American History Told by Contemporaries/Volume 2/Chapter 21
PART VI
CAUSES OF THE REVOLUTION
CHAPTER XXI— NEW CONDITIONS OF ENGLISH CONTROL
130. The Character of George Third (1758)
BY JAMES, EARL OF WALDEGRAVE
Waldegrave was at one time tutor of the young prince. — Bibliography : Donne, Correspondence of George III ; Mahon, England, VI, 100, and Appendix; Lecky, England, III, 10-14.
THE Prince of Wales is entering into his 21st year, and it would be unfair to decide upon his character in the early stages of life, when there is so much time for improvement.
His parts, though not excellent, will be found very tolerable, if ever they are properly exercised.
He is strictly honest, but wants that frank and open behaviour which makes honesty appear amiable.
When he had a very scanty allowance, it was one of his favorite maxims that men should be just before they are generous : his income is now very considerably augmented, but his generosity has not increased in equal proportion.
His religion is free from all hypocrisy, but is not of the most charitable sort; he has rather too much attention to the sins of his neighbour.
He has spirit, but not of the active kind ; and does not want resolution, but it is mixed with too much obstinacy.
He has great command of his passions, and will seldom do wrong, except when he mistakes wrong for right ; but as often as this shall happen, it will be difficult to undeceive him, because he is uncommonly indolent, and has strong prejudices.
His want of application and aversion to business would be far less dangerous, was he eager in the pursuit of pleasure ; for the transition from pleasure to business is both shorter and easier than from a state of total inaction.
He has a kind of unhappiness in his temper, which, if it be not conquered before it has taken too deep a root, will be a source of frequent anxiety. Whenever he is displeased, his anger does not break out with heat and violence ; but he becomes sullen and silent, and retires to his closet ; not to compose his mind by study or contemplation, but merely to indulge the melancholy enjoyment of his own ill humor. Even when the fit is ended, unfavorable symptoms very frequently return, which indicate that on certain occasions his Royal Highness has too correct a memory.
Though I have mentioned his good and bad qualities, without flattery, and without aggravation, allowances should still be made, on account of his youth, and his bad education : for though the Bishop of Peterborough, now Bishop of Salisbury, the preceptor ; Mr. Stone, the sub-governor ; and Mr. Scott, the sub-preceptor, were men of sense, men of learning, and worthy, good men, they had but little weight and influence. The mother and the nursery always prevailed.
During the course of the last year, there has, indeed, been some alteration ; the authority of the nursery has gradually declined, and the Earl of Bute, by the assistance of the mother, has now the intire confidence. But whether this change will be greatly to his Royal Highness's advantage, is a nice question, which cannot hitherto be determined with any certainty.
James [2d] Earl Waldegrave, Memoirs from 1754 to 1758 (edited by H. R. V. Fox, London, 1821), 8-10.
131. Argument on Writs of Assistance (1761)
BY JAMES OTIS
Otis was a Boston lawyer whose powers of debate and fervid oratory made him the most prominent of the Americans in the first phase of the Revolution. This argument was a public assertion of the right of the colonists to be free from a means of executing the acts of trade. — Bibliography : Tyler, Literary History of the Revolution, I, 36-52; William Tudor, Life of Otis ; Winsor, Narrative and Critical History, VI, 68-70; Channing and Hart, Guide, 134. — On the acts of trade, see Contemporaries, I, No. 54, and above, Nos. 45, 55, 87.
MAY IT PLEASE YOUR HONORS,
I WAS desired by one of the Court to look into the books, and consider the question now before them concerning writs of assistance. I have accordingly considered it, and now appear, not only in obedience to your order, but likewise in behalf of the inhabitants of this town, who have presented another petition, and out of regard to the liberties of the subject. And I take this opportunity to declare, that whether under a fee or not (for in such a cause as this I despise a fee) I will to my dying day oppose with all the powers and faculties God has given me, all such instruments of slavery on the one hand, and villany on the other, as this writ of assistance is.
