WEBVTT NOTE 65. The Impact on Britain 1 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:06.000 Volume 3, Chapter 65, The Impact on Britain. 2 00:00:06.000 --> 00:00:12.000 Buoyed by the network of provincial conventions and local enforcement committees, the Continental 3 00:00:12.000 --> 00:00:18.760 Congress's boycott of British imports proved extraordinarily effective. 4 00:00:18.760 --> 00:00:29.440 Imports of the 13 American colonies from Great Britain fell from 2.6 million pounds in 1774 5 00:00:29.440 --> 00:00:38.440 to over 200,000 pounds in 1775. The effectiveness of the boycott is even more startling if we 6 00:00:38.440 --> 00:00:48.440 omit non-boycotting Georgia, where imports more than doubled, from 57,500 pounds to 135,000 7 00:00:48.440 --> 00:00:57.660 pounds. Omitting Georgia, imports from Great Britain fell 97 percent in one year. The drastic 8 00:00:57.660 --> 00:01:03.500 Declining imports had the desired effect on the British merchants and manufacturers in 9 00:01:03.500 --> 00:01:10.500 the American trade. From January through March 1775, they kept up a drum fire of agitation 10 00:01:12.020 --> 00:01:18.460 upon Parliament to repeal the coercive acts. Petitions to this effect passed into Parliament 11 00:01:18.460 --> 00:01:25.460 from London and from such manufacturing towns as Bristol, Glasgow, Birmingham, Manchester, 12 00:01:25.460 --> 00:01:35.460 Liverpool, Leeds, Nottingham and Belfast, which all complained of business losses, bankruptcies and unemployment. 13 00:01:35.460 --> 00:01:45.460 Indeed, in February a subscription fund to send relief to the distressed people of Boston and New England was launched by merchants in London. 14 00:01:45.460 --> 00:01:52.460 But the Tory North Ministry, far more firmly ensconced than the government of a decade before, 15 00:01:52.460 --> 00:02:21.660 An enemy in the bowels of a kingdom is surely to be resisted, opposed and conquered, not 16 00:02:21.660 --> 00:02:26.740 notwithstanding the trade that may suffer and the factories that may be ruined. 17 00:02:26.740 --> 00:02:33.820 Indeed, rather than relent, Lord North decided to escalate the struggle and bring the fractious 18 00:02:33.820 --> 00:02:38.140 Americans to heel by severe retaliation. 19 00:02:38.140 --> 00:02:43.540 If Americans would not trade with Britain, then by God, they would not be allowed to 20 00:02:43.540 --> 00:02:46.940 trade with anyone else. 21 00:02:46.940 --> 00:03:10.940 On March 30, Parliament, over Whig and Chattamite opposition, enacted North's New England Restraining Act, prohibiting New England from trading with any place except Britain and the British West Indies after July 1, and from using the Newfoundland fisheries after July 20, until peaceful conditions were restored. 22 00:03:10.940 --> 00:03:26.940 When news arrived of the widespread ratification of the Continental Association, Parliament in mid-April extended the provisions of the Restraining Act to New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia and South Carolina. 23 00:03:26.940 --> 00:03:39.940 With petty cunning, the supposedly Tory colonies of New York, Delaware, North Carolina and Georgia were omitted in an attempt to induce them to break with the boycott. 24 00:03:39.940 --> 00:04:09.940 But the time for divisive tactics had long since passed. While moving to impose a big-stick policy of escalating force, Lord North also held out a highly anemic and suspect carrot. His conciliatory plan, introduced into Parliament on February 20, tried to seduce the Americans into abandoning their position under the cloak of saving face. 25 00:04:09.940 --> 00:04:20.940 Thus a colony was to be spared parliamentary taxation for revenue, provided that it would tax itself to pay for the salaries of the royal officials. 26 00:04:20.940 --> 00:04:33.940 Britain, indeed the whim of the crown, was in short to tell each colony how much it must raise in taxes to pay for purposes fixed by the home country. 