The Patriot Post® · America 250: The Tensions Increase

The Sugar Act, passed by the British Parliament in 1764, threatened the colonial economy and certainly infringed on a people who had been fairly self-sufficient since the early 1600s. While they were loyal to the British Crown, they had crafted a new society in a new land where courage and intelligence worked hand-in-hand for success.

After more than a hundred years of loose governance, Prime Minister George Grenville made it his primary goal to wrangle the stubbornly independent colonists into compliance with a series of new legislative acts. While he expected that the colonial leaders would acquiesce to Parliament’s directives, he was surprised — nay, he was angered — to discover that the colonists instead demanded that they be treated as English citizens, with the “rights of English citizens.”

What?

They were colonists. They were not the enlightened residents of the British Isles, that land beyond description:

“This royal throne of kings, this scepter’d isle,
This earth of majesty, this seat of Mars,
This other Eden, demi-paradise,
This fortress built by Nature for herself
Against infection and the hand of war,
This happy breed of men, this little world,
This precious stone set in the silver sea,
Which serves it in the office of a wall
Or as a moat defensive to a house,
Against the envy of less happier lands,
This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England…”

—William Shakespeare, Richard II

So, instead of resigning themselves to a role of lesser Englishmen, the colonists in Boston — that hotbed of insurrection — reacted with a united non-importation initiative, joining together in agreeing to stop importing British luxury items in an attempt to force Grenville to back down. The push for local manufacturing increased, with wealthy residents supporting younger citizens with profitable ideas.

Things were looking up for New England until Nathaniel Wheelwright, a wealthy banker and contractor, fled Boston after bankrupting, leaving a debt of more than 170,000 pounds. Businesses all across Boston tottered as his bankruptcy left numerous small businesses impacted with little hope of survival. Bostonians steeled themselves for a fight that truly might destroy their city.

A bright moment occurred in 1765 when Colonel Isaac Barre, an Irish MP, defended the American colonists in a speech that rocked Parliament. (Barre’s constituents understood not being treated as equals to the English.) His remarks have seldom been shared in textbooks or speeches, but they ring true.

Your oppression planted them in America. They fled from your tyranny to a then uncultivated and inhospitable country, where they exposed themselves to almost all the hardships to which human nature is liable, and among others to the cruelties of a savage foe, the most subtle, and I take upon me to say, the most formidable of any people upon the face of God’s earth…

[Were] they nourished by your indulgence? They grew by your neglect of them. As soon as you began to care about them, that care was exercised in sending persons to rule over them, in one department and another… sent to spy out their liberty, to misrepresent their actions and to prey upon them; men whose behaviour on many occasions has caused the blood of these sons of liberty to recoil within them…

[Were] they protected by your arms? They have nobly taken up arms in your defence, they have exerted a valour amidst their constant and laborious industry for the defence of a country whose frontier, while drenched in blood, its interior parts have yielded all its little savings to your emolument [compensation].

The [American] people, I believe, are as truly loyal as any subjects the king has. But they are a people jealous of their liberties and who will vindicate them if ever they should be violated; but the subject is too delicate and I will say no more.

Two hundred and sixty-one years later, those words resonate, and they indicated a solidarity with others who felt oppression at the hands of the British Parliament.

But it was not just Boston that reacted to Parliament’s attempts to restrict the colonists’ sense of self-determination. Virginia bristled, too.

On May 29, 1765, the Virginia House of Burgesses, in a document primarily authored by Patrick Henry, struck a blow. In a series of five Virginia Resolves, Henry reminded the British Parliament that Virginians were indeed English citizens and heirs to the “rights” inherent in that designation.

He wrote in one resolve: “Resolved, That the Taxation of the People by themselves or by Persons chosen by themselves to represent them who can only know what Taxes the People are able to bear and the easiest Mode of raising them and are equally affected by such Taxes themselves is the distinguishing Characteristick of British Freedom and without which the ancient Constitution cannot subsist.” And, he did not stop there. “Resolved, that by two royal charters, granted by King James I, the colonists aforesaid are declared entitled to all liberties, privileges, and immunities of denizens and natural subjects to all intents and purposes as if they had been abiding and born within the Realm of England.”

Oh, my. Peace did not seem imminent.