Complete Works. Hamilton Alexander
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The scheme of the ministry was disappointed on all hands. The tea was returned from all the colonies except South Carolina. It was landed there; but such precautions were taken as equally served to baffle their attempt.
This abortion of their favorite plan, inflamed the ministerial ire. They breathed nothing but vengeance against America. Menaces of punishment resounded through both Houses of Parliament. The Commons of Great Britain spoke more in the supercilious tone of masters than in the becoming language of fellow-subjects. To all the judicious reasonings of a Burke, or Barré, no other answer was returned than the idle tale of lenity and severity. Much was said on their past forbearance, and of their future resentment. This was the burthen of the song. The Quixote minister, too, promised to bring America to his feet. Humiliating idea, and such as ought to be spurned by every free-born American!
Boston was the first victim to the meditated vengeance. An act was passed to block up her ports and destroy her commerce, with every aggravating circumstance that can be imagined. It was not left at her option to elude the stroke by paying for the tea; but she was also to make such satisfaction to the officers of his Majesty's revenue, and others who might have suffered, as should be judged reasonable by the governor.
Nor is this all. Before her commerce could be restored, she must have submitted to the authority claimed and exercised by the Parliament.
Had the rest of America passively looked on while a sister colony was subjugated, the same fate would gradually have overtaken all. The safety of the whole depends upon the mutual protection of every part. If the sword of oppression be permitted to lop off one limb without opposition, reiterated strokes will soon dismember the whole body. Hence, it was the duty and interest of all the colonies to succor and support the one which was suffering. It is sometimes sagaciously urged, that we ought to commiserate the distresses of the people of Massachusetts, but not intermeddle in their affairs, so far as perhaps to bring ourselves into like circumstances with them. This might be good reasoning, if our neutrality would not be more dangerous than our participation; but I am unable to conceive how the colonies in general would have any security against oppression, if they were once to content themselves with barely pitying each other, while Parliament was prosecuting and enforcing its demands. Unless they continually protect and assist each other, they must all inevitably fall a prey to their enemies.
Extraordinary emergencies require extraordinary expedients. The best mode of opposition was that in which there might be a union of councils. This was necessary to ascertain the boundaries of our rights, and to give weight and dignity to our measures, both in Great Britain and America. A Congress was accordingly proposed, and universally agreed to.
You, sir, triumph in the supposed illegality of this body: but granting your supposition were true, it would be a matter of no real importance. When the first principles of civil society are violated, and the rights of a whole people are invaded, the common forms of municipal law are not to be regarded. Men may then betake themselves to the law of nature; and, if they but conform their actions to that standard, all cavils against them betray either ignorance or dishonesty. There are some events in society, to which human laws cannot extend, but when applied to them, lose all their force and efficacy. In short, when human laws contradict or discountenance the means which are necessary to preserve the essential rights of any society, they defeat the proper end of all laws, and so become null and void.
But you have barely asserted, not proved, this illegality. If by the term you mean a contrariety to law, I desire you to produce the law against it. I maintain there is none in being. If you mean that there is no law, the intention of which may authorize such a convention, I deny this also. It has been always a principle of the law, that subjects have a right to state their grievances, and petition the king for redress. This is explicitly acknowledged by the act of the first of William and Mary; and “all prosecutions and commitments for such petitioning” are declared to be illegal. So far, then, the Congress was a body founded in law; for if subjects have such a right, they may undoubtedly elect and depute persons from among themselves to act for them.
As to the particular agreements entered into with respect to our commerce, the law makes no provision for or against them; they are perfectly indifferent in a legal sense. We may or may not trade, as is most suitable to our own circumstances.
The deputies chosen in the several provinces met at Philadelphia according to appointment, and framed a set of resolves declarative of the rights of America; all which I have by general arguments proved are consonant to reason and nature, to the spirit of the British Constitution, and to the intention of our charters. They made the only concession (as I have also shown) that their duty to themselves and their country would justify, or that the connection between Great Britain and the colonies demanded.
They solicited the king for a redress of grievances, but justly concluding from past experience, from the behavior and declarations of the majority in both houses of Parliament, and from the known character and avowed designs of the minister, that little or no dependence was to be placed upon bare entreaties, they thought it necessary to second them by restrictions on trade.
In my former defence of the measures of the Congress, I proved, in a manner you never will be able to invalidate, that petitions and remonstrances would certainly be unavailing. I will now examine your frivolous and prevaricating reply.
You answer thus: “In the commotions occasioned by the Stamp Act, we referred to petitions and remonstrances; our grievances were pointed out, and redress solicited with temper and decency. They were heard; they were attended to; and the disagreeable act repealed. The same mode of application succeeded with regard to the duties laid upon glass, painters’ colors, etc. You say, indeed, that our addresses on this occasion were treated with contempt and neglected. But, I beseech you, were not our addressed received, read, and debated upon? And was not the repeal of those acts the consequence? The fact you know is as I state it. If these acts were not only disagreeable to the Americans, but were also found to militate against the commercial interests of Great Britain, it proves what I asserted above; that duties which injure our trade will soon be felt in England, and then there will be no difficulty in getting them repealed.”
I entirely deny the fact to be as you state it; and you are conscious it is not. Our addresses were not heard, attended to, and the disagreeable act repealed in consequence of them. If this had been the case, why was no notice taken of them in the repealing act? Why were not our complaints assigned as the inducement to it? On the contrary, these are the express words of the first repeal, to which the second is also similar: “Whereas the continuance of the said act would be attended with many inconveniences, and may be productive of consequences greatly detrimental to the commercial interests of Great Britain: May it therefore please your most excellent Majesty, by and with the advice and consent, etc., that from and after the first day of May, 1766, the above-mentioned act, and the several matters and things therein contained, shall be, and is, and are, hereby repealed and made void, to all intents and purposes whatsoever.”
The inconveniences and the ill consequences to Great Britain are the only reasons given for the revolution of the act. How then can you pretend to say it was in compliance with our petitions? You must think the complaisance of your readers very great to imagine they will credit your assertions at the expense of their own understandings.
Neither is the use you make of the assigned reasons at all just. The consequences, so detrimental to the commercial interests of Great Britain, are not such as would have resulted from the natural operation of the act, had it been submitted to; but from the opposition made by us, and the cessation of imports which had taken place.
A non-importation (to which you have so violent an aversion) was the only thing that procured us redress on preceding occasions. We did not formerly, any more than now, confine ourselves to petitions only, but took care to adopt a more prevailing method; to wit,—a suspension of trade.
But what proves to a demonstration that our former petitions were unsuccessful is, that the grand object they aimed at was never obtained. This was an exemption from parliamentary taxation. Our addresses turned entirely upon this point. And so far were they from succeeding, that immediately upon the repeal of the Stamp Act,