27 00:04:33.940 --> 00:04:36.940 And then the colony would have to obey. 28 00:04:36.940 --> 00:04:44.220 Thus, imposed taxation by Britain would remain under a new guise. 29 00:04:44.220 --> 00:04:52.180 North's complex and unworkable plan was consciously designed, as were his force acts, to split 30 00:04:52.180 --> 00:04:54.540 the American colonies. 31 00:04:54.540 --> 00:04:56.820 But no one was fooled. 32 00:04:56.820 --> 00:05:03.900 The illustrious Whig leader Edmund Burke brilliantly analyzed the plan and such of its unworkable 33 00:05:03.900 --> 00:05:10.900 Berk's proposal features as deciding on quotas of taxes for each colony as a ransom-by auction of the colonies. 34 00:05:10.900 --> 00:05:23.900 Lord North's proposal was soon rendered obsolete by the rush of events, reaching New York, for example, the day after news of Lexington and Concord. 35 00:05:23.900 --> 00:05:32.900 Berk, leading the opposition in the House of Commons to the British crackdown, called for repeal and a return to the old Whig colonial policy. 36 00:05:32.900 --> 00:05:44.900 In his Speech on Conciliation with the Colonies, Burke set forth the necessity of appeasement as the prime foreign policy of a truly strong government. 37 00:05:44.900 --> 00:05:56.900 I mean to give peace. Peace implies reconciliation, and reconciliation does in a manner always imply concession on one part or on the other. 38 00:05:56.900 --> 00:06:11.900 In this state of things, the proposal ought to originate from us. Great and acknowledged force is not impaired, either in effect or in opinion, by an unwillingness to exert itself. 39 00:06:11.900 --> 00:06:16.900 The superior power may offer peace with honor and with safety. 40 00:06:16.900 --> 00:06:33.900 And Burke made clear that peace was precisely the desideratum, to be arrived at simply and directly, not by the paradox of pursuing the shimmer of peace through aging long and bloody war. 41 00:06:33.900 --> 00:06:40.380 The proposition is peace, not peace through the medium of war, not peace to be hunted 42 00:06:40.380 --> 00:06:47.500 through the labyrinth of intricate and endless negotiations, not peace to arise out of universal 43 00:06:47.500 --> 00:06:54.580 discord formatted from principle, not peace to depend on the juridical determination of 44 00:06:54.580 --> 00:06:56.580 perplexing questions. 45 00:06:56.580 --> 00:07:04.220 It is simple peace, sought in its natural course and in its ordinary haunts. 46 00:07:04.220 --> 00:07:12.180 It is peace sought in the spirit of peace, laid in principles purely pacific. 47 00:07:12.180 --> 00:07:18.700 Burke saluted American achievements and economic development, which had not been squeezed into 48 00:07:18.700 --> 00:07:24.420 this happy form by the constraints of watchful and suspicious government, but that, through 49 00:07:24.420 --> 00:07:30.580 Through a wise and salutary neglect, a generous nature has been suffered to take her own way 50 00:07:30.580 --> 00:07:37.940 to perfection. He added, When I see how profitable they have been to us, I feel all the pride 51 00:07:37.940 --> 00:07:43.900 of powers sink, and all presumption in the wisdom of human contrivances melt and die 52 00:07:43.900 --> 00:07:50.640 away within me. In this way, Burke harked back to the crucial distinction he had made 53 00:07:50.640 --> 00:07:59.000 in his first work, A Vindication of Natural Society, 1756, Between the Benefits of Natural 54 00:07:59.000 --> 00:08:05.960 Voluntary Actions in Society, Natural Government, and the Mischievous Effects of the Coercive 55 00:08:05.960 --> 00:08:10.800 Intervention of the State, Artificial Government. 56 00:08:10.800 --> 00:08:17.420 This hard-hitting anarchist attack on government, written synonymously while Burke was an impecunious 57 00:08:17.420 --> 00:08:26.420 by the famous and disgruntled young law student, was by him quickly repudiated as a supposed satire when his authorship became known. 