The Wars Between England and America

In 1763, by the Peace of Paris, England won a position of unapproached supremacy in colonial possessions and in naval strength. The entire North American continent east of the Mississippi River was now under the British flag, and four West India sugar islands were added to those already in English hands. In India, the rivalry of the French was definitely crushed and the control of the revenues and fortunes of the native potentates was transferred to the East India Company.

Guided by the genius of Pitt, British armies had beaten French in Germany and America, and British fleets had conquered French and Spanish with complete ease. The power of the Empire seemed beyond challenge. Yet within this Empire itself there lay already the seeds of a discord which was soon {10} to develop into an irrepressible contest, leading to civil war; then, for a generation, to drive the separated parts into renewed antagonism, and finally to cause a second war. Between the North American colonies and the mother country there existed such moral, political, and economic divergence that nothing but prudent and patient statesmanship on both sides of the Atlantic could prevent disaster.

The fundamental source of antagonism lay in the fact that the thirteen colonies had developed a wholly different social and political life from that of the mother country. Originally, the prevailing ideas and habits of the colonists and of the Englishmen who remained at home had been substantially the same. In England, as in America, the gentry and middle classes played a leading part during the years from 1600 to 1660. But by 1763 England, under the Hanoverian kings, had become a state where all political and social power had been gathered into the hands of a landed aristocracy which dominated the government, the Church, and the professions. In parliament, the House of Commons-once the body which reflected the conscious strength of the gentry and citizens,-had now fallen under the control of the peers, owing to the decayed condition of scores of ancient parliamentary boroughs. Nearly one-third of the seats were actually {11} or substantially owned by noblemen, and of the remainder a majority were venal, the close corporations of Mayor and Aldermen selling freely their right to return two members at each parliamentary election. In addition, the influence and prestige of the great landowners were so powerful that even in the counties, and in those boroughs where the number of electors was considerable, none but members of the ruling class sought election. So far as the members of the middle class were concerned-the merchants, master weavers, iron producers, and craftsmen,-they were strong in wealth and their wishes counted heavily with the aristocracy in all legislation of a financial or commercial nature; but of actual part in the government they had none. As for the lower classes,-the labourers, tenant farmers, and shopkeepers,-they were able as a rule to influence government only by rioting and uproar. Without the ballot, they had no other way.

Owing to the personal weakness of successive monarchs since the death of William III, there had grown up the cabinet system of government which, in 1763, meant the reduction of the King to the position of an honorary figurehead and the actual control of officers, perquisites, patronage, and preferment, as well as the direction of public policy, by the leaders of parliamentary groups. The King was {12} obliged to select his ministers from among the members of noble families in the Lords or Commons, who agreed among themselves after elaborate bargains and negotiations upon the formation of cabinets and the distribution of honours. In this way sundry great Whig family "connections," as they were called, had come to monopolize political power, excluding Tories, or adherents of the Stuarts, and treating government as solely a matter of aristocratic concern. Into this limited circle, a poor man could rise only by making himself useful through his talents or his eloquence to one of the ruling cliques, and the goal of his career was naturally a peerage.

The weakness of this system of government by family connection lay in its thorough dependence upon customs of patronage and perquisite. The public offices were heavily burdened with lucrative sinecures, which were used in the factional contests to buy support in Parliament, as were also peerages, contracts, and money bribes. When George III ascended the throne, in 1760, he found the most powerful Minister in the Cabinet to be the Duke of Newcastle, whose sole qualification, apart from his birth, was his pre-eminent ability to handle patronage and purchase votes. That such a system did not ruin England was due to the tenacity and personal courage of this aristocracy and to {13} its use of parliamentary methods, whereby the orderly conduct of legislation and taxation and the habit of public attack and defence of government measures furnished political training for the whole ruling class. Further, the absence of any sharp caste lines made it possible for them to turn, in times of crisis, to such strong-fibred and masterful commoners as Walpole and Pitt, each of whom, in his way, saved the country from the incompetent hands of titled ministries.

This system, moreover, rested in 1763 on the aquiescence of practically all Englishmen. It was accepted by middle and lower classes alike as normal and admirable; and only a small body of radicals felt called upon to criticize the exclusion of the mass of taxpayers from a share in the government. Pitt, in Parliament, was ready to proclaim a national will as something distinct from the voice of the borough-owners, but he had few followers. Only in London and a few counties did sundry advocates of parliamentary reform strive in the years after 1763 to emphasize these views by organizing the freemen to petition and to "instruct" their representatives in the Commons. Such desires evoked nothing but contempt and antipathy in the great majority of Englishmen. Especially when they became audible in the mouths of rioters did they appear revolutionary and {14} obnoxious to the lovers of peace, good order, and the undisturbed collection of rents and taxes. Nothing but a genuine social revolution could bring such ideas to victory and that, in 1763, lay very far in the future. For the time conservatism reigned supreme.

