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But to return to the Stamp Act. Before the meeting of the congress at New York outbreaks of mob violence in Boston had forced the stamp distributor there to resign, and had wrecked the house of Thomas Hutchinson, the chief justice. Owing largely to the indecision of the elective council, the Government had proved powerless to check the dis order. The resolutions passed by the Congress, as well as its petitions to the home Government, gave authoritative form to the claims of the colonial opposition in general, though the body which issued them, like all the congresses which followed until 1776, was extra-legal. In these utterances, as later, the colonists sought to draw their arguments from British precedents and their own history. The two British rights which, it was claimed, were violated by the Stamp Act were the right to trial by jury and the right to be taxed only by an assembly in which they were repre sented. The first grievance was simply an incident of the second, and was occasioned by the extension of the jurisdiction of the admiralty courts. The tax was a direct grievance. For purposes of legislation like this these bodies denied that Parliament was representative of the whole empire. For purposes of taxation, their assemblies, they affirmed, were the only representative bodies they had known. Therefore, ignoring the earlier and tentative measures by which Parliament had actually taxed the Colonies, and falling back upon the sweeping declarations of their assem blies, they denied the right of Parliament to tax them. They de clared that the recent policy of Parliament was wholly an innova tion and insisted upon a return to the constitution as it was be fore 1763. The doctrine of natural right and compact was also resorted to with increasing emphasis in New England utterances.
The decisive blows, however, were struck by the mobs in the Colonies and by the Government itself in England. As the time for the execution of the Stamp Act approached, more or less violent demonstrations occurred in New York and in many other localities. The stamp distributors were forced to resign. Everywhere in the original continental Colonies the use of stamped papers was prevented, except to a slight extent in Georgia. Business requiring the use of stamps was in part suspended, but far more generally it was carried on without their use. Without the aid of the militia, which in no case was invoked, the colonial executives proved indisposed or powerless to enforce the act and it was effectively ,nullified. In England the petitions of the colonists produced little effect. There the decisive events were the accession of the Rockingham ministry to power and the clamours of the merchants which were caused by the decline in American trade. The serious lack of adjustment between British politics and colonial government is illustrated by the fact that, more than three months before the Stamp Act was to go into effect, the ministry whose measure it was resigned, and a cabinet which was indifferent, if not hostile, to it was installed in office. Preparations were soon made for its repeal. The slight
extent to which relations with the Colonies had been defined is indicated by the fact that the debates over the repeal contain the first serious discussion in parliament of the constitution of the British empire. While the Colonies were practically united in their views a great variety of opinions was expressed in parliament. On the question of right Lord Mansfield affirmed the absolute su premacy of parliament in dominions, while Camden and Pitt drew the same sharp line of distinction between taxation and legislation upon which the colonists insisted, and denied the right of parlia ment to tax the Colonies. Motives of expediency, arising both from conditions in the colonies and in England, proved decisive, and in the spring of 1766 the Stamp Act was repealed, while its repeal was accompanied with the passage of a statute (The Declar atory Act) affirming the principle that Great Britain had the right to bind the Colonies in all cases whatsoever. This measure was received with joy in the Colonies, but the prestige of the home Government had received a severe blow, and the colonists were quick to resent further alleged encroachments.
These soon came in the form of a colonial Mutiny Act and of the so-called Townshend Acts (1767). The Mutiny Act was intended largely to meet the needs of the troops stationed in the west and in the new Colonies, but it also affected the older Colonies where garrisons of regular soldiers existed. The act provided for a parliamentary requisition for barrack supplies, and partly because it included certain articles which were not required for the soldiers in Europe, the New York legislature at first refused to make the necessary appropriation. Partly through the influence of the governor it later came to think better of it and in a non-committal way appropriated the supplies required. But meantime in England the Pitt-Grafton ministry had come into office, in which the brilliant but reckless Charles Townshend was chancellor of the exchequer. Pitt himself was disabled by illness, and the ministry, lacking his control, steadily disintegrated. Townshend availed himself of this situation to spring upon his colleagues and upon Parliament a new measure for colonial taxa tion, and with it a bill legalizing writs of assistance and establish ing a board of commissioners of the customs in America, and a third bill suspending the functions of the assembly of New York until it should comply with the terms of the Mutiny Act. These bills all became law. Before the last-mentioned one reached the colonies, the New York Assembly had complied, and therefore the necessity for executing this Act of Parliament was avoided. The establishment of a customs board at Boston did not, of itself, provoke much criticism. But the Act of Trade and Revenue, which provided for the collection in the Colonies of duties on glass, lead, painters' colours, paper and tea, and that out of the revenue raised therefrom salaries should be paid to the governors and judges in America, opened anew the controversy over taxation.