Various
Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851
OUR NATIONAL ANNIVERSARY
BY BENSON J. LOSSING
ON the morning of a brilliant day in October, 1760, the heir apparent to the British throne and his groom of the stole, were riding on horseback near Kew Palace, on the banks of the Thames. The heir was George, son of the deceased Frederick, Prince of Wales; the groom was John Stuart, Earl of Bute, an impoverished descendant of an ancient Scottish chieftain. The prince was young, virtuous, and amiable; the earl was in the prime of mature manhood, pedantic, gay, courtly in bearing, and winning in deportment. He came as an adventurer to the court of George the Second, for he possessed nothing but an earldom, a handsome person, and great assurance; he lived in affluence in the royal household of Frederick, because he played Lothario well not only in the amateur theatre, but in the drawing-room of the princess, and soon became her petted favorite.
The Prince of Wales died, and rumor with her half-lying tongue often whispered in the public ear the suspicion that the earl and the dowager princess were unmindful of the requirements of virtue. Public credulity believed the scandal, and the public mind became troubled because the pupilage of the future sovereign was under the guidance of the shallow earl. He was a tutor more expert in the knowledge of stage-plays, the paraphernalia of the acted drama, and the laws of fashion and etiquette necessary for the beau and the courtier, than in comprehension of the most simple principles of jurisprudence, the duties of a statesman, or the solid acquirements necessary for a reigning prince or his chief adviser. It was evident that the groom of the stole would be the prime minister of the realm when George should possess the throne of his grandfather, and this expectation made virtuous men and true patriots unhappy.
The prince and his inseparable companion had just reined up at the portal of the garden of the dowager, at Kew, when a solemn peal tolled out from the bells of London. While they were listening, a messenger came in haste to the prince and announced the sudden death of the old king. He was soon followed by William Pitt, the greatest commoner in England, the idol of the people, and, as prime minister, the actual ruler of the affairs of the empire. Pitt confirmed the sad tidings, and made preliminary arrangements for proclaiming the accession of George the Third.
EARL OF BUTE.
The earl and his pupil remained that day and night at Kew, in company with Doddington and a few other friends, and the next morning rode up to St. James's, in London, to meet the great officers of state. At that interview, Pitt presented the young king with an address to be pronounced at a meeting of the Privy Council. The minister was informed that one had already been prepared. This announcement opened to the sagacious mind of Pitt a broad and gloomy view of the future. He perceived that Bute was to be the ruling spirit in the new cabinet; that he whom he despised for his weakness and illiberality, his pedantic assumption of superior scholarship, and his merited unpopularity with the people, was to be the bosom friend and adviser of the king. Pitt well knew his unfitness, and deplored the consequences. Unwilling to be held in the least responsible for errors which were certain to abound in the administration of affairs, he soon withdrew to his mansion at Hayes, and watched, with all the interest and anxiety of a statesman and patriot, the gradual weaving of the web of difficulty in which the impotent men who surrounded the king, were soon ensnared.
By virtue of his office as groom of the stole, Bute was sworn in a Privy Councilor, and, by degrees he obtained the control of the cabinet. For nearly ten years his unwise advice and defective statesmanship, in the cabinet and in the parlor, led George the Third into many and grave errors, which finally resulted in the loss of the fairest portion of his American possessions. Had Pitt been allowed to guide the public policy and direct the honest but stubborn mind of the king at the beginning of his long reign of half a century, these United States might have remained a part of the British Empire fifty years longer. But that great man, whose genius as a statesman, eloquence and wisdom as a legislator, and whose thorough knowledge of human nature and the past history of the world, made him peerless, and whose administration of government during almost the entire progress of The Seven Years' War, had carried England to a height of prosperity and influence which she had never before approached, was superseded by a fop; his eminent worth was overlooked; his services were apparently forgotten, and he was allowed to retire from office and leave the young sovereign and his government in the hands of weak, crafty, and selfish men. The people venerated Pitt; they despised the very name of Stuart. They deprecated the influence of the king's mother as being unfavorable to popular freedom. A placard which appeared upon the Royal Exchange, bearing, in large letters, the significant expression of "No petticoat government—no Scotch minister—no Lord George Sackville," prefigured those popular tumults which soon afterward disturbed the metropolis and extended to the American colonies. That placard was the harbinger of that great Declaration, the adoption of which by a representative Congress of the Anglo-American people fifteen years afterward, is the occasion of our National Anniversary.
