Congress: The Causes and Necessity of Taking Up Arms

John Dickinson and Thomas Jefferson drafted The Declaration of the Causes and Necessity of Taking Up Arms, issued July 6, 1775, by "The Representatives of the United Colonies of North-America, Now Met in Congress at Philadelphia." In Dickinson's hand is the first two thirds; in Jefferson's, the rousing conclusion. Apart from the Declaration of Independence, which advanced the case in a few particulars, this is the best statement of the American position in the controversy with Great Britain. 

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If it was possible for men, who exercise their reason to believe, that the divine Author of our existence intended a part of the human race to hold an absolute property in, and an unbounded power over others, marked out by his infinite goodness and wisdom, as the objects of a legal domination never rightfully resistible, however severe and oppressive, the inhabitants of these colonies might at least require from the parliament of Great-Britain some evidence, that this dreadful authority over them, has been granted to that body. But a reverance for our Creator, principles of humanity, and the dictates of common sense, must convince all those who reflect upon the subject, that government was instituted to promote the welfare of mankind, and ought to be administered for the attainment of that end. The legislature of Great-Britain, however, stimulated by an inordinate passion for a power not only unjustifiable, but which they know to be peculiarly reprobated by the very constitution of that kingdom, and desparate of success in any mode of contest, where regard should be had to truth, law, or right, have at length, deserting those, attempted to effect their cruel and impolitic purpose of enslaving these colonies by violence, and have thereby rendered it necessary for us to close with their last appeal from reason to arms. - Yet, however blinded that assembly may be, by their intemperate rage for unlimited domination, so to sight justice and the opinion of mankind, we esteem ourselves bound by obligations of respect to the rest of the world, to make known the justice of our cause.

Our forefathers, inhabitants of the island of Great-Britain, left their native land, to seek on these shores a residence for civil and religious freedom. At the expense of their blood, at the hazard of their fortunes, without the least charge to the country from which they removed, by unceasing labour, and an unconquerable spirit, they effected settlements in the distant and unhospitable wilds of America, then filled with numerous and warlike barbarians.—Societies or governments, vested with perfect legislatures, were formed under charters from the crown, and an harmonious intercourse was established between the colonies and the kingdom from which they derived their origin. The mutual benefits of this union became in a short time so extraordinary, as to excite astonishment. It is universally confessed, that the amazing increase of the wealth, strength, and navigation of the realm, arose from this source; and the minister, who so wisely and successfully directed the measures of Great-Britain in the late war, publicly declared, that these colonies enabled her to triumph over her enemies.—Towards the conclusion of that war, it pleased our sovereign to make a change in his counsels.—From that fatal movement, the affairs of the British empire began to fall into confusion, and gradually sliding from the summit of glorious prosperity, to which they had been advanced by the virtues and abilities of one man, are at length distracted by the convulsions, that now shake it to its deepest foundations.—The new ministry finding the brave foes of Britain, though frequently defeated, yet still contending, took up the unfortunate idea of granting them a hasty peace, and then subduing her faithful friends.

These devoted colonies were judged to be in such a state, as to present victories without bloodshed, and all the easy emoluments of statuteable plunder.—The uninterrupted tenor of their peaceable and respectful behaviour from the beginning of colonization, their dutiful, zealous, and useful services during the war, though so recently and amply acknowledged in the most honourable manner by his majesty, by the late king, and by parliament, could not save them from the meditated innovations.—Parliament was influenced to adopt the pernicious project, and assuming a new power over them, have in the course of eleven years, given such decisive specimens of the spirit and consequences attending this power, as to leave no doubt concerning the effects of acquiescence under it. They have undertaken to give and grant our money without our consent, though we have ever exercised an exclusive right to dispose of our own property; statutes have been passed for extending the jurisdiction of courts of admiralty and vice-admiralty beyond their ancient limits; for depriving us of the accustomed and inestimable privilege of trial by jury, in cases affecting both life and property; for suspending the legislature of one of the colonies; for interdicting all commerce to the capital of another; and for altering fundamentally the form of government established by charter, and secured by acts of its own legislature solemnly confirmed by the crown; for exempting the "murderers" of colonists from legal trial, and in effect, from punishment; for erecting in a neighbouring province, acquired by the joint arms of Great-Britain and America, a despotism dangerous to our very existence; and for quartering soldiers upon the colonists in time of profound peace. It has also been resolved in parliament, that colonists charged with committing certain offences, shall be transported to England to be tried.

But why should we enumerate our injuries in detail? By one statute it is declared, that parliament can "of right make laws to bind us in all cases whatsoever." What is to defend us against so enormous, so unlimited a power? Not a single man of those who assume it, is chosen by us; or is subject to our control or influence; but, on the contrary, they are all of them exempt from the operation of such laws, and an American revenue, if not diverted from the ostensible purposes for which it is raised, would actually lighten their own burdens in proportion, as they increase ours. We saw the misery to which such despotism would reduce us. We for ten years incessantly and ineffectually besieged the throne as supplicants; we reasoned, we remonstrated with parliament, in the most mild and decent language.

Administration sensible that we should regard these oppressive measures as freemen ought to do, sent over fleets and armies to enforce them. The indignation of the Americans was roused, it is true; but it was the indignation of a virtuous, loyal, and affectionate people. A Congress of delegates from the United Colonies was assembled at Philadelphia, on the fifth day of last September. We resolved again to offer an humble and dutiful petition to the King, and also addressed our fellow-subjects of Great-Britain. We have pursued every temperate, every respectful measure; we have even proceeded to break off our commercial intercourse with our fellow-subjects, as the last peaceable admonition, that our attachment to no nation upon earth should supplant our attachment to liberty.—This, we flattered ourselves, was the ultimate step of the controversy: but subsequent events have shewn, how vain was this hope of finding moderation in our enemies.

Several threatening expressions against the colonies were inserted in his majesty's speech; our petition, tho' we were told it was a decent one, and that his majesty had been pleased to receive it graciously, and to promise laying it before his parliament, was huddled into both houses among a bundle of American papers, and there neglected. The lords and commons in their address, in the month of February, said, that "a rebellion at that time actually existed within the province of Massachusetts-Bay; and that those concerned with it, had been countenanced and encouraged by unlawful combinations and engagements, entered into by his majesty's subjects in several of the other colonies; and therefore they besought his majesty, that he would take the most effectual measures to inforce due obediance to the laws and authority of the supreme legislature."—Soon  after, the commercial intercourse of whole colonies, with foreign countries, and with each other, was cut off by an act of parliament; by another several of them were intirely prohibited from the fisheries in the seas near their coasts, on which they always depended for their sustenance; and large reinforcements of ships and troops were immediately sent over to general Gage.

Fruitless were all the entreaties, arguments, and eloquence of an illustrious band of the most distinguished peers, and commoners, who nobly and strenuously asserted the justice of our cause, to stay, or even to mitigate the heedless fury with which these accumulated and unexampled outrages were hurried on.—equally fruitless was the interference of the city of London, of Bristol, and many other respectable towns in our favor. Parliament adopted an insidious manoeuvre calculated to divide us, to establish a perpetual auction of taxations where colony should bid against colony, all of them uninformed what ransom would redeem their lives; and thus to extort from us, at the point of the bayonet, the unknown sums that should be sufficient to gratify, if possible to gratify, ministerial rapacity, with the miserable indulgence left to us of raising, in our own mode, the prescribed tribute. What terms more rigid and humiliating could have been dictated by remorseless victors to conquered enemies? in our circumstances to accept them, would be to deserve them.

Soon after the intelligence of these proceedings arrived on this continent, general Gage, who in the course of the last year had taken possession of the town of Boston, in the province of Massachusetts-Bay, and still occupied it a garrison, on the 19th day of April, sent out from that place a large detachment of his army, who made an unprovoked assault on the inhabitants of the said province, at the town of Lexington, as appears by the affidavits of a great number of persons, some of whom were officers and soldiers of that detachment, murdered eight of the inhabitants, and wounded many others. From thence the troops proceeded in warlike array to the town of Concord, where they set upon another party of the inhabitants of the same province, killing several and wounding more, until compelled to retreat by the country people suddenly assembled to repel this cruel aggression. Hostilities, thus commenced by the British troops, have been since prosecuted by them without regard to faith or reputation.—The inhabitants of Boston being confined within that town by the general their governor, and having, in order to procure their dismission, entered into a treaty with him, it was stipulated that the said inhabitants having deposited their arms with their own magistrate, should have liberty to depart, taking with them their other effects. They accordingly delivered up their arms, but in open violation of honour, in defiance of the obligation of treaties, which even savage nations esteemed sacred, the governor ordered the arms deposited as aforesaid, that they might be preserved for their owners, to be seized by a body of soldiers; detained the greatest part of the inhabitants in the town, and compelled the few who were permitted to retire, to leave their most valuable effects behind.

By this perfidy wives are separated from their husbands, children from their parents, the aged and the sick from their relations and friends, who wish to attend and comfort them; and those who have been used to live in plenty and even elegance, are reduced to deplorable distress.