In the thirteen colonies, on the other hand, the communities of middle-class Englishmen who emigrated in the seventeenth century had developed nothing resembling a real aristocracy. Social distinctions, modelled on those of the old country, remained between the men of large wealth-such as the great landed proprietors in New York and the planters in the South, or the successful merchants in New England and the Middle colonies-and the small farmers, shopkeepers, and fishermen, who formed the bulk of the population; while all of these joined in regarding the outlying frontiersmen as elements of society deserving of small consideration. Men of property, education, and "position" exercised a distinct leadership in public and private life. Yet all this remained purely social; in law no such thing as an aristocracy could be found, and in government the colonies had grown to be very nearly republican. Here lay the fundamental distinction between the England and the America of 1763. In America, a title or peerage conferred no political rights {15} whatever; these were founded in every case on law, on a royal charter or a royal commission which established a frame of government, and were based on moderate property qualifications which admitted a majority of adult males to the suffrage and to office.

In every colony the government consisted of a governor, a council, and an assembly representing the freemen. This body, by charter, or royal instructions, had the full right to impose taxes and vote laws; and, although its acts were liable to veto by the governor, or by the Crown through the Privy Council, it possessed the actual control of political power. This it derived immediately from its constituents and not from any patrons, lords, or close corporations. Representation and the popular will were, in fact, indissolubly united.

The governor in two colonies, Connecticut and Rhode Island, was chosen by the freemen. Elsewhere, he was appointed by an outside authority: in Pennsylvania, Delaware, and Maryland by the hereditary proprietor to whom the charter had been granted, in all other colonies by the Crown. The councillors, who commonly exercised judicial functions in addition to their duties as the governor's advisers and as the upper house of the legislature, were appointed in all colonies except the three in New England; {16} and they were chosen in all cases from among the socially prominent colonists. The judges, also, were appointed by the governor; and they, with governor and council, were supposed to represent the home government in the colonies.

But in reality there was no effective imperial control. The Crown, it is true, appeared to have large powers. It granted charters, established provinces by commissions, exercised the right to annul laws and hear appeals from colonial decisions, exacted reports from governors, sent instructions, and made appointments and removals at will. But nearly all the colonial officials, except the few customs officers, were paid out of colonial appropriations, and this one fact sufficed to deprive them of any independent position. In nearly every colony, the assembly, in the course of two-thirds of a century of incessant petty conflict, of incessant wrangling and bargaining, of incessant encroachments on the nominal legal powers of the governor, had made itself master of the administration. The colonists resisted all attempts to direct their military or civil policy, laid only such taxes as they chose, raised only such troops as they saw fit, passed only such laws as seemed to them desirable, and tied the governor's hands by every sort of device. They usurped the {17} appointment of the colonial treasurer, they appointed committees to oversee the expenditure of sums voted, they systematically withheld a salary from the governor, in order to render him dependent upon annual "presents," liable to diminution or termination in case he did not satisfy the assembly's wishes. The history of the years from 1689 to 1763 is a chronicle of continual defeat for governors who were obliged to see one power after another wrenched away from them. Under the circumstances, the political life of the thirteen colonies was practically republican in character, and was as marked for its absence of administrative machinery as the home government was for its aristocracy and centralization.

Another feature of colonial life tended to accentuate this difference. Although religion had ceased to be a political question, and the English Church was no longer regarded, save in New England, as dangerous to liberty, the fact that the great majority of the colonists were dissenters-Congregational, Presbyterian, or Reformed, with a considerable scattering of Baptists and other sects-had an effect on the attitude of the people toward England. In the home country, the controlling social classes accepted the established church as part of the constitution; but in the colonies it had small {18} strength, and even where it was by law established it remained little more than an official body, the "Governor's church." This tended to widen the gap between the political views of the individualistic dissenting and Puritan sects in the colonies and the people at home.