From the accession of Charles the Second, just one hundred years before George the Third ascended the throne, the English colonies in America struggled manfully for prosperity against the unjust and illiberal commercial policy of Great Britain. With a strange obtuseness of perception in regard to the elements of national prosperity, which the truths of modern political economy now clearly illustrate to the common mind, the British government sought to fill its coffers from the products of colonial industry, by imposing upon their commerce such severe restrictions that its expansion was almost prohibited. The wisdom and prudent counsels of men like Robert Walpole were of no avail; and, down to the accession of George the Third, the industrial pursuits of the colonists, under the regulations of the Board of Trade, were subjected to restraints and impositions which amounted to actual oppression. The Americans often petitioned for justice, but in vain. Continental wars continually drained the imperial treasury, and the inventive genius of British statesmen continually planned new schemes for the creation of a revenue adequate to meet the enormous expenditures of government. Despite the Navigation Act and kindred measures, sometimes enforced with rigor, and sometimes with laxity, the American Colonies grew rich and powerful. Despite the injustice of the mother country, they were eminently loyal. During the long war between France and England which was waged in the wilds of America, and which called into fierce action the savage tribes of the forests, the colonies contributed men and money with a lavish prodigality to sustain the honor of Great Britain, and the Gallic power on our continent was crushed, chiefly by provincial strength. The fidelity, the generosity, the prowess, and the loyalty of the Americans commanded the admiration of England, and should have excited her grateful desires to reciprocate and requite the service. On the contrary, the exhibition of the wealth and strength of the colonies during that war, excited her jealousy, led to greater exactions, and were made a pretense for more flagrant acts of injustice. She seemed to regard the Americans as industrious bees, working in a hive in her own apiary, in duty bound to lay up stores of honey for her especial use, and entitled to only the poor requital of a little treacle.
Relying upon the steady loyalty of the colonists, and their pecuniary ability, the advisers of the king looked to them for unceasing and substantial aid in replenishing the exhausted exchequer. Hitherto many of the commercial regulations had been evaded; now a rigid enforcement of the revenue laws was commenced. By the advice of Bute the king determined to "reform the American charters." Secret agents were sent to traverse the colonies for the purpose of ascertaining the temper of the people, of conciliating men of wealth and influence, and of obtaining such information as might be useful to ministers in preparing a plan for drawing a portion of the surplus wealth of the Americans into the imperial treasury. The first reform measure was the issuing of Writs of Assistance to revenue officers. These were warrants to custom-house officials, giving them and their deputies a general power to enter houses and stores where it might be suspected that contraband goods were concealed. This was a violation of one of the dearest principles of Magna Charta which recognizes the house of every Briton as his castle. The idea of such latitude being given to "the meanest deputy of a deputy's deputy" created general indignation and alarm. It might cover the grossest abuses, and no man's privacy would be free from the intrusions of these ministerial hirelings. The colonies saw in this the budding germ of despotism, and resolved to oppose its growth. The voice of James Otis the younger, a ripe scholar of six-and-thirty, and then the Advocate General of the colony of Massachusetts Bay, first denounced the scheme and declared the great political postulate which became the basis of all subsequent resistance to kingly domination, that "Taxation, without Representation, is Tyranny." Like the deep and startling tones of an alarm-bell, echoing from hill to hill, his bold eloquence aroused the hearts of thinking men from the Penobscot to the St. Mary; and his published arguments, like an electric shock, thrilled every nerve in the Atlantic provinces. "Otis was a flame of fire," said John Adams, in describing the scene in the Massachusetts Assembly, when the orator uttered his denunciations. "With a promptitude of classical allusion and a depth of research, a rapid summary of historical events and dates, a profusion of legal authority, a prophetic glance of his eyes into futurity and a rapid torrent of impetuous eloquence, he hurried away all before him. The seeds of patriots and heroes were then and there sown. Every man of an immensely crowded audience appeared to me to go away, as I did, ready to take up arms against Writs of Assistance. Then and there was the first scene of the first act of opposition to the arbitrary claims of Great Britain. Then and there the child, Independence, was born. In fifteen years, that is, in 1776, he grew up to manhood, and declared himself free."
JAMES OTIS.