The general, further emulating his ministerial masters, by a proclamation bearing date on the 12th day of June, after venting the grossest falsehoods and calumnies against the good people of these colonies, proceeds to "declare them all, either by name or description, to be rebels and traitors, to supersede the course of the common law, and instead thereof to publish and order the use and exercise of the law martial."—His troops have butchered our countrymen, have wantonly burnt Charlestown, besides a considerable number of houses in other places; our ships and vessels are seized; the necessary supplies of provisions are intercepted, and he is exerting his utmost power to spread destruction and devastation around him.

We have received certain intelligence, that general Carleton, the governor of Canada, is instigating the people of that province and the Indians to fall upon us; and we have but too much reason to apprehend, that schemes have been formed to excite domestic enemies against us. In brief, a part of these colonies now feel, and all of them are sure of feeling, as far as the vengeance of administration can inflict them, the complicated calamities of fire, sword and famine. We are reduced to the alternative of chusing an unconditional submission to the tyranny of irritated ministers, or resistance by force.—The latter is our choice.—We have counted the cost of this contest, and find nothing so dreadful as voluntary slavery.—Honour, justice, and humanity, forbid us tamely to surrender that freedom which we received from our gallant ancestors, and which our innocent posterity have a right to receive from us. We cannot endure the infamy and guilt of resigning succeeding generations to that wretchedness which inevitably awaits them, if we basely entail hereditary bondage upon them.

Our cause is just. Our union is perfect. Our internal resources are great, and, if necessary, foreign assistance is undoubtedly attainable.—We gratefully acknowledge, as signal instances of the Divine favour towards us, that his Providence would not permit us to be called into this severe controversy, until we were grown up to our present strength, had been previously exercised in warlike operation, and possessed of the means of defending ourselves. With hearts fortified with these animating reflections, we most solemnly, before God and the world, declare, that, exerting the utmost energy of those powers, which our beneficent Creator hath graciously bestowed upon us, the arms we have been compelled by our enemies to assume, we will, in defiance of every hazard, with unabating firmness and perseverence, employ for the preservation of our liberties; being with one mind resolved to die freemen rather than to live slaves.

Lest this declaration should disquiet the minds of our friends and fellow-subjects in any part of the empire, we assure them that we mean not to dissolve that union which has so long and so happily subsisted between us, and which we sincerely wish to see restored.—Necessity has not yet driven us into that desperate measure, or induced us to excite any other nation to war against them.—We have not raised armies with ambitious designs of separating from Great-Britain, and establishing independent states. We fight not for glory or for conquest. We exhibit to mankind the remarkable spectacle of a people attacked by unprovoked enemies, without any imputation or even suspicion of offence. They boast of their privileges and civilization, and yet proffer no milder conditions than servitude or death.

In our own native land, in defence of the freedom that is our birthright, and which we ever enjoyed till the late violation of it—for the protection of our property, acquired solely by the honest industry of our fore-fathers and ourselves, against violence actually offered, we have taken up arms. We shall lay them down when hostilities shall cease on the part of the aggressors, and all danger of their being renewed shall be removed, and not before.

With an humble confidence in the mercies of the supreme and impartial Judge and Ruler of the Universe, we most devoutly implore his divine goodness to protect us happily through this great conflict, to dispose our adversaries to reconciliation on reasonable terms, and thereby to relieve the empire from the calamities of civil war.

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Documents Illustrative of the Formation of the Union of the American States, edited by Charles C. Tansill. (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1927), 10-17

Ferguson: The Case for War

Adam Ferguson, a member of the Republic of Letters and the distinguished author of Essay on the History of Civil Society (1767), supported the determination of the British government to repress the rebellion of the American colonies. His short speech in the House of Lords, in 1775, distills the basis of the government's policy. 

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That gentlemen should differ about some particular points of colony government, as, for example, how far it was expedient or inexpedient to tax America, considering how much that question was involved in difficulty, and how much could be plausibly said on the one side or the other, was not much to be wondered at: but it was matter of no small surprise to him, that they were still likely to differ in opinion, when the question was no longer confined to taxation, or to any particular exercise of the authority of Great Britain, but extended to the very being of the sovereignty itself, and to those rights of which this kingdom had been in possession ever since the existence of the colonies. The honourable magistrate who spoke last had said, that the congress had declared they did not aim at independence. They certainly had done so in general terms: but how did their particular claims correspond to this general assertion? He was afraid, if these were examined, it would appear that the pretensions of the congress went the length of a total exemption from the power and authority of parliament.

They had declared in the most express terms, that parliament had no right to intermeddle with their provisions for the support of civil government, or the administration of justice. Their language was, that while parliament pursued its plan of civil government within its own jurisdiction, they insisted upon pursuing theirs without molestation, plainly claiming an authority in each of the colony assemblies, exclusive of that parliament. An exclusive right of legislation in all matters of internal policy had been, in the most express terms, asserted by them, and not only the late acts of parliament more particularly complained of, but every other which touched upon the internal polity of the colonies, had been treated by them as unjust encroachments of parliament upon the rights of a legislature as independent as itself.

In military matters, their pretensions were equally extravagant. They expressly denied that Great Britain had a right to keep a single soldier in the whole extensive continent of America, without the consent of the legislature of that colony where the troops were kept. With regard to revenue, had not a declaration been made. in words intelligible to all mankind, that America never would be taxed by parliament, unless they refused to contribute their proportion to the common expences of the state? They even knew, that any reasonable sum would be accepted of; but they would not gratify this country so far as to say that they would contribute a single shilling. The only particular in which they seemed inclined to admit the authority of parliament was in what related to the regulation of their trade: even with regard to that, they expressed themselves with a sufficient degree of caution; but in every thing else they asserted an absolute independence on parliament.

In what manner things had been brought to that unhappy dilemma, did not seem the proper object of their present enquiry. The present object was to remedy the evil. Were he to give his opinion upon that subject, he should be apt to say, that no ministry, since the time of the Stamp-Act, had been altogether free of blame: but he should at the same time add, that, perhaps more than any ministry, those had been to blame, who, not satisfied with expressing their disapprobation of particular measures, had argued, both within and without doors, against the authority of the supreme legislature itself; who, from an excess of zeal in support of America, seemed too much to forget the interest of the mother-country; and, from an apprehension lest the colonies should be ruled with too heavy a hand, seemed inclined to adopt measures which had a tendency to exempt them from the dominion of Great Britain altogether, and to erect them into so many sovereign independent states.

But instead of investigating the causes of the evil, it was more material now to consider what was proper to be done to remedy it, and in this he saw but one choice, either to support with vigour the authority of Great Britain, or to abandon America altogether. Some speculative men have said, and published their opinions to the world, that it would be no such fatal stroke to Britain as is generally imagined, were America to be abandoned altogether: he had not opinion enough of his own foresight to say with certainty what the consequence would be, but so much benefit had he reaped from these speculations as to hope that the prosperity of Great Britain would not be desperate even were such an event to happen. But who would be bold enough to advise such a measure? and who could, with certainty, answer for the effects of it? If no person would, what remained, but that they should exert every nerve to reduce their rebellious subjects to obedience? After they had reduced them, and convinced them of their inability to resist the power of this country, then, and not till then, would be the time to shew them all possible indulgence. Any further concession now would be considered as extorted from them by their fears, not as the voluntary effect of their favour.

But can this country reduce them to obedience, or must the contest be given up for want of power? If it must, there is no help for it: but, at least, let us put it to the trial; for his own part, he could not entertain a doubt of it; he did, indeed, see that those were mistaken who said the Americans would not fight: but those were at least, as much mistaken, if there were any such, who would entertain a doubt of their being reduced by a proper exertion of the power of Great-Britain. As he could not doubt of the strength of Great Britain to reduce them, so he hoped if that strength was exerted it would be done effectually. If a force is sent to America, both prudence and humanity required that it should be such a one as, humanly speaking, would carry its point. The error hitherto had been to have too small a force there; to continue the same error still, was to protract the horrors of a civil war. He did not mean merely that such a force should be sent as would be sufficient to beat their opponents; it ought to be such a one as would deprive them of all idea of resistance.

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Parliamentary History of England, XV: 737-40, October 26, 1775, House of Lords.

Burke: On The Disutility of Force

Edmund Burke’s speech on conciliation with America is probably the greatest oration ever delivered in the English parliament. Given on March 22, 1775 in the House of Commons, it was a tour de force and an instant classic. Elsewhere I have excerpted the passages in his address explicating the sources of American freedom. Here he gives his main proposition of peace and answers the hardliners who wanted a showdown with refractory colonies. He unfolds a perceptive argument showing the disutility of force as a means of keeping the colonies subservient, urges a return to the “salutary neglect” governing American policy until 1763, and gives a profound exposition of the nature of Britain's imperial constitution. Only a British constitution that recognized colonial freedom, he argued, could keep the colonists within the empire.
 

