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CHAPTER XXI.

THE CURRENCY AND THE POLITICS OF THE PROVINCE.¹

No person who has read the chapters in which were narrated the struggles between the representatives and the royal governors in regard to the currency, can have failed to see how important a part this controversy bore in the development of the strained relations between the legislative and executive branches of the government, which paved the way for the assertion by the people of what was then frequently termed “independency.” The inhabitants of the province through these discussions were led to criticize the attitude of their rulers; to oppose the royal instructions, and to uphold their representatatives [sic] in their opposition to the crown officers even in cases where the grounds of this opposition were not clearly defensible. “The people of America,” says John Adams,² “ had been educated in an habitual affection for England as their mother country; and while they thought her a kind and tender parent (erroneously enough, however, for she never was such a mother) no affection could be more sincere. But when they found her a cruel Beldam, willing like lady Macbeth, to ‘dash their brains out,’ it is no wonder their filial affections ceased and were changed into indignation and horror.”

“This radical change in the principles and opinions, sentiments and affections of the people, was the real

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American Revolution.” If we eliminate the exaggerated violence from this statement, no person will be disposed to deny the truths which it contains. The existence during the first half of the eighteenth century, of a strong feeling of loyalty on the part of the colonists can not be doubted, and it is obvious that so complete a change as was implied in the conversion of a loyal people full of affection for the mother country, to the state of mind which could tolerate the thought of armed resistance must have been brought about by some slow process. A writer who has recently made a careful study of the functions of the provincial governor has expressed a thought somewhat akin to this in the following language:¹ “Rightly then to understand the deeper forces which produced the war of independence, one must understand the gradual growth of that sense of divergent interests without which all the political agitation of Samual Adams, the eloquence of Patrick Henry, and even a few injudicious measures of British statesmen from 1760 to 1774, could hardly have led to revolution. Nowhere can this gradually awakening consciousness of divergence, so far as it reveals itself prior to what is commonly called the revolutionary era, be better studied than in the conflicts between the provincial governor and the provincial assembly.” This divergence of interest had existed from the beginning and was inherent in the English conception of the functions of a colony. The various commercial companies which had been established in England for the purpose of colonization, were all of them founded in the thought of gain. This might be of two sorts, gain to the stockholders, or gain

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to the country at large. So far as the early American adventures were concerned they were invariably disastrous to the capitalists who fostered them, but whatever the result to the colonists or to the company, the sole interest taken by the government rested upon the gain present or prospective to be derived from the enterprise. No thought was given to the possibility that the colonists might have other interests than such as were directly contributory to the welfare and prosperity of the mother country. Long after the number of the inhabitants of the colonies of North America had risen to hun dreds of thousands, when generation after generation had been born in the colonies and had lived and died there without personal knowledge of the trans-Atlantic kingdom, the rulers of which claimed the right to direct the affairs of their governments, they were still treated as if they were merely temporary sojourners, whose ultimate interests were vested in Great Britain, and who would endure arbitrary trade regulations, and submit to narrow commercial restraints, because the same were supposed to be for the benefit of the distant government, of which they knew nothing except through its representatives in their midst. They were of the realm, but not in the realm. They were subjects, and when in England had the same rights as Englishmen, but the laws which were made by parliament for the regulation of trade and commerce, and at a later date of colonial manufactures, like much of the penal legislation on the statute books at that time, were so unjust that many of them were incapable of enforcement. At the outset there was no precedent by which either the colonists or parliament could determine what power parliament actually held over the colonies. In 1678, the General Court, answering sundry objections which had been

