The March of Folly_ From Troy to Vietnam - Barbara Wertheim Tuchman [100]
With a majority determined to teach the colonies a lesson in sovereignty and eager for a reduction in their own land tax in consequence of revenue from America, the hope of moving Parliament to vote for repeal was slight. Grenville fulminated about the “outrageous Tumults and Insurrections” in North America, and Lord Northington declared that to “give up the law” by repeal would mean for Britain to “be conquered in America and become a Province to her own Colonies.” Efforts to elicit an opinion from Pitt during the Christmas recess were unavailing and when Parliament reconvened on 14 January 1766, Rockingham, trying to maintain a government weakened by dissension, was uncertain what to do.
Pitt appeared. The benches hushed. He said to them that the subject before them was “of greater importance than ever engaged the attention of this House” since their own liberties were at stake in the revolution of the last century and that “the outcome will decide the judgment of posterity on the glory of this kingdom and the wisdom of government during the present reign.” Taxation was “no part of the governing or legislative power”; it was a “voluntary gift” of representative assemblies. The idea of “virtual representation of America in this House is the most contemptible idea that ever entered into the head of man and it does not deserve a serious refutation.” Referring to remarks by Grenville denouncing those in England who encouraged colonial resistance, he retorted, “I rejoice that America has resisted. Three millions of people so dead to all feelings of liberty as voluntarily to submit to be slaves would have been fit instruments to make slaves of the rest.” A member cried out that the speaker should be sent to the Tower, evoking, according to a witness, “such shouts of applause as I never heard.” Shaken but not diverted, Pitt went on to announce that the Stamp Act must be repealed “absolutely, totally, immediately” and at the same time accompanied by a statement of “sovereign authority over the colonies … in as strong terms as can be devised and be made to extend to every point of legislation whatsoever—that we may bind their trade, confine their manufactures, and exercise every power whatsoever except that of taking their money out of their pockets without their consent.”
Here was a fine obfuscation. Was not binding their trade by customs duties another way of taking money out of their pockets without their consent? If Parliament had supreme legislative power, how could taxation not be “part of that sovereign power”? Grenville, in making these points, refused to accept the distinction between external and internal taxation. Pitt was a firm mercantilist and his reply was unequivocal: “Let it be forever ascertained; taxation is theirs, commercial regulation is ours.” His distinction left others unconvinced. “If you understand the difference,” wrote Lord George Germain to a friend, “it is more than I do, but I assure you it was very fine when I heard it.”
It was enough for Rockingham; he had his signal. A declaration of parliamentary sovereignty, which it was hoped would satisfy the demand for assertiveness, was immediately drafted and introduced along with the bill for repeal. The King’s sullen consent was secured by informing him that the choice was either repeal or armed enforcement requiring additional military forces for which it would be hard to find funds. The House resumed debate. In the Lords the Duke of Bedford, leader of the Grenville faction, insisted that the Stamp Act “if suffered to be removed puts a final period to the British Empire in America.” Rockingham, however, had found allies. He encouraged the merchants’ campaign in order to shift emphasis from controversial “rights” to economic consequences. Provincial mayors and leading citizens from 35 cities arrived each day to present petitions from their cities for repeal. Letters from American traders to