Conceived in Liberty (170 page)

While Parliament would have to decide on repeal, there were many good deeds that the Rockingham administration could perform strictly on its own. Above all, it could return to the policy of salutary neglect, including a seemingly bungling failure to enforce the Stamp Act. This was precisely what it did. Instructions to the royal governors on the stamp tax were deliberately tardy and vague, and confined to cloudy advice to do their duty within the limits of “prudence.” No British army was sent or mobilized, and the navy did not bother about the lack of stamps on the clearance papers of American ships. Furthermore, under the influence of Newcastle, the Rockingham ministry applied salutary neglect to the rest of Grenville’s restrictive program. Laxity was again encouraged. In particular, the useful Spanish bullion trade from South America to the British West Indies in exchange for English manufactured goods, which helped repay debts to American and English merchants, was again looked at benignly even though it was illegal. Laxity was particularly welcome after Grenville’s repressive enforcement had disrupted transatlantic trade habits of over a century.

Moves were also undertaken to legalize informally or formally the vital American molasses trade with the foreign West Indies. Influence to this end was exerted by William Burke, the young undersecretary to Conway. Burke, who had been the leading publicist, at the end of the Seven Years’ War, for the Whig peace terms of keeping the West Indian islands and letting France keep the American colonies, was himself involved in the molasses trade from Guadeloupe to America. Burke was a partner in this vital trade, repressed by Grenville’s program of rigor, as were his cousin Richard Burke and Richard’s brother Edmund, the brilliant young private secretary to Rockingham.

In originally formulating its plans for the opening of Parliament, the Whig ministry had been misled into underestimating the colonial reaction to the Stamp Act, and therefore had planned to repeal or revise the Grenville trade acts gradually
before
taking up the stamp tax. They were misled largely by the special situation in Pennsylvania—including the overoptimistic reports received from Benjamin Franklin, the support for the Stamp Act by Franklin’s Pennsylvania ally Galloway, the actions of the counterrevolutionary White Oaks mob in Philadelphia, and the September elections in Philadelphia won by the royalist party—with the aid of some twenty-six hundred Germans naturalized and enrolled by Galloway just before the election. The Rockingham ministry was at last becoming disillusioned about the quality of Franklin’s reports and about the position of Mr. Franklin himself. The radical and rebellious temper of the colonies was becoming clear, and Franklin’s cool treatment of the Bristol merchants opposed to the Stamp Act called his whole attitude into question. The administration now realized that Stamp Act repeal must be the first order of colonial business in Parliament.

By the December opening of Parliament, then, it was clear that the most pressing problem before the government was the stamp tax. The Whigs, merchants, manufacturers, and London radicals formed the liberal party facing the opposition of Grenville, Bedford, Halifax, Bute, the King’s Friends—in short, all of the various Tory factions. The ideological battle raged in the press; typical of the liberal view were articles by “Rationalis.” Rationalis warned that Britain’s harsh measures might well drive the American colonies out of desperation into independence. He argued, as had Robert Walpole decades before, that refraining from taxing the colonies would leave them free to use the money to buy British goods, an advantage to both peoples. Rationalis cited Walpole’s famous aphorism: deliberately neglecting to enforce taxes and regulations in the colonies “is taxing them more agreeably both to their own constitution and to ours.”

Parliament opened on December 17 with the administration urging another month’s postponement to allow time for public opinion, spurred by Trecothick’s campaign, to mobilize behind repeal. Grenville and Bedford, suspecting an eventual plan for repeal (which had been kept secret by the ministry), issued a violent attack on the colonies and called for suppression of the Stamp
Act rebellion. But the large block of Tory King’s Friends were willing to go along with the king’s ministers, so Grenville did not put his views to a test in Parliament. Significantly, Charles Townshend and Lord George Sackville, conservative members of the ministry, both called for enforcement of the Stamp Act, although doing so while speaking against Grenville’s motion. Leaders for the government in the debates were London aldermen Beckford and Baker, Rose Fuller, and Sir George Savile in the Commons, and Grafton and Dartmouth in the Lords. Leading the Tory attacks were Bedford, Halifax, Sandwich, and North in the Lords, and Grenville in the Commons. Finally, the administration was successful; the House agreed to adjourn until January 14.