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raised by the Lords of the Committee to their legislation, said: “That for the acts passed in Parliament for incouraging trade and navigation, wee humbly conceive according to the usuall sayings of the learned in the lawe, that the lawes of England are bounded w^thin the fower seas and doe not reach America.” The next sentence, as this is punctuated, begins, The subjects of his Maj^tie here being not represented in Parliament.”¹ This obviously forms a qualifying clause of the previous sentence, explanatory of the cause why they thought that the laws of parliament did not apply to them. Parliament, having the power, decided the question in its own behalf, and in this decision the colonists acquiesced. In consequence the doctrine of no taxation without representation lay dormant until revived by James Otis, who declared that “the parliament of Great Britain has an undoubted power and lawful authority, to make acts for the general good, that by naming them, shall and ought to be equally binding, as upon the subjects of Great Britain within the realm.” It was from and under this very power, and its acts, and from the common law, he asserted, that the political rights of the colonists were derived. One of these was, he claimed, that which had been asserted by the General Court in 1678.² The restraints imposed upon commerce and trade were a far greater threat to the ultimate prosperity of the colonies than could be found in such parliamentary legislation as the stamp act and the Townshend tax act, the passage of which aroused such a storm of indignation just before the revolution. John Adams lays bare the secret of this endurance when he says, “These acts

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[the trade acts] never had been executed, and there never had been a time when they would have been, or could have been, obeyed.”¹ The voluminous reports and complaints of Randolph, forwarded to the Board of Trade and to his friends in England, when he was vainly attempting to enforce the navigation act in Boston, bear testimony to the entire truth of this assertion in the days of the colony. In addition to that evidence, we have the admission of the Privy Council that they knew that this was the case. In a letter to the governor and company of Massachusetts, dated October 21, 1681, they say: “We appointed Edward Randolph collector of our customs in Massachusetts, to check the breaches of the acts of trade and navigation frequently practised and connived at therein. We are well satisfied that Edward Randolph has discharged his duty with all diligence and fidelity, yet, because unlawful trading is countenanced by you, all his care has been of little effect.”2 So far as the collection of revenue, in the days of the province under the trade acts, is concerned, an advocate of the new system said in 1765, “the whole remittance [of collectors] from all the colonies at an average of thirty years has not amounted to £1,900 a year,”³ and again: “Such has been the disregard of all revenue laws in America, that this has produced hardly anything, tho’ the commodity has been imported all the time in great quantities.”⁴ Smuggling was so constantly carried

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on and the navigation laws were so openly evaded, that testimony to that effect is hardly needed, but if it were, this author furnishes the evidence. “Ships,” he says, “are continually passing between our plantations and Holland, Hamburg, and most of the ports in the German ocean, and in the Baltic.”¹ “Foreign goods are,” he adds, “illegally run into the colonies in value to no less than £700,000 per annum, which exceeds by far the value of those foreign goods that are conveyed thro’ Great Britain.”² So long as this was the case, it mattered but little to the colonists that the avowed purpose of the act for the encouragement of trade, while it asserted that the plantations were peopled by subjects of the kingdom, was for keeping those subjects “in a firmer dependance” upon that kingdom.³ Assertions of that sort, or even the passage of acts imposing duties upon molasses, the collection of which would have destroyed the trade of the New England colonies with the West Indies, were of little consequence so long as such assertions were mere words and such acts were not enforced. This was, perhaps, not fully appreciated in England. It was known that the laws were on the statute books, but the extent to which they were ignored in the colonies was not generally comprehended. Lord Mansfield, rehearsing in parliament the evidences of the dependent condition of the colonies, unconsciously betrayed the utterly incorrect opinion regarding the relationship between such dependencies and the parent government which then prevailed. “The navigation act,” he

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said, “shut up their intercourse with foreign countries. Their ports had been made subject to customs and regulations, which have cramped and diminished their trade; and duties have been laid affecting the very inmost parts of their commerce. Such were the post-ffice acts; the act for recovering debts in the plantations; the acts for preserving timber and white pines; the paper currency act. The legislature have even gone so low as to restrain the number of hatter’s apprentices in America, and have, in innumerable instances, given forfeitures to the king. Yet all these have been submitted to peaceably, and no one ever thought till now of this doctrine, that the colonies are not to be taxed, regulated or bound by parliament.”

