Carl L. Becker

“ It was Thomas Jefferson’s good fortune, in voicing the prevailing sentiment in America, to give classic expression to those fundamental principles of a political faith which was destined, in the course of a hundred years, to win the allegiance of the greater part of the western world.
“We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these, are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness. ”

“ And the genuine colonial aristocrat, such as Colonel Byrd or Governor Thomas Hutchinson, was proud to have it thought that his mind as well as his house was furnished after the best English fashion. Even more than others, those who were condemned to be provincials of the province consciously endeavored, to avoid provincialism of the spirit; to be mistaken in London for an English gentleman of parts was a much-sought compensation for being, at Williamsburg or Boston, no more than the first gentleman of America. In the middle of the eighteenth century, eccentricity was not yet a mark of genius ”

“ The people of New England fled for the sake of civil and religious liberty; multitudes flocked to America with this dependence, that their liberties should be safe. They and their posterity have enjoyed them to their content, and therefore have endured with greater cheerfulness all the hardships of settling new countries. No ill use has been made of these privileges; but the domain and wealth of Great Britain have received amazing addition. Surely the services we have rendered the nation have not subjected us to any forfeitures. ”

“ The Spaniards found no lack of treasure, but in North America gold ever turned to ashes, and the great South Sea receded like a mirage before every advance. Yet the failure of many voyages to the frozen North, and of many inland expeditions ending in disaster and death, could not quench the optimism which the gentlemen adventurers caught from the men of the Renaissance and bequeathed to the colonist, and which for two hundred years the frontiersman has preserved as a priceless heritage of the New World. ”

“ Reconciliation at this stage would be the ruin of America. If King George were indeed clever, he would eagerly repeal all the obnoxious acts and make every concession; for when the colonies had once become reconciled he could accomplish by “craft and subtlety, in the long run, what he cannot do by force and violence in the short one.” The colonies, having come to maturity, cannot always remain subject to tutelage; like the youth who has reached his majority, they must sooner or later go their own way. ”

“ For from time immemorial the Orient had been the enemy's country, little known beyond the bounds of Syria, a half-mythical land of alien races, of curious customs and infidel faiths, a land of interminable distances, rich and populous, doubtless, certainly dangerous and inaccessible. But in the thirteenth century the veil which had long shrouded Asia in mystery was lifted, discovering to European eyes countries so rich in hoarded treasure and the products of industry that the gems and spices which found their way to the West were seen to be but the refuse of their accumulated stores. ”

“ Joseph Warren, knowing or easily guessing the destination of the troops, at once despatched William Dawes, and later in the evening Paul Revere also, to Lexington and Concord to spread the alarm. As the little army of Colonel Smith—a thousand men, more or less—left Boston and marched up into the country, church bells and the booming of cannon announced their coming. Day was breaking when the British troops approached the town of Lexington; and there on the green they could see, in the early morning light, perhaps half a hundred men standing in military array—fifty against a thousand! ”

“ Yet no conventionalized Puritanism, no mere living on the dead level of habitual virtues could satisfy the leaders of the great migration. The founding of Massachusetts was preëminently a self-conscious movement, the work of able and resolute men who brought an unquenchable moral enthusiasm to the support of a clearly defined purpose. They had counted the cost and made their choice; and every instinct of proud and self-contained men disposed them to minimize the difficulties which they encountered in the New World and to exaggerate those which they had overcome in the Old. ”

“ If, therefore, Americans had been given to boasting, their growing wealth was not, any more than their increasing numbers, a thing to be passed over in silence. In every colony the “starving time,” even if it had ever existed, was now no more than an ancient tradition. “Every man of industry has it in his power to live well,” according to William Smith of New York, “and many are the instances of persons who came here distressed in their poverty who now enjoy easy and plentiful fortunes.” ”

“ At every stage in the controversy, the most uncompromising opponents of Parliamentary taxation were those who felt themselves inadequately represented in colonial assemblies. Fear of British tyranny was most felt by those who had little influence in shaping colonial laws. And half the bitter denunciation of corruption in England was inspired by jealous dislike of those high-placed families in America whose ostentatious lives and condescending manners were an offense to the laborious poor, or to men of talent ambitious to rise from obscurity to influence and power. ”

“ To debate a point of procedure in the Boston or Williamsburg assembly was not, to be sure, as high a privilege as to obstruct legislation in Westminster; but men of the best American families, fashioning their minds as well as their houses on good English models, thought of themselves, in withholding a governor’s salary or limiting his executive power, as but reënacting on a lesser stage the great parliamentary struggles of the seventeenth century. ”

“ Those who looked to America for great financial profit or immediate political advantage were disappointed. The seventeenth century had run half its course before the colonies became an important asset to the English Government: no gold came from them to enrich its treasury, few supplies to furnish its navy, while the revenue, derived from its slowly growing trade was insignificant. Equally deceptive was the New World as a field for corporate exploitation. The sagacity of Thomas Smythe and the idealism of Edwin Sandys were alike unavailing. ”

“ The Sons of Liberty, retaining the semblance of an organization, were rarely in the public eye save at the annual celebrations of the repeal of the Stamp Act, quite harmless occasions devoted to the expression of patriotic sentiments. Merchants and landowners, again prosperous, were content to fall back into accustomed habits of life, conscious of duty done without too much stress, readily believing their liberties finally vindicated against encroachments from abroad and their privileges secure against unwarranted and dangerous pretensions at home. ”