The parliamentary task of the ministry was made all the harder by the untimely death at the end of October of the influential Duke of Cumberland, the king’s uncle and the Whig’s one friend at court. It was Cumberland who had persuaded the king to choose the Rockingham ministry. The ministry was now clearly shakier than ever, and Newcastle began to press upon Rockingham without success his old disastrous tactic of fawning upon William Pitt. Pitt, now pressured by both sides, continued to refuse to support any government dominated by Newcastle. Indeed, Pitt gave strong indications of favoring the exercise of British sovereignty over the colonies. However, the fawning upon Pitt was intensified by Newcastle as a result of the growing defection of the King’s Friends, who were rapidly learning with alarm of the great extent and depth of the colonial rebellion. Thus, as the crucial January session of Parliament approached, the Whigs saw their two potential sets of allies, the Pittites and the King’s Friends, drifting strongly toward opposition to repeal.

Amidst the growing political crisis at home and in the colonies, the cabinet met on December 27 to decide finally upon government policy. Rockingham, Lord Dartmouth, Henry Seymour Conway, and William Dowdeswell, chancellor of the Exchequer and representative of the instinctively liberal wing of the country gentry, came out foursquare for outright and total repeal of the Stamp Act (there was no need to invite Newcastle, perhaps the most “pro-American” of them all). The big surprise, however, was a determined drive by Attorney General Charles Yorke, a conservative renegade Whig, against any “undignified” concessions to the colonies. Whether or not the repeal was pushed, Yorke insisted particularly on a declaratory act, which would affirm conclusively the unbounded sovereign power of Parliament over the colonies. Yorke also called for a penalty of high treason against anyone who might dare to attack the proclaimed sovereignty of Parliament in speech or in writing. Yorke’s stand was attacked by Conway and later by an angry Newcastle. Instead, Newcastle proposed the usual Whig game, which had worked so well in the days of Walpole—namely, a meaningless declaration as sop to the King’s Friends, the Pittites, and the conservative Whigs. The declaration could then serve as a formal camouflage for the reality of conciliation, salutary
neglect, and virtual
de facto
colonial independence from British rule. Rockingham himself was thinking along similar lines. But once again Pitt threw a monkey wrench into the proceedings, calling for a firmer stand against the colonies and insisting on his personal control of the cabinet. Earl Temple trumpeted that Pitt agreed that the Americans must be crushed and, to make matters worse, Conway and Grafton, personally loyal to Pitt although liberal, repeatedly threatened to resign unless Pitt were brought into the cabinet. In the meanwhile, Bute and the King’s Friends, violently disturbed at the colonists’ disobedience, were secretly given the green light by the king himself to vote against his own ministry, which he was already preparing to dump. What the king desired as the Tory ideal of his maneuvers, was a coalition ministry with Bute and the King’s Friends dictating domestic affairs, while leaving foreign affairs to the arch imperialist Pitt. In Parliament, the King’s Friends, without joining Grenville’s organized opposition, would vote against repeal, thereby toppling the ministry and permitting the king to ignore the Grenvillites (whose leader he personally hated) in forming his desired ministry.

As the decisive January session of Parliament drew near, success of the repeal program seemed distant indeed. Borne down by defections within and without, harassed by intrigue, alarmed at the mounting rebellion, the Rockingham Whigs yet coolly and rationally stayed firm on principle, insisting on removing the oppression instead of sending force to crush the colonies. With only the merchants and manufacturers to support the Whigs, the power of the latter in Parliament was minimal. Yet the Whigs refused to temporize, and continued to press for repeal.

Parliament opened on January 14 and the expected immediate assault on the ministry was launched by the Grenvillites and some King’s Friends demanding enforcement of the Stamp Act, as well as the sending of troops to the colonies to crush the rebellion and to impose the brutal model of British policy in conquered Ireland on the Americans.