Forcible as is this complacent recital of the wrongs which parliament had intended to inflict upon the colonies, it is but partial and incomplete, but it was one of the signs which enabled the colonists to realize that the spirit remained the same and that apparent moderation merely meant that the old policy of rigid laws and loose enforcement was to be superseded by legislation specifically for revenue, less arbitrary in its nature, but more practical in character. “In other countries,” says the author from whom several quotations have already been made, “custom house duties are for the most part little more than a branch of the revenue. In the colonies they are a political regulation, and enforce the observance of those wise laws to which the great increase of our trade and naval power are principally owing. The aim of these laws is to confine the European commerce of the colonies to the mother country; to provide that their most valuable commodities shall be exported either to Great Britain or to the British plantations, and to secure the

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navigation of all American exports and imports to British ships and British subjects only.”¹

The full measure of what is involved in the foregoing extract was not perhaps fully appreciated at that time in Massachusetts, but it was felt that laws, the nominal purpose of which was to raise revenue, were for the first time about to be actually enforced through a powerful custom house regime, and it was then that the country was alarmed and that the spirit of opposition asserted itself in the overawing of the officers appointed to enforce the stamp act, and in the destruction of the tea in Boston harbor. The revival of the policy which sent Randolph to Boston, brought with it a renewal of the tactics which were employed to defeat his efforts.

The prosperity of the province depended largely upon its shipping, but the community was self supporting and there was a large agricultural population whose interests were affected only in an indirect manner by restrictions upon trade and manufactures, and taxes upon imports. It is easy to understand why a belief that the government was about to enforce the various restrictive laws and acts for revenue should have aroused those who were directly interested in commerce, but some explanation is required for the sympathy of the agricultural community and the altertness with which they accepted the new attitude of parliament as one hostile to their interests. This is to be found in the prolonged conflicts between the assembly and the royal governors, especially that upon the subject of the currency, which had awakened universal interest throughout the province, which had created a feeling of hostility to the representatives of the crown, and which had in a great measure crushed the sentiments

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of loyalty and affection of which so many writers speak. Thus the state of mind was produced which John Adams denominated “the real American revolution.”

The representatives had taken care throughout these discussions to keep their constituents in close touch with their disputes, by constant appeals for instructions to the selectmen of the towns, and thus farmers, tradesmen and laborers were taught provincial politics. Bancroft, speaking of the controversy over Dudley’s salary in 1702, says: “Here began the controversy which nothing but independence could solve.” This, however, does not date the beginning of the controversy far enough back. Phips wanted a salary as well as Dudley, but this was refused him, and under the guidance of Elisha Cooke the stand then taken upon the salary question was one of the steps in the great struggle which by slow degrees developed ultimately into the assertion of independence. At first it was a mere conservative attempt to preserve under the new charter such of the rights to which the colonists had been accustomed under the former charter, as could be maintained. Among those who were trying to save some of the principles of independent action which had characterized the government organized under the first charter, there were some who saw in the dependence of the governor upon the assembly for his compensation, a weapon which would be available in case of contest, and it was owing to their foresight that the settlement of a salary upon the governor was avoided. Compensation was freely granted to the governors and lieutenant governors, but never in the form of a salary. The chronic disputes upon this point were closely interwoven at times with questions connected with the supply bills, and in the interchange

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of messages the plainest of language was used on both sides, as to what ought to be done; what would be done, and what would not be done. The situation in which Dummer found himself in 1727 and 1728, the hitches that then occurred in connection with the various schemes suggested for securing a new supply of bills of public credit, and finally the charge made by Burnet that the assembly had used their control of the salary question to secure the assent of the lieutenant governor to an emission of the currency, have been heretofore alluded to. The fact that such a charge was made, sufficiently illustrates the character of the controversy and shows its close connection with the subject which occupies our attention. We have seen that Burgess sold to Shute, for the sum of £1,000, the influence which controlled the appointment of the provincial governors. Tailer, the lieutenant governor appointed at the same time with Burgess, failed to secure a new commission under Shute, for the reason that he was an advocate of the private bank. This practical demonstration of the close relation of the currency question to the politics of the province in 1714, compelled Hutchinson to give it attention and he devotes considerable space in his narrative to a development of this fact.¹

Thomas Hutchinson, Sr., was then in the council and belonged to the small minority “which was for drawing in the paper bills and depending upon a silver and gold currency.” Tailer, the lieutenant governor, “a gentleman of no great fortune, whose stipend from the government was trifling,” engaged in the cause of the private bank founded upon the project published in London in 1684, with great zeal. A third party, though opposed

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to this private bank, favored the emission of public bills of credit on mortgage loans, and the hard-money minority, driven to a choice of evils, threw their lot in with those who favored this plan, in order to defeat the private bank. “The controversy,” says Hutchinson, “had an universal spread and divided towns, parishes and particular families.”