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The PROPOSITION is peace. Not peace through the medium of war; not peace to be hunted through the labyrinth of intricate and endless negotiations; not peace to arise out of universal discord, fomented from principle, in all parts of the Empire; not peace to depend on the juridical determination of perplexing questions, or the precise marking the shadowy boundaries of a complex government. It is simple peace, sought in its natural course and its ordinary haunts. It is peace sought in the spirit of peace, and laid in principles purely pacific. I propose, by removing the ground of the difference, and by restoring the former unsuspecting confidence of the Colonies in the mother country, to give permanent satisfaction to your people; and, far from a scheme of ruling by discord, to reconcile them to each other in the same act, and by the bond of the very same interest, which reconciles them to British government.

My idea is nothing more. Refined policy ever has been the parent of confusion, and ever will be so long as the world endures. Plain good intention, which is as easily discovered at the first view as fraud is surely detected at last, is (let me say) of no mean force in the government of mankind. Genuine simplicity of heart is a healing and cementing principle. My plan, therefore, being formed upon the most simple grounds imaginable, may disappoint some people when they hear it. It has nothing to recommend it to the pruriency of curious ears. There is nothing at all new and captivating in it. It has nothing of the splendor of the project which has been lately laid upon your table by the noble lord in the blue ribbon [Lord North]. It does not propose to fill your lobby with squabbling colony agents, who will require the interposition of your mace at every instant to keep the peace among them. It does not institute a magnificent auction of finance, where captivated provinces come to general ransom by bidding against each other, until you knock down the hammer, and determine a proportion of payments beyond all the powers of algebra to equalize and settle.

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Burke goes on to describe the growth in American population, trade, and agriculture, arguing that it shows that England ought not “to trifle with so large a mass of the interests and feelings of the human race. You could at no time do so without guilt; and, be assured, you will not do it long with impunity.” The growth in American agricultural output meant that the old world had increasingly been fed by the new: “The scarcity which you have felt would have been a desolating famine, if this child of your old age, with a true filial piety, with a Roman charity, had not put the full breast of its youthful exuberance to the mouth of its exhausted parent.” All this before descanting on the exploits of New England fishermen:

Pray, sir, what in the world is equal to it? Pass by the other parts, and look at the manner in which the people of New England have of late carried on the whale fishery. While we follow them among the tumbling mountains of ice, and behold them penetrating into the deepest frozen recesses of Hudson’s Bay and Davis’ Straits—while we are looking for them beneath the arctic circle, we hear that they have pierced into the opposite region of polar cold—that they are at the antipodes, and engaged under the frozen Serpent of the south. Falkland Island, which seemed too remote and romantic an object for the grasp of national ambition, is but a stage and resting-place in the progress of their victorious industry.
 

Nor is the equinoctial heat more discouraging to them than the accumulated winter of both the poles. We know that while some of them draw the line, and strike the harpoon on the coast of Africa, others run the longitude, and pursue their gigantic game along the coast of Brazil. No sea but what is vexed by their fisheries. No climate that is not witness to their toils. Neither the perseverance of Holland, nor the activity of France, nor the dexterous and firm sagacity of English enterprise, ever carried this most perilous mode of hard industry to the extent to which it has been pushed by this recent people—a people who are still, as it were, but in the gristle, and not yet hardened into the bone of manhood. When I contemplate these things—when I know that the Colonies in general owe little or nothing to any care of ours, and that they are not squeezed into this happy form by the constraints of watchful and suspicious government, but that, through a wise and salutary neglect, a generous nature has been suffered to take her own way to perfection—when I reflect upon these effects—when I see how profitable they have been to us, I feel all the pride of power sink, and all presumption in the wisdom of human contrivances melt and die away within me. My rigor relents. I pardon something to the spirit of liberty.

I am sensible, sir, that all which I have asserted in my detail is admitted in the gross; but that quite a different conclusion is drawn from it. America, gentlemen say, is a noble object. It is an object well worth fighting for. Certainly it is, if fighting a people be the best way of gaining them.

First, sir, permit me to observe, that the use of force alone is but temporary. It may subdue for a moment, but it does not remove the necessity of subduing again; and a nation is not governed which is perpetually to be conquered.

My next objection is its uncertainty. Terror is not always the effect of force; and an armament is not a victory. If you do not succeed, you are without resource; for, conciliation failing, force remains; but, force failing, no further hope of reconciliation is left. Power and authority are sometimes bought by kindness but they can never be begged as alms by an impoverished and defeated violence.

A further objection to force is, that you impair the object by your very endeavors to preserve it. The thing you fought for is not the thing which you recover; but depreciated, sunk, wasted, and consumed in the contest. Nothing less will content me than whole America. I do not choose to consume its strength along with our own, because in all parts it is the British strength that I consume. I do not choose to be caught by a foreign enemy at the end of this exhausting conflict, and still less in the midst of it. I may escape; but I can make no insurance against such an event. Let me add, that I do not choose wholly to break the American spirit, because it is the spirit that has made the country.

These, sir, are my reasons for not entertaining that high opinion of untried force, by which many gentlemen, for whose sentiments in other particulars I have great respect, seem to be so greatly captivated.

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Burke subsequently explores the sources of American’s love of freedom (see here), buttressing his view that changing the temper and character of the colonies was impossible:

We can not, I fear, falsify the pedigree of this fierce people, and persuade them that they are not sprung from a nation in whose veins the blood of freedom circulates. The language in which they would hear you tell them this tale would detect the imposition. Your speech would betray you. An Englishman is the unfittest person on earth to argue another Englishman into slavery.

I think it is nearly as little in our power to change their republican religion as their free descent; or to substitute the Roman Catholic as a penalty, or the Church of England as an improvement. The mode of inquisition and dragooning is going out of fashion in the Old World, and I should not confide much to their efficacy in the new. The education of the Americans is also on the same unalterable bottom with their religion. You can not persuade them to burn their books of curious science; to banish their lawyers from their courts of law; or to quench the lights of their assemblies, by refusing to choose those persons who are best read in their privileges. It would be no less impracticable to think of wholly annihilating the popular assemblies in which these lawyers sit. The army, by which we must govern in their place, would be far more chargeable to us; not quite so effectual; and perhaps, in the end, fully as difficult to be kept in obedience.

But let us suppose all these moral difficulties got over. The ocean remains. You can not pump this dry; and as long as it continues in its present bed, so long all the causes which weaken authority by distance will continue.

	“Ye gods! annihilate but space and time,
	And make two lovers happy!”

was a pious and passionate prayer, but just as reasonable as many of these serious wishes of very grave and solemn politicians. If, then, sir, it seems almost desperate to think of any alternative course for changing the moral causes (and not quite easy to remove the natural) which produce the prejudices irreconcilable to the late exercise of our authority, but that the spirit infallibly will continue, and, continuing, will produce such effects as now embarrass us, the second mode under consideration is to prosecute that spirit in its overt acts as criminal.

At this proposition I must pause a moment. The thing seems a great deal too big for my ideas of jurisprudence. It should seem, to my way of conceiving such matters, that there is a very wide difference in reason and policy between the mode of proceeding on the irregular conduct of scattered individuals, or even of bands of men, who disturb order within the State, and the civil dissensions which may, from time to time, on great questions, agitate the several communities which compose a great empire. It looks to me to be narrow and pedantic to apply the ordinary ideas of criminal justice to this great public contest. I do not know the method of drawing up an indictment against a whole people. I can not insult and ridicule the feelings of millions of my fellow creatures, as Sir Edward Coke insulted one excellent individual at the bar. I am not ripe to pass sentence on the gravest public bodies, intrusted with magistracies of great authority and dignity, and charged with the safety of their fellow citizens, upon the very same title that I am. I really think that, for wise men, this is not judicious; for sober men, not decent; for minds tinctured with humanity, not mild and merciful.

Perhaps, sir, I am mistaken in my idea of an empire, as distinguished from a single state or kingdom. But my idea of it is this: that an empire is the aggregate of many states, under one common head, whether this head be a monarch or a presiding republic. It does, in such constitutions, frequently happen (and nothing but the dismal, cold, dead uniformity of servitude can prevent its happening) that the subordinate parts have many local privileges and immunities. Between these privileges and the supreme common authority, the line may be extremely nice. Of course, disputes—often, too, very bitter disputes, and much ill blood, will arise. But, tho every privilege is an exemption, in the case, from the ordinary exercise of the supreme authority, it is no denial of it. The claim of a privilege seems rather, ex vi termini, to imply a superior power; for to talk of the privileges of a state or of a person who has no superior, is hardly any better than speaking nonsense.

Now, in such unfortunate quarrels among the component parts of a great political union of communities, I can scarcely conceive anything more completely imprudent than for the head of the Empire to insist that, if any privilege is pleaded against his will or his acts, that his whole authority is denied; instantly to proclaim rebellion, to beat to arms, and to put the offending Provinces under the ban. Will not this, sir, very soon teach the Provinces to make no distinctions on their part? Will it not teach them that the government against which a claim of liberty is tantamount to high treason, is a government to which submission is equivalent to slavery? It may not always be quite convenient to impress dependent communities with such an idea.

