and the obligation of the people to obey the laws which it enacted. Wilkes was elected an Alderman of one of the wards of London; and the Lord Mayor, the Aldermen and the Livery petitioned the king to dissolve Parliament. A remonstrance from London and Westminster asserted that “there is a time when it is clearly demonstrable that men cease to be representatives. That time is now arrived. The House of Commons do not represent the people."

An anonymous journalist named "Junius" attacked the government in his celebrated Letters, which were characterized by their rancorous and unscrupulous tone and by the superior brilliancy of their style, by their clearness and terseness of statement and by the terrible vigor of their invective, thus giving a new power to the literature of the press. George III. obstinately defied public sentiment. Junius was prosecuted, and the petitions and remonstrances of London were haughtily rejected; but the failure of the prosecution of "Junius " established the right of the press to criticise the conduct of Parliament and Ministers and even of the sovereign himself.

66

99

Early in 1770 William Pitt, Earl of Chatham, so far recovered his health that he reappeared in the House of Lords, where he at once denounced the usurpations of the Commons and introduced a bill declaring those usurpations illegal. But his genius soon made him perceive that such outrages really owed their existence to the fact that the House of Commons no longer represented the people of England. He thereforse introduced a plan for the reform of that House by an increase of its county members. He could go no farther, as he was almost alone in the proposals which he made. Even the Whig faction under the Marquis of Rockingham were opposed to Parliamentary reform, and shrank with haughty disdain from the popular agitation in which public opinion was forced to express itself-an agitation which the Earl of Chatham deliberately encouraged, although he censured its extravagance.

Letters of "Junius"

and

Freedom

of the

Press.

Pitt's Fruitless

Efforts

for Parliamentary Reform.

Rise of

Great

Public

These quarrels between Wilkes and the House of Commons were the beginning of the influence of public meetings on English politics. The gatherings of the Middlesex electors in support of Wilkes were the Meetings preludes to the great meetings of the Yorkshire freeholders which gave the question of Parliamentary reform its importance; and the power of political agitation first made itself felt in England in the movement for Parliamentary reform and in the establishment of committees of correspondence throughout the kingdom for the purpose of promoting that reform. Political societies and clubs became prominent in the creation and organization of public opinion; and the spread of political discussion, along with the influence now beginning to be exercised by the appearance of many men in support of any political movement, made it

of Parlia

Debates.

evident that Parliament would soon be obliged to reckon with the sentiments of the English people at large.

Previous But the force of public opinion was brought to bear on Parliament Secrecy itself by an agent far more effective than popular agitation. The mentary secrecy of Parliamentary proceedings, which was the source of so much of the corruption of the House of Commons, was more difficult to preserve as the English people awoke to a greater interest in their public affairs. The debates in Parliament hitherto had been printed surreptitiously, as their publication was deemed a breach of privilege. The public interest in the debates on the Middlesex election induced the printers to act more boldly.

Legal

between

and the

In 1771 a formal complaint was made in the House of Commons; and Struggle that body issued a proclamation forbidding the publication of its dePrinters bates, and summoned six printers who set this proclamation at defiance House of to appear at the bar of the House. One printer who refused to appear Commons. was arrested by the messenger of the House of Commons; but the printer sent for a constable, who took both before the Lord Mayor of London, Mr. Crosby. The Lord Mayor and Aldermen Wilkes and Oliver set aside the proclamation of the House of Commons as without legal force, discharged the printer and required the messenger to furnish bail or go to prison on a charge of illegal arrest. The House of Commons received the news of these proceedings of the London magistrates with the most violent indignation, sent Lord Mayor Crosby and Alderman Oliver to imprisonment in the Tower and summoned Wilkes to appear at the bar of the House. The cheers of the crowds which followed the Lord Mayor to the Tower showed that public opinion was again on the side of the press; and, as Wilkes refused to appear at the bar of the House of Commons unless he were permitted to take his seat for Middlesex, the House compromised its dignity by ordering him to attend on the 8th of April, and then adjourning to the 9th, thus acknowledging its impotence and leaving the moral victory with Wilkes.

Publicity of Parlia

Estab

lished.

Since that event no attempt has been made to prevent the publication mentary of the Parliamentary debates, which now constitute the most important Debates and the most interesting feature in the periodical press. Few changes have been brought about so quietly. The responsibility of members of Parliament to their constituents was made constant and effective by the publication of their proceedings, and the English nation itself was called in to aid in the deliberations of its representatives. The English people at large were roused to a new and wider interest in public affairs, and the discussion of every subject of national importance in Parliament and in the press gave them a new political education. All phases of public opinion, as represented by the public journals, became a force in practical statesmanship, influenced the course of Parliamentary de

bates and controlled the actions of the Ministry in a closer and more constant manner than even Parliament itself had been able to do.

The press obtained an influence from the importance of its new position which it had never had before, and the first great English newspapers took their rise during this period. Journalism took a new tone of responsibility and intelligence with the rise of such great London papers as the Morning Chronicle, the Morning Post, the Morning Herald and the Times. The London Times-the greatest newspaper of the world-was founded January 1, 1788. Journalists of high moral temper and high literary excellence thereafter influenced British public opinion through their columns.

Great

London

News

papers.

SECTION II.-TAXATION WITHOUT REPRESENTATION (A. D. 1761-1775).

