The intolerable acts went through Parliament with extraordinary celerity.There was an opposition,alert and informed;but it was ineffective.Burke spoke eloquently against the Boston port bill,condemning it roundly forpunishing the innocent with the guilty,and showing how likely it was to bring grave consequences in its train.He was heard with respect and his pleas were rejected.The bill passed both houses without a division,the entry "unanimous"being made upon their journals although it did not accurately represent the state of opinion.The law destroying the charter of Massachusetts passed the Commons by a vote of three to one;and the third intolerable act by a vote of four to one.The triumph of the ministry was complete."What passed in Boston,"exclaimed the great jurist,Lord Mansfield,"is the overt act of High Treason proceeding from our over lenity and want of foresight."The crown and Parliament were united in resorting to punitive measures.
In the colonies the laws were received with consternation.To the American Protestants,the Quebec Act was the most offensive.That project they viewed not as an act of grace or of mercy but as a direct attempt to enlist French Canadians on the side of Great Britain.The British government did not grant religious toleration to Catholics either at home or in Ireland and the Americans could see no good motive in granting it in North America.The act was also offensive because Massachusetts,Connecticut,and Virginia had,under their charters,large claims in the territory thus annexed to Quebec.
To enforce these intolerable acts the military arm of the British government was brought into play.The commanderinchief of the armed forces in America,General Gage,was appointed governor of Massachusetts.Reinforcements were brought to the colonies,for now King George was to give "the rebels,"as he called them,a taste of strong medicine.The majesty of his law was to be vindicated by force.
From Reform to Revolution in America
The Doctrine of Natural Rights.The dissolution of assemblies,the destruction of charters,and the use of troops produced in the colonies a new phase in the struggle.In the early days of the contest with the British ministry,the Americans spoke of their "rights as Englishmen"and condemned the acts of Parliament as unlawful,as violating the principles of the English constitution under which they all lived.When they saw that such arguments had no effect on Parliament,they turned for support to their "natural rights."The latter doctrine,in the form in which it was employed by the colonists,was as English as the constitutional argument.John Locke had used it with good effect in defense of the English revolution in the seventeenth century.American leaders,familiar with the writings of Locke,also took up his thesis in the hour of their distress.They openly declared that their rights did not rest after all upon the English constitution or a charter from the crown."Old Magna Carta was not thebeginning of all things,"retorted Otis when the constitutional argument failed."A time may come when Parliament shall declare every American charter void,but the natural,inherent,and inseparable rights of the colonists as men and as citizens would remain and whatever became of charters can never be abolished until the general conflagration."Of the same opinion was the young and impetuous Alexander Hamilton."The sacred rights of mankind,"he exclaimed,"are not to be rummaged for among old parchments or musty records.They are written as with a sunbeam in the whole volume of human destiny by the hand of divinity itself,and can never be erased or obscured by mortal power."
Firm as the American leaders were in the statement and defense of their rights,there is every reason for believing that in the beginning they hoped to confine the conflict to the realm of opinion.They constantly avowed that they were loyal to the king when protesting in the strongest language against his policies.Even Otis,regarded by the loyalists as a firebrand,was in fact attempting to avert revolution by winning concessions from England."I argue this cause with the greater pleasure,"he solemnly urged in his speech against the writs of assistance,"as it is in favor of British liberty ...and as it is in opposition to a kind of power,the exercise of which in former periods cost one king of England his head and another his throne."
Burke Offers the Doctrine of Conciliation.The flooding tide of American sentiment was correctly measured by one Englishman at least,Edmund Burke,who quickly saw that attempts to restrain the rise of American democracy were efforts to reverse the processes of nature.He saw how fixed and rooted in the nature of things was the American spirithow inevitable,how irresistible.He warned his countrymen that there were three ways of handling the delicate situationand only three.One was to remove the cause of friction by changing the spirit of the colonistsan utter impossibility because that spirit was grounded in the essential circumstances of American life.The second was to prosecute American leaders as criminals;of this he begged his countrymen to beware lest the colonists declare that "a government against which a claim of liberty is tantamount to high treason is a government to which submission is equivalent to slavery."The third and right way to meet the problem,Burke concluded,was to accept the American spirit,repeal the obnoxious measures,and receive the colonies into equal partnership.