It appears to me the worst instrument of arbitrary power, the most destructive of English liberty and the fundamental principles of law, that ever was found in an English law-book. I must, therefore, beg your Honors patience and attention to the whole range of an argument, that may perhaps appear uncommon in many things, as well as to points of learning that are more remote and unusual ; that the whole tendency of my design may the more easily be perceived, the conclusions better discerned, and the force of them be better felt. I shall not think much of my pains in this cause, as I engaged in it from principle. I was solicited to argue this cause as Advocate-General ; and because I would not, I have been charged with desertion from my office. To this charge I can give a very sufficient answer. I renounced that office, and I argue this cause, from the same principle ; and I argue it with the greater pleasure, as it is in favor of British liberty, at a time when we hear the greatest monarch upon earth declaring from his throne that he glories in the name of Briton, and that the privileges of his people are dearer to him than the most valuable prerogatives of his crown ; and as it is in opposition to a kind of power, the exercise of which, in former periods of English history, cost one King of England his head, and another his throne. I have taken more pains in this cause, than I ever will take again, although my engaging in this and another popular cause has raised much resentment. But I think I can sincerely declare, that I cheerfully submit myself to every odious name for conscience sake ; and from my soul I despise all those, whose guilt, malice, or folly has made them my foes. Let the consequences be what they will, I am determined to proceed. The only principles of public conduct, that are worthy of a gentleman or a man, are to sacrifice estate, ease, health, and applause, and even life, to the sacred calls of his country. These manly sentiments, in private life, make the good citizen; in public life, the patriot and the hero. I do not say, that when brought to the test, I shall be invincible. I pray God I may never be brought to the melancholy trial ; but if ever I should, it will be then known how far I can reduce to practice principles, which I know to be founded in truth. In the mean time I will proceed to the subject of this writ.
In the first place, may it please your Honors, I will admit that writs of one kind may be legal ; that is, special writs, directed to special officers, and to search certain houses, &c. specially set forth in the writ, may be granted by the Court of Exchequer at home, upon oath made before the Lord Treasurer by the person who asks it, that he suspects such goods to be concealed in those very places he desires to search. The act of 14 Charles II. which Mr. Gridley mentions, proves this. And in this light the writ appears like a warrant from a Justice of the Peace to search for stolen goods. Your Honors will find in the old books concerning the office of a Justice of the Peace, precedents of general warrants to search suspected houses. But in more modern books you will find only special warrants to search such and such houses specially named, in which the complainant has before sworn that he suspects his goods are concealed ; and you will find it adjudged that special warrants only are legal. In the same manner I rely on it, that the writ prayed for in this petition, being general, is illegal. It is a power, that places the liberty of every man in the hands of every petty officer. I say I admit that special writs of assistance, to search special places, may be granted to certain persons on oath ; but I deny that the writ now prayed for can be granted, for I beg leave to make some observations on the writ itself, before I proceed to other acts of Parliament. In the first place, the writ is universal, being directed to all and singular Justices, Sheriffs, Constables, and all other officers and subjects ; so, that, in short, it is directed to every subject in the King's dominions. Every one with this writ may be a tyrant ; if this commission be legal, a tyrant in a legal manner also may control, imprison, or murder any one within the realm. In the next place, it is perpetual ; there is no return. A man is accountable to no person for his doings. Every man may reign secure in his petty tyranny, and spread terror and desolation around him. In the third place, a person with this writ, in the daytime, may enter all houses, shops, &c. at will, and command all to assist him. Fourthly, by this writ not only deputies, &c., but even their menial servants, are allowed to lord it over us. Now one of the most essential branches of English liberty is the freedom of one s house. A man's house is his castle ; and whilst he is quiet, he is as well guarded as a prince in his castle. This writ, if it should be declared legal, would totally annihilate this privilege. Custom-house officers may enter our houses, when they please ; we are commanded to permit their entry. Their menial servants may enter, may break locks, bars, and every thing in their way ; and whether they break through malice or revenge, no man, no court, can inquire. Bare suspicion without oath is sufficient. This