We are, indeed, in all disputes with the Colonies, by the necessity of things, the judge. It is true, sir; but I confess that the character of judge in my own cause is a thing that frightens me. Instead of filling me with pride, I am exceedingly humbled by it. I can not proceed with a stern, assured, judicial confidence, until I find myself in something more like a judicial character. I must have these hesitations as long as I am compelled to recollect that, in my little reading upon such contests as these, the sense of mankind has at least as often decided against the superior as the subordinate power. Sir, let me add, too, that the opinion of my having some abstract right in my favor would not put me much at my ease in passing sentence, unless I could be sure that there were no rights which in their exercise under certain circumstances, were not the most odious of all wrongs, and the most vexatious of all injustice. Sir, these considerations have great weight with me, when I find things so circumstanced that I see the same party at once a civil litigant against me in point of right and a culprit before me: while I sit as criminal judge on acts of his whose moral quality is to be decided on upon the merits of that very litigation. Men are every now and then put, by the complexity of human affairs, into strange situations; but justice is the same, let the judge be in what situation he will.

In this situation, let us seriously and coolly ponder. What is it we have got by all our menaces, which have been many and ferocious? What advantage have we derived from the penal laws we have passed, and which, for the time, have been severe and numerous? What advances have we made toward our object by the sending of a force which, by land and sea, is no contemptible strength? Has the disorder abated? Nothing less. When I see things in this situation, after such confident hopes, bold promises, and active exertions, I can not, for my life, avoid a suspicion that the plan itself is not correctly right.

If, then, the removal of the causes of this spirit of American liberty be, for the greater part, or rather entirely, impracticable; if the ideas of criminal process be inapplicable, or, if applicable, are in the highest degree inexpedient, what way yet remains? No way is open but the third and last—to comply with the American spirit as necessary, or, if you please, to submit to it as a necessary evil.

If we adopt this mode, if we mean to conciliate and concede, let us see, of what nature the concessions ought to be. To ascertain the nature of our concession, we must look at their complaint. The Colonies complain that they have not the characteristic mark and seal of British freedom. They complain that they are taxed in Parliament in which they are not represented. If you mean to satisfy them at all, you must satisfy them with regard to this complaint. If you mean to please any people, you must give them the boon which they ask; not what you may think better for them, but of a kind totally different. Such an act may be a wise regulation, but is no concession, whereas our present theme is the mode of giving satisfaction.

The question with me is, not whether you have a right to render your people miserable, but whether it is not your interest to make them happy. It is not what a lawyer tells me I may do, but what humanity, reason, and justice tell me I ought to do. Is a politic act the worse for being a generous one? Is no concession proper but that which is made from your want of right to keep what you grant? Or does it lessen the grace or dignity of relaxing in the exercise of an odious claim, because you have your evidence-room full of titles, and your magazines stuffed with arms to enforce them?

Such is steadfastly my opinion of the absolute necessity of keeping up the concord of this Empire by a unity of spirit, tho in a diversity of operations, that, if I were sure the Colonists had, at their leaving this country, sealed a regular compact of servitude; that they had solemnly abjured all the rights of citizens; that they had made a vow to renounce all ideas of liberty for them and their posterity to all generations, yet I should hold myself obliged to conform to the temper I found universally prevalent in my own day, and to govern two millions of men, impatient of servitude, on the principles of freedom. I am not determining a point of law. I am restoring tranquillity, and the general character and situation of a people must determine what sort of government is fitted for them. That point nothing else can or ought to determine.

My idea, therefore, without considering whether we yield as matter of right, or grant as matter of favor, is to admit the people of our Colonies into an interest in the Constitution, and, by recording that admission in the journals of Parliament, to give them as strong an assurance as the nature of the thing will admit, that we mean for ever to adhere to that solemn declaration of systematic indulgence. . . .

* * *

Burke explores the ways and means of settling the revenue question and reducing other causes of asperity. Then comes his rousing conclusion. 

My hold of the Colonies is in the close affection which grows from common names, from kindred blood, from similar privileges, and equal protection. These are ties which, tho light as air, are as strong as links of iron. Let the Colonies always keep the idea of their civil rights associated with your government; they will cling and grapple to you, and no force under heaven will be of power to tear them from their allegiance. But let it be once understood that your government may be one thing, and their privileges another; that these two things may exist without any mutual relation; the cement is gone; the cohesion is loosened; and everything hastens to decay and dissolution.

As long as you have the wisdom to keep the sovereign authority of this country as the sanctuary of liberty, the sacred temple consecrated to our common faith; wherever the chosen race and sons of England worship Freedom, they will turn their faces toward you. The more they multiply, the more friends you will have. The more ardently they love liberty, the more perfect will be their obedience. Slavery they can have anywhere. It is a weed that grows in every soil. They may have it from Spain; they may have it from Prussia; but, until you become lost to all feeling of your true interest and your natural dignity, freedom they can have from none but you. This is the commodity of price, of which you have the monopoly. This is the true Act of Navigation, which binds to you the commerce of the Colonies, and through them secures to you the wealth of the world. Deny them this participation of freedom, and you break that sole bond which originally made, and must still preserve, the unity of the Empire. Do not entertain so weak an imagination as that your registers and your bonds, your affidavits and your sufferances, your cockets and your clearances, are what form the great securities of your commerce. Do not dream that your letters of office, and your instructions, and your suspending clauses, are the things that hold together the great contexture of this mysterious whole. These things do not make your government. Dead instruments, passive tools as they are, it is the spirit of the English communion that gives all their life and efficacy to them. It is the spirit of the English Constitution, which, infused through the mighty mass, pervades, feeds, unites, invigorates, vivifies every part of the empire, even down to the minutest member.

All this, I know well enough, will sound wild and chimerical to the profane herd of those vulgar and mechanical politicians, who have no place among us; a sort of people who think that nothing exists but what is gross and material, and who, therefore, far from being qualified to be directors of the great movement of empire, are not fit to turn a wheel in the machine. But to men truly initiated and rightly taught, these ruling and master principles, which, in the opinion of such men as I have mentioned, have no substantial existence, are in truth everything and all in all. Magnanimity in politics is not seldom the truest wisdom; and a great empire and little minds go ill together. If we are conscious of our situation, and glow with zeal to fill our place as becomes our station and ourselves, we ought to auspicate all our public proceeding on America with the old warning of the Church, sursum corda! We ought to elevate our minds to the greatness of that trust to which the order of Providence has called us. By adverting to the dignity of this high calling, our ancestors have turned a savage wilderness into a glorious empire, and have made the most extensive and the only honorable conquests not by destroying, but by promoting, the wealth, the number, the happiness of the human race. Let us get an American revenue as we have got an American empire. English privileges have made it all that it is; English privileges alone will make it all that it can be.

 ***

 

Edmund Burke, On Conciliation with America, March 22, 1775, William Jennings Bryan, ed., The World's Greatest Orations, Vol VI.

Smith: Illusions of Empire

These passages are drawn from the concluding section of The Wealth of Nations. Smith notes that the American colonists are obligated in justice to contribute to the public debts Britain acquired in their behalf, and he is convinced that everything will fall to pieces in America in the absence of Britain's protective hand. He wants the Americans to contribute; if that were impracticable, however, Britain would have to awake from her golden dream. If the project of empire could not be completed, it ought to be given up.

* * *

It is not contrary to justice that both Ireland and America should contribute towards the discharge of the public debt of Great Britain. That debt has been contracted in support of the government established by the Revolution, a government to which the Protestants of Ireland owe, not only the whole authority which they at present enjoy in their own country, but every security which they possess for their liberty, their property, and their religion; a government to which several of the colonies of America owe their present charters, and consequently their present constitution, and to which all the colonies of America owe the liberty, security, and property which they have ever since enjoyed. That public debt has been contracted in the defence, not of Great Britain alone, but of all the different provinces of the empire; the immense debt contracted in the late war in particular, and a great part of that contracted in the war before, were both properly contracted in defence of America. . . .

No oppressive aristocracy has ever prevailed in the colonies. Even they, however, would, in point of happiness and tranquility, gain considerably by a union with Great Britain. It would, at least, deliver them from those rancorous and virulent factions which are inseparable from small democracies, and which have so frequently divided the affections of their people, and disturbed the tranquillity of their governments, in their form so nearly democratical. In the case of a total separation from Great Britain, which, unless prevented by a union of this kind, seems very likely to take place, those factions would be ten times more virulent than ever. Before the commencement of the present disturbances, the coercive power of the mother country had always been able to restrain those factions from breaking out into anything worse than gross brutality and insult. If that coercive power were entirely taken away, they would probably soon break out into open violence and bloodshed. In all great countries which are united under one uniform government, the spirit of party commonly prevails less in the remote provinces than in the centre of the empire. The distance of those provinces from the capital, from the principal seat of the great scramble of faction and ambition, makes them enter less into the views of any of the contending parties, and renders them more indifferent and impartial spectators of the conduct of all. The spirit of party prevails less in Scotland than in England. In the case of a union it would probably prevail less in Ireland than in Scotland, and the colonies would probably soon enjoy a degree of concord and unanimity at present unknown in any part of the British empire. Both Ireland and the colonies, indeed, would be subjected to heavier taxes than any which they at present pay. In consequence, however, of a diligent and faithful application of the public revenue towards the discharge of the national debt, the greater part of those taxes might not be of long continuance, and the public revenue of Great Britain might soon be reduced to what was necessary for maintaining a moderate peace establishment. . . .

