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By Root 1054 0

to expend £500,000 a year to assist the Customs-House officers in collecting £295, which was the whole net produce of the taxes there.” The hero of the debates was none of these but former Governor Thomas Pownall speaking from seven years’ experience in America in the administration of four different colonies. In long, cogent, irrefutable argument and evidence, he was perhaps the only one to speak from genuine disinterest and genuine concern to restore good relations with America. Other critics, with scoffing invective and exaggerated sympathy for the oppressed colonists—whom Barré described as the “honest, faithful, loyal, and till that moment, as subjects, irreproachable people of Massachusetts”—were more concerned to bring down the Government than to reconcile it with America. The Government complacently ignored the criticism, secure in its large majority.

Pownall laid bare the follies. Instead of ordering the billeting and supply of troops by the Quartering Act, which instantly aroused colonial protest, the process should be left “to the people themselves to do it in their own way, and by their own modes of doing business” as they had done during the Seven Years’ War. The commanding officer of any body of soldiers should be empowered to treat with local magistrates to quarter the troops by mutual agreement. In moving repeal of the Townshend Act, he showed how the preamble in announcing the purpose to be revenue for civil government was a “total change” of the system by which the colonies had always controlled public servants by their own legislatures having the grant and disposal of funds for government. In changing that system, the Act was not only unnecessary, since the Declaratory Act already established Parliament’s sovereignty, but “unjust and a grievance in every degree.”

As regards trade, he showed how the Act was “directly contrary to all the principles of commerce respecting your own interests”: it served as a bounty to American manufactures, encouraged contraband and recourse to foreign markets, rendered the colonies “every day less beneficial and advantageous to us and will in the end break off their dependence on us.” If this occasion for rectifying the error were lost, “it is lost forever. If this session elapses with Parliament’s doing nothing, American affairs will perhaps be impracticable forever after. You may exert power over, but you can never govern an unwilling people.” Almost unintentionally, Pownall had formulated a principle worth the attention of all who rule at any time—that government must conduct itself with regard to the feelings of the governed, and ignores them at its peril.

Despite the fact that Pownall’s motion won general agreement (or perhaps because of it), the ministry complained that it was too late in the session to debate a matter of so much consequence for which they were not prepared, and carried a motion to put it off to the next session. This was a fumble because their own desire was to end Non-Importation as quickly as possible. The Cabinet took up the problem during the recess. Grafton and his group, who voted for total repeal, were outvoted by Hillsborough, North and the three Bedford ministers, who insisted on retaining the duty on tea in order to retain the preamble as token of the right to tax for revenue. A resolution of painful straddling was adopted: that no measure would be taken “to derogate in any way from the legislative authority of Great Britain over the colonies”; at the same time it was not the intention to lay “any further taxes” upon America for revenue, and it was the intention at the next session of Parliament “to take off the duties upon paper, glass and colours.” When Hillsborough informed the colonial governors of the intended repeal, he managed to vitiate its effect by omitting “the soothing and conciliatory expressions” which the Grafton group had won consent to introduce. Since the omission of tea indicated that the Act as a whole was not to be repealed, the colonies were not persuaded to call off Non-Importation.

“If you would be but steady in