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Home Great Britain and her Relations with America after the Seven Years War, 1763-1783 1763-1783; Part 4 |
1763-1783; Part 4Great questions, however, when they are once raised, seldom lie dormant for long. Moreover, on the American side, there were extremists who wished to reduce British control to a vanishing-point, and who were on the lookout for quarrels to effect their purpose. The character of the colonists in the north - and, above all, in Boston, the capital of Massachusetts - was, in Pitt's phrase, " umbrageous" (i.e. they took umbrage easily) and quarrelsome, and their conduct was sometimes very irritating to the mother country. Meantime, at home, the politicians were not statesmen enough to deal with a difficult situation. As a consequence a series of disputes, insignificant in themselves, became by exaggeration and misunderstanding so magnified that finally, as has been said, one side saw in coercion and the other in secession the only solution of the difficulty.The first dispute was due to a brilliant and unreliable man, by name Townshend, who was Chancellor of the Exchequer in Lord Chatham's ministry. In 1767, at a time when Chatham was totally incapacitated by illness, Townshend announced his intention of raising an income of £40,000 a year by imposing duties on tea, glass, and paper imported into the American colonies. He contended that as these were external taxes levied at the ports, and not internal taxes, the colonists could not object. It is needless to say that they did object, and the agitation, led by the men of Massachusetts, was reopened. Accordingly, in 1770, Lord North’s ministry - which had come into office in that year, and was to remain in power for the next twelve years - gave way, and the duties on glass and paper were abolished. But, with incredible folly, the duty on tea was retained, in order to assert the right of taxing. Small incidents are easily exaggerated when two peoples are irritated with one another, and it was unfortunate that at this time various occurrences exasperated feeling on both sides. We can only refer to two of these incidents. British regiments had been subjected to various kinds of insult from the townspeople in Boston. Finally a mob surrounded some soldiers, and after calling them "Rascals, lobsters, and bloody backs (Because they were liable to be flogged), proceeded to snowball them. In the confusion a volley was fired, and three people were killed. The affair was magnified into a massacre, even into " the massacre ", by the colonists, and great indignation was aroused (1770). The other incident inflamed feeling in Great Britain. . One of the king's ships, which was engaged in repressing smuggling, was boarded one night by some American colonists and burnt (1772), and the perpetrators of this outrage were never punished. |
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