which we are not able to work off, to serve them for their freedom?" 1774. April. The words fell from him as burning oracles; while he spoke for the rights of America, he seemed to prepare the way for renovating the constitution of England. Yet it was not so. Though more than half a century had intervened, Burke would not be wiser than the whigs of the days of King William. It was enough for him if the aristocracy applauded. He did not believe in the dawn. of a new light, in the coming on of a new order, though a new order of things was at the door, and a new light had broken. He would not turn to see, nor bend to learn, if the political system of Somers, and Walpole, and the Pelhams, was to pass away; if it were so, he himself was determined not to know it, but "rather to be the last of that race of men." As Dante sums up the civilization of the middle age so that its departed spirit still lives in his immortal verse, Burke portrays all the lineaments of that old whig aristocracy which in its day achieved mighty things for liberty and for England. He that will study under its best aspect the enlightened character of England in the first half of the eighteenth century, the wonderful intermixture of privilege and prerogative, of aristocratic power and popular liberty, of a free press and a secret house of commons, of an established church and a toleration of all Protestant sects, of a fixed adherence to prescription and liberal tendencies in administration, must give his days and nights to the writings of Edmund Burke. But time never keeps company with the mourners; it flies from the memories of the expiring past, though clad in the brightest colors of imagination; it leaves those who stand still to their despair, and hurries forward to fresh fields of action and scenes for ever new. Resuming the debate, Fox said earnestly: "If you persist in your right to tax the Americans, you will force them into open rebellion." On the other hand, Lord North asked that his measures might be sustained with firmness and resolution; and then, said he, "there is no doubt but peace and quietude will soon be restored." "We are now in great difficulties," said Dowdeswell, speaking for all who adhered to Lord Rockingham; "let us do justice before it is too late." But it was too late. Even Burke's object had been only "to refute the charges against that party with which he had all along acted." After his splendid eloquence, no more divided with him than forty-nine, just the number that had divided against the stamp act, while on the other side stood nearly four times as many. "The repeal of the tea-tax was never to be obtained, so long as the authority of parliament was publicly rejected or opposed." 1774. On the day on which the house of commons was April. voting not to repeal the duty on tea, the people of New York sent back the tea-ship which had arrived but the day before; and eighteen chests of tea, found on board of another vessel, were hoisted on deck and emptied into “the slip." The bill at its different stages in the house of commons was combated by Dowdeswell, Pownall, Sir George Saville, Conway, Burke, Fox, Barré, and most elaborately by Dunning; yet it passed the commons by a vote of more than three to one. Though vehemently opposed in the house of lords, it was carried by a still greater majority, but not without an elaborate protest. The king did not dream that by that act, which, as he writes, gave him "infinite satisfaction," all power of command in Massachusetts had from that day forth gone out from him, and that his word would never more be obeyed there. A third penal measure, which had been questioned by Dartmouth, and recommended by the king, transferred the place of trial of any magistrates, revenue officers, or soldiers, indicted for murder or other capital offence in Massachusetts Bay, to Nova Scotia or Great Britain. As Lord North brought forward this wholesale bill of indemnity to the governor and soldiers, if they should trample upon the people of Boston and be charged with murder, it was noticed that he trembled and faltered at every word; showing that he was the vassal of a stronger will than his own, and vainly struggled to wrestle down the feelings which his nature refused to disavow. "If the people of America," said Van, 66 'oppose the measures of government that are now sent, I would do as was done of old in the time of the ancient Britons: I would burn and set fire to all their woods, and leave their country open. If we are likely to lose it, I think it better lost by our own soldiers than wrested from us by our rebellious children." "The bill is meant to enslave America," said Sawbridge, with only forty to listen to him. "I execrate the present measure," cried Barré; "you have had one meeting of the colonies in congress; you may soon have another. The Americans will not abandon their principles; for, if they submit, they are slaves." The bill passed the commons by a vote of more than four to one. But evil comes intermixed with good: the ill is evanescent, the good endures. The British government inflamed the passions of the English people against America, and courted their sympathy; as a consequence, the secrecy of the debates in parliament came to an end; and this great change in the political relation of the legislature to public opinion was the irrevocable concession of a tory government, seeking strength from popular excitement. 1774. A fourth measure legalized the quartering of troops within the town of Boston. The fifth professed to April. regulate the affairs of the province of Quebec. The nation, which would not so much as legally recognise the existence of a Catholic in Ireland, from political considerations sanctioned on the St. Lawrence "the free exercise of the religion of the church of Rome, and confirmed to its clergy their accustomed dues and rights" with the tithes as fixed in 1672 by the edict of Louis XIV. But the act did not stop there. In disregard of the charters and rights of Massachusetts, Connecticut, New York, and Virginia, it extended the boundaries of the new government of Quebec to the Ohio and the Mississippi, and over the region which included, besides Canada, the area of the present states of Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, Illinois, and Wisconsin; and moreover it decreed for this great part of a continent an unmixed arbitrary rule. The establishment of colonies on principles of liberty is "the peculiar and appropriated glory of England," rendering her venerable throughout all time in the history of the world. The office of peopling a continent with free and happy commonwealths was renounced. The Quebec bill, which quickly passed the house of lords without an adverse petition or a protest, and was borne through the commons by the zeal of the ministry and the influence of the king, left the people who were to colonize the most fertile territory in the world without the writ of habeas corpus to protect the rights of persons, and without a share of power in any one branch of the government. "The Quebec constitution," said Thurlow, in the house of commons, "is the only proper constitution for colonies; it ought to have been given to them all, when first planted; and it is what all now ought to be reduced to." 1774. April. In this manner, Great Britain, allured by a phantom of absolute authority over colonies, made war on human freedom. The liberties of Poland had been sequestered, and its territory began to be parcelled out among the usurpers. The aristocratic privileges of Sweden had been swept away by treachery and usurpation. The free towns of Germany, which had preserved in that empire the example of republics, "like so many dying sparks that go out one after another." Venice and Genoa had stifled the spirit of independence in their prodigal luxury. Holland was ruinously divided against itself. In Great Britain, the house were of commons had become so venal that it might be asked whether a body so chosen and so influenced was fit to legislate even within the realm. If it shall succeed in establishing by force of arms its "boundless" authority over America, where shall humanity find an asylum? But this decay of the old forms of liberty was the sign and the forerunner of a new creation. The knell of the ages of servitude and inequality was rung; those of equality and brotherhood were to come into life. As the fleets and armies of England went forth to consolidate arbitrary power, the sound of war everywhere else on the earth died away. Kings sat still in awe, and nations turned to watch the issue. |