WEBVTT NOTE 9. Reaction in Rhode Island and Connecticut 1 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:07.000 Volume 3, Chapter 9, Reaction in Rhode Island and Connecticut. 2 00:00:07.040 --> 00:00:13.160 As the Revenue Act was being passed, Colonel Eliphelet Dyer of Wyndham, a member of the 3 00:00:13.160 --> 00:00:19.280 Connecticut Council, attacked the revenue bill for supporting the standing army and 4 00:00:19.280 --> 00:00:26.280 called on the colonies to unite in protest. If they failed to do so, they may bid farewell 5 00:00:26.280 --> 00:00:32.560 Did farewell to freedom and liberty, burn their charters, and make the best of thraldom 6 00:00:32.560 --> 00:00:40.160 and slavery, for if we can have our interests and estates taken away and disposed of without 7 00:00:40.160 --> 00:00:46.860 our consent, and by those whose interest as well as inclination it may be to shift the 8 00:00:46.860 --> 00:00:54.380 burden off from themselves under pretence of protecting and defending America, then 9 00:00:54.380 --> 00:01:01.380 And England can insist on America's paying the expenses of any wars, past or present. 10 00:01:02.580 --> 00:01:09.580 Connecticut's legislature of May-June 1764 appointed a protest committee that included 11 00:01:09.780 --> 00:01:15.580 Governor Thomas Fitch. The committee's address to England, approved by the legislature in 12 00:01:15.580 --> 00:01:22.580 October, strongly protested the molasses tax, but again it retreated from principle to the 13 00:01:22.580 --> 00:01:28.580 to the artificial distinction between internal and external taxation. 14 00:01:28.580 --> 00:01:33.580 Once again, Connecticut's perfidious London agent, Richard Jackson, 15 00:01:33.580 --> 00:01:39.580 was instrumental in ensuring a suitably weak stand in the colonies. 16 00:01:39.580 --> 00:01:42.580 Rhode Island, with its large interest in trade, 17 00:01:42.580 --> 00:01:47.580 took a similar but a more bitter stance toward the molasses tax. 18 00:01:47.580 --> 00:01:54.380 In July, the legislature chose a committee to confer with other colonies on protesting the tax. 19 00:01:54.380 --> 00:02:00.580 The committee included the merchant Nicholas Brown and was headed by Governor Stephen Hopkins. 20 00:02:00.580 --> 00:02:07.580 Hopkins, a prominent storekeeper and popular politician, had founded the Providence Gazette 21 00:02:07.580 --> 00:02:13.580 and as early as January had written an essay on the trade of the northern colonies, 22 00:02:13.580 --> 00:02:19.580 Urging United Colonial Action for Repeal of the Old Malasses Act 23 00:02:19.580 --> 00:02:29.580 The Hopkins Committee, however, took no action until instructed by the legislature in September to confer with neighboring colonies. 24 00:02:29.580 --> 00:02:39.580 The committee then wrote to other colonies, significantly suggesting an inter-colonial conference to launch a united protest. 25 00:02:39.580 --> 00:02:54.580 In October, the legislature also appointed a committee to frame a protest and sent it to England the following month, along with a draft of Governor Hopkins' pamphlet, The Rights of the Colonies Examined. 26 00:02:54.580 --> 00:03:10.580 The address in Hopkin's pamphlet strongly protested the trade restrictions and enforcement provisions of the Revenue Act, but explicitly denied only the right of Parliament to levy internal taxes. 27 00:03:10.580 --> 00:03:23.580 However, both Hopkins and the Assembly went beyond other colonies by denying the right of Parliament to legislate for the colonies except for the general good of the whole Empire. 28 00:03:23.580 --> 00:03:30.380 The Hopkins pamphlet was popular in America and was soon reprinted in every colony. The 29 00:03:30.380 --> 00:03:36.580 Radical Massachusetts Gazette hailed it as a pamphlet that breathes a true spirit of 30 00:03:36.580 --> 00:03:40.700 liberty. The following February, however, the Hopkins 31 00:03:40.700 --> 00:03:47.580 essay was attacked in a pamphlet by Martin Howard, Jr., a leading Rhode Island Tory, 32 00:03:47.580 --> 00:03:52.380 who invoked the transcendent sovereignty of Parliament. 33 00:03:52.380 --> 00:03:57.020 Under pressure, Hopkins retreated from his denial of the right of Parliament to pass 34 00:03:57.020 --> 00:04:03.580 laws governing America, and also hinted that colonial representation in Parliament after 35 00:04:03.580 --> 00:04:08.700 the Manor of Scotland would remove colonial grievances. 