At this point William Pitt, ill and erratic as usual, exercised his charisma once more. Pitt, felled by illness and insanity, had not appeared in Parliament for two years. Now Pitt played his pivotal role to maximum dramatic effect, after having kept everyone in the dark about his position. Staggering to his feet, Pitt stunned everyone with a fiery defense of the Americans and a scathing attack on Grenville: “As to the late ministry, every capital measure they have taken, has been entirely wrong.” The Whigs were criticized by Pitt, in an odd turnabout, for hesitancy in treating the problem. As for the Americans, Pitt averred that they had “all the natural rights of mankind and the peculiar privileges of Englishmen.” Only American assemblies have the right to tax the colonies; any other dispensation would be “slavery.” Pitt concluded that “this kingdom has no right to lay a tax upon the colonies,” although sovereign over them in every field of legislation or regulation. Pitt therefore
urged immediate repeal of the Stamp Act on the grounds that it was an unconstitutional tax on the colonies. The repeal was to be accompanied by a declaratory act asserting Parliament’s sovereignty (limited by a lack of taxing power) over the Americans.

After Grenville answered with one of his typical legalistic speeches, Pitt’s reply rose to the heights of eloquence:

I have been charged with giving birth to sedition in America. They have spoken their sentiments with freedom against this unhappy act, and that freedom has become their crime.... The gentleman tells us America is obstinate; America is almost in open rebellion. I rejoice that America has resisted. Three millions of people, so dead to all feelings of liberty as voluntarily to submit and be slaves, would have been fit to make slaves of the rest. I come not here armed at all points, with law cases... to defend the cause of liberty. I am passed the time of life to be turning to books to know whether I love liberty or not.... Will you sheath your sword in the bowels of your brother, the Americans? You may coerce and conquer, but when they fall, they will fall like the strong man embracing the pillars of this constitution, and bury it in ruin with them....

Pitt’s brilliant speech was a mighty blow for the American cause. Yet it is surely ironic that this, one of the few libertarian stands of Pitt’s career, was to make this Johnny-come-lately a supposedly libertarian hero to the American colonists. Rockingham’s thankless role was forgotten, even though Pitt had refused to coordinate his moves with the ministry, and even now
continued
to refuse cooperation with Rockingham. In fact, Pitt, erratically, continued to insist on Earl Temple’s inclusion into the cabinet as the price of his support, even though Temple was ardently defending the Stamp Act in the House of Lords.

Still, Pitt
had
drastically changed his mind. Three weeks before, he was ready to impose British authority on the colonists. Now he stood fast for repeal. What, apart from inherent instability, had changed him? The answer lies in the Trecothick agitation among the merchants and manufacturers, shrewdly directed from behind the scenes by the Rockingham ministry and spurred by the depression and the trade boycotts waged in the colonies.

During December and January, the merchants’ agitation received a great boost from the temporary suppression of American shipping because of the lack of stamped clearances, and from the closing of the civil courts to British creditors. The English agitation for repeal was also joined to great effect in the pubic press: the leading Whig publicists in the campaign were William Burke, Edmund Burke, and, particularly, David Hartley, a lifelong friend and adviser of Savile’s who had first urged Sir George, the previous fall, to press for complete and immediate repeal.

Foremost in influencing Pitt was the unanimous clamor for repeal among the merchants. All his life Pitt had been the spokesman of the merchants,
especially those engaged in West India planting, but now all the merchants, whether in America or West India trade, united to urge repeal. Of the fifty-two merchants sitting in Parliament in February 1766, forty-six voted for repeal (of the maverick six, two were members of the king’s Scots bloc; two were agents of the East India Company, headed by the Tory Earl of Sandwich; and two were indebted to Grenville). Of the West Indian planting interests, Beckford, the Lascelles family, and the Fullers, as well as the West Country gentry, were all ardent opponents of the Stamp Act. It was therefore clear to Pitt that there was only one way for him to reattract his old mercantile, West Country, and West India support, and to wean them from their attachment to the Whigs over the Stamp Act. That way was to make a grandstand play, to shout louder than the Rockingham Whigs for the American cause. No matter that the Whigs had to engage in subtle and often silent strategy to maneuver a repeal through Parliament. Never mind destruction of the Whig’s well-laid plans. By thundering dramatically in Parliament Pitt could seem to be
the
heroic champion of American liberty, and make the Rockinghams
seem
pale and timorous by comparison. Such is precisely what Pitt did in his irresponsibly designed speech.