So improvidently were the duties chosen that they were all, 1770. except the duty on tea, afterwards taken off by Lord North, on the ground that they interfered with English manufactures. No greater sum than £40,000 per annum was expected to arise from these duties, which sum was to be devoted primarily to secure the salaries of the Governors and judges, thereby, of course, rendering these officers additionally, unpopular. Hutchinson afterwards pointed out that, if these duties had been paid on exportation from England and applied to the same purposes, there would have been no opposition made to them in America. Never from first to last was any business so hopelessly mismanaged. Never was there so striking an illustration of Aristotle's maxim γίγνονται μεν ἁι στάσεις οὐ περὶ μικρῶν ἀλλ' ἐκ μικρῶν, στασιάζουσι δε περὶ μεγαλῶν, than the case of the Boston tea. The duty upon tea had been fixed at threepence per pound, and it was excused the duty of nearly twelvepence a pound paid in England, so that the practical effect of the measure was that people in America drank tea for three shillings a pound for which people in England gave six shillings, Leonard,2 some years later, stated that a calculation had "been lately made both of the amount of the revenue arising from the duties, with which our trade is at present charged, and of the bounties and encouragements paid out of the British revenue, upon articles of American produce, imported into England, and the latter is found to exceed the former more than fourfold." And yet it was to achieve this amazing result that

2 Writing as Massachuchettensis.

1 Hist. of Mass., 1749-1774. 3 We have already noted some of these bounties. Additional ones were granted in 1769 upon the importation of raw silk (9 G. III. c. 38) and in 1771 upon. the importation of pipes, hogsheads, barrel staves (11 G. III. c. 50). In the matter of 'drawbacks,' the commercial Policy of England compared very favourably with that of other nations. Having assumed the exclusive right of supplying the Colonies with European goods, Great Britain might have forced them to receive such goods loaded with the same duties which they paid in England. But, on the contrary, till 1763, the same 'drawbacks' were paid upon the exportation of the greater part of foreign goods to our Colonies as to any independent Foreign Country.' The statute 4 G. III. c. 15, to some extent altered this, but even afterwards A. Smith affirms that some sorts of foreign goods might be bought cheaper in the Colonies than in England.

England estranged her colonists, lost America and well-nigh ceased to exist as a great Power.

Having set the match to the stack, Townsend died in the following September, leaving to his successors to deal with the fire. He was succeeded by Lord North, an able man, but from whose entry into an important office dates the final triumph for fifteen years of George the Third's policy. Within a short time, Conway, Shelburne, and Chatham resigned. In 1768 Lord Hillsborough became Secretary of State for the American department, and the opposition to America in the Ministry was further strengthened by the accession to office of members of that Bedford party, which had always advocated strong measures against the Colonies. A very hostile account is given of Lord Hillsborough by Franklin,' but his despatches seem to testify to the substantial accuracy of Franklin's picture. He appears to have belonged to that very numerous class of politicians who seek to disguise their real weakness under a fluttering assumption of firmness. By a curious irony, this time, when the American Colonies were so soon to be a thing of the past, was the time chosen for the definite appointment of a separate Secretary of State for American affairs. We have seen how, from its first inception, the absence of independent authority in the Board of Trade had led to delay and confusion, and we have noticed some complaints on the subject. We have seen also how, in 1752, the difficulty had been partly met by some extension of the functions of the Board of Trade. The settlement of 1752 had been again modified in 1761, and in 1766 the old plan of Colonial authorities, corresponding both with the Secretary of State and the Board of Trade, was once more revived. In that year there had been some question of a separate Secretary of State for America, and we find Lord Chesterfield writing to Lord Dartmouth,2" If we have no Secretary of State with full and undisputed powers for America, in a few years we may as well have no America." At the time, however, the King was opposed to such a change.