If it should be found impracticable for Great Britain to draw any considerable augmentation of revenue from any of the resources above mentioned, the only resource which can remain to her is a diminution of her expence. In the mode of collecting and in that of expending the public revenue, though in both there may be still room for improvement, Great Britain seems to be at least as œconomical as any of her neighbours. The military establishment which she maintains for her own defence in time of peace is more moderate than that of any European state which can pretend to rival her either in wealth or in power. None of those articles, therefore, seem to admit of any considerable reduction of expence. The expence of the peace establishment of the colonies was, before the commencement of the present disturbances, very considerable, and is an expence which may, and if no revenue can be drawn from them ought certainly to be saved altogether. This constant expence in time of peace, though very great, is insignificant in comparison with what the defence of the colonies has cost us in time of war. The last war, which was undertaken altogether on account of the colonies, cost Great Britain, it has already been observed, upwards of ninety millions. The Spanish war of 1739 was principally undertaken on their account, in which, and in the French war that was the consequence of it, Great Britain spent upwards of forty millions, a great part of which ought justly to be charged to the colonies. In those two wars the colonies cost Great Britain much more than double the sum which the national debt amounted to before the commencement of the first of them. Had it not been for those wars that debt might, and probably would by this time, have been completely paid; and had it not been for the colonies, the former of those wars might not, and the latter certainly would not have been undertaken. It was because the colonies were supposed to be provinces of the British empire that this expence was laid out upon them. But countries which contribute neither revenue nor military force towards the support of the empire cannot be considered as provinces. They may perhaps be considered as appendages, as a sort of splendid and showy equipage of the empire. But if the empire can no longer support the expence of keeping up this equipage, it ought certainly to lay it down; and if it cannot raise its revenue in proportion to its expence, it ought, at least, to accommodate its expence to its revenue. If the colonies, notwithstanding their refusal to submit to British taxes, are still to be considered as provinces of the British empire, their defence in some future war may cost Great Britain as great an expence as it ever has done in any former war. The rulers of Great Britain have, for more than a century past, amused the people with the imagination that they possessed a great empire on the west side of the Atlantic. This empire, however, has hitherto existed in imagination only. It has hitherto been, not an empire, but the project of an empire; not a gold mine, but the project of a gold mine; a project which has cost, which continues to cost, and which, if pursued in the same way as it has been hitherto, is likely to cost, immense expence, without being likely to bring any profit; for the effects of the monopoly of the colony trade, it has been shown, are, to the great body of the people, mere loss instead of profit. It is surely now time that our rulers should either realize this golden dream, in which they have been indulging themselves, perhaps, as well as the people, or that they should awake from it themselves, and endeavour to awaken the people. If the project cannot be completed, it ought to be given up. If any of the provinces of the British empire cannot be made to contribute towards the support of the whole empire, it is surely time that Great Britain should free herself from the expence of defending those provinces in time of war, and of supporting any part of their civil or military establishments in time of peace, and endeavour to accommodate her future views and designs to the real mediocrity of her circumstances.

Tucker: On Giving Up the Empire

Of all the contemporary writers on the imperial crisis dividing Great Britain from its American colonies, none was more perceptive than Josiah Tucker, Dean of Gloucester Cathedral. Scarcely remembered, and in any case overshadowed by the great luminaries of the age such as Burke, Smith, Hume, and Gibbon,  Tucker’s writings brilliantly illuminated the nature of the crisis and what, for Britain, was the only possible solution. His two best productions—“The True Interest of Great Britain Set Forth in Regard to the Colonies; And the Only Means of Living in Peace and Harmony with them” (1774) and “A Letter to Edmund Burke” (1775)—are both available online; perversely, the only modern edition of Tucker’s writings, published by Routledge in 1993, retails at over $1500, as if there were some cosmic conspiracy to keep his light from our besotted generation.

Both when I first approached the subject as a graduate student, and then again when I took up the subject in preparation for Peace Pact, I was struck by Tucker’s perspicacity and wit. There follows an extended extract from Peace Pact (without the notes) summarizing Tucker’s outlook on the American crisis: 

* * *

Tucker was as emphatic as Burke on the disutility of force. He conceded that the government, if it acted speedily, “might prevail, and America, however unwilling, be forced to submit.” But the blood and treasure that would be spent in that eventuality, the damage to commerce and manufactures that a hostile spirit would produce, and the impossibility of maintaining “a Superiority in it afterwards for any Length of Time” all argued for the absurdity of the attempt. In the event of a successful war, Britain would face the alternative of “permitting the Colonies to enjoy once more those Advantages of English Liberty, and of an English Constitution, which they had forfeited; or else a Resolution to govern them for the future by arbitrary Sway and despotic Power.” Tucker showed either alternative to be inadmissible, lamenting in the latter case the “baleful Influence this Government a la Prusse would have on every other Part of the British Empire” and in the former the return to the very situation—their ungovernability—the use of force was expected to resolve.

Tucker also rejected the idea of combining colonial representation in Parliament for the purpose of incorporating “America and Great-Britain into one common Empire.” Far from “proving a Means of Reconciliation, and a Center of Union,” the measure would instead “have a Tendency to beget endless Jealousies, Quarrels, and Divisions, between the Mother-Country and the Colonies.”  Tucker saw two great difficulties from this measure: it would, in the first place, import into the British constitution doctrines of representation that would be inimical to the right understanding of parliamentary duty. Tucker shared with Burke and Whately the view that a member of Parliament was obliged to “to take Care of the Interests of all the People in general,” and that he could not, consistently with that duty, “pay any Deference to the Request, Instruction, Remonstrance, or Memorial, of his particular Electors, except in such Cases only herein he is convinced in his Conscience, that the Measures, which they require him to pursue, are not incompatible with the public Good.” Instructions sent by sovereign bodies were characteristic of diplomatic assemblies, but a similar procedure in the case of Parliaments threatened basic values of deliberation for the sake of an acknowledged common good; it seemed plain to Tucker that American notions of representation would challenge the normative order of the British Parliament and perhaps lead subjects at home into disobedience to the laws (since they had not, after all, actually consented to them).

Tucker’s second objection was directed against the assumption that colonial representation in Parliament would establish the legitimacy of parliamentary measures over America. That sanguine view ignored the evident difficulties of dividing powers between the national Parliament and colonial legislatures, based on what was external and internal, and what general and provincial: “who is to judge between the British Parliament and the Provincial Assemblies” when conflicts arose, as they surely would? The “very same Things justly pass under both Denominations, according as they are seen from different Points of View.”  Barracks and fortresses necessary for defense were of a general nature, yet from another view every barrack might be denominated “as an odious Badge of slavery,” and every magazine “a Monument of Tyranny and despotic power, and Prerogative for destroying the few Liberties that were left.”

The proposals for colonial representation in Parliament had carried with them the evident implication, occasionally acknowledged, that “America should become the general Seat of the Empire.” Tucker was at his most mischievous in showing the absurdity of this scheme. “[W]hatever Events may be in the Womb of Time, or whatever Revolutions may happen in the Rise and Fall of Empires, there is not the least Probability, that this Country should ever become a Province to North-America.” The English would rather be governed by the French than the Americans. He acknowledged that his foresight was limited, but thought “this Island would rather gravitate towards the Continent of Europe, than towards the Continent of America; unless indeed we should add one Extravagance to another, by supposing that these American Heroes are to conquer all the World. And in that Case I do allow, that England must become a Province to America.”  There was, in fact, as much probability of America governing England, as England governing America, and his demonstration of the impossibility of the one gave strength to his condemnation of the other. Having surveyed the extant options, and readily shown the defects of them all, Tucker arrived at his astonishing conclusion: “For if we neither can govern the Americans, nor be governed by them; if we can neither unite with them, nor ought to subdue them;—what remains, but to part with them on as friendly Terms as we can?” Those terms were to declare “them to be a free and independent People, over whom we lay no Claim” and to offer “to guarantee this Freedom and Independence against all foreign Invaders whatever.” The relationship would be reconstructed on the basis of mutual interest and beneficial exchange rather than obedience.