The settlement of the specific question at issue in this contest, by the triumph of the party in favor of “the public bank,” through this combination with the advocates of a specie currency, merely diverted the discussions between the governor and the assembly to other topics. It was maintained with intermittent vigor under each of the representatives of the crown who chanced to be at the head of affairs, its energy and virulence being largely determined by the character of the governor or lieutenant governor for the time being.

One point which was frequently under discussion during this period, had the effect of keeping constantly before the people the question of their rights under the charter, and the possibility of those rights being invaded. The subject of discussion referred to was the extent to which the assembly could be brought under the control of royal instructions. It is true that no direct efforts were made by the crown to instruct the assembly how it should legislate, but indirectly through instructions to the governors to secure the passage of certain laws and not to approve others, it was sought to influence legislation. That which was not desired could be absolutely prevented from taking effect, since all laws were subject to the approval of the governor and were also submitted for approval or rejection to the Privy Council. This power of control rendered the royal instructions of great moment to the assembly, but inasmuch as they

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were seldom communicated to that body, except in cases of emergency or under pressure, they were not treated with much respect, even when specific knowledge of their character was furnished by the governors. The instructions were subject to interpretation, and the representatives appeared to think that in the exercise of the power of interpretation, the governors could make the instructions plastic enough to fit every emergency. When the council advised the governor that the instructions would not permit him to sign a bill involving the emission of currency, the house said: “We cannot but please ourselves, had a more general and proper question been put they had given their advice to your Honor to sign the bill.” At another time they thought the difficulty lay in the “instructions as now understood and improved by his Excellency,” and the same idea is involved in the request of the council that the governor would “take such measures that he may be enabled to give his consent to the said bill as soon as may be.” When the representatives asserted that if they did “not struggle in every way to maintain and preserve their liberty they would act more like vassals of an arbitrary prince than like subjects of King George, their most gracious sovereign,” we need to be told that the subject under discussion was a royal instruction from that most gracious sovereign to fully appreciate the force of the statement. The provincial courts of law did not hesitate to disregard such instructions when in their judgment they contravened the rights of the litigants or the courts under the charter,’ and the agents of the province at London did not scruple to advise the assembly that it was better to force parliament to intervene

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than to submit to instructions which invaded the rights of the people. “Of what value,” said Wilks and Belcher in 1729, “is the Charter if an instruction shall at pleasure take away every valuable part of it? If we must be compelled to fix a salary doubtless it must be better that it be done by the Supream legislature than to do it ourselves; if our liberties must be lost, much better that they be taken away, than we be in any manner accessory to our own Ruin.”¹

When the attempt was made in 1749 to secure the enforcement of royal instructions in the colonies, through parliamentary legislation in connection with the currency, William Bollan said to a committee of the House of Commons, “This bill by the matter therein contained, providing for the enforcement throughout the colonies, of royal orders and instructions, would practically approve all future orders of future princes, no matter how repugnant they might be to the present constitution of Great Britain, and all such orders, if the bill should become a law, would receive the sanction of parliament. Royal orders, no matter how illegal except for this bill, would through its agency when ratified and enforced by it, themselves become laws and necessarily bind the people.” It is to the credit of parliament that it listened to Bollan and rejected the clause in the law concerning which he was arguing, but the discussion revealed possibilities to which the eyes of the people were gradually opening. We certainly have hints here of a progressive change in the opinions of the people of the province as to certain methods of the royal government which indicate an alienation of their affections and which if not radical enough to mark the epoch of the “real American

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Revolution,” at least point out a steady tendency towards the state of mind which would render it possible.