36 00:04:08.700 --> 00:04:15.020 Not only was Hopkins pressed into retreat, so too was James Otis of Massachusetts. 37 00:04:15.020 --> 00:04:24.020 In March 1765, Otis, in A Vindication of the British Colonies, attempting to defend Hopkins, 38 00:04:24.020 --> 00:04:31.020 wound up retreating to a repudiation of his own pamphlet of a few months earlier. Otis's 39 00:04:31.020 --> 00:04:37.780 virtual surrender to Howard was soon completed in another pamphlet, Brief Remarks. But in 40 00:04:37.780 --> 00:04:44.300 the same pamphlet, Otis lashed out in bitter and hard-hitting denunciation of Howard and 41 00:04:44.300 --> 00:04:50.460 and his small but powerful clique of Tories known as the Newport Junto. 42 00:04:50.460 --> 00:04:58.060 Otis attacked the Junto as that little, dirty, drinking, drabbing, contaminated knot of thieves, 43 00:04:58.060 --> 00:05:04.380 beggars and transports, or the worthy descendants of such, made up of Turks, Jews and other 44 00:05:04.380 --> 00:05:09.580 infidels with a few renegade Christians and Catholics. 45 00:05:09.580 --> 00:05:16.780 The formation of the Newport Junto in late 1764 was, undoubtedly, one of the reasons 46 00:05:16.780 --> 00:05:23.380 for Governor Hopkins' precipitate retreat from liberal principle. The Junto had had 47 00:05:23.380 --> 00:05:29.940 the gall to petition England for revocation of Rhode Island's precious liberal and self-governing 48 00:05:29.940 --> 00:05:37.600 charter. Leader of the Tory Junto was Martin Howard, Jr., an Anglican lawyer, the son of 49 00:05:37.600 --> 00:05:56.600 Samuel Hall, printer of the Newport Mercury, one of the two newspapers in the colony, supported the Junto and made his paper a spokesman for Junto Views. 50 00:05:56.600 --> 00:06:06.600 Other leading members were Dr. Thomas Moffatt of Edinburgh, George Rome, an agent and debt collector for an English mercantile firm, 51 00:06:06.600 --> 00:06:19.600 Probably Augustus Johnston, Attorney General of Rhode Island, and the King's officers in the colony, especially John Robinson and his roommate, Lieutenant Benjamin Wickham. 52 00:06:19.600 --> 00:06:31.600 The Junto called for strict Crown control over fractious and democratic Rhode Island and for suppression of the abusive protests against English measures. 53 00:06:31.600 --> 00:06:39.600 The citizens of Rhode Island were understandably incensed at the Junto and at Howard's pamphlet against Hopkins. 54 00:06:39.600 --> 00:06:45.600 Freedom of speech and press was hardly, purely upheld in 18th century America, 55 00:06:45.600 --> 00:06:53.600 and Deputy Governor Joseph Wanton Jr. urged the Assembly to move against the Tory pamphlet and its printer. 56 00:06:53.600 --> 00:06:57.600 Fortunately, the Assembly voted down the zealots. 57 00:06:57.600 --> 00:07:04.320 The Superior Court under Governor Hopkins' control did call up and intimidate the printer, 58 00:07:04.320 --> 00:07:11.080 Samuel Hall, for a while, but did nothing further. Hall's Mercury, in reply, thundered 59 00:07:11.080 --> 00:07:16.120 that liberty of the press and freedom itself were in grave danger. 60 00:07:16.120 --> 00:07:22.240 Rhode Island and Connecticut were uniquely fortunate. Both had democratically elected 61 00:07:22.240 --> 00:07:29.720 Executives and therefore were free of an appointed oligarchy of royal officials, their friends 62 00:07:29.720 --> 00:07:36.120 and their favorites. In Rhode Island, the New Port Junto had nuisance value but not 63 00:07:36.120 --> 00:07:42.880 political power. Instead, Rhode Island was torn between two political factions, both 64 00:07:42.880 --> 00:07:50.200 of which were relatively liberal and opposed to British exactions. One faction was led 65 00:07:50.200 --> 00:07:57.420 by Stephen Hopkins of Providence and the other by Samuel Ward of Westerly in South Rhode 66 00:07:57.420 --> 00:08:06.420 Island. Historians have unfortunately woven around the Ward-Hopkins controversy, the neo-Marxian 67 00:08:06.420 --> 00:08:13.920 myth that the two sides waged a class struggle. The Hopkins group representing the radical 68 00:08:13.920 --> 00:08:20.400 Federal Farmers and the ward faction, the conservative merchants. Actually both parties 