Merrill Jensen

The Founding of a Nation

The committee scoffed at Grenville's delay of a stamp act as 'any vast favor.' It was simply a threat that Parliament would tax the colonies if they did not tax themselves. And the committee was contemptuous of the British argument that the acquisition of Canada would benefit the northern colonies. The colonies got along for a century without much help from England and they had gone to vast expense in the recent war. Now Britain was proposing to cut off their resources at the same time that she was planning to make them pay for the support of the British troops in the colonies. If the colonies were taxed without the consent of any Americans in Parliament, there would be no difference between Americans and the subjects of the most absolute prince. 'If we are not represented, we are slaves.'

The idea of colonial representation in Parliament was James Otis's. During the session a document called 'The Rights of the British Colonies' was twice read to the House of Representatives and then turned over to the committee to answer the agent. The house sent a copy to the agent along with the letter denouncing him and British policy. A few weeks later, James Otis's The Rights of the British Colonies Asserted and Proved was published in Boston. Otis began his confused and contradictory pamphlet boldly. All government originates in the will of God; in every society there must be a supreme, sovereign power; and in the order of nature, under God, comes the 'power of a simple democracy.' But he then went on to praise the British constitution as the best ever devised and to assert that Parliament had the power to legislate for the colonies and that the colonies had to obey its laws. Americans, however, had the same rights as their fellow subjects. He scorned colonial charters as the basis for those rights and insisted that colonial rights were based on the laws of God and nature, the common law, and acts of Parliament.

After asserting the uncontrollable power of Parliament, he got around it by appealing to a 'higher law,' as he had in his speech against writs of assistance in 1761. Acts of Parliament that were contrary to the 'natural laws' of God were void. Therefore, he argued, 'no part of his Majesty's dominions can be taxed without their consent.' His solution was American representation in Parliament.

The pamphlet alarmed the British but it had little impact in America. Most American leaders, canny politicians that they were, had no intention of asking for representation in Parliament. It would destroy their soundest argument against parliamentary taxation, and they knew perfectly well that even if they were represented they would not have enough members of Parliament to have much influence.

The Massachusetts government as a whole had not protested officially against anything Britain had done or might do, and it was plain that the council disapproved of the house's action. Furthermore, Massachusetts merchants were far more interested in economics than in statements of political theory and they asked Governor Bernard to call a special session of the legislature. He agreed and it met in October 1764. This time the Hutchinson forces were there in strength and they had the support of the merchants.

The Boston representatives at once presented a petition asserting the 'natural right' of the colonies to tax themselves and persuaded the house to adopt it. Hutchinson blocked it. He thought that the Revenue Act of 1764 was bad and he privately objected to the proposed stamp act, but as holder of many offices he was discreet. Furthermore, he was convinced that Parliament had a right to legislate for the colonies, however uneconomic or inexpedient the laws might be. Hutchinson insisted that the petition be based on economic grounds and that instead of talking about colonial 'rights' they ought to talk about 'privileges.' Above all, the question of constitutionality should be ignored. With all his force he opposed the 'very ill-judged petition' which 'the lawyers upon the Boston seat' had written. Hutchinson had his way and both the house and council agreed to his formulation of a petition to the House of Commons, which he thought 'a more decent one.' It objected to the Revenue Act of 1764, to the new enforcement policies of the customs service, and to the proposed stamp act, all on economic grounds. Ignoring their defeat, the popular leaders wrote the colonial agent that the letter of the past June and Otis's Rights of the British Colonies expressed the sentiments of 'the representative body of the people' far better than the official petition.