me, she had incurred an
enormous debt. The British officers, entertained with a hospitality in
America, carried back to England exaggerated reports of the wealth of
the colonies. The colonial governors and the British ministry had often
been thwarted and annoyed by the republican and independent, and
sometimes factious spirit, of the colonial assemblies, and longed to see
them curbed. The British merchants complained to the government of the
heavy losses entailed upon them by the depreciated colonial paper
currency. The Church of England was indignant at the violent opposition
to the introduction of bishops into the colonies, at the decision of the
"Parsons' Cause," and other provocations and indignities. The advice of
many governors and military officers had deeply impressed the government
with the necessity of laying direct taxes as the only means of retaining
the control of the colonies. The British administration, in the first
years of the reign of George the Third, was in the hands of a corrupt
oligarchy, and the ministers determined to lessen the burden at home by
levying a direct tax upon the colonies. The loyalty of the Americans had
never been warmer than at the close of the war. They had expended their
treasure and their blood freely; and the recollection of mutual
sufferings and a common glory strengthened their attachment to the
mother country; but these loyal sentiments were destined soon to wither
and expire. The colonies, too, had involved themselves in a heavy debt.
Within three years, intervening between 1756 and 1759, parliament had
granted them a large amount of money to encourage their efforts; yet,
notwithstanding that and the extraordinary supplies appropriated by the
assemblies, a heavy debt still remained unliquidated. When, therefore,
parliament in a few years thereafter undertook to extort money by a
direct tax from provinces to which she had recently granted incomparably
larger sums, it was conceived that the object of the minister, in this
innovation, was not simply to raise the inconsiderable amount of the
tax, but to establish gradually a new and absolute system of "taxation
without representation." It was easy to foresee that it would be made
the instrument of unlimited extortions, and would extinguish the
practical legislative independence of the Anglo-American colonies.
Neither the English parliament, nor those who were represented by the
lords and commons, would pay a farthing of the tax