69 00:08:20.400 --> 00:08:26.080 had similar liberal principles and both were equally democratic in a highly democratic 70 00:08:26.080 --> 00:08:33.880 colony where nearly 80 percent of the adult males were eligible to vote. In addition to 71 00:08:33.880 --> 00:08:40.800 personal disputes, the two factions roughly represented sectional interest. The Hopkins 72 00:08:40.800 --> 00:08:46.640 Business forces represented Providence and the North, and the Wardites, Newport and the 73 00:08:46.640 --> 00:08:53.640 South. The controversy was sectional, but not class. Each group represented a similar 74 00:08:54.920 --> 00:09:01.920 economic congrease of agriculture, trade and finance. This should not be surprising when 75 00:09:02.660 --> 00:09:09.660 we remember that on the market, farmers, merchants and financiers are not in conflict or even 76 00:09:10.800 --> 00:09:25.800 Each occupational group is interdependent, and together they form a harmoniously integrated network of production and exchange, each benefiting from the other's activities. 77 00:09:25.800 --> 00:09:37.800 Competition, not conflict, existed between two such commercial complexes as rising Providence and relatively declining Newport. 78 00:09:37.800 --> 00:10:01.800 Both factions, then, were inter-class. Thus, Hopkins was backed by the influential Brown brothers, leading merchants of Providence, and by the wealthy and aristocratic wantons of Newport. Samuel Ward, on the other hand, was a farmer and small-town merchant who was no more wealthy than his rival Hopkins. 79 00:10:01.800 --> 00:10:15.800 As Professor Lovejoy puts it, farmers and merchants alike supported ward or Hopkins for reasons not directly related to the position either candidate or voter held in society. 80 00:10:15.800 --> 00:10:26.800 What then did the Hopkins and ward groups quarrel about? About the essentials of government in any era or any country. 81 00:10:26.800 --> 00:10:35.800 Allocation of the privileges to be derived from government and of the burdens to pay for these privileges. 82 00:10:35.800 --> 00:10:41.800 The essence of government is an exploitative rob-peter-to-pay poll process, 83 00:10:41.800 --> 00:10:50.800 and the jockeying of factions is to become as much of the poll and as little of the peter as possible. 84 00:10:50.800 --> 00:10:56.640 The perquisites of government in the Rhode Island of that day were largely public funds 85 00:10:56.640 --> 00:11:03.720 for bridges, lighthouses, schools and public works, letters of marque to allow ships to 86 00:11:03.720 --> 00:11:11.660 be privateers upon the enemy during wartime, grants of monopolies to businesses, and grants 87 00:11:11.660 --> 00:11:17.880 of permission to businesses to build dams or to towns to hold lotteries. 88 00:11:17.880 --> 00:11:23.060 Particularly important was the allocation of the tax burden. When the Hopkins faction 89 00:11:23.060 --> 00:11:30.140 came to power, the colonies' taxes fell more heavily upon the southern towns and more lightly 90 00:11:30.140 --> 00:11:35.700 on the northern. And the reverse was true when the ward group was in the saddle. A general 91 00:11:35.700 --> 00:11:42.480 atmosphere of local rebellion against taxation then began to permeate the colony. The northern 92 00:11:42.480 --> 00:11:49.100 Southern towns began to refuse tax payments during a warred regime, and the southern towns 93 00:11:49.100 --> 00:11:56.160 became delinquent during a Hopkins period. Each set of towns could wait for an ex post 94 00:11:56.160 --> 00:12:03.000 facto vindication when political fortunes would change. Seeing this, the towns of the 95 00:12:03.000 --> 00:12:11.800 factions in power began to take advantage of the situation and quietly cease to pay. 96 00:12:11.800 --> 00:12:19.200 As a result, tax refusal and tax delinquency permeated Rhode Island. 97 00:12:19.200 --> 00:12:25.200 Here was a particularly strong reason for Rhode Island's bitter resistance to the prospect 98 00:12:25.200 --> 00:12:27.720 of parliamentary taxation. 99 00:12:27.720 --> 00:12:33.800 The Rhode Islanders were paying very little colonial taxes at all, and neither the Ward 100 00:12:33.800 --> 00:12:41.160 nor the Hopkins faction had any wish to disturb this idol by becoming subject to levies from 101 00:12:41.160 --> 00:12:41.660 in England.