wanton exercise of this power is not a chimerical suggestion of a heated brain. I will mention some facts. Mr. Pew had one of these writs, and when Mr. Ware succeeded him, he endorsed this writ over to Mr. Ware ; so that these writs are negotiable from one officer to another ; and so your Honors have no opportunity of judging the persons to whom this vast power is delegated. Another instance is this : Mr. Justice Walley had called this same Mr. Ware before him, by a constable, to answer for a breach of Sabbath-day acts, or that of profane swearing. As soon as he had finished, Mr. Ware asked him if he had done. He replied, Yes. Well then, said Mr. Ware, I will show you a little of my power. I command you to permit me to search your house for uncustomed goods. And went on to search his house from the garret to the cellar ; and then served the constable in the same manner. But to show another absurdity in this writ ; if it should be established, I insist upon it, every person by the 14 Charles II. has this power as well as custom-house officers. The words are, 'It shall be lawful for any person or persons authorized,' &c. What a scene does this open ! Every man, prompted by revenge, ill humor, or wantonness, to inspect the inside of his neighbor s house, may get a writ of assistance. Others will ask it from self-defence ; one arbitrary exertion will provoke another, until society be involved in tumult and in blood.
Again, these writs are not returned. Writs in their nature are temporary things. When the purposes for which they are issued are answered, they exist no more ; but these live forever ; no one can be called to account. Thus reason and the constitution are both against this writ. Let us see what authority there is for it. Not more than one instance can be found of it in all our law-books ; and that was in the zenith of arbitrary power, namely, in the reign of Charles II. , when star-chamber powers were pushed to extremity by some ignorant clerk of the exchequer. But had this writ been in any book whatever, it would have been illegal. All precedents are under the control of the principles of law. Lord Talbot says it is better to observe these than any precedents, though in the House of Lords, the last resort of the subject. No Acts of Parliament can establish such a writ ; though it should be made in the very words of the petition, it would be void. An act against the constitution is void. (vid. Viner.) But these prove no more than what I before observed, that special writs may be granted on oath and probable suspicion. The act of 7 & 8 William III. that the officers of the plantations shall have the same powers, &c. is confined to this sense ; that an officer should show probable ground ; should take his oath of it ; should do this before a magistrate ; and that such magistrate, if he think proper, should issue a special warrant to a constable to search the places. That of 6 Anne can prove no more.
John Adams, Works (edited by Charles Francis Adams, Boston, 1850), II, Appendix, 523-525.
132. Opposition to Arbitrary Power (1763)
These extracts are taken from the famous No. 45 of The North Briton, published by Wilkes, then a member of Parliament. Wilkes was clever but profligate, and his paper was scurrilous; yet he stood for liberty of the subject and for parliamentary reform in England at the time when the treatment of the American colonies was under discussion. —Bibliography: Fitzgerald, Life of Wilkes ; May, Constitutional History of England, II, chs. ix-x, III, ch. xi; Lecky, England, III, 68-82, and ch. xi.
THE Preliminary Articles of Peace were such as have drawn the contempt of mankind on our wretched negociators. All our most valuable conquests were agreed to be restored, and the East-India company would have been infallibly ruined by a single article of this fallacious and baneful negociation. No hireling of the minister has been hardy enough to dispute this ; yet the minister himself has made our sovereign declare, the satisfaction which he felt at the approaching reestablishment of peace upon conditions so honourable to his crown, and so beneficial to his people. As to the entire approbation of parliament, which is so vainly boasted of, the world knows how that was obtained. The large debt on the Civil List, already above half a year in arrear, shews pretty clear the transactions of the winter. It is, however, remarkable, that the minister s speech dwells on the entire approbation given by parliament to the Preliminary Articles, which I will venture to say, he must by this time be ashamed of; for he has been brought to confess the total want of that knowledge, accuracy and precision, by which such immense advantages, both of trade and territory, were sacrificed to our inveterate enemies. These gross blunders, are, indeed, in some measure set right by the Definitive Treaty ; yet the most important articles, relative to cession, commerce, and the Fishery, remain as they were, with respect to the French. The proud and feeble Spaniard too does not renounce, but only desists from all pretensions, which he may have formed, to the right of fishing—where? Only about the island of Newfoundland—till a favourable opportunity arises of insisting on it, there, as well as elsewhere.