In 1740, under the influence of the fear of a stringency of the circulating medium, created by the instructions to the governors to compel the withdrawal of the greater part of the currency, the Land Bank originally proposed in the province in 1714, again raised its head.¹ Hutchinson, speaking of the house of representatives then in power, says, “it appeared that by far the majority of the representatives for 1740, were subscribers to or favorers of the scheme, and they have ever since been distinguished by the land bank house.”² With great caution he adds further on “Perhaps the major part, in number, of the inhabitants of the province, openly or secretly, were well wishers to it.”

The situation at this time has already been fully set forth. The capitalists and hard money men, powerless to control the public sentiment which was so manifestly in favor of this ill-founded scheme, powerless also as they found upon trial to accomplish anything through their counter-scheme, the silver bank, appealed to parliament. “The authority of Parliament,” says Hutchinson, “to control all public and private persons was, in that day, questioned by nobody,” and he adds that the application for an act to suppress the company was very easily obtained. Too easily, alas! for those who knew all the circumstances of the case, ever again to believe that

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parliament could be trusted to legislate for the colonies. Any man who could read could see that the Act of the 6th of George I, chapter 18, did not by its terms apply to the colonies. So that every intelligent person in the province must have understood that a great wrong was done in thus declaring that the organizers of the land bank came within the scope of that drastic measure. Some persons in the province at that time knew that the law officers of the crown had been consulted and that they had rendered opinions that there was no existing law under which such an experiment in banking could be reached. There were some who knew that the New Hampshire merchants’ bank had actually met with approval by the Board of Trade, and yet when the opportunity came for applying this doctrine to men in Massachusetts engaged in an enterprise of similar nature, their acts were discovered to be no longer legal and permissory, but had in some strange way become criminal and abhorrent. A law which could not have been interpreted as reaching to the colonies was declared to have originally applied to them, to have been constantly in operation there and to be at that time in full force in the province of the Massachusetts Bay. The majority of the house of representatives, the majority perhaps of the people of the province, were converted by this act from innocent law abiding citizens either into actual violators of the law liable to criminal process, or into what was nearly as bad, avowed sympathizers with others who were thus situated. How this was looked upon by those who believed in the power of parliament to legislate as it pleased concerning the colonies is disclosed by Hutchinson in the following words: “It was said the act of George I. when it passed had no relation to America; but another act twenty years after gave it force, even

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from the passing it, which it never could have had without. This was said to be an instance of the transcendent power of Parliament.”¹ At the time when Hutchinson thus glibly wrote of an act giving force to a previous one “even from the passing it, which it never could have had without,” he had abundant reasons for comprehending that something had aroused the people of Massachusetts, and it is difficult to comprehend how he or any other inhabitant of the province could have calmly contemplated legislation of this character. It must be borne in mind however that the capitalists and intelligent business men were then in a state of heated indignation and were prepared to avail themselves of any method which presented itself for the suppression of the land bank. There were some however who understood that the influence of these proceedings upon public sentiment was far reaching and important. The subscribers to the land bank, believing that they had a perfect right to proceed were loath to recognize the parliamentary act and reluctantly consented to liquidate the affairs of the bank. Many of them were apparently ready to resist the enforcement of the law, but wiser counsels prevailed and partly through the voluntary acts of the subscribers, partly through provincial legislation, the bank was wound up. Under the act of parliament, every act performed by the subscribers to the land bank under their organization was null and void. In order to close up the bank, it was absolutely necessary to recognize the obligations of the company and in turn those given to the company by the subscribers. Thus by provincial legislation passed for the purpose of effecting

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the object aimed at by the act of parliament, the act itself was swept aside. This paradoxical proceeding was referred to by Samuel Adams in a reply on the part of the house of representatives to the speech of the gove[r]nor on the second of March 1773. “The act of Parliament,” said Adams, “passed in 1741, for putting an end to several unwarrantable schemes, mentioned by your excellency, was designed for the general good; and, if the validity of it was not disputed, it cannot be urged as a concession of the supreme authority, to make laws binding on us in all cases whatever. But if the design of it was for the general benefit of the province, it was in one respect, at the least greatly complained of, by the persons most immediately affected by it; and to remedy the inconvenience, the legislative of this province, passed an act directly militating with it; which is the strongest evidence, that although they may have submitted, sub silentio, to some acts of parliament, that they conceived might operate for their benefit, they did not conceive themselves bound by any of the acts, which they judged would operate to the injury even of individuals.”¹