“ The glowing accounts which reached England appealed to those of every class whose straitened circumstances or unsatisfied ambitions disposed them to a hazard of new fortunes. The yeoman farmer, whose income was small and whose children would always remain yeomen; the lawyer and the physician, the merchant and the clergyman, ambitious to become landowners and play the gentleman; younger sons of the country gentry, for whom there were no assured avenues of advancement: these felt the call of the New World. ”

“ Duties on glass and tea certainly would take money out of their pockets without their consent, and therefore it must be true that taxes could be rightly laid only by colonial assemblies, in which alone Americans could be represented. But of what value was it to preserve the abstract right of taxation by colonial assemblies if meanwhile the assemblies themselves might, by act of Parliament, be abolished? And had not the New York Assembly been suspended by act of Parliament? ”

“ They liked to think of themselves as exhibiting "a resolution which would not have disgraced the Romans in their best days"; and seem almost to welcome persecution in order to prove that the spirit of Regulus still lived. It was no mere dispute in the practical art of politics that engaged them, but a cosmic conflict between the unconditioned good and the powers of darkness. "It is impossible that vice can so triumph over virtue," writes Lee in all soberness, "as that the slaves of Tyranny should succeed against the brave and generous asserters of Liberty and the just rights of Humanity." ”

“ During these years there was no power in the course of events or in the tongue of man to move him in the conviction that “if the Liberties of America are ever completely ruined, it will in all probability be the 178 consequence of a mistaken notion of prudence, which leads men to acquiesce in measures of the most destructive tendency for the sake of present ease.” Never, therefore, were “the political affairs of America in a more dangerous state” than when the people had seemingly grown weary of altercations and Parliament could endure an entire session “without one offensive measure.” ”

“ Overreached and defrauded in nearly every bargain, the Indian hated the trader whose lure he could not resist, and with the coming of the surveyor and the settler was well aware that the pretended friendship of the English was but a thin mask to conceal the greed of men who had no other desire than to rob him of his land. During the latter years of the war, after the conquest of Canada placed the allies of France under the heavy hand of Amherst and opened the way to actual settlement, it became clear that an ominous spirit of unrest was spreading throughout all the Northwest. ”

“ A certain great Fortune and piddling Genius, whose Fame has been trumpeted so loudly, has given a silly Cast to our whole Doings. We are between Hawk and Buzzard. We ought to have had in our Hands a month ago the whole Legislative, executive, and judicial of the whole Continent, and have completely modeled a Constitution; to have raised a naval Power, and opened our Ports wide; to have arrested every Friend of Government on the Continent and held them as Hostages for the poor Victims of Boston, and then opened the Door as wide as possible for Peace and Reconciliation. ”

“ For a decade these excitable Americans did, indeed, cultivate the sensations of freedom; went out periodically, as it were, to "snuff the approach of tyranny on every tainted breeze"; a practice which, becoming habitual, developed a peculiar type of mind which marked a man out from his fellows. Such a man was William Hall, Esquire, of North Carolina, at whose house Josiah Quincy stopped; "a most sensible, polite gentleman, and, although a Crown officer, a man replete with the sentiments of general liberty." ”

“ And therefore, since the Constitution is founded “in the law of God and nature,” and since “it is an essential natural right that a man shall quietly enjoy and have the sole disposal of his property,” the Americans must enjoy this right equally with Englishmen, and Parliament must be bound to respect this right in the colonies as well as in England; from which it followed irresistibly that the consent of the colonies to any taxation must be sought exclusively in their own assemblies, it being manifestly impossible for that consent to be “constitutionally had in Parliament.” ”

“ In contrast with Europe, so "artificial," so oppressed with defenseless tyrannies and useless inequalities, so encumbered with decayed superstitions and the débris of worn-out institutions, how superior was this new land of promise where the citizen was a free man, where the necessities of life were the sure reward of industry, where manners were simple, where vice was less prevalent than virtue and native incapacity the only effective barrier to ambition! ”

“ Nor is there occasion for any national expense in America. For one hundred years together the New England colonies received no aid in their wars with the Indians, assisted by the French. Those governments now molested are as able to defend their respective frontiers; and had rather do the whole of it by a tax of their own raising, than pay their proportion in any other way. Moreover, it must be prejudicial to the national interest to impose parliamentary taxes. The advantages promised by an increase of the revenue are all fallacious and delusive. You will lose more than you will gain. ”

“ And the circumstances of the migration seemed, indeed, a miraculous preparation for this easy solution of human government; for persecution was taken to be but "a strange contrivance of God" to gather "a chosen company of men"—the sifted wheat for planting an ideal commonwealth. Yet of the first settlers more than half refused to take the covenant, thus renouncing the privileges of the ideal commonwealth without obtaining relief from its burdens. ”

“ Hancock would not wish to see the entire tea trade of America in the hands of the East India Company.
And indeed to whose interest would it be to have an English company granted a monopoly of a thriving branch of American trade? To those, doubtless, who were the consignees of the Company, such as the sons of Thomas Hutchinson, or Mr. Abram Lott of New York. Certainly no private merchant “who is acquainted with the 204 operation of a monopoly ... will send out or order tea to America when those who have it at first hand send to the same market.” ”

“ The routine of work and pleasure was much the same on the great plantation as on the small: clearing and planting, spinning and weaving, dancing and horse-racing, neighborly hospitality which was generous and sincere because the opportunity to exercise it was rare, attendance at church or at the county court, at elections, at the annual muster—it was a range of activities too limited to permit of any deep-seated sense of difference between man and man. ”