-interest, would
have hesitated to do so but for the harassment of them pursuant to the
enforcement provisions of the American Act of .
Sections and provided an added penalty for violating any of
the British restrictions on colonial trade of three times the value of the
condemned property, payable by each of the participants.
Section provided that the owner of goods seized for alleged vio-
lation of British acts of trade or revenue could not enter a defense in
suits for forfeiture of the goods, no matter how small their value, with-
out putting up a bond of £ to answer the costs and charges of the suit,
thus discouraging the owner from even trying to recover the seized
goods unless they were of considerable value.
Section provided that if any “goods shall be seized for any cause
of forfeiture and any dispute shall arise...whether the same have been
lawfully imported or exported or concerning the growth, product or
manufacture of such goods...in such cases the proof thereof shall be
upon the owner...and not upon the officer who shall...seize the
same, any law, custom or usage to the contrary notwithstanding.”²⁹
Sections and made it possible in many cases for the seizing of-
ficer to escape any cost or penalty if the owner, despite the obstacles
placed in his way by the provisions of the act just described, won the
suit. Section authorized the British Customs Board to indemnify any
officer for his costs in bringing an unsuccessful suit, and section pro-
vided that the owner of a seized vessel or cargo could not recover more
than two pence in damages, for the seizure and detention of his prop-
erty, no matter how great his actual damage, if the presiding judge cer-
tified there had been “probable cause” for the seizure.
Heretofore, customs officers were of course tempted to make seizures
and bring suits for forfeiture by the lure of sharing in the proceeds from
sale if the seized property were condemned; yet they had wisely been
deterred from reckless seizure and suit by the fear of heavy court costs
and recovery of damages by the owner if the suit for condemnation
were dismissed. This deterrent was now greatly weakened by sections
and of the American Act of .
Furthermore, sections and now, for the first time, imposed a
heavy burden on colonial coastwise and river traffic, most of which had
previously been exempt, except in time of war,³⁰ from customs clearance.³¹
Section (as amended in ) provided that vessels carrying cargo
from one colony to another must, unless undecked and of twenty tons
or less in burden, obtain from the customs authorities a “cocket...ex-
pressing the quantity and quality of the goods that are liable to the pay-
ment of any duty, either upon the importation into, or upon exportation
from the said colonies or plantations, [and] the said cocket or cockets
shall likewise distinctly specify that the duties have been paid for the
same, referring to the terms or dates of entry and payment of such du-
ties, and by whom they were paid,” under penalty of forfeiture of all
goods not covered by the required cocket.³²
Section provided that the master of “every ship or vessel” (with-
out excepting even small undecked vessels) must, before taking aboard
any non-enumerated colonial products, give bond to the customs au-
thorities of £, if the vessel were under a hundred tons, £, if
the vessel were a hundred tons or over, “with condition that in case any
molasses or syrups...of foreign colonial production shall be laden on
board such ship or vessel, the same shall (the danger of the seas and en-
emies excepted) be brought, without fraud or willful diminution, by the
said ship or vessel to some of his Majesty’s colonies or plantations in
America or to some port in Great Britain.”
The penalty for failure to give the required bond was forfeiture of the
entire cargo “together with the ship or vessel and her furniture. . . .” The
bond must be given for each voyage in which any “non-enumerated”
product, including lumber, wheat, flour, corn, vegetables, fish, meat,
and dairy products of all kinds, were to be shipped.
Bearing in mind that, because of wretched roads and the absence of
any bridges on the lower reaches of the principal colonial rivers, car-
riage along the whole Atlantic seaboard was then chiefly by water,³³
the reader will appreciate the extreme burdensomeness of this new re-
quirement for bonds for shipments even in small vessels and from place
to place within the same colony.
The most disturbing feature of the act was, however, section , pro-
viding that all suits for forfeitures or other penalties “inflicted by this or
any other act or acts of parliament relating to the trade and revenue” of
the colonies, might be brought in colonial admiralty courts, in which
the judge sat without jury.
As shown in the first appendix to this chapter, this provision laid the
foundation for rigid enforcement not only of the new restrictions on
colonial trade imposed by the Act of , but of those, heretofore little
enforced, imposed by earlier acts.
Moreover, if acquiesced in by the colonists, the provision for the trial
without jury of suits under acts of Parliament relating to the trade and
revenue of the colonies would establish a precedent for denying trial by
jury under all acts of Parliament relating to them.³⁴ Section of the Act
of was, therefore, a threat not only to colonial merchants, but to
the colonists in general.