The American of 1763 was thus a different kind of man from the Englishman. As a result of the divergent development on the two sides of the Atlantic from a common ancestry, their political habits had become mutually incomprehensible. To the Englishman, the rule of the nobility was normal-the ideal political system. He was content, if a commoner, with the place assigned to him. To the colonist, on the other hand, government in which the majority of adult male inhabitants possessed the chief power was the only valid form,-all others were vicious. Patriotism meant two contradictory things. The Englishman's patriotism was sturdy but unenthusiastic, and showed itself almost as much in a contempt for foreigners as in complacency over English institutions. The colonist, on the contrary, had a double allegiance: one conventional and traditional, to the British crown; the other a new, intensely local and narrow attachment to his province. England was still the "old home," looked to as the source of political authority, of manners and literature. It was for many of {19} the residents their recent abode and, for all except a few of Dutch, German, or French extraction, their ancestral country. But already this "loyalty" on the part of the colonists was dwindling into something more sentimental than real. The genuine local patriotism of the colonists was shown by their persistent struggle against the representatives of English authority in the governors' chairs. There had developed in America a new sort of man, an "American," who wished to be as independent of government as possible, and who, while professing and no doubt feeling a general loyalty to England, was in fact a patriot of his own colony.

The colonists entered very slightly into the thoughts of the English noblemen and gentry. They were regarded in a highly practical way, without a trace of any sentiment, as members of the middle and lower classes, not without a large criminal admixture, who had been helped and allowed to build up some unruly and not very admirable communities. Nor did the English middle classes look upon the colonists with much interest, or regard them as, on the whole, their equals. The prevailing colonial political habits, as seen from England, suggested only unwarrantable wrangling indicative of political incompetence and a spirit of disobedience. Loyalty, to an {20} Englishman, meant submission to the law. To men trained in such different schools, words did not mean the same thing. The time had come when the two peoples were scarcely able to understand each other.

A second cause for antagonism, scarcely less fundamental and destined to cause equal irritation, is to be found in the conflict between the economic life of the American communities and the beliefs of the mother country concerning commercial and naval policy. Great Britain, in 1763, was predominantly a trading country. Its ships carried goods for all the nations of Europe and brought imports to England from all lands. Although the manufacturers were not yet in possession of the new inventions which were to revolutionize the industries of the world, they were active and prosperous in their domestic production of hardware and textiles, and they furnished cargoes for the shipowners to transport to all quarters. To these two great interests of the middle classes, banking and finance were largely subsidiary. Agriculture, the mainstay of the nobility and gentry, continued to hold first place in the interests of the governing classes, but the importance of all sources of wealth was fully recognized.

In the colonies, on the contrary, manufacture scarcely existed beyond the domestic {21} production of articles for local use; and the inhabitants relied on importations for nearly all finished commodities and for all luxuries. Their products were chiefly things which Great Britain could not itself raise, such as sugar in the West Indies; tobacco from the islands and the southern mainland colonies; indigo and rice from Carolina; furs, skins, masts, pine products; and, from New England, above all, fish. The natural market for these articles was in England or in other colonies; and in return British manufactures found their natural market in the new communities. When the Economic Revolution transformed industry, and factories, driven by steam, made England the workshop of the world, the existing tendency for her to supply America with manufactured products was intensified regardless of the political separation of the two countries. Not until later economic changes supervened was this normal relationship altered.

The traditional British policy in 1763 was that of the so-called Mercantile System, which involved a thoroughgoing application of the principle of protection to the British shipowner, manufacturer, and corn-grower against any competition. An elaborate tariff, with a system of prohibitions and bounties, attempted to prevent the landowner from being undersold by foreign corn, and the {22} manufacturer from meeting competition from foreign producers. Navigation Acts shut out foreign-built, -owned, or -manned ships from the carrying trade between any region but their home country and England, reserving all other commerce for British vessels. Into this last restriction there entered another purely political consideration, namely, the perpetuation of a supply of mariners for the British navy, whose importance was fully recognized. So far as the colonies were concerned, they were brought within the scope of mercantilist ideas by being considered as sources of supply for England in products not possible to raise at home, as markets which must be reserved for British manufacturers and traders, and as places which must not be allowed to develop any rivalry to British producers. Furthermore, they were so situated that by proper regulations they might serve to encourage British shipping even if this involved an economic loss.

The Navigation Acts accordingly, from 1660 to 1763, were designed to put this theory into operation, and excluded all foreign vessels from trading with the colonies, prohibited any trade to the colonies except from British ports and enumerated certain commodities-sugar, cotton, dye woods, indigo, rice, furs-which could be sent only to England. To ensure the carrying out of these {23} laws, an elaborate system of bonds and local duties was devised, and customs officers were appointed, resident in the colonies, while governors were obliged to take oath to enforce the Acts. As time revealed defects or unnecessary stringencies, the restrictions were frequently modified. The Carolinas, for instance, were allowed to ship rice not only to England, but to any place in Europe south of Cape Finisterre. Bounties were established to aid the production of tar and turpentine; but special Acts prohibited the export of hats from the colonies, or the manufacture of rolled iron, in order to check a possible source of competition to British producers. In short, the Board of Trade, the administrative body charged with the oversight of the plantations, devoted its energies to suggesting devices which should aid the colonists, benefit the British consumer and producer, and increase "navigation."

