BOOK XI. In America, where the people had been taught to regard the repeal as a hopeless proposition, the intelligence of its 1766. political consummation and actual prevalence produced a transport of mingled surprise, exultation, and gratitude. In the provincial assemblies, it was impossible that even those members who sympathized not in the general flow of enthusiastic sentiment, could decently refuse to unite in the expressions of it suggested by their colleagues: and, among the people at large, many who had more or less deliberately contemplated a perilous and sanguinary conflict, were unfeignedly rejoiced to behold this terrible extremity averted or retarded. Amidst the first emotions of surprise and pleasure, the alarming terms of the Declaratory Act were little heeded. The assembly of Massachusetts presented an address of grateful thanks to the king, in which they declared their apprehension that the Americans had been greatly misrepresented to his majesty, and injuriously reproached with aversion to the constitutional supremacy of the British legislature. Thanks were also voted to the royal ministers, and to Lord Camden, Pitt, Colonel Barré, and other individuals who had promoted the repeal or defended the Americans. Similar demonstrations occurred in New Hampshire. The assembly of Virginia voted that a statue of the king should be erected in this province: and in a general meeting of the inhabitants of Philadelphia, it was unanimously resolved" that to demonstrate our zeal to Great Britain, and our gratitude for the repeal of the Stamp Act, each of us will, on the 4th of June next, being the birth-day of our gracious sovereign, dress ourselves in a new suit of the manufactures of England, and give what homespun clothes we have to the poor." Professions of joy, gratitude, and attachment to Britain, equally loud and warm, and perhaps as sincere and deliberate, resounded through all the other American communities. And yet, even amidst the first warm gush of hope and exultation, was heard the voice of some enlightened or stubborn patriots who accounted the triumph of their countrymen, immoderate, disproportioned, and premature. Christopher Gadsden, of South Carolina, in particular, who had been a delegate from this province to the late convention, and was afterwards distinguished as a civil and military leader in the revolutionary struggle, hesitated not to I. 1766. assure his friends that the public hopes were fallacious; that CHA P. a permanent restoration of cordial friendship with Britain was impossible; and that it was madness on the part of America to remit her vigilance, or relax her preparation for a contest which must undoubtedly ensue. His views and sentiments were approved by those to whom they were communicated: and a secret association was formed to watch every suitable opportunity of acting in conformity with them. Mayhew, the Boston preacher, who has already attracted our notice, delivered a sermon in reference to the repeal of the Stamp Act, much more fraught with republican sentiment, than with incitements to loyal or pacific consideration. "Having been initiated in youth," said this political and polemical divine, "in the doctrines of civil liberty, as they were taught by such men as Plato, Demosthenes, Cicero, and other renowned persons among the ancients, and such as Sidney, Milton, Locke, and Hoadley, among the moderns,-I liked them: they seemed rational. And having learned from the holy scriptures that wise, brave, and virtuous men were always friends to liberty; that God gave the Israelites a king in his anger, because they had not sense and virtue enough to like a free commonwealth, and that liberty always flourishes where the Spirit of the Lord is imparted,—this made me conclude that freedom was a great blessing.' Thus ended the first act of that grand historic drama, the American Revolution. That it was the first, makes no slight addition to its importance. It was on that account the more fitted to convey a lesson which Britain might have seasonably and advantageously appropriated; as it showed thus early, with what determined spirit the Americans cherished the principles of liberty, in unison with their still remaining attachment to the parent state and her authority and institutions. The folly which she committed in totally neglecting this lesson, may be palliated, perhaps, by the consideration of those efforts which were made both by friends and by enemies of the Americans to disguise its real import, and of the fluctuating state of the British cabinet at this period, which was very unfavourable to deliberate and consistent councils. 1 Ann. Reg. for 1765 and for 1766. Franklin's Memoirs. Belknap. Gordon. Burk's Virginia. Ramsay. Bradford. Eliot. Rogers. CHAPTER II. Sentiments of the Americans. - Leading Politicians in America - Randolph — BOOK THE Controversy with regard to the Stamp Act ended as XI. some previous disputes between Britain and America had 1766. done, by an adjustment ill calculated to afford lasting satisfaction to either country, and leaving each in possession of pretensions denied by the other. It differed, indeed, from preceding disputes, in this important circumstance which was calculated to enhance the mischief of its imperfect adjustment, that instead of having been waged merely between a particular British cabinet or board of trade and a single American province, it had occupied the attention and aroused the interest of the great body of the people both in Britain and America. If Britain repealed the Stamp Act, it was not