Poor Otis! The bludgeon of a ministerial myrmidon paralyzed his brilliant intellect, and he was not allowed to participate in the scenes of the Revolution which ensued. Just as the white banner of peace began to wave over his country, after a struggle of twenty years to which he gave the first impulse, an electric bolt from the clouds mercifully released his wearied spirit from its earthly thrall.
The people were now fairly aroused. "Give us a just representation in the national council," they said, "and we will cheerfully submit to the expressed will of the majority." Great Britain was too proud to listen to conditions from her children; too blind to perceive the expediency of fair concession. She haughtily refused the reciprocity asked, and menaced the recusants. In the war just closed, the colonists had discovered their inherent strength, and they were not easily frightened by the mother's frown. Upon the postulate of Otis they planted the standard of resistance and boldly kept it floating on the breeze until the War of the Revolution broke out.
PATRICK HENRY.
Heedless of the portentous warnings already given, the British ministry conceived another scheme for taxing the Americans. The famous Stamp Act was elaborated in council, discussed in parliament, and made a law by sanction of the king's signature in the spring of 1765. That act imposed certain duties upon every species of legal writing. It declared invalid and null every promissory note, deed, mortgage, bond, marriage license, business agreement, and every contract which was not written upon paper, vellum, or parchment impressed with the stamp of the imperial government. For these, fixed rates were stipulated. In this measure the Americans perceived another head of the Hydra, Despotism. The Writs of Assistance touched the interests of commercial men; the Stamp Act touched the interests of the whole people. The principle involved was the same in each; the practical effect of the latter was universally felt. Fierce was the tempest of indignation which followed the annunciation of its enactment, and throughout the colonies the hearts of the people beat as with one pulsation. Sectional differences were forgotten. The bold notes of defiance uttered in New England and New York were caught up and echoed with manifold vehemence in Virginia. Patrick Henry, the idle boy of Hanover, had just burst from the chrysalis of obscurity, and was enchanting his countrymen with the brilliancy of his eloquence. He had been but a few days a member of the Virginia House of Burgesses, when intelligence of the passage of the Stamp Act reached the Old Dominion. Upon a scrap of paper torn from the fly-leaf of an old copy of "Coke upon Littleton," he wrote those famous resolutions which formed the first positive gauntlet of defiance cast at the feet of the British monarch. The introduction of those resolutions startled the apathetic, alarmed the timid, surprised the boldest. With voice and mien almost superhuman in cadence and aspect, Henry defended them. In descanting upon the tyranny of the odious Act, he shook that assembly with alarm, and as he exclaimed in clear bell-tones of deepest meaning, "Cæsar had his Brutus—Charles the First his Cromwell, and George the Third—" cries of "Treason! Treason!" came from every part of the House. Henry faltered not for an instant; but rising to a loftier altitude, and fixing on the Speaker an eye of the most determined fire, he finished the sentence with vehement emphasis—"George the the Third—may profit by their example. If that be treason, make the most of it." The resolutions were adopted, and from that day Massachusetts and Virginia were the head and heart of the American Revolution.
We will not tarry to notice the various measures subsequently adopted by the British Government to tax the Americans without their consent, and the scenes of excitement which every where prevailed in the colonies. The taxes imposed were light, some of them almost nominal; the colonists complained only of the principle involved in the avowal of government, that it possessed the right to impose taxes without the consent of the governed. This was the issue, and both parties were unyielding. For ten years the people complained of wrongs, petitioned for redress, and suffered insults. They were forbearing, because they were fond of the name of Englishmen. The mother country was blind, not voluntarily wicked. The British ministry did not deliberately counsel the king to oppress his subjects, for he would have spurned such advice with indignation; yet the measures which they proposed, and which the king sanctioned, accomplished the ends of positive tyranny and oppression. Forbearance, at length, became no longer a virtue, and, turning their backs upon Great Britain, the Americans prepared for inevitable war. They understood the maxim of revolutionists, that "in union there is strength." A spontaneous desire for a continental council was every where manifested. Its proposition by the Massachusetts Assembly was warmly responded to. The people met in primary assemblies, appointed representatives, and on the 5th of September, 1774, forty-three delegates from twelve colonies assembled in convention, in Carpenter's Hall, Philadelphia. Others soon came, and the first Continental Congress began its labors.