It does not appear that the Acts of Trade were, in general, a source of loss to the colonies. Their vessels shared in the privileges reserved for British-built ships. The compulsory sending of the enumerated commodities to England may have damaged the tobacco-growers; but in other respects it did little harm. The articles would have gone to England in any case. The restriction of importation to goods from England was no {24} great grievance, since British products would, in any case, have supplied the American market. Even the effort, by an Act of 1672, to check intercolonial trade in enumerated commodities was not oppressive, for, with one exception noted below, there was no great development of such a trade. By 1763, according to the best evidence, the thirteen colonies seem to have adjusted their habits to the Navigation Acts, and to have been carrying on their flourishing commerce within these restrictions.

To this general condition, however, there were some slight exceptions, and one serious one. The colonists undoubtedly resented the necessity of purchasing European products from English middlemen, and were especially desirous of importing Spanish and Portuguese wines and French brandies directly. Smuggling in these articles seems to have been steadily carried on. Much more important-and to the American ship-owners the kernel of the whole matter-was the problem of the West India trade. It was proved, as the eighteenth century progressed, that the North American colonies could balance their heavy indebtedness to the mother country for excess of imports over exports only by selling to the French, as well as the British West Indies, barrel staves, clapboards, fish and food products. In {25} return, they took sugar and molasses, developing in New England a flourishing rum manufacture, which in turn was used in the African slave trade. By these means the people of the New England and Middle colonies built up an active commerce, using their profits to balance their indebtedness to England. This "triangular trade" disturbed the British West India planters, who, being largely non-residents and very influential in London, induced Parliament, in 1733, to pass an Act imposing prohibitory duties on all sugar and molasses of foreign growth. This law, if enforced, would have struck a damaging blow at the prosperity of the Northern colonies, merely to benefit the West India sugar-growers by giving them a monopoly; but the evidence goes to show that it was systematically evaded and that French sugar, together with French and Portuguese wines, was still habitually smuggled into the colonies. Thus the Navigation Acts, in the only points where they would have been actually oppressive, were not enforced. The colonial governors saw the serious consequences and shrank from arousing discontent. It is significant that the same colonists who contended with the royal governors did not hesitate to violate a parliamentary law when it ran counter to their interests.

The only reason why the radical difference {26} between the colonies and the home government did not cause open conflict long before 1763 is to be found in the absorption of the English ministries in parliamentary manoeuvring at home, diplomacy, and European wars. The weakness of the imperial control was recognized and frequently complained of by governors, Boards of Trade, and other officials; but so long as the colonies continued to supply the sugar, furs, lumber and masts called for by the Acts, bought largely from English shippers and manufacturers, and stimulated the growth of British shipping, the Whig and Tory noblemen were content. The rapidly growing republicanism of the provincial and proprietary governments was ignored and allowed to develop unchecked. A half-century of complaints from thwarted governors, teeming with suggestions that England ought to take the government of the colonies into its own hands, produced no results beyond creating in official circles an opinion unfavourable to the colonists.

In the years of the French war, 1754-1760, the utter incompatibility between imperial theories on the one hand and colonial political habits on the other, could no longer be disregarded. In the midst of the struggle, the legislatures continued to wrangle with governors over points of privilege; they were slow to vote supplies; they were {27} dilatory in raising troops; they hung back from a jealous fear that their neighbour colonies might fail to do their share; they were ready to let British soldiers do all the hard fighting. Worse still, the colonial shipowners persisted in their trade with the French and Spanish West Indies, furnishing their enemies with supplies, and buying their sugar and molasses as usual. When, in Boston, writs of assistance were employed by the customs officials, in order that by a general power of search they might discover such smuggled property, the merchants protested in the courts, and James Otis, a fiery young lawyer, boldly declared the writs an infringement of the rights of the colonists, unconstitutional, and beyond the power of Parliament to authorize. To Ministers engaged in a tremendous war for the overthrow of France, the behaviour of the colonies revealed a spirit scarcely short of disloyalty, and a weakness of government no longer to be tolerated. The Secretaries, the Board of Trade, the customs officials, army officers, naval commanders, colonial governors, and judges all agreed that the time had come for a thorough and drastic reform. They approached the task purely and simply as members of the English governing classes, ignorant of the colonists' political ideas and totally indifferent to their views; and their measures were framed in the spirit {28} of unquestioning acceptance of the principles of the Acts of Trade as a fundamental national policy.