When this act was passed John Adams was a mere boy of about six years of age. The ceaseless passage of

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the years bore him on to a period of life when he took an interest in public affairs, and still the protracted legislation and litigation connected with the the closure of the land bank occupied the attention of the assembly and of the courts of law. When he speaks of the effect of these proceedings upon the popular mind, he furnishes testimony which may be accepted as that of one in close touch with these events. His measure of their importance stated in the following language leaves no doubt of his opinion upon that point: “The act to destroy the land bank scheme raised a greater ferment in the province than the Stamp act did.”¹ We seek in vain for any recognition by historians of the political importance of these events, at all proportionate to that to which they were entitled, if we may accept the above expression of opinion as even approximately true. Minot merely gives an outline of the scheme and of the events connected with its history.² Bancroft contents himself with a few quotations from Hutchinson.³ Hildreth gives a brief sketch of the land bank and says that the act extending the Bubble act to the colonies “was denounced in Massachusetts as an interference with the provincial charter, and in South Carolina as a violation of provincial rights.” He also refers to the fact that “earnest efforts on behalf of these unfortunate speculators, of whom his father was one, first introduced into politics Samuel Adams, afterwards so celebrated.”⁴ Barry, deals with it in the briefest possible way and adds “and threats of civil disturbance were made if its operations

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were suspended.¹ Palfrey’s sympathy with those who were opposed to the land bank, blinded his eyes to what had actually taken place. He saw that the project had usurped a prominent position in politics, but evidently regarded it as local and temporary. His satisfaction at the closure of the scheme is shown in his epigrammatic statement of the result of the application to parliament: “The land bank was caught in its own devices.”² No person who fully appreciated what had taken place could have thus epitomized the proceedings which followed the action of parliament. It will be seen that Hildreth alone seems to have been upon the verge of a complete understanding of the political value of these experiences. We can see that the preposterous legislation of parliament although incapable of practical enforcement, was made use of as a blind behind which laws which violated its terms were passed to accomplish its purposes. Its evasion by the assembly brought the question of parliamentary supremacy under discussion. The enforcement of the provincial laws passed to put it in practical operation although acquiesced in by the capitalists and the solid men of the community on account of the good thereby to be accomplished, was not secured without arousing indignation and hostility throughout the province.

“It is supposed,” wrote one of the pamphleteers of the day, “that there will be about one thousand subscribers, who in their station of life must have an intercourse of business or dealing interwoven with ten thousand more.” “Many towns,” wrote another, “take the notes in trade, besides paying their town and ministerial rates with it, at least in part.” As we look over the list of directors

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we see the name of Samuel Adams, and in later reports of committees his estate is classed among the delinquents. It is known that the harassing proceedings taken against the estate of the father were a source of annoyance and trouble to the son. Adams’s defiance of the sheriff who was trying to levy upon that estate was published in the News Letter in 1758. Who shall measure the effect of these proceedings upon the mind of the future inspirer of the committees of correspondence, the indefatigable and persistent leader in the revolutionary movement? The success of this movement is largely attributed to these committees of correspondence. Who can doubt that the idea of thus arousing the people and keeping them in touch with the contest, took its root in the frequent appeals to the select men of the towns made by the representatives during these prolonged discussions? Who can fail to see that the land bank if it had been left alone, would have collapsed in a few months through its own inherent weakness? Yet parliament too impatient to wait for this, and too anxious to secure the prompt closure of the scheme to scrutinize the methods by which it should be accomplished, sacrificed its reputation for consistency and justice, and in its haste and impatience to crush the land bank resorted to means which then aroused the indignation of this great number of interested persons and which can not fail to create the same feelings in the mind of the disinterested reader to-day. As we rehearse these events who can doubt the instrumentality of the currency discussions, the conflicts between the governors and the representatives and the appeals to the select men for instructions, in creating that state of opinion which John Adams said was the real American revolution?

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