1 Works, Vol. VII., Letter of Feb. 5, 1771.

2 Hist. MSS. Com., Dartmouth Corr.

Pownall, who, as an ex-Governor, spoke with authority, gives a striking picture1 of the confusion which resulted from the absence of a separate Colonial department. The military corresponded with the Secretary of State-the Civil, in one part of their office with the Secretary of State, in another, with the Board of Trade; the navy corresponded with the Admiralty in matters not merely naval; the engineers with the Board of Ordnance; and the revenue officers with the several Boards of that Branch. It was no one's business to collect into one view all these matters of information. "Until an effective administration," he writes, "for Colony affairs be established by Government, all plans for the governing of those countries under any regular system of policy will be only matter of speculation and become mere useless opprobious theory. All official information given by those whose duty it is to give it, will, as accidents shall decide, or as the connections of party shall run, be received or not; nay, it may so happen that those officers who should duly report to Government the state of these matters, will, as they find themselves conscientiously or politically disposed, direct that information to those who are in or who are out of administration. Every leader of every little flying squadron will have his own runner, his own proper channel of information, and will hold forth his own importance in public by bringing his plan for American affairs before it. All true and regular knowledge of these affairs, being dispersed, will be evaporated. Every administration, even Parliament itself, will be distracted in its Councils by a thousand odds and ends of propositions, by a thousand pieces and parcels of plans, while those surely who are so deeply concerned as the Americans themselves are, will not be excluded from having their plan also . . . if, therefore, we mean to govern the Colonies, we must previously form at home some practical and efficient administration for Colony affairs."

The appointment, then, of a new Secretary of State for American affairs was clearly a right step, though the usual ill-luck of Ministers dogged them in their selection of Lord 1 Administration of the Colonies.

2 Ibid.

Hillsborough. I suppose that the years which elapsed between the virtual eclipse of the elder and the rise of the younger Pitt were the most shameful to be found in English history. Abject abroad and insolent at home, the English Government, while it encouraged the House of Commons to wage foolish war against the City of London and the printers, would have blundered, but for the fortunate dismissal of Choiseul, into a war with France and Spain combined. We now know that the momentous decision to retain the duty on tea, whilst repealing the other duties imposed by Charles Townsend, was only arrived at in the Cabinet by a majority of one. For the repeal there voted the Duke of Grafton, Lord Camden, Lord Granby and General Conway; against, Lord Rochford, Lord North, Lord Gower, Lord Weymouth and Lord Hillsborough. The minute of the Cabinet, according to Lord Hillsborough, was to the following effect :-"It is the unanimous opinion of the Lords present . . . that no measures should be taken which can in any way derogate from the Legislative authority of Great Britain over the Colonies, but that the Secretary of State in his correspondence and conversation be permitted to state that it is by no means the intention of Administration, nor do they think it expedient, or for the interest of Great Britain or of America, to propose or consent to the laying of any further taxes upon America, for the purpose of raising a revenue, and that it is at present their intention to propose, in the next Session of Parliament, to take off the duties upon. paper, glass and colours imported into America, upon consideration of such duties having been laid contrary to the true principles of commerce." Camden and Lord Grafton objected to the word "unanimous," but a more serious cause of complaint lay in the wording of Lord Hillsborough's circular to the Colonial Governors, founded on the Minute. Although based on that Minute, it displays a note of querulous complaint eminently calculated to undo the good effects of its conciliatory promises. Lord North seems to have held the most extraordinary views as to 1 Duke of Grafton's Journal, published at end of Walpole's George III.

the taxation of the Colonies. There had been the old view that duties were imposed for the regulation of trade. There had been the recent view that they might be employed to raise a revenue, but North seems to regard them as methods of rewarding or punishing the Mother country's naughty children.1 "Would to God," he exclaimed, with marvellous naïveté, "that I could see any reason from the subsequent behaviour of the Americans to grant them further indulgence." Yet more amazing was his cynical avowal of the absence of any system.2 "We repealed the Act when America was in flames, we laid on a new tax when America was calm. It is easy to see what sort of opinion such conduct must have given the Americans of the wisdom and authority of this Government." Again,3 "I have seen America punished and I have seen her rewarded, but I have never yet seen the people of Great Britain of one mind."

In this state of things Colonial policy was what one might expect. We have already seen the dangerous weakness of the Executive in the Colonies. In Massachusetts civil government by England was practically a thing of the past.1 Governor Bernard called urgently for two measures, the forming of a plan of civil government and its support by troops. The Ministry attended to the second part of his proposal while neglecting the first. Troops were sent, but on their arrival they found no magistrates willing to employ them. If the intention was to govern by the aid of military force, the troops sent out were too few, on any other hypothesis they were too many. In this way it was left to a subordinate officer practically to decide the question whether or not there should be civil war. No men should have been placed in the position of these unfortunate soldiers. An officer, who had served in America, afterwards stated 1 Cavendish Debates, Vol. I.. p. 485. 2 P. 486. 3 P. 487. Note the striking language of G. Grenville in the last speech he made in the House of Commons, May 9, 1770, Cavendish Debates, Vol. II., p. 35. "Look at Governor Bernard's letter. First he calls for a plan of civil government; then

he calls for troops. Is it proper to take only half of a man's plan ?”

Col. Mackay, Cavendish Debates, Vol. I., p. 493.