Warned by colonial pamphlets,³⁵ letters,³⁶ and legislative protests³⁷
of the indignation throughout the colonies over the trade provisions of
the American Act of , Henry S. Conway, Secretary of State for the
Southern Department in the Rockingham administration, wrote a cir-
cular letter to colonial Governors dated March , , stating, “A
Revision of the late American Trade Laws is going to be the immediate
Object of Parliament: Nor will the late Transactions there [resistance to
the Stamp Act], however provoking, prevent I dare say, the full Opera-
tion of that kind & indulgent Disposition prevailing both in His Majesty
& His Parliament, to give to the Trade & interests of America every Re-
lief which the true State of their Circumstances demanded or admits.”³⁸
But this promise proved to be illusory. The act of Geo. III ch. ,
hereafter referred to as the Act of , did, indeed, reduce the duty of
three pence a gallon on British colonial imports of foreign colonial mo-
lasses imposed by the American Act of to a penny a gallon,³⁹ and
waive import duties levied by that act on colonial imports of several
West Indian products provided they were reexported.⁴⁰ But these fa-
vorable changes relating to the importation of West Indian products
were partly offset by extending the colonial duty on molasses to include
molasses imported from one British colony into another,⁴¹ and by
providing that a tariff preference in favor of British West Indian sugar
imported into Great Britain heretofore allowed whether the sugar were
shipped directly from the West Indies or by way of the British conti-
nental colonies should henceforth be allowed only if the sugar were
shipped directly from the British West Indies.⁴²
Also, and more important, the Act of , which apparently passed
without any division,⁴³ still further restricted the exportation of colonial
products directly to Europe.
The Act of , as we have seen, prohibited the export of colonial
lumber and iron directly to any part of continental Europe and of a
number of other colonial products to any part of continental Europe
north of Cape Finisterre. Sections and of the Act of now pro-
hibited the shipment of any colonial products, including wheat, flour,
fish, meat, dairy products, and a number of other less important “non-
enumerated”⁴⁴ products, the export of which was hitherto unrestricted,
to Ireland or any part of continental Europe north of Cape Finisterre
except the Spanish ports on the Bay of Biscay.⁴⁵ Henceforth, a vessel
carrying such products to northern continental Europe or Ireland⁴⁶
must first put into a British port and there be unloaded and reloaded
before it could legally continue to its destination.
Furthermore, section of the Act of , repealing the onerous re-
quirement of the Act of for molasses bonds, which, at first glance,
appeared to afford relief to the colonies from one of the most galling
provisions of the Act of , in fact afforded no relief whatever; the
next two sections of the Act of provided for a new type of bond
which was just as onerous as the old. These sections required the mas-
ter of “every” ship or vessel without regard to size, taking aboard any
non-enumerated colonial products in the colonies to furnish a bond
(£, for vessels if under a hundred tons, £, if a hundred tons or
over) not to land these products in Ireland or any part of continental
Europe north of the Spanish ports in the Bay of Biscay.⁴⁷
The London Agent for the South Carolina Legislature tried to have
the bill for the Act of amended to permit small vessels regularly
plying between ports within a single colony to give bond only once a
year not to leave for any port outside the colony. But he failed to secure
even this reasonable concession.⁴⁸
Some relief from the requirement of bonds seems to have been
granted in practice to undecked vessels engaged exclusively in coast-
wise and river trade;⁴⁹ but the failure to legalize this exemption gave
countenance to the harassment of small vessels in coastwise trade such
as that leading to the Gaspee incident (described in Chapter ).⁵⁰
Two additional factors contributing to continued colonial discon-
tent in must be briefly noted.
The first was the publication in and early of several editions
of an exceptionally able and popular pamphlet, Considerations on the Pro-
priety of Imposing Taxes in the British Colonies, by Daniel Dulany, a leading
Maryland lawyer and planter.⁵¹ Though aimed primarily against the
Stamp Act, this pamphlet gave figures indicating that the provision in
the Navigation Act of forbidding the export of colonial tobacco to
any place outside the colonies, excepting Great Britain,⁵² was costing
colonial planters, on tobacco shipped from Virginia and Maryland
alone, around £, sterling a year.⁵³ Thus, though the new British
restrictions on exports imposed by the Act of affected chiefly the
northern colonies, southern tobacco planters had recently been alerted
to the heavy burden imposed on them by this earlier act restricting co-
lonial exports.
The other was the Free Port Act of , sponsored by the Rocking-
ham administration. Though, at first glance, this act seemed designed
to carry out Conway’s promise of relief to colonial trade, it was in fact
calculated, as brought out in the second appendix to this chapter, to
benefit British and British West Indian interests to the detriment of
those of the British North American colonies.⁵⁴
Curiously, the most dangerous act of all, the Declaratory Act of ,
asserting the “full power and authority” of Parliament “to make laws . . .
to bind the colonies...in all cases whatsoever,” gave rise to compara-
tively little colonial protest.⁵⁵ The probable explanation is that, assured
by English correspondents that the act was a mere gesture,⁵⁶ and eager
to reestablish peaceful relations with Great Britain, the colonists, as
Samuel Adams later wrote, “chose to treat this act with silence, at least
till necessity should oblige them to remonstrate the ill effects of it.”⁵⁷