Tucker disposed readily of the proposition that the surrender of sovereignty would mean the sacrifice of the American trade. The reverse was true. The British could have it when it was in the interest of the Americans to do so, and those were, as a practical matter, the very terms on which they enjoyed it now. Besides, there was no better motive for denying Great Britain a trade prompted by interest than the injuries and retaliations incident to a war. Britain had already “become a Kind of a general Mart” for most commodities, and from an economic perspective it was clear that the colonies could not “trade with any other European State to greater Advantage than they can with Great-Britain.” As for fears that the French would take possession of the Colonies, Tucker deemed them “very wild, very extravagant, and absurd.”  The notion supposed that the colonists, “who cannot brook our Government, would like a French one much better,” and that “our mild and limited Government, where Prerogative is ascertained by Law, where every Man is at  Liberty to seek for Redress, and where popular Clamours too often carry every Thing before them,—is nevertheless too severe, too oppressive, and too tyrannical for the Spirits and Genius of Americans to bear; and therefore they will apply to an arbitrary, despotic Government” for their remedy. It was not only that the Americans would not submit to this inglorious yoke; the French themselves should certainly think thrice about it. Could an arbitrary government, Tucker asked, “dispose with such Liberties as a republican Spirit will require”? Could it incorporate, and still remain itself, “An absolute Freedom of the Press! No controul on the Liberty either of Speaking or Writing on Matters of State! Newspapers and Pamphlets filled with the bitterrest invectives against the Measures of Government! Associations formed in every Quarter to cry down Ministerial Hirelings, and their Dependents! The Votes and Resolutions of the Provincial Assemblies to assert their own Authority and Independence! No landing of Troops from Old France to quell Insurrections! No raising of new Levies in America! No quartering of Troops! No Building of Forts, or erecting of Garrisons!” All this fun was to show that France could not turn the balance of power in her favor by seeking dominion over the colonies; at all events, Great Britain, with her superior marine, would have in her hands the means to prevent such an acquisition if it seemed that a revival of French ambitions in America “would really and truly be an Addition of Strength in the political Balance and Scale of Power.”

Tucker’s sketch of the consequences such an abdication would have on the political relations between Great Britain and the American states emphasized the parlous unity of the colonials.  “The Moment a Separation takes Effect,” he wrote, “intestine Quarrels will begin: For it is well known, that the Seeds of Discord and Dissention between Province and Province are now ready to shoot forth; and that they are only kept down by the present Combination of all the Colonies against us, whom they unhappily fancy to be their common enemy.” Renounce the claim of authority, and “the weaker Provinces will intreat our Protection against the stronger; and the less cautious against the more crafty and designing.” Tucker’s vision of Great Britain serving, in effect, as the holder of the balance in America, and being found useful by Americans as “their general Umpires and Referees,” was a highly plausible projection from his line of policy, and bore out his larger argument that the renunciation of all authority over the Americans would actually increase rather than diminish British influence with them. That it would have had momentous consequences for the political structures that emerged in North America after 1776 seems evident, for the centripetal forces operating on the American states after that date were almost all owing to the exigencies, oaths, sacrifices, and common institutions that emerged from the vortex of the War of Independence.  That struggle cast its shadows long after its thunders were hushed in peace. For a generation and more, the great thing that Americans could agree on, when they could agree on almost nothing else, was that the British state, led by wicked and designing ministers, had conducted an infamous attack against the liberties of the American colonies. The development of the American union and the sentiment of American nationalism was bound part and parcel with the divorce from the British nation, and from the bitter passions that engendered.

Tucker shared in many respects Burke’s appreciation of “the spirit of liberty” that animated the American colonists, though he readily distinguished, as all observers did, between the northern and southern continental colonies. Burke had attributed that spirit in northern colonies to their religion. While all varieties of the Protestant religion were “a sort of dissent,” New England offered a refinement on this principle: it was “the dissidence of dissent and the Protestantism of the Protestant religion.” In the southern colonies, by contrast, where “the Church of England forms a large body and has a regular establishment,” the “spirit of liberty” was “still more high and haughty” than in the north. . . . [see here]

Tucker accepted this basic portrait, though he reminded Burke that the first settlers in New England, conceiving “that Dominion was founded in Grace,” were of that strain of Republicans who thought “that they had the best Right in the World both to tax, and to persecute the Ungodly. And they did both, as soon as they got Power into their Hands, in the most open and atrocious manner.” Tucker acknowledged that the “present Dissenters in North-America retain very little of the peculiar Tenets of their Fore-fathers, excepting their Antipathy to our established Religion, and their Zeal to pull down all Orders in Church and State, if found to be superior to their own.” But these surviving traits raised strong doubts over the desirability of continuing “a Connection with a People who are actuated by Principles so very repugnant to our own Constitution both in Church and State, and so diametrically opposite to the Spirit of the Gospel.” The Puritans of Massachusetts, wrote Tucker, were “universally Calvinists of the most inflexible Sort” and professed enemies to popery and Arminiamism, yet they were “no Enemies to religious Establishments.” On the contrary, “their great Aim was, to establish the solemn League and Covenant, as the only System which ought to be admitted into a Christian State. Nor would they have suffered any other religious Persuasion to have existed, if they could have prevented it.”  Though all in favor of “pulling down proud and lordly Prelacy,” they were “most indefatigable in erecting Classes, and Synods, and Elderships, in the genuine Spirit of High-Church, Presbyterian Hierarchy, and armed with the Terrors and Powers of an Inquisition. In short, their Aim was to establish a republican Form of Government built on republican Principles both in Church and State. But, like all other Republicans ancient and modern, they were extremely averse from granting any Portion of that Liberty to others, which they claimed to themselves as their unalienable Birth-Right.” Tucker thought that justice and policy required “That each Religious Persuasion ought to have a full Toleration from the State to worship Almighty God, according to the Dictates of their own Consciences,” but did not think that the Church of England would suffer in the colonies in the event of independence. Noting the “Persecution which the Church of England daily suffers in America, by being denied those Rights which every other Sect of Christians so amply enjoys,” Tucker attributed it to the fact that “The Americans have taken it into their Heads to believe, that an Episcopate would operate as some further Tie upon them” and would be “used as an Engine, under the Masque of Religion, to rivet those Chains, which they imagine we are forging for them.” Were the mother country to surrender its authority, “all their Fears will vanish away, and their Panics be at an End.”  And so it did indeed prove to be.

Nor did Tucker dispute Burke’s contention that the American’s “ungovernable Spirit” of liberty was derived, in the southern colonies, from the “Domination of the Masters over their Slaves.” “For it seems, he that is a Tyrant over his Inferiors is, of Course, a Patriot, and a Leveller in respect to his Superiors.” Tucker did not let pass the opportunity of condemning the institution of “domestic or predial” slavery: it was “the most onerous and expensive Mode of cultivating Land, and of raising Produce, that could be devised.” Much to be preferred, in point of economy and morality, was “the Method of hiring free Persons, and paying them wages,” a fact that demonstrated that the “Laws of Commerce, when rightly understood, do perfectly coincide with the Laws of Morality.”  But his larger point was that the very spirit that made slave-masters “haughty, insolent, and imperious in private Life” also made them “turbulent and factious in respect to the Public.” Republican governments, whether ancient or modern, were consequently “the most insolent and tyrannical upon Earth;” their subjects retained “less of Liberty, both in Form and Substance, than most of the Subjects even of monarchical Governments.” It was useless to appease such people in the hope of keeping them within the British Empire, and all the characteristics to which Burke had pointed in showing the necessity of governing them mildly showed to Tucker, and not unreasonably, that the British could not govern them at all. A man, he said, must have a high opinion of his eloquence who should think he should bind these “High Mightinesses” further than they wished to be bound.

Tucker’s animadversions on the American character, though unkind, were not terribly unjust. The levelling, intolerant, and fanatical ways of New Englanders, imbibed from their Puritan fathers; the haughty, insolent, and imperious ways of the southern gentleman, molded from birth by the institution of slavery—these cultural traits were not only real but also showed little sign of disappearing. Though Tucker took perverse delight in dwelling on the “refractory Behavior” of the colonies, he was far from charging them “with being Sinners above others.” On the contrary, it was the nature of all colonies “to aspire after Independence, and to set up for themselves as soon as ever they find that they are able to subsist, without being beholden to the Mother-Country. And if our Americans have expressed themselves sooner on this Head than others have done, or in a more direct and daring Manner, this ought not to be imputed to any greater Malignity, or Ingratitude in them, than in others, but to that bold free Constitution, which is the Prerogative and Boast of us all.” Employing the familial analogy so characteristic of discourse on the empire, Tucker recognized that America had come of age; for the parents to continue treating the young man like a child would simply confirm him in his childish behavior. Better to throw him out, and then re-establish the relationship on the basis of equal respect and mutual interest.