The minister cannot forbear, even in the King's Speech, insulting us with a dull repetition of the word œconomy. I did not expect so soon to hear that word again, after it had been so lately exploded, and more than once by a most numerous audience, hissed off the stage of our English theatres. It is held in derision by the voice of the people, and every tongue loudly proclaims the universal contempt, in which these empty professions are held by this nation. Let the public be informed of a single instance of œconomy, except indeed in the houshold. . . . Lord Ligonier is now no longer at the head of the army ; but lord Bute in effect is ; I mean that every preferment given by the crown will be found still to be obtained by his enormous influence, and to be bestowed only on the creatures of the Scottish faction. The nation is still in the same deplorable state, while he governs, and can make the tools of his power pursue the same odious measures. Such a retreat, as he intends, can only mean the personal indemnity, which, I hope, guilt will never find from an injured nation. The negociations of the late inglorious peace and the excise, will haunt him wherever he goes, and the terrors of the just resentment which he must be sure to meet from a brave and insulted people, and which must finally crush him, will be for ever before his eyes.
In vain will such a minister, or the foul dregs of his power, the tools of corruption and despotism, preach up in the speech that spirit of concord, and that obedience to the laws, which is essential to good order. They have sent the spirit of discord through the land, and I will prophecy, that it will never be extinguished, but by the extinction of their power. Is the spirit of concord to go hand in hand with the peace and excise, through this nation? Is it to be expected between an insolent Exciseman, and a peer, gentleman, freeholder, or farmer, whose private houses are now made liable to be entered and searched at pleasure? Gloucestershire, Herefordshire, and in general all the cyder counties, are not surely the several counties which are alluded to in the speech. The spirit of concord hath not gone forth among them, but the spirit of liberty has, and a noble opposition has been given to the wicked instruments of oppression. A nation as sensible as the English, will see that a spirit of concord when they are oppressed, means a tame submission to injury, and that a spirit of liberty ought then to arise, and I am sure ever will, in proportion to the weight of the grievance they feel. Every legal attempt of a contrary tendency to the spirit of concord will be deemed a justifiable resistance, warranted by the spirit of the English constitution.
A despotic minister will always endeavour to dazzle his prince with high-flown ideas of the prerogative and honour of the crown, which the minister will make a parade of firmly maintaining. I wish as much as any man in the kingdom to see the honour of the crown maintained in a manner truly becoming Royalty. . . .
The Stuart line has ever been intoxicated with the slavish doctrines of the absolute, independent, unlimited power of the crown. Some of that line were so weakly advised, as to endeavour to reduce them into practice : but the English nation was too spirited to suffer the least encroachment on the antient liberties of this kingdom. The King of England is only the first magistrate of this country ; but is invested by the law with the whole executive power. He is, however, responsible to his people for the due execution of the royal functions, in the choice of ministers, &c. equal with the meanest of his subjects in his particular duty. The personal character of our present amiable sovereign makes us easy and happy that so great a power is lodged in such hands ; but the favourite has given too just cause for him to escape the general odium. The prerogative of the crown is to exert the constitutional powers entrusted to it in a way not of blind favour and partiality, but of wisdom and judgment. This is the spirit of our constitution. The people too have their prerogative, and I hope the fine words of Dryden will be engraven on our hearts :
Freedom is the English Subject's Prerogative.
