Volume 3, Chapter 8, Reaction in Massachusetts
The news of the New Revenue Act reached America in early May 1764 and provoked a storm of
protest in the northern and other colonies, especially in trade-conscious Boston. A Boston
town meeting on May 15 quickly appointed a committee to draw up Boston's instructions
The Committee's instructions, approved rapidly at the next meeting, were drawn up by the great popular leader of the Massachusetts Liberals, Sam Adams.
Adams threw down the gauntlet on constitutional and libertarian principles, as well as on the pragmatic consequences of the crippling restrictions.
He boldly denied any right of Parliament to tax the colonies.
Adams warned, for if our trade may be taxed, why not our lands? An appeal to the farmers of Massachusetts. Why not the produce of our lands and everything we possess or make use of? This, we apprehend, annihilates our charter right to govern and tax ourselves. It strikes at our British privileges.
Adams also called for uniting the efforts of protest of the other American colonies.
The Massachusetts legislature promptly organized two committees, each dominated by their Boston
members. One committee, headed by James Otis, instructed Massachusetts' London agent to
urge repeal of the American Revenue Act and wavered between a principled denial of the
The State of the Rights of the Colonies Implied an Immunity of the Colonies from Parliamentary Taxation and Grounded its Argument against the State of the Rights of the Colonies.
not only on the Magna Carta but also on common law and on the laws of nature and of nations, the voice of universal reason and of God.
The other House committee sent a circular letter at the end of June to the other colonies urging a united colonial protest.
A few weeks later James Otis published an expanded version of his thesis titled
The Rights of the British Colonies Asserted and Proved
in person or by his representative, as well as the invalidity of acts contrary to natural
law. At other points, he upheld the absolute power of Parliament to legislate for the general
good of the Empire. But in the pamphlet, Otis stressed that government derived its powers
from the people. Should a government violate, rather than protect the natural rights of
the People to Their Life, Liberty and Property, Otis emphasized, then it could be overthrown
by the people. Otis also condemned the abrogation of trial by jury, admiralty courts, restrictions
on colonial trade, the discriminatory treatment of colonial troops during the war, and Negro
slavery. Later in the summer, another Boston representative, the lawyer Oxenbridge Thatcher,
Thacher protested the various enforcement provisions in the Revenue Act and again denounced the violations of the basic English right of taxation only by consent of one's representatives.
In the fall, the Massachusetts House held a special session called at the behest of Otis Thacher and the other Boston delegates.
It approved and addressed to England a claim of exemption from any parliamentary taxes
for revenue on the essentially British right of no taxation without representation.
The Conservative Council, however, declined to approve and a compromise address confined
the protest to pragmatic grounds implying that Parliament did have the right to impose
external taxes on the colonies and only denying its right to levy direct internal taxation.
This was a grave retreat from principle, since all previous English taxation of trade had
been designed for regulation rather than for revenue. Indeed, in 1764, before the Revenue
Therefore, before the Revenue Act came into force, gross annual revenue from all the trade
acts on the colonies amounted to less than 2,000 pounds a year, while the cost of collecting
it totaled over 7,000 pounds. The way was now, unfortunately, open to unlimited
taxation of American trade. The person responsible for weakening the Massachusetts stand was
Thomas Hutchinson, Lieutenant Governor, Chief Justice, Counselor and Head of the Court Party
Oligarchy in Massachusetts. Hutchinson understood the issue clearly enough, but he imposed a
distinction between internal and external taxation that he knew to be unsound for fear
of jeopardizing his position as royal favorite in Massachusetts. In addition, the pernicious
This influence of Richard Jackson helped to sabotage Massachusetts' stand on principle.
It was Jackson, in fact, who propounded the spurious distinction between internal and
external taxation. Jackson was undoubtedly motivated in his advice to the colonist by
his powerful post as secretary to the British prime minister. Despite the crucial role played
by Otis and especially by Adams in triggering colonial protest at the Sugar Act, the Radical
Liberal Party in Massachusetts suffered troubles by early 1765.
For one thing, Boston, the center of radical liberalism in the province, was grievously
underrepresented in the Massachusetts assembly.
The House was represented by the number of towns rather than by population, and as a
result the disproportion against populous Boston grew ever greater as the colony expanded
and more towns arose in western Massachusetts. In this period, Boston had only four representatives
out of one hundred twenty in the House. Moreover, rural Massachusetts had not been really aroused
Roused Against British Tyranny. In fact, Western Massachusetts was then dominated by such leading
Tories as Colonel John Murray of Rutland, the largest landowner in Worcester County,
and by Colonel Timothy Ruggles of Hardwick, another leader of the Court Party.