DEMOCRATIC ideas had a slow and steady but solid growth in England's North American colonies from the time of the establishment of those colonies. Those who left their homes in Europe to settle in the New World were animated with a desire for the enjoyment of pure civil, political and religious freedom. The republican spirit of the English American colonists was manifested in popular resistance to obnoxious acts of the British Parliament and to the tyranny of the royal governors sent from England to America to administer the government of the colonies. The claim of the British Parliament to legislate for the colonies was boldly denied by the colonists, who finally rebelled against the Mother Country, and, after a war of seven years, achieved their political independence and established a democratic republic under the name of The United States of America.

Demo

cratic Ideas

in the AngloAmerican

Colonies.

Colonial

Resist

ance to

Parlia

Taxation.

The long wars against France oppressed Great Britain with an enormous debt and exhausted the British treasury; and the Imperial Government resolved to procure money from the Anglo-American colonies by either direct or indirect taxation, on the plea that the French and mentary Indian War had been undertaken by Great Britain for the protection of her colonies, and that therefore it was not more than right that the colonists should bear some part of the expense of that struggle. The colonists denied the right of the Imperial Parliament to tax them, as they were not allowed any representation in that body, and maintained that "Taxation without representation is tyranny."

In order to fully understand the causes which led to Great Britain's loss of her thirteen North American colonies, it will be well to take a view of the relations of the colonies with the Mother Country for over half a century till the adoption of measures by the British Ministry and

Previous

Colonial Relations.

Views

of the Mother

Parliament which led the colonies finally to cast off their allegiance to their mother land. The American Revolution was not a sudden violent outburst caused by recent acts of oppression, but a climax produced by a final culmination of a long series of causes tending to produce such a result.

As the colonies were passing from infancy through youth into vigorous manhood the Mother Country viewed them in a new light. More Country. than had been anticipated was to be hoped for from them, and more than had been expected was to be feared from them. Great Britain now perceived that her flourishing North American colonies might be of great value to her in a material way by contributing largely to her national resources, and yet the colonies might consider themselves able to refuse thus to contribute. The colonists had manifested strange symptoms of insubordination toward the crown, Parliament and the British officials in the colonies, with the most amazing fearlessness. The British authorities regarded it as high time to curb the rising spirit of insubordination in the colonies and to confine them to the course demanded by the interests of the mother land.

Board of
Trade.

Its Acts.

The chief agency put in operation with the foregoing end in view was the Board of Trade, a body consisting of a president and seven members entitled the Lord Commissioners for Trade and Plantations, organized in 1696. This body was invested with functions previously exercised by committees of the Privy Council, but by this time enlarged with extensive powers of administration. It was assigned the enforcement of the Navigation Acts, to which were now added new and oppressive provisions of colonial Courts of Admirality. It was also authorized to execute the new acts by which the administration as well as the trade of the colonies was to be brought under stricter control. Among the first steps which it took was the royal approval of all colonial governors and the conformity of all colonial laws to the statutes of Parliament. The board entered upon its mission very heartily. It proposed the appointment of a Captain-General of the colonies, clothed with power to levy and organize an army independent of all colonial authority, as early as 1697.

The Board of Trade prohibited the exportation of colonial woolens, even from colony to colony, in 1698. In 1701 it even went so far as to recommend the resumption of the charters still retained by some of the colonies. Repeatedly were bills introduced in Parliament declaring the colonial charters void, but for various reasons these bills were not acted upon. The Board of Trade, winning the approval of the British authorities at home by its zeal, developed into a kind of ministerial body on being attached to a Secretary of State as its chief, in 1714. its course was not improved. The Secretary of State with the longest

But

official term (1724-1748)-the Duke of Newcastle-imagined New England to be an island. In short, the Board of Trade proved by their actions that they had no regard for the welfare of the colonies, considering only the interests of the Mother Country, as though the colonies were simply a broken cluster off the British coast.

Royal African

and the Slave

Trade.

About the time of the organization of the Board of Trade, the Royal African Company, hitherto a monopoly, was enlarged so as to permit Company general participation in its operations, its name signifying what these operations were. But the name does not make clear the near connection of the company with the English colonies, of the oppressiveness of the company or of the restiveness of the colonies. The royal instructions of Queen Anne to the royal governor of New York and New Jersey in 1702 were: "Give due encouragement to merchants, and, in particular, to the Royal African Company." In 1750 Parliament, in making the slave trade independent of the Royal African Company, declared: "The slave trade is very advantageous to Great Britain." In fact, the slave trade was a cardinal point in the treaties of Great Britain with the European powers. The Treaty of Utrecht in 1713 required Spain to provide her colonies with slaves furnished by Great Britain only. The Treaty of Aix la Chapelle was followed by a convention in 1750 indemnifying Great Britain to the amount of four hundred thousand pounds for relinquishing the slave-trade monopoly with Spain's colonies.

The Royal African Company's grip upon the English colonies was still closer. Virginia and South Carolina vainly imposed a prohibitory duty upon the importation of slaves, as their acts were annulled by the royal command. The Mother Country upheld the slave trade because the profits of the Royal African Company and of the private slave traders were enormous, and because the dependence of the colonists in agriculture, manufactures and commerce, as well as in government, was assured so long as they were confined to slave labor. This was openly avowed in England. Thus the colonies were at the mercy of the Royal African Company so long as that company was in existence, no matter how much they resisted its action and policy.

Its Grip on the English Colonies.

Govern

org.

The boards and companies of the Mother Country were heartily sup- Colonial ported in their policies and courses by the royal governors of the various English colonies. All the colonial governors, except those of Rhode Island and Connecticut, which the colonists themselves elected, were the efficient instruments of the British home authorities. There never was a more rapacious or avaricious set of officials sent forth to administer executive authority than the prodigal courtiers, broken-down officials and sycophant colonists who successively appeared in the scramble for colonial spoils.