New York_ The Novel - Edward Rutherfurd [107]
For nearly half an hour, now, Hudson happily kept her occupied in the kitchen, until her father was ready.
John Master looked at the two letters before him and sighed. He knew he’d been right to let James return to England, but he missed him, and he wished that he were back.
The first was from Captain Rivers. They had kept in touch since their meeting in London. As promised, Rivers had visited New York, where they’d spent a pleasant week. Then he’d gone down to Carolina and married his rich widow. They already had two children. By all accounts, the captain had done well with his plantations, and Master knew that he had an excellent account with Albion. Many of his neighbors, however, Rivers told him, complained of their English creditors. They’d lived easy for years, buying all manner of goods on credit—which the London merchants were happy to grant them. “Now times are harder,” he wrote, “they can’t pay.” Rivers had the sense to live within his means.
He also described a visit to Virginia. His host had been George Washington, the former British officer, who had large landholdings there. Washington, too, had complaints against the mother country, but of a different kind. “He dislikes the government’s restraints on trade, especially the iron trade from which his wife’s large fortune comes,” Rivers wrote. But a deeper complaint concerned the western frontier. After serving in the army, Washington had been granted bounty lands in Indian territory. Yet now the ministry in London, wanting to maintain peace with the Indians, had told him he couldn’t claim his lands and kick the Indians out. “I met many Virginians in the same position,” Rivers wrote. “They were hoping to make fortunes out of those land grants, and now they’re furious—though Washington tells them to be patient.”
On the whole, Master considered the British view was right. There was still plenty of available land in the east. Every year thousands of families from the mother country were arriving—English, Scots and Irish—in search of cheap land. And they were finding it. Washington and his friends would have to be patient.
But the other letter worried him. It was from Albion.
It started cheerfully enough. James was happy at Oxford. He was tall and handsome, and quite a hero to young Grey Albion. In London, a fellow called Wilkes had written articles against the government, and been thrown in jail for it. But the whole city had risen in protest, and now Wilkes was a national hero. It reminded Master of the Zenger trial of his youth; and he was glad, though not surprised, that good Englishmen were defending free speech.
But then Albion came to the main point of his letter.
Britain’s finances were in a mess. The years of war had left her with a great empire, but huge debts. Credit was tight. The government was struggling to raise taxes where it could, but the English were now taxed higher than any nation in Europe. A recent attempt to impose a cider tax down in the West Country had caused riots. Worse, having been promised some lowering of the high wartime land taxes, the Parliament men were clamoring to pay less taxes, not more.
Britain’s greatest cost was America. Pontiac’s revolt had shown that the colonies still required expensive garrisons to defend them, but who was going to pay?
“It’s hardly surprising therefore,” Albion wrote, “that the ministry should look to the American colonies, who so far have paid almost nothing, to contribute to the cost of their own defense. The new duty on sugar imposed last year only covers about an eighth of what’s needed.”
Master shook his head. The Sugar Act of the previous year had been a badly drafted mass of irritating regulations. The New Yorkers had been furious. However, it was at least the custom for the government to receive duties on trade, and he reckoned the grumbling would subside.
“So that is why it was proposed,” Albion continued, “that the tax upon stamps, which as you know