John Wilkes, Charles Churchill, and others, editors, The North Briton, from No. I to No. XLVI inclusive (London, 1769), No. XLV, [156a-b] passim
133. Grenville's Scheme of Taxation (1763-1764)
Grenville was at this time the English prime minister. — Bibliography on his scheme: Winsor, Narrative and Critical History, VI, 62-68; Channing and Hart, Guide, § 134. —For Franklin, see No. 68 above.
Passy, 12 March, 1778.
DEAR SIR: In the pamphlets you were so kind as to lend me there is one important fact misstated, apparently from the writers not having been furnished with good information. It is the transaction between Mr. Grenville and the colonies, wherein he understands that Mr. Grenville demanded of them a specific sum, that they refused to grant any thing, and that it was on their refusal only that he made the motion for the Stamp Act. No one of the particulars was true. The fact was this :
Some time in the winter of 1763-4 Mr. Grenville called together the agents of the several colonies, and told them that he purposed to draw a revenue from America ; and to that end his intention was to levy a stamp duty on the colonies by act of Parliament in the ensuing session, of which he thought it fit that they should be immediately acquainted, that they might have time to consider ; and if any other duty equally productive would be more agreeable to them, they might let him know it. The agents were therefore directed to write this to their respective Assemblies, and communicate to him the answers they should receive : the agents wrote accordingly.
I was a member in the Assembly of Pennsylvania when this notification came to hand. The observations there made upon it were, that the ancient, established, and regular method of drawing aid from the colonies was this : The occasion was always first considered by their sovereign in his Privy Council, by whose sage advice he directed his Secretary of State to write circular-letters to the several governors, who were directed to lay them before their Assemblies. In those letters the occasion was explained to their satisfaction, with gracious expressions of his Majesty's confidence in their known duty and affection, on which he relied that they would grant such sums as should be suitable to their abilities, loyalty, and zeal for his service ; that the colonies had always granted liberally on such requisitions, and so liberally during the late war, that the king, sensible they had granted much more than their proportion, had recommended it to Parliament five years successively to make them some compensation, and the Parliament accordingly returned them ₤200,000 a year, to be divided among them ; that the proposition of taxing them, in Parliament, was therefore both cruel and unjust; that, by the constitution of the colonies, their business was with the king in matters of aid ; they had nothing to do with any financier, nor he with them ; nor were the agents the proper channels through which requisitions should be made ; it was therefore improper for them to enter into any stipulation, or make any proposition to Mr. Grenville about laying taxes on their constituents by Parliament, which had really no right at all to tax them, especially as the notice he had sent them did not appear to be by the king s order, and perhaps was without his knowledge, as the king, when he would obtain any thing from them, always accompanied his requisition with good words, but this gentleman, instead of a decent demand, sent them a menace, that they should certainly be taxed, and only left them the choice of the manner. But all this notwithstanding, they were so far from refusing to grant money that they resolved to the following purpose : "That they always had, so they always should think it their duty to grant aid to the crown, according to their abilities, whenever required of them in the usual constitutional manner." I went soon after to England, and took with me an authentic copy of this resolution, which I presented to Mr. Grenville before he brought in the Stamp Act. I asserted in the House of Commons (Mr. Grenville being present) that I had done so, and he did not deny it. Other colonies made similar resolutions, and had Mr. Grenville, instead of that act, applied to the king in council for such requisitional letters to be circulated by the Secretary of State, I am sure he would have obtained more money from the colonies by their voluntary grants than he himself expected from his stamps. But he chose compulsion rather than persuasion, and would not receive from their good-will what he thought he could obtain without it. And thus the golden bridge which the ingenious author thinks the Americans unwisely and unbecomingly refused to hold out to the minister and Parliament, was actually held out to them, but they refused to walk over it.
This is the true history of that transaction ; and as it is probable there may be another edition of that excellent pamphlet, I wish this may be communicated to the candid author, who, I doubt not, will correct that error. . . .
Benjamin Franklin, Complete Works (edited by John Bigelow, New York, etc., 1888). VI, 142-145.