58 00:08:27.420 --> 00:08:42.420 Burke hailed the fierce spirit of liberty that had grown up among the Americans, a result of their remoteness, their religion and customs, their English tradition of liberty and revolution, and their education in legal and political theory. 59 00:08:42.420 --> 00:08:49.580 Now, the spirit of liberty in America was in collision with the spirit of power in England. 60 00:08:49.580 --> 00:08:55.420 Burke saw with acute perception the radically new nature of what the Americans had recently 61 00:08:55.420 --> 00:08:56.940 been doing. 62 00:08:56.940 --> 00:09:01.980 He saw that they had been creating, in their network of local and provincial committees 63 00:09:01.980 --> 00:09:10.300 of correspondence, of enforcement and conventions of delegates, both provincial and continental, 64 00:09:10.300 --> 00:09:18.020 and an approach to a state of anarchism. For here were revolutionary institutions completely 65 00:09:18.020 --> 00:09:25.060 illegal and outside the legal framework created spontaneously by the people building from 66 00:09:25.060 --> 00:09:32.180 the grass roots. This voluntary network of popular revolutionary organs from town committees 67 00:09:32.180 --> 00:09:39.260 up to provincial conventions and even including the congress exercised only minimal coercive 68 00:09:39.260 --> 00:09:45.580 of Authority. Its influence was in giving leadership to the voluntary actions of the 69 00:09:45.580 --> 00:09:52.580 mass of individuals. These institutions, for example, did not live off taxation, that coercive 70 00:09:53.860 --> 00:10:00.860 institution unique to the concept of government. And none printed its own money. Thus its legal 71 00:10:01.100 --> 00:10:07.140 government began to break down, particularly where it was prohibited in Massachusetts and 72 00:10:07.140 --> 00:10:13.860 It was replaced by these popular institutions. Government in America began to veer toward 73 00:10:13.860 --> 00:10:21.940 anarchism. As Burke phrased it, We thought, sir, that the utmost which the discontented 74 00:10:21.940 --> 00:10:30.020 colonist would do was to disturb authority. We never dreamt they could of themselves supply 75 00:10:30.020 --> 00:10:46.020 They have formed a government sufficient for its purposes, without the troublesome formality of an election. Evident necessity and tacit consent have done the business in an instant. 76 00:10:46.020 --> 00:10:57.020 So well have they done it that the new institution is infinitely better obeyed than the ancient government ever was in its most fortunate period. 77 00:10:57.020 --> 00:11:04.860 Obedience is what makes government, and not the names by which it is called. 78 00:11:04.860 --> 00:11:11.940 This new government has originated directly from the people, and was not transmitted through 79 00:11:11.940 --> 00:11:18.100 any of the ordinary artificial media of a positive constitution. 80 00:11:18.100 --> 00:11:23.340 It was not a manufacture ready-formed and transmitted to them in that condition from 81 00:11:23.340 --> 00:11:24.940 England. 82 00:11:24.940 --> 00:11:31.940 The evil arising from hence is this, that the colonist, having once found the possibility 83 00:11:32.500 --> 00:11:39.500 of enjoying the advantages of order in the midst of a struggle for liberty, such struggles 84 00:11:41.220 --> 00:11:47.420 will not henceforward seem so terrible to the settled and sober part of mankind as they 85 00:11:47.420 --> 00:11:54.420 had appeared before. And as to Massachusetts, we were confident that the first feeling, 86 00:11:54.420 --> 00:12:01.420 If not the very prospect of anarchy, would instantly enforce a complete submission. 87 00:12:02.260 --> 00:12:09.260 The experiment was tried. A new, strange, unexpected face of things appeared. Anarchy 88 00:12:10.180 --> 00:12:17.180 is found tolerable. A vast province has now subsisted and subsisted in a considerable 89 00:12:17.180 --> 00:12:27.180 for a considerable degree of health and vigor for near a 12-month, without governors, without judges, and without executive magistrates.