In terms of immediate policy, Tucker was not as far from Burke as his polemic might indicate. When Burke made his plea for peace—“Not Peace thro’ the Medium of War; not Peace to be hunted thro’ the Labyrinths of intricate and endless Negociations; not Peace to arise out of universal Discord, fomented from Principle, in all Parts of the Empire . . .”—Tucker had asked: “what is this Heaven-born pacific Scheme, of which we have heard so laboured an Encomium? Why truly; if we will grant the Colonies all that they shall require, and stipulate for nothing in Return; then they will be at Peace with us. I believe it; and on these simple Principles of simple Peace-making I will engage to terminate every Difference throughout the World.” Yet Tucker’s plan was vulnerable to the same satire, and in fact his real quarrel with Burke was that he and the Rockingham Whigs would not grant the colonies the freedom and independence that they really wanted, but rather continued to solicit from them an acceptance of their subordination to Parliament.

Franklin: Narrative of the Late Massacres

The Conestoga Massacre of 1763 took place in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. The Paxton Boys, a group of settlers from the western counties, slew 20 Conestoga Indians in cold blood. The two documents that follow offer profoundly different accounts of the circumstances leading up to the event. The first, “A Narrative of the Late Massacres, in Lancaster County . . .” by Benjamin Franklin, condemns the raid as a barbarous outrage; the second, a remonstrance given by the Paxton Boys to the Provincial Council of Pennsylvania on February 13, 1764, assails Indian duplicity and cruelty.

 * * *

These Indians were the Remains of a Tribe of the Six Nations, settled at Conestogoe, and thence called Conestogoe Indians. On the first Arrival of the English in Pennsylvania, Messengers from this Tribe came to welcome them, with Presents of Venison, Corn and Skins; and the whole Tribe entered into a Treaty of Friendship with the first Proprietor, WILLIAM PENN, which was to last "as long as the Sun should shine, or the Waters run in the Rivers."

This Treaty has been since frequently renewed, and the Chain brightened, as they express it, from time to time. It has never been violated, on their Part or ours, till now. As their Lands by Degrees were mostly purchased, and the Settlements of the White People began to surround them, the Proprietor assigned them Lands on the Manor of Conestogoe, which they might not part with; there they have lived many Years in Friendship with their White Neighbours, who loved them for their peaceable inoffensive Behaviour.

It has always been observed, that Indians, settled in the Neighbourhood of White People, do not increase, but diminish continually. This Tribe accordingly went on diminishing, till there remained in their Town on the Manor, but 20 Persons, viz. 7 Men, 5 Women, and 8 Children, Boys and Girls. . . .

On Wednesday, the 14th of December, 1763, Fifty-seven Men, from some of our Frontier Townships, who had projected the Destruction of this little Common-wealth, came, all well-mounted, and armed with Firelocks, Hangers and Hatchets, having travelled through the Country in the Night, to Conestogoe Manor. There they surrounded the small Village of Indian Huts, and just at Break of Day broke into them all at once. Only three Men, two Women, and a young Boy, were found at home, the rest being out among the neighbouring White People,some to sell the Baskets, Brooms and Bowls they manufactured, and others on other Occasions. These poor defenceless Creatures were immediately fired upon, stabbed and hatcheted to Death! The good Shehaes, among the rest, cut to Pieces in his Bed. All of them were scalped, and otherwise horribly mangled. Then their Huts were set on Fire, and most of them burnt down. When the Troop, pleased with their own Conduct and Bravery, but enraged that any of the poor Indians had escaped the Massacre, rode off, and in small Parties, by different Roads, went home.

The universal Concern of the neighbouring White People on hearing of this Event, and the Lamentations of the younger Indians, when they returned and saw the Desolation, and the butchered half-burnt Bodies of their murdered Parents, and other Relations, cannot well be expressed.

The Magistrates of Lancaster sent out to collect the remaining Indians, brought them into the Town for their better Security against any farther Attempt; and it is said condoled with them on the Misfortune that had happened, took them by the Hand, comforted and promised them Protection. -- They were all put into the Workhouse, a strong Building, as the Place of greatest Safety.

When the shocking News arrived in Town, a Proclamation was issued by the Governor, in the following Terms, viz.

    "WHEREAS I have received Information, That on Wednesday, the Fourteenth Day of this Month, a Number of People, armed, and mounted on Horseback, unlawfully assembled together, and went to the Indian Town in the Conestogoe Manor, in Lancaster County, and without the least Reason or Provocation, in cool Blood, barbarously killed six of the Indians settled there, and burnt and destroyed all their Houses and Effects: And whereas so cruel and inhuman an Act, committed in the Heart of this Province on the said Indians, who have lived peaceably and inoffensively among us, during all our late Troubles, and for many Years before, and were justly considered as under the Protection of this Government and its Laws, calls loudly for the vigorous Exertion of the civil Authority, to detect the Offenders, and bring them to condign Punishment; I have therefore, by and with the Advice and Consent of the Council, thought fit to issue this Proclamation, and do hereby strictly charge and enjoin all Judges, Justices, Sheriffs, Constables, Officers Civil and Military, and all other His Majesty's liege Subjects within this Province, to make diligent Search and Enquiry after the Authors and Perpetrators of the said Crime, their Abettors and Accomplices, and to use all possible Means to apprehend and secure them in some of the publick Goals of this Province,that they may be brought to their Trials, and be proceeded against according to Law.

    "And whereas a Number of other Indians, who lately lived on or near the Frontiers of this Province, being willing and desirous to preserve and continue the ancient Friendship which heretofore subsisted between them and the good People of this Province, have, at their own earnest Request, been removed from their Habitations, and brought into the County of Philadelphia, and seated, for the present, for their better Security, on the Province-Island, and in other Places in the Neighbourhood of the City of Philadelphia, where Provision is made for them at the public Expence; I do therefore hereby strictly forbid all Persons whatsoever, to molest or injure any of the said Indians, as they will answer the contrary at their Peril.

    GIVEN under my Hand,and the Great Seal of the said Province, at Philadelphia, the Twenty-second Day of December, Anno Domini One Thousand Seven Hundred and Sixty-three, and in the Fourth Year of His Majesty's Reign. JOHN PENN."

    By His Honour's Command,

    JOSEPH SHIPPEN, jun. Secretary.

    GOD Save the KING.

Notwithstanding this Proclamation, those cruel Men again assembled themselves, and hearing that the remaining fourteen Indians were in the Work-house at Lancaster, they suddenly appeared in that Town, on the 27th of December. Fifty of them, armed as before, dismounting, went directly to the Work-house, and by Violence broke open the Door, and entered with the utmost Fury in their Countenances. -- When the poor Wretches saw they had no Protection nigh, nor could possibly escape, and being without the least Weapon for Defence, they divided into their little Families, the Children clinging to the Parents; they fell on their Knees, protested their Innocence, declared their Love to the English, and that, in their whole Lives, they had never done them Injury; and in this Posture they all received the Hatchet! -- Men, Women and little Children -- were every one inhumanly murdered! -- in cold Blood!

The barbarous Men who committed the atrocious Fact, in Defiance of Government, of all Laws human and divine, and to the eternal Disgrace of their Country and Colour, then mounted their Horses, huzza'd in Triumph, as if they had gained a Victory, and rode off -- unmolested!

The Bodies of the Murdered were then brought out and exposed in the Street, till a Hole could be made in the Earth, to receive and cover them.

But the Wickedness cannot be covered, the Guilt will lie on the whole Land, till Justice is done on the Murderers. THE BLOOD OF THE INNOCENT WILL CRY TO HEAVEN FOR VENGEANCE.

It is said that Shehaes, being before told, that it was to be feared some English might come from the Frontier into the Country, and murder him and his People; he replied, "It is impossible: There are Indians, indeed, in the Woods, who would kill me and mine, if they could get at us, for my Friendship to the English; but the English will wrap me in their Matchcoat, and secure me from all Danger." How unfortunately was he mistaken! . . .

There are some (I am ashamed to hear it) who would extenuate the enormous Wickedness of these Actions, by saying, "The Inhabitants of the Frontiers are exasperated with the Murder of their Relations, by the Enemy Indians, in the present War." It is possible; -- but though this might justify their going out into the Woods, to seek for those Enemies, and avenge upon them those Murders; it can never justify their turning in to the Heart of the Country, to murder their Friends.

If an Indian injures me, does it follow that I may revenge that Injury on all Indians? It is well known that Indians are of different Tribes, Nations and Languages, as well as the White People. In Europe, if the French, who are White People, should injure the Dutch, are they to revenge it on the English, because they too are White People? The only Crime of these poor Wretches seems to have been, that they had a reddish brown Skin, and black Hair; and some People of that Sort, it seems, had murdered some of our Relations. If it be right to kill Men for such a Reason, then, should any Man, with a freckled Face and red Hair, kill a Wife or Child of mine, it would be right for me to revenge it, by killing all the freckled red-haired Men, Women and Children, I could afterwards any where meet with.

But it seems these People think they have a better Justification; nothing less than the Word of God. With the Scriptures in their Hands and Mouths, they can set at nought that express Command, Thou shalt do no Murder; and justify their Wickedness, by the Command given Joshua to destroy the Heathen. Horrid Perversion of Scripture and of Religion! to father the worst of Crimes on the God of Peace and Love! -- Even the Jews, to whom that particular Commission was directed, spared the Gibeonites, on Account of their Faith once given. The Faith of this Government has been frequently given to those Indians; -- but that did not avail them with People who despise Government.