till after America had disobeyed it: and if she proclaimed by the Declaratory Act her pretension to the prerogative of taxing America, this was no more than the Stamp Act had already assumed and the resistance of America had practically refuted. Many persons in America considered the Declaratory Act as a mere empty homage to British pride, intended not to afford a handle for renewing the dispute but to disguise the mortification of defeat; and some proclaimed this conviction with a II. contemptuous openness that savoured more of hardihood than CHAP. of wisdom or moderation. The parliament had authoritatively condemned the independent sentiments expressed by the 1766. Americans, and the actual violence with which these sentiments had been supported: but the Americans were sensible that their language and conduct had been substantially successful, and had rendered the Stamp Act inefficacious long before its formal repeal. Britain had ultimately desisted from enforcing this act for reasons, real or pretended, of mercantile convenience: but America had first resisted and prevented its enforcement, on totally different grounds. Some persons might be interested to maintain, and some might be willing to believe that no actual resistance had been offered to the power of Britain, except by the transient rage of the poorest and most ignorant inhabitants of America: but no pretext or protestation could disguise the grand fact that a British statute had been deliberately disobeyed and rendered quite ineffectual in the scene of its application; and that during the whole period of the subsistence of the Stamp Act, not a sheet of stamped paper had been employed in America. The benefit conferred by the repeal of this statute, was rather the deliverance from an impending and dangerous civil war, than the removal of an actual burden. And hence, as well as for Sentiments other reasons, the joy produced in America by the repeal was of the much more lively than lasting. Pitt's remarkable words, "I ricans. rejoice that America has resisted," produced a far deeper and more permanent impression, which coincided with the reflection speedily arising, that Britain by the Declaratory Act had reserved to herself a pretext for renewing the quarrel at the first convenient opportunity, and had affixed an opprobrious stigma on the exertions to which America was substan 1 Yet the effect of this impression on the Americans was very much overvalued in England; where even the author of the celebrated Letters of Junius did not scruple to designate Pitt and Camden as the authors of American resistance. Their declaration," says the first of these letters which appeared in January, 1769, “gave spirit and argument to the colonies; and while, perhaps, they meant no more than the ruin of a minister, they in effect divided one-half of the empire from the other." Junius ascribes Pitt's vehement opposition to the Stamp Act, to a desire of driving Grenville from office. But Grenville had ceased to be minister before Pitt's opposition was exerted. Facts and dates are less entertaining but often more instructive than the most ingenious theories. Resistance was practised in America before it was defended in England. Ame XI. 1766. BOOK tially beholden, and to which she must again, in all probability, at no distant period be indebted for a similar deliverance. Besides, although the grievance of the commercial restrictions had been latterly, for politic reasons, but little insisted on by the Americans, the discontent occasioned by the aggravated pressure of these restrictions, had taken a very deep and wide root, and had greatly increased the acrimony with which the dispute respecting the Stamp Act had been conducted. Much irritation kindled by the commercial restrictions was vented in abuse of the Stamp Act: and this measure, consequently, in addition to its own intrinsic importance, acquired an adventitious interest which in the eyes of considerate persons, did not long survive its repeal. As the excitement produced by the sudden and unexpected cessation of peril subsided, the consideration arose that the repeal of an act which the Americans by their own spirit had previously rendered inoperative, was beneficial only to the resident population of Britain, by tending to restore the interrupted importation of British manufactures. All of pleasurable retrospect that was left for the Americans, was the exulting consciousness of the spirit which they had exerted, and which if a British parliament had condemned, at least Pitt and Camden had applauded: and this spirit, mingling with the discontent occasioned by the commercial restrictions, gave to the general current of sentiment and opinion throughout America, a bias very far from propitious to the authority of Great Britain. June. The intelligence of the Declaratory Act and the Act of Repeal, was followed by a circular letter from secretary Conway to the American governors, in which "the lenity and tenderness, the moderation and forbearance of the parliament towards the colonies" were celebrated in strains which touched no responsive chord in the bosoms of the Americans, who were farther required to show "their respectful gratitude and cheerful obedience in return for such a signal display of indulgence and affection." This letter also transmitted a resolution which had been passed by the British Parliament, adjudging "that those persons who had suffered any injury or damage in consequence of their assisting to execute the late act, should be compensated by the colonies in which such |