We pretend to be Christians, and, from the superior Light we enjoy, ought to exceed Heathens, Turks, Saracens, Moors, Negroes and Indians, in the Knowledge and Practice of what is right. I will endeavour to show, by a few Examples from Books and History, the Sense those People have had of such Actions. . . .

* * * * *

Here is the petition of the Paxton Boys:

WE, MATTHEW SMITH AND JAMES GIBSON, in behalf of ourselves and His Majesty's

faithful and loyal subjects, the inhabitants of the frontier counties of Lancaster, York, Cumberland, Berks, and Northampton, humbly beg leave to remonstrate and to lay before you the following grievances, which we submit to your wisdom for redress.

First, we apprehend that as freemen and English subjects, we have an indisputable title to the same privileges and immunities with His Majesty's other subjects who reside in the interior counties of Philadelphia, Chester, and Bucks, and therefore ought not to be excluded from an equal share with them in the very important privilege of legislation. Nevertheless, contrary to the proprietor's charter and the acknowledged principles of common justice and equity, our five counties are restrained from electing more than ten representatives, viz.: four for Lancaster, two for York, two for Cumberland, one for Berks, and one for Northampton; while the three counties and city of Philadelphia, Chester, and Bucks elect twenty-six. This we humbly conceive is oppressive, unequal, and unjust, the cause many of our grievances, and an infringement of our natural privileges of freedom and equality. Wherefore we humbly pray; that we may be no longer deprived of an equal number with the three aforesaid counties, to represent us in Assembly.

Second, we understand that a bill is now before the House of Assembly wherein it is provided that such persons as shall charged with killing any Indians in Lancaster County shall not be tried in the county where the fact was committed, but in the counties of Philadelphia, Chester, or Bucks. This is manifestly to deprive British subjects of their known privileges to cast an eternal reproach upon whole counties, as if they were unfit to serve their country in the quality of jurymen, and to contradict the well-known laws of the British nation in a point whereon life, liberty, and security essentially depend, namely, that of being tried by their equals in the neighborhood where their own, their accusers', and the witnesses' character and credit, with the circumstances of the fact, are best known, and instead thereof putting their lives in the hands of strangers who may as justly be suspected of partiality to, as the frontier counties can be of prejudices against, Indians; and this, too, in favor of Indians only, against His Majesty's faithful and loyal subjects. . . .

Third, during the late and present Indian war, the frontiers of this province have been repeatedly attacked and ravaged by skulking parties of the Indians, who have with the most savage cruelty murdered men, women, and children without distinction, and have reduced near a thousand families to the most extreme distress. It grieves us to the very heart to see such of our frontier inhabitants as have escaped savage fury with the loss of their parents, their children, their wives or relatives, left destitute by the public, and exposed to the most cruel poverty and wretchedness while upward of 120 of these savages, who are with great reason suspected of being guilty of these horrid barbarities under the mask of friendship, have procured themselves to be taken under the protection of the government, with a view to elude the fury of the brave relatives of the murdered, and are now maintained at the public expense.

Some of these Indians now in the barracks of Philadelphia are confessedly a part of the Wyalusing Indians, which tribe is now at war with us, and the others are the Moravian Indians, who, living amongst us under the cloak of friendship, carried on a correspondence with our known enemies on the Great Island. We cannot but observe with sorrow and indignation that some persons in this province are at pains to extenuate the barbarous cruelties practised by these savages on our murdered brethren and relatives, which are shocking to human nature, and must pierce every heart but that of the hardened perpetrators or their abettors. Nor is it less distressing to hear others pleading that although the Wyalusing tribe is at war with us, yet that part of it which is under the protection of the government may be friendly to the English and innocent.

In what nation under the sun was it ever the custom that when a neighboring nation took up arms, not an individual should be touched but only the persons that offered hostilities? Who ever proclaimed war with a part of a nation, and not with the whole? Had these Indians disapproved of the perfidy of their tribe, and been willing to cultivate and preserve friendship with us, why did they not give notice of the war before it happened, as it is known to be the result of long deliberations, and a preconcerted combination amongst them? Why did they not leave their tribe immediately, and come amongst us before there was ground to suspect them, or war was actually waged with their tribe? No, they stayed amongst them, were privy to their murders and ravages, until we had destroyed their provisions; and when they could no longer subsist at home, they come not as deserters but as friends to be maintained through the winter, that they may be able to scalp and butcher us in the spring.

And as to the Moravian Indians, there are strong grounds at least to suspect their friendship, as it is known they carried on a correspondence with our enemies on the Great Island. We killed three Indians going from Bethlehem to the Great Island with blankets, ammunition, and provisions, which is an undeniable proof that the Moravian Indians were in confederacy with our open enemies; and we cannot but be filled with indignation to hear this action of ours painted in the most odious and detestable colors, as if we had inhumanly murdered our guides who preserved us from perishing in the woods, when we only killed three of our known enemies, who attempted to shoot us when we surprised them.

And besides all this, we understand that one of these very Indians is proved by the oath of Stinton's widow to be the very person that murdered her husband. How then comes it to pass that he alone, of all the Moravian Indians, should join with the enemy to murder that family? Or can it be supposed that any enemy Indians, contrary to their known custom of making war, should penetrate into the heart of a settled country to burn, plunder, and murder the inhabitants, and not molest any houses in their return, or ever be seen or heard of? Or how can we account for it, that no ravages have been committed in Northampton County, since the removal of the Moravian Indians, when the Great Cove has been struck since? These things put it beyond doubt with us that the Indians now at Philadelphia are His Majesty's perfidious enemies and therefore to protect and maintain them at the public expense, while our suffering brethren on the frontiers are almost destitute of the necessaries of life and are neglected by the public, is sufficient to make us mad with rage, and tempt us to do what nothing but the most violent necessity can vindicate. We humbly and earnestly pray, therefore, that those enemies of His Majesty may be removed as soon as possible out of the province.

Fourth, we humbly conceive that it is contrary to the maxims of good policy, and extremely dangerous to our frontiers, to suffer any Indians of what tribe soever to live within the inhabited parts of this province while we are engaged in an Indian war, as experience has taught us that they are all perfidious, and their claim to freedom and independency puts it in their power to act as spies, to entertain and give intelligence to our enemies, and to furnish them with provisions and warlike stores. To this fatal intercourse between our pretended friends and open enemies, we must ascribe the greatest of the ravages and murders that have been committed in the course of this and the last Indian war. We therefore pray that this grievance be taken under consideration and remedied.

Fifth, we cannot help lamenting that no provision has been hitherto made, that such of our frontier inhabitants as have been wounded in defense of the province, their lives and liberties, may be taken care of and cured of their wounds at the public expense. We therefore pray that this grievance may be redressed.

Sixth, in the late Indian war, this province, with others of His Majesty's colonies, gave rewards for Indian scalps, to encourage the seeking them in their own country, as the most likely means of destroying or reducing them to reason; but no such encouragement has been given in this war, which has damped the spirits of many brave men who are willing to venture their lives in parties against the enemy. We therefore pray that public rewards may be proposed for Indian scalps, which may be adequate to the dangers attending enterprises of this nature.

Seventh, we daily lament that numbers of our nearest and dearest relatives are still in captivity among the savage heathen, to be trained up in all their ignorance and barbarity, or to be tortured to death with all the contrivances of Indian cruelty, for attempting to make their escape from bondage; and we see they pay no regard to the many solemn promises which they have made to restore our friends who are in bondage amongst them. We therefore earnestly pray that no trade ay hereafter be permitted to be carried on with them until our brethren and relatives are brought home to us.

Eighth, we complain that a certain society of people in this province, in the late Indian war, and at several treaties held by the King's representatives, openly loaded the Indians with presents, and that J. P., a leader of the said society, in defiance of all government, not only abetted our Indian enemies, but kept up a private intelligence with them, and publicly received from them a belt of wampum, as if he had been our governor or authorized by the King to treat with his enemies. By this means the Indians have been taught to despise us as a weak and disunited people, and from this fatal source have arisen many of our calamities under which we groan. We humbly pray therefore that this grievance may be re-dressed, and that no private subject be hereafter permitted to treat with, or carry on, a correspondence with our enemies.

Ninth, we cannot but observe with sorrow that Fort Augusta, which has been very expensive to this province, has afforded us but little assistance during this or the last war. The men that were stationed at that place neither helped our distressed inhabitants to save their crops, nor did they attack our enemies in their towns, or patrol on our frontiers. We humbly request that proper measures may be taken to make that garrison more serviceable to us in our distress, if it can be done.

N.B. We are far from intending any reflection against the commanding officer stationed at Augusta, as we presume his conduct was always directed by those from whom he received his orders.

Signed on behalf of ourselves, and by appointment of a great number of the frontier inhabitants.

Sources: The Annals of America, II, 118-128;  The Writings of Benjamin Franklin, III